Every company should be owned by its employees • Hacker News Board

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#661

Post by jasode » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:02 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #633

Nifty3929 wrote: post #594

I think it's easy to look at this with an existing, successful business in mind - but things don't always work out that way. How would a business like this get started? Usually the owner is the one who invests a lot of their own time and/or money into the business to get it off the ground in the first place. Would we be asking workers to pony up in those early years when failure is likely? With Central States, the st…

The article is arguing for ESOPs, basically stock options for employees. The examples cited are actually quite tame by tech industry standards: "During Central States’ worst year, employees earned the equivalent of 6 percent of their pay in stock, during their best they earned 26 percent." By contrast, FANG employees routinely make >50% of their compensation in stock, and it can be up to 80% in good years. As for how…

>As for how these get started, it's the same as any tech startup. [...]

To clarify, the gp was asking a rhetorical question that he already knew the answer to when he stated, "How would a business [that already looks attractive for ESOP] like this get started? [... his recap similar to your recap ...]"

To put it differently, the scenario he's trying to explain is something like this given that ~9 out 10 businesses fail :

- you can't look at just a single company's successful timeline to judge the ESOP for society; you also have to consider all the failed companies and how ESOPs would play out in those timelines as well. Since ~90% of businesses fail, you have to play out the financial dynamics of employees buying into ownership of all those failed companies. And in contradiction of employee-ownership, a lot of employees would prefer getting a bigger paycheck from a dying company rather than having money deducted to buy worthless equity shares.

- e.g. of course employees would love to be significant workers-cooperative owners of Amazon Inc and Apple Inc. But the analysis also must include employees owning worthless shares of Pets.com (bankrupt 2000 and shutdown) and Commodore Computer (bankrupt 1994). Some workers got employee-ownership shares of Commodore Inc instead of Apple Inc?!? Well, it sucks to be those workers.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#662

Post by indoordin0saur » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:04 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #656

> “It's hard to build true wealth for yourself if you don't have some type of ownership in something, and it's hard for most people to get ownership in something,” Ruger says. I think this is a really good insight. But it also touches on something that many of the HN crowd, especially in the Bay Area find uncomfortable: home ownership. One of the ownership assets that is most attainable by many Americans is a little…

Land value tax.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#663

Post by qwytw » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:04 PM UTC

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #467

jjmarr wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the purpose of the mixed economy in which most of us live. The government changes the rules of the game to try to align the profit motive with social good, because they are naturally not aligned. You haven't said why worker cooperatives optimizing the benefit of their own workers wouldn't add up to more welfare if the entire economy was based around worker cooperatives. in my opinion worker ownership of the m…

> good historical track record Please cite some sources that are not communist countries. You know, “just socialism.” You way want to also ignore the existence of Norway, much of Europe, and popular US federal programs too when you're doing this exercise.

Please list any countries are are "just socialist" not communist. If we're compared hypothetical systems vs actual real-world ones it's not exactly fair.

> existence of Norway

Which is certainly not a "socialist" countries, unless you define socialism in extremely broad and ambiguous terms at which point the word losses any meaning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy isn't socialism by any reasonable definition. Unless you think Bismarck was a socialist...

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#664

Post by apwell23 » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:04 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #656

> “It's hard to build true wealth for yourself if you don't have some type of ownership in something, and it's hard for most people to get ownership in something,” Ruger says. I think this is a really good insight. But it also touches on something that many of the HN crowd, especially in the Bay Area find uncomfortable: home ownership. One of the ownership assets that is most attainable by many Americans is a little…

> One of the ownership assets that is most attainable by many Americans is a little plot of real estate

most attainable is buying stock through IRA account.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#665

Post by qwytw » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:07 PM UTC

trinsic2 wrote: post #539

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> good historical track record Please cite some sources that are not communist countries. You know, “just socialism.” You way want to also ignore the existence of Norway, much of Europe, and popular US federal programs too when you're doing this exercise.

Exactly. Sick of people applying the catch-phrase "socialism" to everything to marginalize a method of community good.

> Sick of people applying the catch-phrase "socialism"

People claiming that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy is "socialism" are not any less silly.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#666

Post by torontopizza » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

hemantv wrote: post #617

Nifty3929 wrote: post #594

I think it's easy to look at this with an existing, successful business in mind - but things don't always work out that way. How would a business like this get started? Usually the owner is the one who invests a lot of their own time and/or money into the business to get it off the ground in the first place. Would we be asking workers to pony up in those early years when failure is likely? With Central States, the st…

Individuals have visions not committee. We build monuments for individuals not for committee. Having said that no man is island of itself. Current incentive structure works great to motivate individuals to start companies

Of course, you are right.

----

Edit, I was mistaken in my earlier post, so I will just leave this here as a correction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Burghers_of_Calais

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#667

Post by qwytw » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

trinsic2 wrote: post #611

jjmarr wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Every company should be owned by its employees" is the definition of socialism, which is social ownership of the means of production. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism Specifically this is market socialism.

I don't give a fuck with the definition is. Its not helpful to this discussion, move on. Our world is being destroyed by capitalism, maybe its time to try something else.

> Our world is being destroyed by capitalism, maybe its time to try something else.

Well.. same could be said about "democracy". Despite its many inherent flaws (and even a more non inherent ones) free market capitalism has been the main driving force behind human progress for hundreds of years.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#668

Post by bobthepanda » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:09 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #656

> “It's hard to build true wealth for yourself if you don't have some type of ownership in something, and it's hard for most people to get ownership in something,” Ruger says. I think this is a really good insight. But it also touches on something that many of the HN crowd, especially in the Bay Area find uncomfortable: home ownership. One of the ownership assets that is most attainable by many Americans is a little…

Part of the problem with upzoning is that for people who are not going to redevelop because they like their house or they do not have the financial means to do so, and are also unwilling to sell, they get no monetary benefit from the upzone.

In some jurisdictions, this is alleviated by allowing the sale of excess zoning capacity to others, which now gives people in that situation a way to realize monetary gains. https://caldwellcommercial.com/understanding-commercial-real...

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#669

Post by standardUser » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:09 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #656

> “It's hard to build true wealth for yourself if you don't have some type of ownership in something, and it's hard for most people to get ownership in something,” Ruger says. I think this is a really good insight. But it also touches on something that many of the HN crowd, especially in the Bay Area find uncomfortable: home ownership. One of the ownership assets that is most attainable by many Americans is a little…

> once that piece of ownership has been attained it's also rational to want to preserve and maximize the value of that investment

By that logic, the idea of workers having part ownership of the companies they work for has a lot of upside.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#670

Post by harhargange » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:12 PM UTC

RandomCitizen12 wrote: post #658

Nifty3929 wrote: post #594

I think it's easy to look at this with an existing, successful business in mind - but things don't always work out that way. How would a business like this get started? Usually the owner is the one who invests a lot of their own time and/or money into the business to get it off the ground in the first place. Would we be asking workers to pony up in those early years when failure is likely? With Central States, the st…

> How would a business like this get started? Usually the owner is the one who invests a lot of their own time and/or money into the business to get it off the ground in the first place. Would we be asking workers to pony up in those early years when failure is likely? In Canada, there are 'Labour Sponsored Venture Capital Corporations' with union overseers to do this and special tax deductions for investing money th…

Moreover, splitting the decision making is so conflict prone and unoptimised for competition. I had a look at some statistics that showed most successful startups take off when they have a single founder