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Every company should be owned by its employees

elysian.press

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Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#811

Post by DaoVeles »

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…

> IOW, they're being underpaid relative to market, in exchange for ownership, expecting to get more later when they sell the shares.

Alas this would be a big issue. It is the deferred payment test writ large. Do you want $20 now or $30 next week.

For a lot of humanity when times get difficult we will tend towards the immediate payoff rather than the long term. To eat the seed corn.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#812

Post by whoknowsidont »

yibg wrote: post #762
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…

This model also puts a lot of risk on the employees. It’s basically forcing investment in the same company that pays your salary. An investment that has less liquidity than standard investments. It’s like putting all your retirement fund into your company’s stock.

>It’s like putting all your retirement fund into your company’s stock.

As opposed to putting your retirement fund into other company's stocks, which everyone does at the same time, making those companies too big too fail without unraveling several threads of social fabric.

I think your statement actually proves why employees should have stock in the company.

If we really were worried about issues such as this we'd have universal (not attached to you employer) healthcare and a pretty robust (but minimal) retire fund for citizens.

But we have the opposite of that with none of the upsides.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#813

Post by Gormo »

ossobuco wrote: post #304
lennixm wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People need to stop using this stat. It's completely useless. There are literally people making top percentile incomes saying they're living paycheck to paycheck in these surveys because they interpret the survey questions wildly different than other people. A tiny, tiny percentage of Americans would literally go hungry if they didn't get their next month's paycheck the rest would have to cash out some small percenta…

> A tiny, tiny percentage of Americans would literally go hungry if they didn't get their next month's paycheck "71.93% of Americans Living Paycheck to Paycheck Have $2,000 or Less in Savings"[0]. So no, it's not a tiny percentage. $2k or less in savings means being one emergency expense away from not being able to pay rent or your house loan next month. - [0]: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/living-paycheck-t…

I'm confused about that figure, since not having any savings to fall back on seems to me to be the definition of living paycheck-to-paycheck. How is that not 100%? The argument you're making seems tautological, and doesn't really account for the elasticity of people's spending habits, or the income ranges they fall into in the first place.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#814

Post by [deleted] »

carlosjobim wrote: post #705
xivzgrev wrote: post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homes shouldn't be an investment. They've accidentally become that in the past few decades, and as a result, affordability is getting worse. The better it does as an investment class, the worse it will become. It's a self perpetuating spiral. I don't see the market solving this. I only see some regulation helping here - ie any tax filer can at most own 1 SFH (this includes married couples). So no second, third, tenth…

> They've accidentally become that There is no accident at all. The bankers decided that real estate should be the primary vehicle for new money to be created and released into circulation. This means that the increase in total real estate monetary value will always be larger than the monetary value of total labour and trade productivity within a nation. It is a mathematical fact that won't change unless the monetary…

[deleted]

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#815

Post by apantel »

andrepd wrote: post #772
apantel wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system is not perfectly efficient because humans aren’t efficient. I think the idea is, keeping a market relatively free (with a sane amount of regulation) allows capital to seek returns. This leads to a lot of independent, decentralized value production, like startups popping up out of nowhere because some founders have an idea and attract capital. The thing is, people who pile up capital don’t have to be effici…

>If you wanted to implement a perfectly-efficient system, would that mean banning the fulfillment of any desire that wasn’t strictly a need? I don’t think anyone would want to live in such a system. Holy mother of slippery slopes x) Do you think $current_economic_system can be improved? Ah so you want to ban fulfillment of any desire ? Sheesh

You’re strawmanning. I was caricaturing the call for efficiency by blowing it up into a monster. I wasn’t saying I want to ban fulfillment of desire, or saying that’s the only alternative to the status quo.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#816

Post by apantel »

hellojesus wrote: post #755
apantel wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system is not perfectly efficient because humans aren’t efficient. I think the idea is, keeping a market relatively free (with a sane amount of regulation) allows capital to seek returns. This leads to a lot of independent, decentralized value production, like startups popping up out of nowhere because some founders have an idea and attract capital. The thing is, people who pile up capital don’t have to be effici…

Efficiency is measured exactly by people maximizing their utility subject to their preferences and constraints. What you see as vanity, such as hair extensions, may be a high utility item for others. Consider the hair extensions make them a more attractive mate and provide them the opportunity to breed with a better stock, for example. Similarly, consider that 20k ft sq mansion in context: all the prior owner(s) of t…

Yeah I’m all for these things that I was calling “vanity”. I was only using the word vanity because the comment I was responding to used it pejoratively: “vanity projects”.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#817

Post by localfirst »

This happened in South Korea in the late 70s when the founder gave 100% of his stake in a famous pharmaceutical company.

Fast forward to 2024, the employers who now own the company are fighting amongst each other, involved in bribery, and the company is now at risk of a hostile takeover perhaps even bankruptcy as they've been losing market share steadily after it became 100% employee owned 50 years ago.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#818

Post by parpfish »

bognition wrote: post #796
parpfish wrote: post #771

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how does equity in privately held companies work? I get that some share provide voting rights, but that's not generally what to employees. when the people in the article cash out their ESOP shares to buy a house... who's on the other end of that deal to buy those shares? is it some other employee? Wouldn't that mean that money is just switching hands between your employees rather than helping all your employees get r…

The vast majority of small businesses have no "exit" in sight. Instead they want to rely on solid business fundamentals. Sell a product/service for a profit. Typically the owners of the business get access to the profits proportional to their ownership stake. By enabling employees to be owners you grant them access to those profits and to participate in discussions around how to spend/re-invest profits.

In small businesses like that, how often do profits actually appear? It seems like big public companies often decide to increase spending to chase growth that would increase revenue and be profit-neutral. Do smaller companies think about it in the same way?

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#819

Post by hellojesus »

consteval wrote: post #791
hellojesus wrote: post #784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we want the labor market to not be skewed like this, we will need to allow (and even force) laborers to unionize. We already allow workers to unionize; a practice with which I don't agree. If we were to force workers to unionize, then we take away worker atonomy. I fail to see that as a benefit. I don't have anything against unions generally and am happy for companies to decide they will exclusively deal with union…

As I've said, we don't really because union busting is not only allowed but expected. The reality is that employers should not have such autonomy. What you're arguing is the right for an employer to necessarily hold more leverage in negotiation as opposed to workers. Which... isn't a right. It's an anti-right. As in, you want less rights for workers. Unions only work if they're enforced. Just like a right to life imp…

> What you're arguing is the right for an employer to necessarily hold more leverage in negotiation as opposed to workers. Which... isn't a right. It's an anti-right. As in, you want less rights for workers.

No. My argument is that forcing companies to only negotiate with unions if that isn't want the company wants to do is an anti-right. It violates free trade. You disallow entity A from negotiating with entity B because entity C doesn't like it.

> Just like a right to life implies an anti-right to kill, a right to fair negotiations implies an anti-right for employers to choose not to negotiate with unions.

My point above is illustrated here. Person A being alive doesn't impact person B being alive, or person C being alive.

Disallowing entity A from negotiating with entity B as entity C means that you are now infringing on entity A and entity B as an external third party.

As entity C, you would be perfectly within reason to inform entity A you will not trade with them if they do not negotiate through entity D or if they negotiate with any of your peers through any channel other than entity D. Entity A would get to decide if you offer more value. But to be entities X, Y, Z and disallow entities A and B from trade is anti-rights.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#820

Post by greycol »

Gormo wrote: post #808
jrflowers wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this caricature of the spoiled entitled employee because it completely ignores the concept of shareholders having a say in governance. If stocks were only a proxy for money and nothing else the example would be spot-on.

Can you elaborate on how shareholders having a say in governance relates to worker compensation? Why shouldn't shareholders have control over governance?

They shouldn't have complete control over governence because, especially in larger businesses, the shareholders are less invested in what a business does than the stakeholders.

A classic example would be an employee forced to work in an unhealthy manner. If the cost of replacing the employee when they're worn out is less than the extra profit made by causing the employee to work in that manner it might be the right form of governance for shareholders. Even if it would not be profitable if the health costs weren't externalised.

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