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How does democracy give employees "control of their own life"? In any organization of appreciable size, your vote doesn't matter. Capitalism gives employees co

How does democracy give employees "control of their own life"? In any organization of appreciable size, your vote doesn't matter. Capitalism gives employees control; your life has changed immediately after you exercise your option to exit. Voting simply doesn't. It's also potentially very harmful, due to the principal/agent problem. Every agent (employee) has the incentive to loot the company, build empires, and protect their job. But such things are of course very bad for organizations. This is made worse by democracy, because not only do voters have no incentive to do what's best for the organization, they can do whatever makes them feel good (since their vote doesn't matter). (As an example of the principal/agent problem, witness Marisa Mayer vs Starboard. She wants to keep her job and build her empire at Yahoo. Shareholders want to avoid paying taxes on Alibaba, which will destroy far more value than the Yahoo empire could ever plausibly be worth.)

jahaja 11y ago
> But such things are of course very bad for organizations. I'd say the ideals of a worker cooperative is that the workers _are_ the organization. The organization is a means to an end for all workers benefit. Not the other way around as is usually the case in a totalitarian capitalistic one. And yes you're right, Capitalism gives you as much control giving as any totalitarian system, quitting/exile. As the goal of worker cooperatives is usually not to become multi-nationals I'm not sure how low your bar is for when ones vote become absolutely futile.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  When P(vote affects outcome) x (Value of outcome A - value of outcome B) < emotional_benefit_of_doing_whatever_you_want. You observe this effect in national politics all the time - for instance, the emotional benefit of voting for a cool guy like Trump drastically exceeds P(vote effects outcome) x (Delta in outcomes). Last time I checked, I had to approximate P(vote effects outcome) by hand because it was too small to represent with double precision floating point numbers.
js8 11y ago
Democracy is not just voting, it also gives you possibly to put forward proposals and candidate for leading roles. As other commenter said, you can always exit. But democracy gives you explicit right to change things (albeit no bigger than to other people in the organization), which is actually a more efficient method of introducing change than fatalistically wait until the dysfunctional organization dies.
st3v3r 11y ago
"This is made worse by democracy, because not only do voters have no incentive to do what's best for the organization" I fail to see how this is any different than in any other job, at least for non top level management.
Tycho 11y ago
hey, do you know any good blogs or articles or studies about this sort of 'empire building?'

jahaja 11y ago

> But such things are of course very bad for organizations. I'd say the ideals of a worker cooperative is that the workers _are_ the organization. The organization is a means to an end for all workers benefit. Not the other way around as is usually the case in a totalitarian capitalistic one. And yes you're right, Capitalism gives you as much control giving as any totalitarian system, quitting/exile. As the goal of worker cooperatives is usually not to become multi-nationals I'm not sure how low your bar is for when ones vote become absolutely futile.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
When P(vote affects outcome) x (Value of outcome A - value of outcome B) < emotional_benefit_of_doing_whatever_you_want. You observe this effect in national politics all the time - for instance, the emotional benefit of voting for a cool guy like Trump drastically exceeds P(vote effects outcome) x (Delta in outcomes). Last time I checked, I had to approximate P(vote effects outcome) by hand because it was too small to represent with double precision floating point numbers.

js8 11y ago

Democracy is not just voting, it also gives you possibly to put forward proposals and candidate for leading roles. As other commenter said, you can always exit. But democracy gives you explicit right to change things (albeit no bigger than to other people in the organization), which is actually a more efficient method of introducing change than fatalistically wait until the dysfunctional organization dies.

st3v3r 11y ago

"This is made worse by democracy, because not only do voters have no incentive to do what's best for the organization" I fail to see how this is any different than in any other job, at least for non top level management.

Tycho 11y ago

hey, do you know any good blogs or articles or studies about this sort of 'empire building?'