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I just formed a company back in December. Super easy to set up an LLC, C or S Corp. But I wanted it to be a worker co-op like Mondragon. And there's no real gui

I just formed a company back in December. Super easy to set up an LLC, C or S Corp. But I wanted it to be a worker co-op like Mondragon. And there's no real guidance or help. Democracy is cool, until we look at companies. Then it's dictatorships as the norm. And trying to do it right from the ground up is high impossible. As a obligatory comment: are there any other in the HN-sphere that focuses on worker cooperatives?

danso 7y ago
Sure, it's hard/unfeasible for a startup to unionize in its formative years. But Kickstarter was founded in 2009 and is a relatively mature company in the tech sector.
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  I think they parent is asking more about how few resources exist helping people establish and manage worker co-op forms of businesses rather than LLCs or S-Corps.
umvi 7y ago
> Democracy is cool, until we look at companies. Then it's dictatorships as the norm. Democracy is a horribly inefficient system of government. Its only redeeming quality is that it seems effective at (so far) deterring tyranny and abuse of power. However, like I said, it's horribly inefficient. Changes that are easy to make under a dictatorship can be extremely hard to make under a democracy. Not exactly a quality you would want for a project or company, especially if you (the founder) have a vision. IMO, part of the reason Linux and Python were so successful was that they had a "benevolent dictator" with a strong vision. Imagine the gridlock that would occur with Linux development if we had a 2-party system that polarized on controversial issues and got mired at every vote.
- mempko 7y ago
  Democracy is also a system that produces BETTER decisions. Sure tyranny can make decisions "efficiently" but that's not that great when those decisions are terrible. Democracy: Fewer macro, more micro, better decisions Command-Control: More macro, fewer micro, terrible decisions. EDIT: Another way to think of democracy is "distributed decision making" vs command-control which is "centralized decision making". When I talk about democracy, I mean distributed decision making.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    It also makes the orgs much slower moving, much less able to adapt quickly. Market conditions change while these companies are still debating decisions from months ago. TL;DR: It works for some (and we should have more of them imo!) but not all or even most.
  - NhanH 7y ago
    Non action is a decision. In general, I don't think there is even a possibility to ever make less decisions. A situation happens, and a decision needs to be made to resolved it, non-action is also just one of the possible decision. I don't think I have ever heard, study or read about the claim of democracy making better decision (at the least, the common refrain about tyranny of the majority comes to mind), so I will have to ask for justifications of that statement.
    - mempko 7y ago
      First, most people misunderstand democracy. Democracy is that people have a say over in proportion to how much a decision affects them. Command-control hierarchies don't have this property. I like to call democracy 'distributed' decision making vs centralized like command-control. Have you read studies that command-control hierarchies make better decisions?
    - evunveot 7y ago
      "Wisdom of the crowd" was also a common refrain for a time. Somewhat trendy in the years before Twitter and Facebook blew up. I think it's widely regarded as naive nowadays, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd#Problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd#Problems
- jrochkind1 7y ago
  Some have experienced egregious tyranny and abuse of power in the workplace, and might think it is worth deterring there too.
  - umvi 7y ago
    IMO with companies, the stakes are not so high that democracies (i.e. unions) need to be implemented right from inception. If a company demonstrates repeated abuse of employees, then sure, retrofit it with a union to keep future abuses in check. But unions have several significant downsides too, and for companies with a clean record, strong leaders with a vision, good pay and benefits, high morale, etc. I don't see any benefit to encumbering such with a union.
    - jrochkind1 7y ago
      If you haven't been in a position where workplace tyranny and abuse of power don't seem so high stakes, you are fortunate, but your experience is not universal or necessarily typical.
      - umvi 7y ago
        Not high stakes as in you won't be killed, your family won't be shipped off to a labor camp, etc. if the company president turns out to be a malevolent dictator. You really think it's worth it to encumber all companies with unions because of a few bad eggs?
        Apocryphon 7y ago
        In the U.S., healthcare is tied to employer. That, coupled with low amount of savings most Americans have, does make it into a life and death situation.
        jrochkind1 7y ago
        No, at worst you might just might end up living on the street, without healthcare. Or just humiliated and broken down daily. Sure I do. What's the downside, someone might tell you not to plug in your own computer? You think it's worth it to have people spending the majority of their life in an environment of tyranny, abuse of power, humilation and degradation, no democracy in the environment you spend most of your waking hours in -- because some unions might tell you not to plug in your own computer?
- geofft 7y ago
  Linus and Guido a) do not control anyone's paycheck b) cannot control who decides they're interested in working on Linux and Python. The benevolent dictatorship model works great when people can vote with their feet (or their keyboards, as the case may be) whether they support the dictator in the first place. The contributors to Linux and Python have more influence over the projects than the dictators do - they continually decide whether to endorse the dictator's vision. A dictatorship of a company is much more like an actual dictatorship of a country, where you control people's lives and decide who gets to join and leave. It's more efficient, yes - but it is both less just and less incentivized to point that ruthless efficiency in the right direction. By all means, run technical projects at work like Linux and Python are run - but give people the freedom to vote no confidence in these projects without endangering their housing and their health insurance.
  - technotony 7y ago
    You don't get to decide who leaves. If people don't like a companies dictator then they are free to go join another company. It's this competition in the free market for labor that helps prevent the abuses of tyranny.
    - xiler 7y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony
    - lexs 7y ago
      That is a terribly naive perspective on the "free market for labor"
      - pathseeker 7y ago
        Not in software.
        7y ago
- Mangalor 7y ago
  Maybe what would improve these companies is not pure democracy, but rather a bill of rights for workers. This can include a mutual contract over pay and benefits, depending on how well the company is doing, with a legitimate appeals process for both sides.
- carapace 7y ago
  [In]efficient at what? You've got to think carefully about your metrics when it comes to government. Look it's widely understood that, if the dictator or tyrant is good at his (or, very occasionally, her) job then things usually go well. The old women of Bhutan cried when the King decreed democracy. It's getting rid of the bad ones that's the big problem, and so: democracy. "The worst form of government except for all the others." Edit to add: the ultimate government is "full consensus", but it's incredibly expensive in terms of the time it takes to get everybody's input and consensus. However, once full consensus is reached it's the most efficient at execution: everyone works together in harmony to achieve the ends of the group in the mutually-agreed fashion. Needless to say, this form of government is very very rare on Earth, but hardly unknown. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Democracy is efficient at getting shit done. As uncareful as this metric is defined. But I would say even more importantly, democracy is very efficient at limiting internal bloodshed. It provides a well-defined, peaceful process for people to grab power. The power is limited, but you don't have to kill people to gain it, and in turn you don't risk getting killed yourself by the next upstart.
    - carapace 7y ago
      I agree. One of the most important and successful aspects is the relatively peaceful transfer of power. Personally I'm more concerned that the government remains responsive and, for lack of a better word, humble. (That's part of why the Kingdom of Bhutan is so amazing: the don't measure GNP, they have a measure called Gross National Happiness that they take pretty seriously. Heh. They really seem to have their kit together. It's a Third-World country you can't emigrate to.)
- mrlala 7y ago
  >Its only redeeming quality is that it seems effective at (so far) deterring tyranny and abuse of power. =/
dv_dt 7y ago
Look here and with their sister orgs https://www.usworker.coop/home/ https://www.usworker.coop/home/ They hold conferences and workshops. Edit: And if you're looking for a higher level approach: https://democracycollaborative.org/ https://democracycollaborative.org/
archagon 7y ago
I’ve been wondering recently to what extent the political structures of the most successful corporations may influence those of politics at large... It’s funny that we value democracy in name, but still enforce a rigid, top-down, and winner-takes-all hierarchy in most of our businesses.
j4pe 7y ago
Nice! I also ran a company as a worker coop - but I structured it as an LLC, just because it was far easier. Coop practices like revenue sharing were defined through company bylaws, not its legal ownership structure. Lots of people have done coops in tech. One decent list: https://github.com/hng/tech-coops https://github.com/hng/tech-coops Yanis Varoufakis, before he was the finance minister of Greece(!), worked at Valve and wrote about the economic theory of why corporations are structured as centrally controlled fiefdoms instead of democracies, and why Valve was apparently more democratic (http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/why-valve-or-what-do-we-need-corporations-for-and-how-does-valves-management-structure-fit-into-todays-corporate-world/ http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/why-valve-or-what-d...). Great read.

danso 7y ago

Sure, it's hard/unfeasible for a startup to unionize in its formative years. But Kickstarter was founded in 2009 and is a relatively mature company in the tech sector.

ilikehurdles 7y ago
I think they parent is asking more about how few resources exist helping people establish and manage worker co-op forms of businesses rather than LLCs or S-Corps.

umvi 7y ago

> Democracy is cool, until we look at companies. Then it's dictatorships as the norm. Democracy is a horribly inefficient system of government. Its only redeeming quality is that it seems effective at (so far) deterring tyranny and abuse of power. However, like I said, it's horribly inefficient. Changes that are easy to make under a dictatorship can be extremely hard to make under a democracy. Not exactly a quality you would want for a project or company, especially if you (the founder) have a vision. IMO, part of the reason Linux and Python were so successful was that they had a "benevolent dictator" with a strong vision. Imagine the gridlock that would occur with Linux development if we had a 2-party system that polarized on controversial issues and got mired at every vote.

mempko 7y ago
Democracy is also a system that produces BETTER decisions. Sure tyranny can make decisions "efficiently" but that's not that great when those decisions are terrible. Democracy: Fewer macro, more micro, better decisions Command-Control: More macro, fewer micro, terrible decisions. EDIT: Another way to think of democracy is "distributed decision making" vs command-control which is "centralized decision making". When I talk about democracy, I mean distributed decision making.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  It also makes the orgs much slower moving, much less able to adapt quickly. Market conditions change while these companies are still debating decisions from months ago. TL;DR: It works for some (and we should have more of them imo!) but not all or even most.
- NhanH 7y ago
  Non action is a decision. In general, I don't think there is even a possibility to ever make less decisions. A situation happens, and a decision needs to be made to resolved it, non-action is also just one of the possible decision. I don't think I have ever heard, study or read about the claim of democracy making better decision (at the least, the common refrain about tyranny of the majority comes to mind), so I will have to ask for justifications of that statement.
  - mempko 7y ago
    First, most people misunderstand democracy. Democracy is that people have a say over in proportion to how much a decision affects them. Command-control hierarchies don't have this property. I like to call democracy 'distributed' decision making vs centralized like command-control. Have you read studies that command-control hierarchies make better decisions?
  - evunveot 7y ago
    "Wisdom of the crowd" was also a common refrain for a time. Somewhat trendy in the years before Twitter and Facebook blew up. I think it's widely regarded as naive nowadays, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd#Problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd#Problems
jrochkind1 7y ago
Some have experienced egregious tyranny and abuse of power in the workplace, and might think it is worth deterring there too.
- umvi 7y ago
  IMO with companies, the stakes are not so high that democracies (i.e. unions) need to be implemented right from inception. If a company demonstrates repeated abuse of employees, then sure, retrofit it with a union to keep future abuses in check. But unions have several significant downsides too, and for companies with a clean record, strong leaders with a vision, good pay and benefits, high morale, etc. I don't see any benefit to encumbering such with a union.
  - jrochkind1 7y ago
    If you haven't been in a position where workplace tyranny and abuse of power don't seem so high stakes, you are fortunate, but your experience is not universal or necessarily typical.
    - umvi 7y ago
      Not high stakes as in you won't be killed, your family won't be shipped off to a labor camp, etc. if the company president turns out to be a malevolent dictator. You really think it's worth it to encumber all companies with unions because of a few bad eggs?
      - Apocryphon 7y ago
        In the U.S., healthcare is tied to employer. That, coupled with low amount of savings most Americans have, does make it into a life and death situation.
      - jrochkind1 7y ago
        No, at worst you might just might end up living on the street, without healthcare. Or just humiliated and broken down daily. Sure I do. What's the downside, someone might tell you not to plug in your own computer? You think it's worth it to have people spending the majority of their life in an environment of tyranny, abuse of power, humilation and degradation, no democracy in the environment you spend most of your waking hours in -- because some unions might tell you not to plug in your own computer?
geofft 7y ago
Linus and Guido a) do not control anyone's paycheck b) cannot control who decides they're interested in working on Linux and Python. The benevolent dictatorship model works great when people can vote with their feet (or their keyboards, as the case may be) whether they support the dictator in the first place. The contributors to Linux and Python have more influence over the projects than the dictators do - they continually decide whether to endorse the dictator's vision. A dictatorship of a company is much more like an actual dictatorship of a country, where you control people's lives and decide who gets to join and leave. It's more efficient, yes - but it is both less just and less incentivized to point that ruthless efficiency in the right direction. By all means, run technical projects at work like Linux and Python are run - but give people the freedom to vote no confidence in these projects without endangering their housing and their health insurance.
- technotony 7y ago
  You don't get to decide who leaves. If people don't like a companies dictator then they are free to go join another company. It's this competition in the free market for labor that helps prevent the abuses of tyranny.
  - xiler 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony
  - lexs 7y ago
    That is a terribly naive perspective on the "free market for labor"
    - pathseeker 7y ago
      Not in software.
      - 7y ago
Mangalor 7y ago
Maybe what would improve these companies is not pure democracy, but rather a bill of rights for workers. This can include a mutual contract over pay and benefits, depending on how well the company is doing, with a legitimate appeals process for both sides.
carapace 7y ago
[In]efficient at what? You've got to think carefully about your metrics when it comes to government. Look it's widely understood that, if the dictator or tyrant is good at his (or, very occasionally, her) job then things usually go well. The old women of Bhutan cried when the King decreed democracy. It's getting rid of the bad ones that's the big problem, and so: democracy. "The worst form of government except for all the others." Edit to add: the ultimate government is "full consensus", but it's incredibly expensive in terms of the time it takes to get everybody's input and consensus. However, once full consensus is reached it's the most efficient at execution: everyone works together in harmony to achieve the ends of the group in the mutually-agreed fashion. Needless to say, this form of government is very very rare on Earth, but hardly unknown. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Democracy is efficient at getting shit done. As uncareful as this metric is defined. But I would say even more importantly, democracy is very efficient at limiting internal bloodshed. It provides a well-defined, peaceful process for people to grab power. The power is limited, but you don't have to kill people to gain it, and in turn you don't risk getting killed yourself by the next upstart.
  - carapace 7y ago
    I agree. One of the most important and successful aspects is the relatively peaceful transfer of power. Personally I'm more concerned that the government remains responsive and, for lack of a better word, humble. (That's part of why the Kingdom of Bhutan is so amazing: the don't measure GNP, they have a measure called Gross National Happiness that they take pretty seriously. Heh. They really seem to have their kit together. It's a Third-World country you can't emigrate to.)
mrlala 7y ago
>Its only redeeming quality is that it seems effective at (so far) deterring tyranny and abuse of power. =/

dv_dt 7y ago

Look here and with their sister orgs https://www.usworker.coop/home/ https://www.usworker.coop/home/ They hold conferences and workshops. Edit: And if you're looking for a higher level approach: https://democracycollaborative.org/ https://democracycollaborative.org/

archagon 7y ago

I’ve been wondering recently to what extent the political structures of the most successful corporations may influence those of politics at large... It’s funny that we value democracy in name, but still enforce a rigid, top-down, and winner-takes-all hierarchy in most of our businesses.

j4pe 7y ago

Nice! I also ran a company as a worker coop - but I structured it as an LLC, just because it was far easier. Coop practices like revenue sharing were defined through company bylaws, not its legal ownership structure. Lots of people have done coops in tech. One decent list: https://github.com/hng/tech-coops https://github.com/hng/tech-coops Yanis Varoufakis, before he was the finance minister of Greece(!), worked at Valve and wrote about the economic theory of why corporations are structured as centrally controlled fiefdoms instead of democracies, and why Valve was apparently more democratic (http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/why-valve-or-what-do-we-need-corporations-for-and-how-does-valves-management-structure-fit-into-todays-corporate-world/ http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/why-valve-or-what-d...). Great read.