3 ms·

It seems that all the forms of collective control you listed are perfectly legal. If the majority of workers prefer workplaces like that then those places will

It seems that all the forms of collective control you listed are perfectly legal. If the majority of workers prefer workplaces like that then those places will thrive. What you are implying though, is that the government forces all workplaces to conform to your desired control scheme. So fuller democracy equals government limiting choice, as long as it is your desired choice.

zorked 6y ago
That's a bit like saying "Here we are in 1650 under an absolute monarchy. The people are the majority, they could topple our illegitimate hereditary government and make it a democracy, but they haven't done it yet because they certainly prefer things this way".
- megaman821 6y ago
  Not at all. If the people tried to topple the monarchy, they would be actively in conflict with the military. I am pretty sure you can start a co-op without risking conflict with the military. Can you tell me the exact things the government is preventing people from doing in this case?
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    Another metaphor: "Linux is open and free, it can be a major desktop OS if everyone just switched to it, but because they haven't they obviously don't care for it."
    - megaman821 6y ago
      Not to go off on a tangent but what you said is true, most people don't care about Linux...or Windows, or MacOS. They have a general apathy to whatever desktop OS they use, with a slight bias to whatever they used last. People just want to use the applications they want and need. Perhaps the same statement would apply to workplace control. Most people have a general apathy to their workplace governance and only care about their pay and benefits. I really don't know how you make people care about things, but compelling a change that people are free to make today by government force is last on my list of things to try.
      - Apocryphon 6y ago
        My overall point is that there are many examples of the dominant players in a market being inferior in certain ways compared to more obscure choices, and there are different reasons for it. Cooperatives and alternative corporate governance models are simply less well-known, not unlike the average consumer hasn't even heard of Linux. They don't know the benefits involved in these alternate models. You can extend to many other categories where there are superior, but obscurer, alternatives that come with trade-offs. There's also situations where dominant players make it difficult for smaller competitors to survive. In a loose analogy, Microsoft's monopolistic strategies in the '90s can be compared to the past decades' weakening of laws protecting unions. Strengthening unions, or rather reversing the weakening of unions in this country, doesn't really require oppressive government force. That's in line with the misconception that considers America's sickly unions- who are an absolute paper tiger at this point in history- to have any considerable strength. https://psmag.com/economics/what-caused-the-decline-of-unions-in-america https://psmag.com/economics/what-caused-the-decline-of-union...
        dantheman 6y ago
        Are you saying Windows is inferior to Linux on the desktop?
        Apocryphon 6y ago
        In terms of not crashing, fewer security issues, no telemetry, or having to pay money for it, sure. Point is it's an alternative that could potentially serve the needs of some users better than Windows does, but will likely never be considered by them just because it's almost unknown to the general public. I'm sure better examples exist.
        dantheman 6y ago
        That's great and all, but people don't really care - they want to run the applications that they want to use. They want it to support their hardware. OSX and Windows work because the make it easy for end users to use them; and run the applications/games they want to play.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- zby 6y ago
  I don't know - there are cooperatives - it is not like you need to risk your life to work at one. Somehow they are not that popular. There are also partnerships - which are kind of close to cooperatives, when they employ only the partners and for example outsource office cleaning and stuff. In some industries they do pretty well - for example in law. Why cooperatives do poorly? Maybe people usually are not very good at governance, that's understandable, you can have trade-offs - slightly worse pay for better working conditions, or better dignity. Does it work like this?
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    Maybe they're less popular because they're less well-known, their benefits and downsides are as well, and so they're less likely to be considered by people incorporating a new business? Or maybe they're less advantageous to the founders so that's why they're simply not pursued?
  - devalgo 6y ago
    >Why cooperatives do poorly? I don't think you have evidence to back this up. The reality is that cooperatives are very rare, so 99% of people don't even have to option to work for one. It's probably not even clear to the vast majority of workers that such a thing is even possible. This says nothing of the extreme aversion to anything even remotely resembling collectivism in the US.
    - 6510 6y ago
      Education
  - megaman821 6y ago
    > Why cooperatives do poorly? I have seen economist claim that cooperatives tend to be pretty inflexible. Slack was a communication tool for what is now a failed gaming company. If the company was owned by game developers, artists, and story writers, how many of them would have voted to sack themselves and pursue a chat application?
    - 6y ago
devalgo 6y ago
>If the majority of workers prefer workplaces like that then those places will thrive The majority of workers have probably never even heard of worker coops and those that have probably imagine it to be related to socialism and therefore un-American. >So fuller democracy equals government limiting choice, as long as it is your desired choice So more democracy actually == more authoritarian. Astounding logic.
- megaman821 6y ago
  So people are dumb, they just need to listen to me. That is the lazy way. If people are uniformed, we need to do more to inform them. People have power to choose where they work and where they spend their time and money. No one needs to come in and force Amazon into becoming a co-op. If top talent wants to work for co-ops and consumer prefer to get their good from co-ops, Amazon will adapt or die.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    There is literally no one advocating for existing corporations to be converted into co-ops. People are saying there should be more co-ops in general, but that can be promoted by creating an environment that's more friendly and attractive to founding co-ops. Or educating people to promote the concept, which is largely unknown to the public. Bringing up the possibility of government force in the discussion is cheap scaremongering. It's like screaming "communism!" in a practical discussion about tax policy. Though the concept of Amazon becoming a co-op is interesting. One wonders if a majority of Amazon employees organized and wanted that, if there would be even any legal avenue for them to do that. They probably wouldn't have enough shares to make that change from within.

zorked 6y ago

That's a bit like saying "Here we are in 1650 under an absolute monarchy. The people are the majority, they could topple our illegitimate hereditary government and make it a democracy, but they haven't done it yet because they certainly prefer things this way".

megaman821 6y ago
Not at all. If the people tried to topple the monarchy, they would be actively in conflict with the military. I am pretty sure you can start a co-op without risking conflict with the military. Can you tell me the exact things the government is preventing people from doing in this case?
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  Another metaphor: "Linux is open and free, it can be a major desktop OS if everyone just switched to it, but because they haven't they obviously don't care for it."
  - megaman821 6y ago
    Not to go off on a tangent but what you said is true, most people don't care about Linux...or Windows, or MacOS. They have a general apathy to whatever desktop OS they use, with a slight bias to whatever they used last. People just want to use the applications they want and need. Perhaps the same statement would apply to workplace control. Most people have a general apathy to their workplace governance and only care about their pay and benefits. I really don't know how you make people care about things, but compelling a change that people are free to make today by government force is last on my list of things to try.
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      My overall point is that there are many examples of the dominant players in a market being inferior in certain ways compared to more obscure choices, and there are different reasons for it. Cooperatives and alternative corporate governance models are simply less well-known, not unlike the average consumer hasn't even heard of Linux. They don't know the benefits involved in these alternate models. You can extend to many other categories where there are superior, but obscurer, alternatives that come with trade-offs. There's also situations where dominant players make it difficult for smaller competitors to survive. In a loose analogy, Microsoft's monopolistic strategies in the '90s can be compared to the past decades' weakening of laws protecting unions. Strengthening unions, or rather reversing the weakening of unions in this country, doesn't really require oppressive government force. That's in line with the misconception that considers America's sickly unions- who are an absolute paper tiger at this point in history- to have any considerable strength. https://psmag.com/economics/what-caused-the-decline-of-unions-in-america https://psmag.com/economics/what-caused-the-decline-of-union...
      - dantheman 6y ago
        Are you saying Windows is inferior to Linux on the desktop?
        Apocryphon 6y ago
        In terms of not crashing, fewer security issues, no telemetry, or having to pay money for it, sure. Point is it's an alternative that could potentially serve the needs of some users better than Windows does, but will likely never be considered by them just because it's almost unknown to the general public. I'm sure better examples exist.
        dantheman 6y ago
        That's great and all, but people don't really care - they want to run the applications that they want to use. They want it to support their hardware. OSX and Windows work because the make it easy for end users to use them; and run the applications/games they want to play.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
zby 6y ago
I don't know - there are cooperatives - it is not like you need to risk your life to work at one. Somehow they are not that popular. There are also partnerships - which are kind of close to cooperatives, when they employ only the partners and for example outsource office cleaning and stuff. In some industries they do pretty well - for example in law. Why cooperatives do poorly? Maybe people usually are not very good at governance, that's understandable, you can have trade-offs - slightly worse pay for better working conditions, or better dignity. Does it work like this?
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  Maybe they're less popular because they're less well-known, their benefits and downsides are as well, and so they're less likely to be considered by people incorporating a new business? Or maybe they're less advantageous to the founders so that's why they're simply not pursued?
- devalgo 6y ago
  >Why cooperatives do poorly? I don't think you have evidence to back this up. The reality is that cooperatives are very rare, so 99% of people don't even have to option to work for one. It's probably not even clear to the vast majority of workers that such a thing is even possible. This says nothing of the extreme aversion to anything even remotely resembling collectivism in the US.
  - 6510 6y ago
    Education
- megaman821 6y ago
  > Why cooperatives do poorly? I have seen economist claim that cooperatives tend to be pretty inflexible. Slack was a communication tool for what is now a failed gaming company. If the company was owned by game developers, artists, and story writers, how many of them would have voted to sack themselves and pursue a chat application?
  - 6y ago

devalgo 6y ago

>If the majority of workers prefer workplaces like that then those places will thrive The majority of workers have probably never even heard of worker coops and those that have probably imagine it to be related to socialism and therefore un-American. >So fuller democracy equals government limiting choice, as long as it is your desired choice So more democracy actually == more authoritarian. Astounding logic.

megaman821 6y ago
So people are dumb, they just need to listen to me. That is the lazy way. If people are uniformed, we need to do more to inform them. People have power to choose where they work and where they spend their time and money. No one needs to come in and force Amazon into becoming a co-op. If top talent wants to work for co-ops and consumer prefer to get their good from co-ops, Amazon will adapt or die.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  There is literally no one advocating for existing corporations to be converted into co-ops. People are saying there should be more co-ops in general, but that can be promoted by creating an environment that's more friendly and attractive to founding co-ops. Or educating people to promote the concept, which is largely unknown to the public. Bringing up the possibility of government force in the discussion is cheap scaremongering. It's like screaming "communism!" in a practical discussion about tax policy. Though the concept of Amazon becoming a co-op is interesting. One wonders if a majority of Amazon employees organized and wanted that, if there would be even any legal avenue for them to do that. They probably wouldn't have enough shares to make that change from within.