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If they paid you the value you provide, they would go out of business.
by spacephysics 6y ago
If they paid you the value you provide, they would go out of business.
- mschuster91 6y agoWorker cooperatives exist. They just don't pay out value to shareholders who do nothing.
- pasabagi 6y agoThe problem is, shareholders can do something cooperatives cannot - they can operate at a substantial loss, effectively indefinitely, with the knowledge that they can get their profit by selling the share. Amazon, for instance, ran at a net loss for much of its history. I don't know how a workers cooperative would manage this. Secondly, in capitalism, capital is concentrated among a small number of people, who are often friends. Shareholders therefore often help with raising further capital, since they are always from the capitalist class. So a worker's cooperative won't be as good at raising funds.
- jacobr1 6y agoNot the full answer, but loans. Trading equity isn't the only way to get a pile of cash. It isn't even the most common way.
- nunez 6y agoBusiness and (especially) consumer lenders are, by and large, much more risk-averse than investors, almost by definition. They would absolutely not be okay with near-indefinite loss; they would never regain their principal!
- afthonos 6y agoI don’t buy that. That would imply the company as a whole provides no value except that brought by the employees.
- spacephysics 6y agoTry running a company with no employees