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Do you think worker-owned businesses can mitigate this? After all, one of their pluses is supposed to be that the workers can choose to prioritise things other

Do you think worker-owned businesses can mitigate this? After all, one of their pluses is supposed to be that the workers can choose to prioritise things other than profit.

coeneedell 5y ago
Not the parent, but I have a thought on this. While workers would be able to prioritize things other than profit, I don't think they would. From an economics analysis, we're really just redefining profit as benefits to all corporation members instead of to the owners. Imagine a middle manager has to choose between hiring a factory that is cheap but has a bad rights/ecological/legal record and a factory that will be more expensive, but is proverbially clean . At a top owned corporation they have no personal incentive to maximize profits, but if they own part of the company, their own compensation will increase if they take the less ethical option. Note: I generally think a distributed ownership model for a company leads to better health and production in the long run, but this is probably a case where it's worse. When incentives are distributed, and those incentives are perverse, you just have everyone bearing the pressure to enact unethical business prectices.
perryizgr8 5y ago
Worker owned business can't even compete. Name one such company that is in the top 5 in any product category.
- johannes1234321 5y ago
  This is to a large part due to worker owned business being unable to attract capital. A capital giver wants ownership or at least tcomaprable influence as consequence. At that point they aren't worker-owned anymore. Generally however I think worker-owned companies are unlikely to take risk but value the workplace of current workers over future workers. (i.e. closing a department in order to build a new market will be delayed)
- jesboat 5y ago
  Ocean Spray. Wikipedia describes it as > Ocean Spray is an American agricultural cooperative of growers of cranberries and grapefruit headquartered in Plymouth County, Massachusetts. It currently has over 700 member growers (in Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington, Florida, British Columbia and other parts of Canada, as well as Chile). The cooperative employs about 2,000 people, with sales of $1.2 billion in fiscal year 2013 and accounts for 70% of North American cranberry production.
- atq2119 5y ago
  Apparently Huawei has an interesting ownership structure that may partially approximate this? Unfortunately I never bothered to try to find out in more detail.

Do you think worker-owned businesses can mitigate this? After all, one of their pluses is supposed to be that the workers can choose to prioritise things other than profit.

coeneedell 5y ago

Not the parent, but I have a thought on this. While workers would be able to prioritize things other than profit, I don't think they would. From an economics analysis, we're really just redefining profit as benefits to all corporation members instead of to the owners. Imagine a middle manager has to choose between hiring a factory that is cheap but has a bad rights/ecological/legal record and a factory that will be more expensive, but is proverbially clean . At a top owned corporation they have no personal incentive to maximize profits, but if they own part of the company, their own compensation will increase if they take the less ethical option. Note: I generally think a distributed ownership model for a company leads to better health and production in the long run, but this is probably a case where it's worse. When incentives are distributed, and those incentives are perverse, you just have everyone bearing the pressure to enact unethical business prectices.

perryizgr8 5y ago

Worker owned business can't even compete. Name one such company that is in the top 5 in any product category.

johannes1234321 5y ago
This is to a large part due to worker owned business being unable to attract capital. A capital giver wants ownership or at least tcomaprable influence as consequence. At that point they aren't worker-owned anymore. Generally however I think worker-owned companies are unlikely to take risk but value the workplace of current workers over future workers. (i.e. closing a department in order to build a new market will be delayed)
jesboat 5y ago
Ocean Spray. Wikipedia describes it as > Ocean Spray is an American agricultural cooperative of growers of cranberries and grapefruit headquartered in Plymouth County, Massachusetts. It currently has over 700 member growers (in Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington, Florida, British Columbia and other parts of Canada, as well as Chile). The cooperative employs about 2,000 people, with sales of $1.2 billion in fiscal year 2013 and accounts for 70% of North American cranberry production.
atq2119 5y ago
Apparently Huawei has an interesting ownership structure that may partially approximate this? Unfortunately I never bothered to try to find out in more detail.