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One alternative to capitalism from where we are now is a market economy of worker cooperatives. The market can still allocate resources, but the profit/surplus

One alternative to capitalism from where we are now is a market economy of worker cooperatives. The market can still allocate resources, but the profit/surplus is distributed more equally (between the workers.) By encouraging the creation of worker cooperatives, government reforms can move us in this direction.

busterarm 5y ago
Who cleans the toilets at your software cooperative? How do you equally compensate everyone when a task requires highly specialized knowledge that only one individual can deliver?
- jessaustin 5y ago
  Cooperatives can cooperatively decide to allocate more resources to more important tasks. One might suspect they would be less effective at such decisions than a Fortune 500 company, but that would be proof one has never worked at a Fortune 500 company.
- freeone3000 5y ago
  Mate, if you think you're above cleaning toilets just because you also write software, maybe capitalism is the system for you.
  - busterarm 5y ago
    Completely agreed but this is also one of the fields I've heard "that's not my job description" the most in. Everyone decries the evils of context switching, meetings, interruptions when my headphones are on, etc. People come to this field because they don't like doing people-centric tasks, but people-centric tasks are at the heart of any organization -- especially one operating as a collective.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  Your question is begging the question. How do you know the person cleaning the toilets doesn't have the potential to be a better manager/developer than you?
- system16 5y ago
  The cleaning company or building maintenance you contract. Ideally it would be a company that is also a co-op, but sometimes this isn't possible. Being a co-op doesn't mean you have to cut yourself off from the outside world.
  - Pet_Ant 5y ago
    That is the slippery slope to eroding the co-operative. You don't work for the company but rather the programmer company they contract out to. That way instead of wealth disparity within a company you have it hidden amongst cooperatives. No net gain. And this isn't just being facetious, the executive team already sees the sales team as the real value-adders and the developers as merely a cost centre. Either you respect the toilet cleaner or you don't respect anyone. As an annecdote, the company handy-man was the social glue that held morale together. He was never recognised for it, but it was always him firing up the grill on a nice day, or remembering your birthday. Everyone matters or no one does.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - busterarm 5y ago
      smile You perfectly described the grenade hiding in my question. I've seen so many co-ops fall apart over things like this.
- eevilspock 5y ago
  > that only one individual can deliver That's a fallacy. There are very smart people cleaning toilets and picking strawberries in the hot sun because capitalism is far far from a level playing field. While not everyone is going to be a surgeon or physicist, there are far more people capable of it than our current system surfaces. > How do you equally compensate everyone It's only in a selfishness-oriented culture where someone with rare skills will leverage that scarcity to hoard more of society's resources for themselves. Why should a surgeon make 50 to 100 times a farm worker for work that is equally exhausting? Why should a star NBA basketball player earn 10 times more than that surgeon, for being born tall and having amazing ball handling skills? Why should a founder/CEO earn 10 to 100 times more than that NBA star (10,000 to 100,000 times more than the strawberry picker) for a social media company that profits off of social media addiction, undermining privacy to harvest information to sell advertising that in turn is used to manipulate people's emotions and weaknesses? If your answer is that "the market says so", you are begging the question. If your answer is that it's because of "human nature", we've made that a self-fulfilling prophesy by adopting a system where "selfishness is a virtue".
  - busterarm 5y ago
    Part of the reason that I acquired specialized skills was so that I could enrich myself. Acquiring specialized skills was extremely difficult and expensive. My job is also quite stressful. The reason people contact me for my specialized skills is because they have literally millions of dollars on the line. Not everyone can be a surgeon -- like literally might not have the steady hands for it. More importantly, you don't want just anyone performing surgery on you. Not everyone has the baseline genetic gifts + nurturing required to play sports at a world-class competitive level. The more rare something is that is useful, the more value it has in society. I'm sorry that supply and demand is a difficult concept for you. Now assume your utopian society where everyone is worth the same. Who does the truly difficult jobs? Do people become brain surgeons because of their gifts and training or because they want to? Why would somebody go through the rigorous education process necessary to do brain surgery if they could farm or serve food? Not everyone _loves_ their job, even at the highest levels of talent & training. Now, would you want somebody to be a brain surgeon _just_ because they love it and it's what they want to do? Even if they aren't good at it? Please.
- jwmhjwmh 5y ago
  Cooperatives don't compensate everyone equally. For example, Mondragon cooperatives set wage ratios between manager wages and minimum wages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation#Wage_regulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation#Wage_reg...
djbebs 5y ago
There is nothing preventing worker cooperatives from existing today, and indeed there are plenty in business all over the world. Unfortunately you will find that they simply are not as effective as regular corporations, and hence they tend to be very small, and occupy only a small niche where their lack of competitiveness won't cause them to go bankrupt quickly.
- Miner49er 5y ago
  I'm not so sure that's why there's less co-ops. It could just be that they have a harder time getting capital. Which makes sense, because they don't prioritize investors like traditional companies.
- jhgb 5y ago
  > they simply are not as effective as regular corporations Of course the effectiveness of the existing system led us right into a climate disaster.
- timbit42 5y ago
  Mondragon has over 81,500 workers and has been in existence for 55 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation Ocean Spray has over 2,000 workers and has been going for 91. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Spray_(cooperative) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Spray_(cooperative)
megaman821 5y ago
Nothing in the current capitalist system stops the creation of worker cooperatives. If they are the superior solution what is holding them back? The major critique of worker cooperatives that I have heard is that they are inflexible. They have a large incentive not to change because change would disrupt the jobs of the people who make up the cooperative.
- fallingfrog 5y ago
  It’s hard to obtain startup capital for cooperatives, because if the people supplying the capital want equity, then it’s no longer a cooperative. So they have to get loans, and banks that offer loans don’t want to take risks. Once established however worker cooperatives do very well.
- jwmhjwmh 5y ago
  If a cooperative is inflexible, couldn't another cooperative out-compete it? Provided the market is competitive, this doesn't seem like a big problem. One thing I have read is that cooperatives are less likely to grow into monopolizing behemoths because they approximately maximize profit in proportion to the number of workers rather than overall; they will only grow to the most efficient size. I can't remember where I read this, but it makes sense to me (although I'm not an economist.)
- myWindoonn 5y ago
  It is only your perception that coops are somehow being held back. Cooperatives have succeeded in every industry. The vast majority of industry requires Free Software, a cooperative system. I went to the store yesterday and bought milk, eggs, and flour from worker-owned dairies and mills, to say nothing of the weekly farmers' market. I grew up shopping at a Bi-Mart. Some folks have entire careers at Mondragon. Worker cooperatives are incredibly successful; we should really be asking why traditional corporations get so many subsidies and tax benefits.

busterarm 5y ago

Who cleans the toilets at your software cooperative? How do you equally compensate everyone when a task requires highly specialized knowledge that only one individual can deliver?

jessaustin 5y ago
Cooperatives can cooperatively decide to allocate more resources to more important tasks. One might suspect they would be less effective at such decisions than a Fortune 500 company, but that would be proof one has never worked at a Fortune 500 company.
freeone3000 5y ago
Mate, if you think you're above cleaning toilets just because you also write software, maybe capitalism is the system for you.
- busterarm 5y ago
  Completely agreed but this is also one of the fields I've heard "that's not my job description" the most in. Everyone decries the evils of context switching, meetings, interruptions when my headphones are on, etc. People come to this field because they don't like doing people-centric tasks, but people-centric tasks are at the heart of any organization -- especially one operating as a collective.
TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
Your question is begging the question. How do you know the person cleaning the toilets doesn't have the potential to be a better manager/developer than you?
system16 5y ago
The cleaning company or building maintenance you contract. Ideally it would be a company that is also a co-op, but sometimes this isn't possible. Being a co-op doesn't mean you have to cut yourself off from the outside world.
- Pet_Ant 5y ago
  That is the slippery slope to eroding the co-operative. You don't work for the company but rather the programmer company they contract out to. That way instead of wealth disparity within a company you have it hidden amongst cooperatives. No net gain. And this isn't just being facetious, the executive team already sees the sales team as the real value-adders and the developers as merely a cost centre. Either you respect the toilet cleaner or you don't respect anyone. As an annecdote, the company handy-man was the social glue that held morale together. He was never recognised for it, but it was always him firing up the grill on a nice day, or remembering your birthday. Everyone matters or no one does.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - busterarm 5y ago
    smile You perfectly described the grenade hiding in my question. I've seen so many co-ops fall apart over things like this.
eevilspock 5y ago
> that only one individual can deliver That's a fallacy. There are very smart people cleaning toilets and picking strawberries in the hot sun because capitalism is far far from a level playing field. While not everyone is going to be a surgeon or physicist, there are far more people capable of it than our current system surfaces. > How do you equally compensate everyone It's only in a selfishness-oriented culture where someone with rare skills will leverage that scarcity to hoard more of society's resources for themselves. Why should a surgeon make 50 to 100 times a farm worker for work that is equally exhausting? Why should a star NBA basketball player earn 10 times more than that surgeon, for being born tall and having amazing ball handling skills? Why should a founder/CEO earn 10 to 100 times more than that NBA star (10,000 to 100,000 times more than the strawberry picker) for a social media company that profits off of social media addiction, undermining privacy to harvest information to sell advertising that in turn is used to manipulate people's emotions and weaknesses? If your answer is that "the market says so", you are begging the question. If your answer is that it's because of "human nature", we've made that a self-fulfilling prophesy by adopting a system where "selfishness is a virtue".
- busterarm 5y ago
  Part of the reason that I acquired specialized skills was so that I could enrich myself. Acquiring specialized skills was extremely difficult and expensive. My job is also quite stressful. The reason people contact me for my specialized skills is because they have literally millions of dollars on the line. Not everyone can be a surgeon -- like literally might not have the steady hands for it. More importantly, you don't want just anyone performing surgery on you. Not everyone has the baseline genetic gifts + nurturing required to play sports at a world-class competitive level. The more rare something is that is useful, the more value it has in society. I'm sorry that supply and demand is a difficult concept for you. Now assume your utopian society where everyone is worth the same. Who does the truly difficult jobs? Do people become brain surgeons because of their gifts and training or because they want to? Why would somebody go through the rigorous education process necessary to do brain surgery if they could farm or serve food? Not everyone _loves_ their job, even at the highest levels of talent & training. Now, would you want somebody to be a brain surgeon _just_ because they love it and it's what they want to do? Even if they aren't good at it? Please.
jwmhjwmh 5y ago
Cooperatives don't compensate everyone equally. For example, Mondragon cooperatives set wage ratios between manager wages and minimum wages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation#Wage_regulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation#Wage_reg...

djbebs 5y ago

There is nothing preventing worker cooperatives from existing today, and indeed there are plenty in business all over the world. Unfortunately you will find that they simply are not as effective as regular corporations, and hence they tend to be very small, and occupy only a small niche where their lack of competitiveness won't cause them to go bankrupt quickly.

Miner49er 5y ago
I'm not so sure that's why there's less co-ops. It could just be that they have a harder time getting capital. Which makes sense, because they don't prioritize investors like traditional companies.
jhgb 5y ago
> they simply are not as effective as regular corporations Of course the effectiveness of the existing system led us right into a climate disaster.
timbit42 5y ago
Mondragon has over 81,500 workers and has been in existence for 55 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation Ocean Spray has over 2,000 workers and has been going for 91. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Spray_(cooperative) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Spray_(cooperative)

megaman821 5y ago

Nothing in the current capitalist system stops the creation of worker cooperatives. If they are the superior solution what is holding them back? The major critique of worker cooperatives that I have heard is that they are inflexible. They have a large incentive not to change because change would disrupt the jobs of the people who make up the cooperative.

fallingfrog 5y ago
It’s hard to obtain startup capital for cooperatives, because if the people supplying the capital want equity, then it’s no longer a cooperative. So they have to get loans, and banks that offer loans don’t want to take risks. Once established however worker cooperatives do very well.
jwmhjwmh 5y ago
If a cooperative is inflexible, couldn't another cooperative out-compete it? Provided the market is competitive, this doesn't seem like a big problem. One thing I have read is that cooperatives are less likely to grow into monopolizing behemoths because they approximately maximize profit in proportion to the number of workers rather than overall; they will only grow to the most efficient size. I can't remember where I read this, but it makes sense to me (although I'm not an economist.)
myWindoonn 5y ago
It is only your perception that coops are somehow being held back. Cooperatives have succeeded in every industry. The vast majority of industry requires Free Software, a cooperative system. I went to the store yesterday and bought milk, eggs, and flour from worker-owned dairies and mills, to say nothing of the weekly farmers' market. I grew up shopping at a Bi-Mart. Some folks have entire careers at Mondragon. Worker cooperatives are incredibly successful; we should really be asking why traditional corporations get so many subsidies and tax benefits.