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Worker owned co-ops are 100% compatible with capitalist regimes, since they're just people freely consenting to a work/ownership arrangement. I think they're co

Worker owned co-ops are 100% compatible with capitalist regimes, since they're just people freely consenting to a work/ownership arrangement. I think they're cool experiments, if anything. With that said: if they're so much better than traditional firms, they why haven't they taken over the world? That is, if they were so good, greedy shareholders and investors all over the world would demand that their firms restructure into Cooperatives, and firms that weren't Cooperatives would tend to lose out in the marketplace (being beaten by the more efficient Cooperatives). But we don't see this happening. This seems like strong evidence to me that they don't offer a superior arrangement (at the firm/system level) for producing goods & services more efficiently.

emixam 4y ago
The problem really comes from the capacity for a coop to raise funds. A coop is a non-capitalistic company so very few investors are interested. There is no valuation other than amount of shares x value of share. Voting power is not dependent on share (1 person = 1 vote). Making an exit is thus not a possibility. Investors have little interest to finance a traditional company that would only yield dividends (if it does, which is not mandatory). The problem of speed is also often cited: democracy takes more time. While I think that's true, I haven't felt that was a limiting factor. Financing is a much bigger one.
boulos 4y ago
They might be net positive for the workers within the co-op (at the median anyway) versus taking on outside investors and giving them a slice in search of larger scale. For diversified investors, it's more valuable to have some of your companies return higher gains even if others don't work out. For an employee though, their income is totally concentrated in their one job. The employees can be rational in not wanting investors, and the investors are rational in not wanting to invest in those firms (at terms the co-op would accept).

emixam 4y ago

The problem really comes from the capacity for a coop to raise funds. A coop is a non-capitalistic company so very few investors are interested. There is no valuation other than amount of shares x value of share. Voting power is not dependent on share (1 person = 1 vote). Making an exit is thus not a possibility. Investors have little interest to finance a traditional company that would only yield dividends (if it does, which is not mandatory). The problem of speed is also often cited: democracy takes more time. While I think that's true, I haven't felt that was a limiting factor. Financing is a much bigger one.

boulos 4y ago

They might be net positive for the workers within the co-op (at the median anyway) versus taking on outside investors and giving them a slice in search of larger scale. For diversified investors, it's more valuable to have some of your companies return higher gains even if others don't work out. For an employee though, their income is totally concentrated in their one job. The employees can be rational in not wanting investors, and the investors are rational in not wanting to invest in those firms (at terms the co-op would accept).