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There’s nothing you can do because the companies are dictatorships or oligarchies at best, not democracies or meritocracies. If he’s the founder presumably he h
by lovich 4y ago
There’s nothing you can do because the companies are dictatorships or oligarchies at best, not democracies or meritocracies. If he’s the founder presumably he had enough ownership in the company to force the company to keep him in that position.
Changing that up requires a radical redesign of how companies are legally constrained in the US or a cultural change that causes an expectation of worker ownership so that they get a say. For examples look at Germany requiring a representative of the workers on company boards
- kibwen 4y agoEmployee-owned companies aren't entirely unheard-of in the US. Legally, they're structured as companies where employees own more than 50% of its shares via an ESOP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_stock_ownership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_stock_ownership
- User23 4y agoA fun example along those lines is the Green Bay Packers[1]. They are a public non-profit whose shares are largely owned by members of the Green Bay community. Shareholding is mostly a matter of community pride, as it confers very few rights[2]. It's actually a pretty good model, and I wonder why it isn't used for other municipal assets. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bay_Packers,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bay_Packers,_Inc. [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-TOTALB-269 https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-TOTALB-269
- kibwen 4y agoLegally speaking I think that might be in a different category than what I was referring to (nonprofit vs corporation). And there are other legal structures, like co-operatives (and credit unions?), with similar ideas.
- deberon 4y agoI agree it’s a great model! Unfortunately the NFL has banned it (last I heard) - https://web.archive.org/web/20110813051753/http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2009/10/20091026/This-Weeks-News/NFL-Pares-Ownership-Rule.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20110813051753/http://www.sports...
- nightski 4y agoIt's also meh. The money gets tied up in the company until the shares vest (my wife had to wait like 8 years or something). It's performance is tied to the performance of the company and you can't diversify. Lots of times it doesn't end up giving you all that much extra. I'd much rather just get a bonus I could invest elsewhere. ESOPs were invented as a way for owners to cash out. Not really an altruistic thing that works well imho.
- astura 4y agoI cannot stress this enough - employee-owned companies are still dictatorships, the employees being shareholders doesn't change that at all. Employees get zero, and I mean ZERO, say over day-to-day operations or even major decisions. The SOLE difference between a non-employee owned company and an employee owned company is who the shareholders are. Source: personal experience working at multiple employee owned companies
- monkeydust 4y agoSo what's a viable framework where employees can get an official say? My mind went to DAOs where employees all allocated governance tokens and anyone can propose a new idea and others can use their tokens to vote.
- z3ugma 4y agoCheck out sociocracy. There is overhead cost to operating this way though. In your model, what happens when you get outvoted?
- astura 4y agoCooperatives
- lovich 4y agoWe don’t need to bring crypto into it for some amount of control. The poster above is referencing the same problem with any direct democracy which what you get with employee ownership being just shareholders and what you would get with handing out tokens. The solution is to vote on a representative/s who sit on the board much like the German example I mentioned.
- kingkawn 4y agoFeudalism lives on beneath a thin veneer of electoral democracy