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Without knowing about the industry, I like to wistfully think that a cooperative would be the way to structure a company that cares about this. Not just worker-

Without knowing about the industry, I like to wistfully think that a cooperative would be the way to structure a company that cares about this. Not just worker-owned, but customer-owned as well. If you're buying an asset you expect to last decades, having a stake in the manufacturer doesn't seem like a completely bad idea.

cobertos 4y ago
The problem with any cooperative feels like a human one. Keeping everyone informed and active communicants. People like to forget about things when they're stable. A coop loses so much value when it just becomes a one email a year affair with "Hey, it's that time to vote for things again!"
- crabmusket 4y ago
  Agreed, but from a distance it sounds like farm machinery might be something that keeps interest and involvement, as it's so critical to operations. I'm somewhat influenced by the descriptions of various farming organisations in Seeing Like A State which I recently read. There is a lot of active cooperation, experimentation, knowledge sharing etc. around crop varieties.
- einpoklum 4y ago
  This is a problem in every social/political organization which is not ruled by interested minorities. So, co-operatives, voluntary social activity clubs, democratic NGOs/associations, professional societies, etc. Democratic states suffer from this also, although it's arguable whether they're not ruled by interested minorities to begin with. In fact, the unfortunate public-opinion manipulations we see in national and international politics are also often present in smaller, local organizations, albeit in less-well-funded and less-spectacular form. I'm always reminded of the Anarchist Peasants: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2c-X8HiBng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2c-X8HiBng
chongli 4y ago
It’s very difficult to start a worker cooperative in a capital-intensive industry. In most companies, the difference between workers and owners is that the owners provided the capital to get things started. A factory that builds modern tractors is a pretty huge investment. It’s very large and has a ton of very expensive robotics. It also has a huge supply chain that delivers a wide variety of parts to the factory for final assembly. A factory worker, while a lot more skilled than a day labourer working on a farm, does not have access to the kind of capital needed to start a big factory. So how does it happen? The people who have the billions of dollars in capital needed to start the factory aren’t just going to give shares to workers they hire.
- heywhatupboys 4y ago
  > It’s very difficult to start a worker cooperative in a capital-intensive industry some of the most successful Danish agricultural companies started out as / are cooperatives.
  - chongli 4y ago
    Very difficult but not impossible. Looks like some of those co-ops go back to the 1700s. So that provides one possible solution to the problem: start small with no capital and grow over a period of centuries to become a large co-op. But how do you achieve it today? How do you take a bunch of workers and start a co-op factory that can compete with John Deere?
    - jezovuk 4y ago
      Credit/VC? Or you start a co-op dairy / farm / repair shop and work for centuries towards arriving at where JD is today (by which time big corps would have moved a few centuries ahead).
      - chongli 4y ago
        Credit is probably the only way. But I don’t see regular banks jumping at the chance to invest in worker co-ops. Maybe a credit union? VC doesn’t work. Investors want equity for their money.
rtpg 4y ago
The real pie in the sky stuff is figuring out open designs that are durable but not so complex as to be totally out of reach. I cannot claim to know the relative difficulty of such a task, or relevant regulations. But if there were some standard designs that multiple manufacturers were involved in, I bet parts would stay in production for a very very long time.

cobertos 4y ago

The problem with any cooperative feels like a human one. Keeping everyone informed and active communicants. People like to forget about things when they're stable. A coop loses so much value when it just becomes a one email a year affair with "Hey, it's that time to vote for things again!"

crabmusket 4y ago
Agreed, but from a distance it sounds like farm machinery might be something that keeps interest and involvement, as it's so critical to operations. I'm somewhat influenced by the descriptions of various farming organisations in Seeing Like A State which I recently read. There is a lot of active cooperation, experimentation, knowledge sharing etc. around crop varieties.
einpoklum 4y ago
This is a problem in every social/political organization which is not ruled by interested minorities. So, co-operatives, voluntary social activity clubs, democratic NGOs/associations, professional societies, etc. Democratic states suffer from this also, although it's arguable whether they're not ruled by interested minorities to begin with. In fact, the unfortunate public-opinion manipulations we see in national and international politics are also often present in smaller, local organizations, albeit in less-well-funded and less-spectacular form. I'm always reminded of the Anarchist Peasants: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2c-X8HiBng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2c-X8HiBng

chongli 4y ago

It’s very difficult to start a worker cooperative in a capital-intensive industry. In most companies, the difference between workers and owners is that the owners provided the capital to get things started. A factory that builds modern tractors is a pretty huge investment. It’s very large and has a ton of very expensive robotics. It also has a huge supply chain that delivers a wide variety of parts to the factory for final assembly. A factory worker, while a lot more skilled than a day labourer working on a farm, does not have access to the kind of capital needed to start a big factory. So how does it happen? The people who have the billions of dollars in capital needed to start the factory aren’t just going to give shares to workers they hire.

heywhatupboys 4y ago
> It’s very difficult to start a worker cooperative in a capital-intensive industry some of the most successful Danish agricultural companies started out as / are cooperatives.
- chongli 4y ago
  Very difficult but not impossible. Looks like some of those co-ops go back to the 1700s. So that provides one possible solution to the problem: start small with no capital and grow over a period of centuries to become a large co-op. But how do you achieve it today? How do you take a bunch of workers and start a co-op factory that can compete with John Deere?
  - jezovuk 4y ago
    Credit/VC? Or you start a co-op dairy / farm / repair shop and work for centuries towards arriving at where JD is today (by which time big corps would have moved a few centuries ahead).
    - chongli 4y ago
      Credit is probably the only way. But I don’t see regular banks jumping at the chance to invest in worker co-ops. Maybe a credit union? VC doesn’t work. Investors want equity for their money.

rtpg 4y ago

The real pie in the sky stuff is figuring out open designs that are durable but not so complex as to be totally out of reach. I cannot claim to know the relative difficulty of such a task, or relevant regulations. But if there were some standard designs that multiple manufacturers were involved in, I bet parts would stay in production for a very very long time.