5 ms·

Here's the reduced-down version: You get some stake for free when you join, it entitles you to a fraction of the profits while you're there, and you lose it if

Here's the reduced-down version: You get some stake for free when you join, it entitles you to a fraction of the profits while you're there, and you lose it if you quit or get voted off the island according to some bylaws. Stake also gives you voting power for hiring new employees (including managers), and how much stake to give them. And nobody can buy shares, especially those who aren't employees. To simplify things, there are no wages. But idk, this just sounds like a worse version of a regular corporation. New employees' stakes will pay out in a way that's competitive with local wages. More profits than usual will have to be paid out rather than reinvested in the business (think high dividend yield, low P/E), otherwise new employees just needing to pay bills won't trust it. If they want to offer some wage and less stake, it's the same.

TylerE 3y ago
Sounds like a great way to turn a business into even more of a hyper-politicized environment than it already is. It becomes not about what you can do, but who you make like you.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  Yeah, or it works ok at a small scale but you can never expand, and a competitor (maybe your own ex-employees) eats your lunch like what happened to Cheeseboard. Which is still ok, you can be in that cool little niche if that's what you like, but don't tell me it's a better model overall.
  - DangitBobby 3y ago
    It's almost certainly a better for the people who are working somewhere they actually care about for more than minimum wage with performance potentially tied to income.
    - TylerE 3y ago
      Except that looking at the two linked here (Seward and the pizza place) both are struggling - raising prices, cutting hours, and both are essentially begging the community to fund them so they continue to exist.
      - afavour 3y ago
        There are plenty of non worker owned restaurants doing the same in today’s economy, of course. Non-chain restaurants are kind of weird businesses, really. Owner owned or worker owned they’re rarely big money spinners and often owe a lot to the community around them to keep them viable.
      - hot_gril 3y ago
        Idk how Cheese Board is doing. They were fine last I checked. Just probably would've done way better as a corp. The Avedisyan couple turned their cheese shop into a coop decades ago, and it was basically an act of charity when they could've kept ownership instead. The store didn't expand much despite decades of exceptional work and high popularity, which is a missed opportunity for profit, but that wasn't their goal. I do wonder where they got the initial investment for the shop.
        sdenton4 3y ago
        Arizmendi spun out of Cheeseboard in 1996 and now has six locations... Also, Mondragon exists. Coops can expand.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        hot_gril 3y ago
        Arizmendi and Cheeseboard are separate companies though, same with Cheeseboard and Sliver (which is btw not a co-op). Not sure about Mondragon's structure since it's headlined as a corporation/federation of co-ops, which sounds like the workers don't collectively own the entire business and there's a higher level that's just a regular corp. Anyway, I'm not saying co-ops can never expand while still maintaining collective ownership, only that it's harder. Also harder to start, or to exist in general.
    - hot_gril 3y ago
      Just because the employees own the store doesn't mean they pay everyone above market rate. If they do, then yeah, some lucky employees will get paid extra at the previous investors' expense. Meanwhile a regular corp restaurant could offer the same pay but fill the spots with higher skill to match, and some do. Same thing except the corp more likely thrives.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - MrJohz 3y ago
    Except worker cooperatives are noted for being particularly resilient against closures - Wikipedia links to a number of studies and analyses here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative#Research_on_worker_cooperatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative#Research_on... For example there's a British study that shows that 76% of worker cooperatives tend to survive the first five years, compared to 42% of all companies overall, making them particularly stable businesses. You've also got typically higher job satisfaction from the employees (so less likely to have the ex-employees to create competitors out of), and more productive employees overall. Honestly that sounds like a pretty good model for businesses overall to me.
    - hot_gril 3y ago
      Because of the big leap involved in "worker owned cooperatives that have been created by workers buying a business." Either the workers are unusually wealthy and dedicated or a rich owner is doing a bit of charity, in both cases their odds are way better with a corp too. If you're starting with nothing, it'll be difficult to find investment for a co-op.
      - MrJohz 3y ago
        Do you have evidence to back up that claim? I would imagine that only a minority of coops are actually founded by existing workers, and the majority would be new companies - certainly this is the experience I've had with worker coops near me. But it would be interesting if that wasn't the case. EDIT: the France study is particularly interesting because they specifically talk about this as a potential reason for the surprising longevity, but then point out that "the overwhelming majority of cooperatives are created from scratch, and hence this explanation remains incomplete".
        hot_gril 3y ago
        Created from scratch probably means someone with a lot of money beforehand decided to do it. The same study calls coop formation rare, and it's hard to control things when you're sampling a rare case.
- mehlmao 3y ago
  versus the status quo, where it's not about what you can do, but making the owner like you?
  - TylerE 3y ago
    Easier to make 1 person happy than 50.
    - hot_gril 3y ago
      It's not this simple either way. I just feel like a co-op is likely to have more effort spent on politics between employees. It's a lot like a union.
magicalist 3y ago
The takes in this thread are so funny. Oh no, what if they have too much money and there aren't owners siphoning it off disproportionate to their value? People might fight over it! Or they might have to plan on steady operating income, but how can they do that if they didn't go through the rigorous schooling that the ownership class does?
- hot_gril 3y ago
  Non-employee owners vs employee owners taking extra profits, same problem. Difference is the un-democratic owners can more easily reinvest to expand the business instead, and in many cases they do.
  - charlie0 3y ago
    If the business is doing very well, why not just raise prices? Most restaurants simply don't scale or lose alot when they do. They are great because it's the team and leadership that work there that makes it awesome. Not every single restaurant has to become the next franchise in order to be considered a success.
    - hot_gril 3y ago
      Sometimes they do raise prices, sometimes it'll scale to at least an expanded set of tables next door, and rarely they'll just let the line get really long (usually cash-only ramen shops). Unless the restaurant benefits from exclusivity, it's usually more profitable to expand if the owners are capable of managing that.
  - __loam 3y ago
    It's incredible to see the unironic take here that we need undemocratic do nothings to actually make business decisions. Some of the oldest and most successful companies in the world are worker owned and operated. Just look at the Mondragon Corporation in Spain, which has been around since 1956, has 12b in yearly revenue, and has 80,000 employees. The idea that a co-op wouldn't be capable of investing in the business is ludicrous.

TylerE 3y ago

Sounds like a great way to turn a business into even more of a hyper-politicized environment than it already is. It becomes not about what you can do, but who you make like you.

hot_gril 3y ago
Yeah, or it works ok at a small scale but you can never expand, and a competitor (maybe your own ex-employees) eats your lunch like what happened to Cheeseboard. Which is still ok, you can be in that cool little niche if that's what you like, but don't tell me it's a better model overall.
- DangitBobby 3y ago
  It's almost certainly a better for the people who are working somewhere they actually care about for more than minimum wage with performance potentially tied to income.
  - TylerE 3y ago
    Except that looking at the two linked here (Seward and the pizza place) both are struggling - raising prices, cutting hours, and both are essentially begging the community to fund them so they continue to exist.
    - afavour 3y ago
      There are plenty of non worker owned restaurants doing the same in today’s economy, of course. Non-chain restaurants are kind of weird businesses, really. Owner owned or worker owned they’re rarely big money spinners and often owe a lot to the community around them to keep them viable.
    - hot_gril 3y ago
      Idk how Cheese Board is doing. They were fine last I checked. Just probably would've done way better as a corp. The Avedisyan couple turned their cheese shop into a coop decades ago, and it was basically an act of charity when they could've kept ownership instead. The store didn't expand much despite decades of exceptional work and high popularity, which is a missed opportunity for profit, but that wasn't their goal. I do wonder where they got the initial investment for the shop.
      - sdenton4 3y ago
        Arizmendi spun out of Cheeseboard in 1996 and now has six locations... Also, Mondragon exists. Coops can expand.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        hot_gril 3y ago
        Arizmendi and Cheeseboard are separate companies though, same with Cheeseboard and Sliver (which is btw not a co-op). Not sure about Mondragon's structure since it's headlined as a corporation/federation of co-ops, which sounds like the workers don't collectively own the entire business and there's a higher level that's just a regular corp. Anyway, I'm not saying co-ops can never expand while still maintaining collective ownership, only that it's harder. Also harder to start, or to exist in general.
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    Just because the employees own the store doesn't mean they pay everyone above market rate. If they do, then yeah, some lucky employees will get paid extra at the previous investors' expense. Meanwhile a regular corp restaurant could offer the same pay but fill the spots with higher skill to match, and some do. Same thing except the corp more likely thrives.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- MrJohz 3y ago
  Except worker cooperatives are noted for being particularly resilient against closures - Wikipedia links to a number of studies and analyses here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative#Research_on_worker_cooperatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative#Research_on... For example there's a British study that shows that 76% of worker cooperatives tend to survive the first five years, compared to 42% of all companies overall, making them particularly stable businesses. You've also got typically higher job satisfaction from the employees (so less likely to have the ex-employees to create competitors out of), and more productive employees overall. Honestly that sounds like a pretty good model for businesses overall to me.
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    Because of the big leap involved in "worker owned cooperatives that have been created by workers buying a business." Either the workers are unusually wealthy and dedicated or a rich owner is doing a bit of charity, in both cases their odds are way better with a corp too. If you're starting with nothing, it'll be difficult to find investment for a co-op.
    - MrJohz 3y ago
      Do you have evidence to back up that claim? I would imagine that only a minority of coops are actually founded by existing workers, and the majority would be new companies - certainly this is the experience I've had with worker coops near me. But it would be interesting if that wasn't the case. EDIT: the France study is particularly interesting because they specifically talk about this as a potential reason for the surprising longevity, but then point out that "the overwhelming majority of cooperatives are created from scratch, and hence this explanation remains incomplete".
      - hot_gril 3y ago
        Created from scratch probably means someone with a lot of money beforehand decided to do it. The same study calls coop formation rare, and it's hard to control things when you're sampling a rare case.
mehlmao 3y ago
versus the status quo, where it's not about what you can do, but making the owner like you?
- TylerE 3y ago
  Easier to make 1 person happy than 50.
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    It's not this simple either way. I just feel like a co-op is likely to have more effort spent on politics between employees. It's a lot like a union.

magicalist 3y ago

The takes in this thread are so funny. Oh no, what if they have too much money and there aren't owners siphoning it off disproportionate to their value? People might fight over it! Or they might have to plan on steady operating income, but how can they do that if they didn't go through the rigorous schooling that the ownership class does?

hot_gril 3y ago
Non-employee owners vs employee owners taking extra profits, same problem. Difference is the un-democratic owners can more easily reinvest to expand the business instead, and in many cases they do.
- charlie0 3y ago
  If the business is doing very well, why not just raise prices? Most restaurants simply don't scale or lose alot when they do. They are great because it's the team and leadership that work there that makes it awesome. Not every single restaurant has to become the next franchise in order to be considered a success.
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    Sometimes they do raise prices, sometimes it'll scale to at least an expanded set of tables next door, and rarely they'll just let the line get really long (usually cash-only ramen shops). Unless the restaurant benefits from exclusivity, it's usually more profitable to expand if the owners are capable of managing that.
- __loam 3y ago
  It's incredible to see the unironic take here that we need undemocratic do nothings to actually make business decisions. Some of the oldest and most successful companies in the world are worker owned and operated. Just look at the Mondragon Corporation in Spain, which has been around since 1956, has 12b in yearly revenue, and has 80,000 employees. The idea that a co-op wouldn't be capable of investing in the business is ludicrous.