4 ms·

> someone else had to get it off the ground implying what? that "workers" can't start something? Even if we imagine there's a category of people that are suite

by fouc 3y ago

> someone else had to get it off the ground implying what? that "workers" can't start something? Even if we imagine there's a category of people that are suited to be "starters" or "entrepreneurs" that category is still plenty numerous, easily 10-35% of the population, if not more.

wjnc 3y ago
Please be kind in your interpretation. Build and run are two very different phases. You need lots of capital for the former, mostly hands for the latter. Capital formation is probably harder for a group of workers because it leads to messy questions about residual earnings.
- JamesBarney 3y ago
  I think this is the issue. Starting a company is a lot riskier than working at one. To do that you usually need capital and/or someone who is willing to work their ass off for peanuts for a couple of years. The only reason people will take risks is for outsized returns.
rcme 3y ago
Yes that is the implication. Starting something requires raising money and organizing things. Generally, at the start, only a small number of people care to do this work. And once they do it, why would they give their ownership stake away to their employees when they could just keep it for themselves?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- salawat 3y ago
  Boredom. (You have to be insane to whip something up and get it moving. Some thrive doing just that, but suffer under steady state stagnation.)
- sam0x17 3y ago
  Practically anyone already wanting to work at such a place would care to do it with the proper resources. Imagine if you could easily get a government grant to start such a co-op...
  - rcme 3y ago
    Even if we're imaging a scenario with free government money, I'm not sure a co-op makes sense because of the financial incentives at the heart of capitalism. Imagine you could get government money to start a co-op or take private investment and maintain a large ownership stake in the business? Isn't the upside way higher for you if you go the private investment route? Of course, the government could subsidize co-ops to the degree that financial incentives of starting a co-op outweigh the financial incentives from starting a traditional business, and maybe they should do that, but it's not how our curent market is structured.
    - hnbad 3y ago
      This assumes all founders act as rational economic actors. Yes, it's hard to pivot from a traditional corporation to a co-op because of capitalism, but there are plenty of people who love the idea of a co-op but either don't have the capital or where the available capital is not evenly distributed among those interested to found the co-op with them. Amazingly, most humans do not do primarily what has the biggest economic advantages for them but what they think aligns best with who they think they are or want to be. Speaking from personal experience, as a founder who does not come from wealth the biggest reasons not to pivot to a co-op are that you're giving up control over something you created, you have a lot of money caught up in it that could have instead gone towards your personal life and that someone you hired as an employee is not necessarily interested in becoming a co-owner (e.g. if your country has workers rights they might be losing access to certain guarantees and benefits by doing so). Your wording is also needlessly abrasive. The government subsidies a large part of the economy like agriculture and fossil fuels (this is true in Germany and also seems to be the case in the US). Calling subsidies "free government money" suggests this is unheard of and unrealistic. If we want to go full utopia, the government could not simply subsidize co-ops, it could mandate them, e.g. by enacting a law that requires non-publicly traded businesses above a certain size to be worker-owned (with all liabilities to the founders being converted to standard loans) and prohibiting natural persons from holding more than a given percentage of any publicly traded company to shut down the potential loophole of just going public. It's the government. It's what allows corporations to exist so it could also restrict them.
- berkes 3y ago
  If that's true (I doubt it) the reverse has to be true too: that those great at starting (a restaurant) are bad at sustaining it. If there are distinct phases, and certain people or topologies are good at just one of those phases, then it follows that people starting restaurants must be bad at running them once they've established.
  - ghiculescu 3y ago
    That doesn’t follow at all. There’s no reason you can’t be good at both.
    - berkes 3y ago
      Yes. Which is why the comment I replied to is nonsense.
      - ghiculescu 3y ago
        No it’s not. You haven’t refuted the claim that starting a restaurant requires momey. You just said having money makes you bad at running a restaurant. Which is silly.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- secretsatan 3y ago
  It strikes me that an argument against that is that it is too expensive to setup a business
- sdenton4 3y ago
  As I recall, Arizmendi spun out of Cheeseboard... So, yes, we also have examples where worker coops beget other worker coops. http://www.arizmendi.coop/about-arizmendi-association.html http://www.arizmendi.coop/about-arizmendi-association.html IMO, the reason you don't see more is that us financing is quite conservative and unwilling to risk "unusual" business models. (Similarly, finding a mortgage for shared housing requires a lot of extra work, because the mortgage brokers only like nuclear families... Even when you show up with four incomes and no kids, it's still considered risky because unusual.) Which is to say... The smallish number of worker coops in the US has nothing to do with the rarity of magical founder people... I'll say that the folks I've known in housing and worker coops have a much higher rates creativity, grit, and organizational chops than anyone I've met from a business school. And, indeed, many of them are now run their own businesses in a wide range of endeavours.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
dagw 3y ago
implying what? that "workers" can't start something? Technically if there's no company yet there is nowhere to work and thus no workers. You need "founders" to get the company started for there even to be workers. Now those people have to decide if they want to never hire anybody new, 'give away' a a piece of 'their' company each time they hire, or give up on the worker-owned idea all together. Of course most "founders" used to be "workers" and often become "workers" again after the company is founded, but the act of founding a company is fundamentally different from the act of working at a company
- hnbad 3y ago
  As someone who founded a company and had employees: it's not all that different, though the specifics depend on the kind of business. The biggest difference is that in order to found a company you need capital and workers generally don't have enough capital to found a company (and if they do and do found a company, as you said they become founders themselves). There is of course different work to be done at every stage of development of a company and this means that founding a company may require skills running it may not or vice versa but there is no reason someone who is good at founding companies should continue to call the shots or pocket most of the revenue once the company is fully operational. That's an expectation tied to the return on investment primarily and our system being set up in such a way that founders are owners and workers coming in later are not.

by fouc 3y ago

wjnc 3y ago

Please be kind in your interpretation. Build and run are two very different phases. You need lots of capital for the former, mostly hands for the latter. Capital formation is probably harder for a group of workers because it leads to messy questions about residual earnings.

JamesBarney 3y ago
I think this is the issue. Starting a company is a lot riskier than working at one. To do that you usually need capital and/or someone who is willing to work their ass off for peanuts for a couple of years. The only reason people will take risks is for outsized returns.

rcme 3y ago

Yes that is the implication. Starting something requires raising money and organizing things. Generally, at the start, only a small number of people care to do this work. And once they do it, why would they give their ownership stake away to their employees when they could just keep it for themselves?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
salawat 3y ago
Boredom. (You have to be insane to whip something up and get it moving. Some thrive doing just that, but suffer under steady state stagnation.)
sam0x17 3y ago
Practically anyone already wanting to work at such a place would care to do it with the proper resources. Imagine if you could easily get a government grant to start such a co-op...
- rcme 3y ago
  Even if we're imaging a scenario with free government money, I'm not sure a co-op makes sense because of the financial incentives at the heart of capitalism. Imagine you could get government money to start a co-op or take private investment and maintain a large ownership stake in the business? Isn't the upside way higher for you if you go the private investment route? Of course, the government could subsidize co-ops to the degree that financial incentives of starting a co-op outweigh the financial incentives from starting a traditional business, and maybe they should do that, but it's not how our curent market is structured.
  - hnbad 3y ago
    This assumes all founders act as rational economic actors. Yes, it's hard to pivot from a traditional corporation to a co-op because of capitalism, but there are plenty of people who love the idea of a co-op but either don't have the capital or where the available capital is not evenly distributed among those interested to found the co-op with them. Amazingly, most humans do not do primarily what has the biggest economic advantages for them but what they think aligns best with who they think they are or want to be. Speaking from personal experience, as a founder who does not come from wealth the biggest reasons not to pivot to a co-op are that you're giving up control over something you created, you have a lot of money caught up in it that could have instead gone towards your personal life and that someone you hired as an employee is not necessarily interested in becoming a co-owner (e.g. if your country has workers rights they might be losing access to certain guarantees and benefits by doing so). Your wording is also needlessly abrasive. The government subsidies a large part of the economy like agriculture and fossil fuels (this is true in Germany and also seems to be the case in the US). Calling subsidies "free government money" suggests this is unheard of and unrealistic. If we want to go full utopia, the government could not simply subsidize co-ops, it could mandate them, e.g. by enacting a law that requires non-publicly traded businesses above a certain size to be worker-owned (with all liabilities to the founders being converted to standard loans) and prohibiting natural persons from holding more than a given percentage of any publicly traded company to shut down the potential loophole of just going public. It's the government. It's what allows corporations to exist so it could also restrict them.
berkes 3y ago
If that's true (I doubt it) the reverse has to be true too: that those great at starting (a restaurant) are bad at sustaining it. If there are distinct phases, and certain people or topologies are good at just one of those phases, then it follows that people starting restaurants must be bad at running them once they've established.
- ghiculescu 3y ago
  That doesn’t follow at all. There’s no reason you can’t be good at both.
  - berkes 3y ago
    Yes. Which is why the comment I replied to is nonsense.
    - ghiculescu 3y ago
      No it’s not. You haven’t refuted the claim that starting a restaurant requires momey. You just said having money makes you bad at running a restaurant. Which is silly.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
secretsatan 3y ago
It strikes me that an argument against that is that it is too expensive to setup a business
sdenton4 3y ago
As I recall, Arizmendi spun out of Cheeseboard... So, yes, we also have examples where worker coops beget other worker coops. http://www.arizmendi.coop/about-arizmendi-association.html http://www.arizmendi.coop/about-arizmendi-association.html IMO, the reason you don't see more is that us financing is quite conservative and unwilling to risk "unusual" business models. (Similarly, finding a mortgage for shared housing requires a lot of extra work, because the mortgage brokers only like nuclear families... Even when you show up with four incomes and no kids, it's still considered risky because unusual.) Which is to say... The smallish number of worker coops in the US has nothing to do with the rarity of magical founder people... I'll say that the folks I've known in housing and worker coops have a much higher rates creativity, grit, and organizational chops than anyone I've met from a business school. And, indeed, many of them are now run their own businesses in a wide range of endeavours.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

dagw 3y ago

implying what? that "workers" can't start something? Technically if there's no company yet there is nowhere to work and thus no workers. You need "founders" to get the company started for there even to be workers. Now those people have to decide if they want to never hire anybody new, 'give away' a a piece of 'their' company each time they hire, or give up on the worker-owned idea all together. Of course most "founders" used to be "workers" and often become "workers" again after the company is founded, but the act of founding a company is fundamentally different from the act of working at a company

hnbad 3y ago
As someone who founded a company and had employees: it's not all that different, though the specifics depend on the kind of business. The biggest difference is that in order to found a company you need capital and workers generally don't have enough capital to found a company (and if they do and do found a company, as you said they become founders themselves). There is of course different work to be done at every stage of development of a company and this means that founding a company may require skills running it may not or vice versa but there is no reason someone who is good at founding companies should continue to call the shots or pocket most of the revenue once the company is fully operational. That's an expectation tied to the return on investment primarily and our system being set up in such a way that founders are owners and workers coming in later are not.