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Employee stock options are not a new idea, obviously. If the story is "every company should offer stock options to its employees", then sure, that's often a go

• instagraham 2y ago
  For people living cheque to cheque, pre-IPO ESOPS are not really a great incentive either. If ESOPS come at the cost of actual salary increases, it feels more like a corporate smokescreen than an actual value-add (not everyone can afford to think long-term with their sole source of income).
• Aissen 2y ago
  > Your barista at Starbucks is not going to increase the stock price no matter how well he fills your order But 400k barista all doing it well might.
  • vsuperpower2021 2y ago
    This is not tenable. 400k people aren't going to all individually work extra hard for starbucks if their own work doesn't individually benefit them.
    • ErikBjare 2y ago
      I think the idea is that feelings of co-ownership in the company could affect the company culture positively. Although I'm sure the effect diminishes with company size.
    • topper-123 2y ago
      True, but could the incentuve be structured around the individual employee’s coffee shop (which would mean divulging the i individual coffee shops financials? That could make each employee look better out for the profitability of their coffee shop.
    • briandear 2y ago
      This is precisely the failure that advocates of communism fail to grasp. They failed to read their Adam Smith. We saw this play out in the Soviet Union.
      • bregma 2y ago
        The Soviet Union never even attempted communism.
• stavros 2y ago
  Then maybe "taking over the market" is a bad metric, and we should be optimizing for making a company that makes the workers' lives better. The US cultural bias is showing here, as it's assumed that profit is above all else, and a company that forgoes profit to make workers happier must thus be less good. The vast majority of people in companies are workers. Let's stop optimizing for owner wealth and start optimizing for worker happiness instead.
  • vrotaru 2y ago
    Stop optimizing for consumers, start optimizing for producers. Maybe, you want to rethink that.
    • stavros 2y ago
      Why? It sounds good to me.
      • vrotaru 2y ago
        Just an example. Should teachers be judged on how a pleasant life they live, or how good they teach?
        • Qwertious 2y ago
          That's not as relevant as you'd think - the "customers" of teachers are, arguably, taxpayers and not children. Alternatively it's parents, or perhaps politicians who set the budget. Focusing on children is the more pro-social preference, but children who attend schools famously don't have jobs in functioning societies. More importantly, the teaching system is basically un-incentivized by incentives - teachers in the US (focusing just on the US for a sec) are incredibly underpaid, and basically rely on masters-degree teachers putting in effort completely disproportionate to the pay. Everyone accepts this state of affairs specifically because we're all ignoring market incentives in favor of the good of society (i.e. the quality of childrens' education). So, let's suppose we judge teachers based on how well they appease politicians and parents who support their funding: they pass all students, regardless of how poorly they do on tests and how badly the children need to just repeat the year. This is a terrible outcome, and yet you're implicitly endorsing it.
• IneffablePigeon 2y ago
  > they tend to make decisions that maximize worker welfare rather than profit Oh no
• f6v 2y ago
  > note that you are calling for a restriction on workers' rights: they have to be given part of their pay as stocks No matter the mental gymnastics, that’s how it already works in big tech. You can view the stock grant as “incentive”, but you can’t refuse it and take cash upfront.
  • coderatlarge 2y ago
    You can generally negotiate for more cash instead of a stock grant. Of course you have to accept the current price. I’ve done it and lost a lot :)
• Gooblebrai 2y ago
  > they tend to make decisions that maximize worker welfare rather than profit That this a "con", says something worrying about the values that, as society, we have decided are more important
  • bootsmann 2y ago
    It maximizes _current_ worker welfare, not global worker welfare, don't confuse the two.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• jrnx 2y ago
  > (a) they find it hard to raise capital (b) they tend to make decisions that maximize worker welfare rather than profit at the end a company needs to be financially successful and for this it needs to provide competitive products and services. Otherwise, they'll just be replaced. There of course may be a chance they'll get replaced by another employee owned company, but the odds of a free-capital owned company replacing them are probably bigger as they have more freedom to make the right decisions to become successful. Also imagine your pension would just depend on the odds of the company you have been working for a live long, because you just cannot invest into other companies because they are only owned by employees.
  • aziaziazi 2y ago
    My pension depends on other members of my country, as well as they depend on my. The feeling of safeness (event if it’s not 100% safe) and bound is what I call “society“, meaning we go forward together very much like what most feel with their family. Never ever will I live in a country that encourage people to compete instead of collaborate, it sounds better for the 1% stakeholders but not for the 99% others.
    • mharig 2y ago
      [dead]
    • jrnx 2y ago
      I wish it were that simple... even if everyone tried to "collaborate" to produce the same product, there would still be some competition somewhere, at least for ideas. somehow the final products to be made need to be decided upon and the other won't be made. That also means, that somehow the people overseeing the final products have more power than the ones that were not chosen by whatever process is in place to make those decisions... It really has not been proven, that there is a more effective organisational form for this competition better than capital allocation using markets with a lot of freedom. For your case or "cross-generational" pensions where the young pay for the pensions of the old: That worked well while the baby boomers were working. This may go sour when the baby boomers retire and the numbers of their first and second generation of offspring decline... Even worse: if they have made the economy, tax and debt burden for those offspring so bad, they can barely buy their own home.
• yieldcrv 2y ago
  There are additional options Co-determination was born as a compromise in Germany (between the capitalist occupiers and the communist occupiers trying to find common ground for decades) that has done well, essentially its that the Employee Union has at least one board seat, by law employee representation on the board in combination with US stock ownership concepts would be very novel and very attractive I think both classes of stakeholders typically have some common ground and can find a way to make austerity and growth measures economically practical with more sustainment of employee consideration
  • dash2 2y ago
    It's possible. But note that Germany has struggled to move out of declining sectors (petrol cars) and into new ones (tech) - which fits what I said about worker control making creative destruction hard. Its economic performance has been dramatically bad recently. Equally, I wouldn't want to judge Rhineland capitalism on a few bad years, or claim that the US "open the casino" approach dominates it on every dimension.
    • yunohn 2y ago
      The whole world still relies on and builds petrol cars. EVs are still a small portion of the global market. I think it’s quite disingenuous to blame Germany’s slow moving industry sector on “worker’s control”.
• dgb23 2y ago
  I've read studies about workers coops and some of them somewhat contradict what you say in your last paragraph, specifically (b). Worker coops often cut down on their individual profits in hard times to keep the boat afloat. I think ultimately a company creates and maintains a culture, regardless of the legal structure. Maintaining a good culture requires effort and especially a sensible, trusting image of humanity. When we talk about the crass gap in compensation and power between workers and owners or executives, then we often hear the excuse that much of the compensation at the top is from stocks (even though that is a very incomplete picture). The big bosses can't just sell their stock to increase wages is the narrative, but they _could_ pay some of that stock as additional compensation. A single worker doesn't move the statistical needle in a very large corporation? For one, the same fallacy comes up with voting. Secondly: This notion that people are rational robots who only optimize their profits and then also calculate the statistical impact of every of their actions is not just too theoretical, it's just wrong. Loyalty, trust and engagement are things you earn and maintain. A generous compensation (including stocks) can be a part of that. An additional approach is to decentralize and enable partial ownership of franchises. Now suddenly the needle can be moved, day by day and year by year. But again, the legal structure is just part of it all. I think it starts with the image of humanity, the culture and a long term strategy that incorporates all participants of a company. The details fall into place after that.
  • dash2 2y ago
    > Worker coops often cut down on their individual profits in hard times to keep the boat afloat. Sure, I believe that. Do they do it enough though? Co-operatives were big in 19th century Britain; now they make up a small part of the market for most things. In particular the Co-op supermarket, though it's cute, is now small (6% market share). > A single worker doesn't move the statistical needle in a very large corporation? For one, the same fallacy comes up with voting. Secondly: This notion that people are rational robots who only optimize their profits and then also calculate the statistical impact of every of their actions is not just too theoretical, it's just wrong. Loyalty, trust and engagement are things you earn and maintain. A generous compensation (including stocks) can be a part of that. It's really true that your vote won't decide the next election! I'm sorry :-) You're right that generous compensation can maintain loyalty and I agree people aren't robots. But for that to save the argument you need more - stocks have to be better at maintaining loyalty than just straightforward pay. Is that true? Maybe: stocks are a "stake" in the company. Is it so true that many companies could improve efficiency by paying in stocks not cash? I'll believe it when I see evidence. Is it so true that we should force companies to do it? I find it highly unlikely and the evidence is clearly inadequate. >An additional approach is to decentralize and enable partial ownership of franchises. Now suddenly the needle can be moved, day by day and year by year. Sounds like McDonalds is your ideal of corporate structure :-) Maybe! It's certainly successful.
• enugu 2y ago
  > fully employee-owned There are more possibilities which open up, if we drop the 'fully' criterion, both for decision making power and share of the profits. If employees had, say, a 30% share in board decisions (not share of profits), then the CEO would have to be more mindful of how their decisions affect employees, just like they have to constantly track the markets today. Or a more local version of this, where decisions/appointments in each unit of the company are partially handled by employees of that unit. Not enough for a badly performing group of employees to have a veto, but also not something ignorable by management. Regarding share of profits, there were high tax regimes in Western countries in the 1950-70's. For instance, top bracket of income tax could sometimes reach 90% and corporate tax 50%. In effect, this is saying that the public has a non-voting share(sometimes even a majority share) of the profits of the company. Of course, a large organization like the government is itself often corrupt/inefficient and fails to represent the public, so the taxation could happen at a more local level. 'Market socialism' proposals sometimes involve public ownership of the stocks of privately run companies, but a high tax regime can have a lot of the same effect.
• cen4 2y ago
  Now please use the barista argument on what house wives should be paid.
  • beambot 2y ago
    Turns out you can't project human values into a single (monetary) dimension... Similarly, my estimate of the value of my life (infinite) differs from how society would broadly estimate it actuarily. Such is the nature of things.
    • cen4 2y ago
      Nature of things is always changing. Once upon a time the King or Land Lord or Factory owner handed off all the shares to the eldest son. Doesn't happen anymore. Also remember Bezos and Gates had to hand over a chunk of their wealth on divorce. That didn't happen without the nature of things changing.
  • phkahler 2y ago
    >> ...what house wives should be paid. House wives are often very well compensated. They have a home they don't pay for. They often have a bank account they can use to cover expenses (effectively direct deposite). The entire reason alimony exists is an acknowledgement that she has effectively been getting that benefit from the marriage and is not prepared to abruptly lose it in a divorce even after splitting the assets. Assets? Right, that's also part of the compensation package.
    • cen4 2y ago
      Domesticated animals are also housed and taken care off very well. Their appearance is beautiful and they are very grateful to their masters. The circus lion is bred and trained from birth not ask too many questions. But once you give the circus lion access to the internet, sooner or later the lion is going to ask why am I jumping through hoops? It just take one of them to find a better answer and a better purpose in life to walk off the circus, for all the others to see what options they have to totally disrupt the foundations of the circus. The circus managers and the circus have elements of domination and exploitation that have been swept under the carpet. Its good to recognize them. Otherwise surprises and shocks are on the road ahead.
• phkahler 2y ago
  This isn't about stock options or public markets. These kinds of companies are owned by the employees. You or I can not buy stock in them. This can be a much bigger incentive than regular options or the toilet paper options startups offer. Payout is over several years after you leave, so people care about the long term rather than next quarter. From your comment it seems you're not at all familiar with this model. It's not perfect but it's way better than stock options.
  • choeger 2y ago
    > You or I can not buy stock in them. But that means employees cannot sell their stock, either. So if one of those millionaire employees retires and the company goes bankrupt one year later, the million is worthless all of a sudden.
    • t0mas88 2y ago
      I think the idea is that employees make most money from the profits paid to them as owners, instead of an increase in the stock price and then selling.
      • Nevermark 2y ago
        There is no difference for optimizing dividends vs. stock value increases due to reinvestment, as for any other company. Employees that can sell shares at any time have the same financial interests as with any other corporation. As much reinvestment as grows value faster than the overall market is how much is best to reinvest. Distribute the rest to owners to use/invest elsewhere.
        • thanksgiving 2y ago
          It sounds like you just explained the opposite of what you said. If you can only get the dividends and can never sell your ownership outright, it makes sense to optimize for long term, sustainable growth and profits over short term profits. So, you don't care about stock value increase as you already own your shares. Actually, I'm thinking low share prices compared to dividends are good because it allows you to buy more and earn more. It sounds like this is a much healthier concept overall?
• rakoo 2y ago
  > The reason not every company does it to all its employees is probably that for those employees, it wouldn't affect incentives much and it would make payment subject to the vagaries of the stock market. Pleast don't be so naive. The reason not every company does that is that giving ownership gives power and dilutes your own, reduces the chances at doing humongus profits that can be hoarded by a minority. Business owners are not operating out of sympathy for the workers, they are operating for themselves, by design
  • zby 2y ago
    And yet people overwhelmingly prefer to work for these non-employees owned companies instead of working in cooperatives - how do you explain that? They could take those humongous profits for themselves but they don't do that. My answer to that question is that organizing people is much more difficult than everybody thinks and politics is the biggest source of inefficiencies on any human organisation bigger than a few persons. And cooperatives introduce additional political layer.
    • chronofar 2y ago
      > And yet people overwhelmingly prefer to work for these non-employees owned companies instead of working in cooperatives - how do you explain that? Easily: there are far more non-employee owned companies than employee owned. Thus this isn’t a preference at all, it’s merely the availability of the market. Now you could say that entrepreneurs who start companies have a preference for non-employee owned, thus explaining the aforementioned market allotment. Again that’s pretty easy to explain, because of course such an entrepreneur would give up ownership in an employee-owned arrangement. It’s also just the de facto paradigm most are aware of in news cycles and business schools, and is easier to setup and support.
    • peepee1982 2y ago
      Not so many cooperatives to apply for, are there? Otherwise I would definitely prefer worker owned.
      • 2y ago
• typicalset 2y ago
  > If the story is "all companies must be fully employee-owned workers' cooperatives", then first, note that you are calling for a restriction on workers' rights: they have to be given part of their pay as stocks, and they can't sell them freely. This is simply not true. Many workers' coops issue one share per worker (there may not even be stock), which affords them one vote in company matters. In such a scenario the share may not be bought or sold, as it is a case of one share if and only if a member. It is not correct to represent proportional democratic control of a workplace as somehow a restriction on workers rights.
  • zby 2y ago
    If you cannot choose to work for an organization that is governed in a different way - then this is a restriction on your rights.
    • typicalset 2y ago
      The employees can democratically decide how they want to run things. They can choose to issue stock, they can choose other people to make decisions about the business e.g. appoint a manager to make decisions for them. They cannot do these things in a general employment situation. At the most bloody-minded level a food-service worker must wash their hands after going to the toilet and this is a restriction on their rights, but at the same time this infringes upon the rights of customers to not get sick eating food. Denying employees democratic control of their workplaces is a much greater restriction of their rights. And as a matter of practice, employees get the short end of the stick when they have a boss.
      • zby 2y ago
        Well if you don't allow the traditional company governance and everything must be a cooperative - then these employees cannot choose a traditional company governance. But my comment really was about restricting the choice of a potential employee - someone who has not yet decided what company to join.
        • 2y ago
• ziggyzecat 2y ago
  > it wouldn't affect incentives much. Speculation based on a shortage of info and, I assume (speculation), a feeling that at least some workers would rather do a different job, which would, from my POV (speculation) fit with > Your barista at Starbucks is not going to increase the stock price no matter how well he fills your order; at the same time, maybe he wants to know how much he takes home every day. Yes, your barista is increasing the stock price by doing his job well because customers will return for the enjoyable process and outcome. Given the positive feedback and proper operation procedures in quality assurance, workplace development and operations improvement your barista will also "design" & submit ideas to improve/change/expand certain things which can benefit process and outcome for the customers. Your barista is only one link in the supply chain to customer and daily income, which means that every decision will run through a feedback loop that creates the evolution of the company. But that's rarely the main driver of stock prices, which are currently mostly artificial constructs based on shareholder bullshit, networked manipulation and whale circle jerks. If a company "does bad", though, these main influences are dropped and increases are reversed until company behavior serves the kinks of the shareholders financial orgy again. "Imagine" a company creating free value that can not be monetized by whales but only by the rest of the world. "Free" energy, for example, a perfectly adaptable mix of energy sources maintained by sustainable procedures the negative side effects of which are compensated by gracefully handling resulting trash, upcycling or, out of imminent necessity, the creation of industries that R&D adequate solutions. All of this happens but always based on game theory methods, and that happens only, exclusively, because leadership falsely believes they are compensating their workers based on market evaluations of their work, which, entirely ignore that consumer prices are inflated by whale circle jerk behavior. It's pathetic and deserves nothing but disrespect. But people in circle jerks are manic and obsessed. Stocks, in their current form and with the current laws, are bullshit and serve a future world where AI will do most jobs and people in companies will only exist so that people higher up in the chain will feel pseudo-dominant, which is already the case, but too many journalists and politicians are part of the circle jerks and thus manic and obsessed as well. > (a) they find it hard to raise capital Because circle jerks. There's not even a game theoretical argument to justify this behavior as the giving those companies capital will either increase market and profits directly or by ways of added value as in "learning lessons" and "process of elimination". The reason it's done anyway because the circle jerks base their decision on fear of the evolution of the game so they'd rather keep the game as it is, balancing their decisions which requires totalitarianism, dictatorship. > (b) they tend to make decisions that maximize worker welfare rather than profit, e.g. they won't sack underperforming divisions or expand in ways that dilute existing workers' stake. Speculation/misinterpretation. They would sack underperforming divisions if they had to, but there rarely are cases where such divisions can't be improved and made more useful or cases where underperformance has exclusively negative outcomes. Again, the problem is whale circle jerk thinking. Underperformance is a matter of the right metrics, which do not serve the shareholders but company and consumer (the _correct_ metrics, that is). Now, when it comes to expanding while diluting the workers stake, you have the same problem, because the base income won't change. Only the stock increase will, which comes on top of the base revenue and makes everybody rich. But even in the rare cases where everybody does make less money, it's always temporary and sometimes necessary. This is not closed system after all.
• charlieyu1 2y ago
  I'm pretty sure the stock options of the corner shop near my house won't be very attractive to employees.
• kerkeslager 2y ago
  > If the story is "all companies must be fully employee-owned workers' cooperatives", then first, note that you are calling for a restriction on workers' rights: This is completely dishonest. You're not arguing against this because you're concerned for workers. > they have to be given part of their pay as stocks, This is nonsense: the stock given to workers would normally be distributed to other places, so when it's given to workers instead, it's generally in addition to what they would normally be paid. > and they can't sell them freely. Also nonsense: this is a rule at some companies, but doesn't have to be. > Second, that will probably make markets work worse. There's a large economics literature on this: worker-owned cooperatives have not taken over the market, although they are an available institutional form, because (a) they find it hard to raise capital (b) they tend to make decisions that maximize worker welfare rather than profit, e.g. they won't sack underperforming divisions or expand in ways that dilute existing workers' stake. Ah, the real reason you care about this issue: "it will probably make markets worse". Screw workers, can't make markets worse! As a society, is it our goal to have companies that "take over the market"? Or is our goal to have an economy that meets the needs of our people?
• maxerickson 2y ago
  There are coffee shops that are owner operated, which is probably closer to what you'd get than Starbucks. Not sure it'd be a bad thing to have more of the one and less of the other.
• agentultra 2y ago
  This is different from options and RSUs. It sounds like they’re getting paid directly in stock. They’re not being given the option to buy stock at a later date (with lower preference than the executives and early employees). Those kinds of arrangements still benefit the capital holders the most. Whether it’s a bad thing to improve employee welfare over profits… I don’t think it’s that bad. It’s perhaps more efficient than hoping that the state will. And it’s probably temporary and tactical: profits still matter when you own stock.
• mdorazio 2y ago
  Fun fact: Starbucks baristas do get RSUs [1]. It was a core principle of the company under Howard Schultz and one of the big things he credits for Starbucks's success specifically because owning even a small part of the company increases employee sense of responsibility and pride. I highly recommend the recent in-depth interview that Acquired did with him [2]. Herb Kelleher famously setup Southwest Airlines with very similar principles and stock options for everyone, with pretty amazing results for decades. [1] https://www.starbucksbenefits.com/en-us/home/stock-savings/bean-stock/ https://www.starbucksbenefits.com/en-us/home/stock-savings/b... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0fvX-wV70Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0fvX-wV70Y
• habosa 2y ago
  > Your barista at Starbucks is not going to increase the stock price Not sure I agree. If all the baristas did a better job then I think that would positively affect company value.
  • charles_f 2y ago
    And they would probably do a better job being happier and less stressed about money related issues
• BigParm 2y ago
  Something that is naturally selected is not necessarily good. Most of nature is horrible in fact. And everything we do is a fight against nature to make it better.
  • 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    But instead of things like mandatory co-ops, rent caps, minimum wages, etc., could we get the same benefits from UBI instead? It's a much simpler welfare system. It would be cool if I could live partially off of welfare and have my job be an unprofitable charity making free software, where even if I had stock it would be worthless. Such a public good cannot exist under capitalism alone, not even for-the-workers-colored capitalism.
• JohnFen 2y ago
  If the stock an employee gets doesn't give voting rights, then it's not really even a sliver of ownership, it's just a form of profit-sharing. That's not at all bad, but a different thing. Personally, I consider stock options to be a bit like lottery tickets. All things being equal, it doesn't hurt to have them, but I'm not going to count them as compensation and that I have them isn't going to make me work any differently. All that said, as a customer, I tend to prefer to patronize businesses that are "employee-owned" to a significant degree.
• Aeolun 2y ago
  I’m not sure what you are saying the argument against them is? It kinda reads like the answer is “people with capital don’t like them because it doesn’t increase their capital fast enough”.
• vegetablepotpie 2y ago
  The story I read are that ESOPs are an alternative to unionization, it allows founders to cash out, it aligns incentives towards long term growth of a company and this has shown better performance in tough economic times. The barriers are that knowledge of them is low and there isn't institutional support in government for organizing companies in this way. Getting stock or pay are not an either/or. Employee actual wages have been effectively flat for the last 30 years, whereas corporate profits have continued to increase. Companies can do both. The money is there. Most of us are not getting it. Corporate organizing hasn't worked for everyone over the last 40 years. The mantra that corporations should only deliver value to shareholders has lead to laser sharp focus on quarterly profits in exclusion to everything else. Financial engineering like stock buybacks and leveraged buy-outs only concentrate wealth and destroy value. While declaring the end of neoliberalism and ESG have been attempts at turning that around, they have not been effective at influencing change. Being smart about how to align incentives is what is going to lead to more value in our economy and lead to more equitable outcomes for all.
• sqeaky 2y ago
  This sounds like someone saying that banning children from mines is a restrictions on the child's right to mine coal. If society would be a better place than short term growth be damned.
  • charles_f 2y ago
    I'm not sure why so many people want to find issues with giving more to employees.
    • sqeaky 2y ago
      To be maximally charitable, some people don't want to trade one freedom for another (lots of people are just assholes, but let's ignore them for a moment). There are some fundamental compromises in freedom. If I have a right not to be stabbed you have a lost a right to stab me. Clearly, there are some things where this is an obviously good trade, like in not being stabbed. I suspect this person fears they will lose some freedoms if they choose to run a company or have their options reduced in the job market if companies are regulated to be less shitty. There may be some of that, but I suspect we can take the worst offences off the table and make the market more robust creating a total increase in freedom and options for everyone. This is why I went with a child in the mines example. Getting kids out of the mines and into schools was a complete gain for everyone beneficial to society. Employers got more educated employees. Kid got out of the mines. Coal production went up.
      • dalmo3 2y ago
        > To be maximally charitable Yet you proceed to build a strawman. I want the freedom to exchange my services for money without having to care about all the bullshit ownership ensues. It takes a sociopath to conclude that idea is somehow equivalent to being stabbed or sending children to mines.
        • sqeaky 2y ago
          > I want the freedom to exchange my services for money without having to care about all the bullshit ownership ensues. Then sell immediately, no one here is proposing forcing ownership onto employees. For nearly all Americans owning something significant that is likely to grow in value distinct from the output of their labor is an exceptional opportunity. Just like how when children were given the opportunity to leave the mines for good there wasn't a massive popular resurgence to make abusive child labor legal again. Most people wanted kids out of mines and into other opportunities. Most people want wealth. Most people want better opportunity than coal mines. If you want to sell your ownership you can. If you want to mine coal you can when you reach the age of majority. Rather than view de-facto employee ownership as a burden it is an opportunity to leave a metaphorical coal mine, if you want. You could choose either way if society made de-facto ownership for labor a thing. Right most of us don't have choice.
• calibas 2y ago
  > (a) they find it hard to raise capital (b) they tend to make decisions that maximize worker welfare rather than profit, e.g. they won't sack underperforming divisions or expand in ways that dilute existing workers' stake. Maybe this is the good way of running a business, and the gigantic corporations who grow like cancer and try to control governments are a bad thing?
• darby_nine 2y ago
  > Your barista at Starbucks is not going to increase the stock price no matter how well he fills your order; at the same time, maybe he wants to know how much he takes home every day. I imagine the goal would not be to get rich off of the work, just have a democratic say in how the work is done and what work is to be done.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• andrepd 2y ago
  > worker-owned cooperatives have not taken over the market, although they are an available institutional form, because (a) they find it hard to raise capital Isn't this just a circular argument then? The economic system based on tradable joint-stock companies is not conducive to other forms of economic organisation. Huge surprise! :) Of course they can't raise money in an economic system where money creation is privatised, that's exactly the problem!
• BeFlatXIII 2y ago
  Regarding point B, how often do they prioritize worker welfare to the point that they do the equivalent of cutting through the branch they sat on?
• panick21_ 2y ago
  Having service workers that are invested in the company and provide great service is essential to any service buissness. Sure any individul isnt single handet gone make your stock go up, but collectivly they do. The same as most engineers.
• DrScientist 2y ago
  Isn't the problem of adapting to change universal across all companies - and the key success factor there is leadership - rather than the structure of ownership? Perhaps capital owned companies have the distance to be a bit more ruthless in driving change - however while that may mean you get better short term allocation of capital, it doesn't take into account the other costs. Everytime a company lays off workers it relies on the state to ensure that those people and their dependents don't starve, potentially retrained and available to be successfully deployed elsewhere. Or to stop them, in their desperation, to gain the materials to live, start breaking the law. ie there is an element of free-riding of private capital on the State to ensure a stable society that private enterprise existence relies on, while they employ 'creative destruction'. Good companies - whether employee owned or not, don't free-load, they invest in their own staff through training, they pay good redundancy etc. You could argue the above is more likely in employee owned companies. However as I said at the start, in the end it's the leadership that matters.
• valval 2y ago
  I love reading long, matter-of-fact toned messages like this where obviously no serious thinking was done prior. It’s a silly statement that the efforts of Starbucks baristas wouldn’t have a massive impact on the company’s business.