12 ms·

To take over the market companies need to attract customers - i.e. make their lives better. Usually there are more consumers than employees - so I think that me

by zby 2y ago

To take over the market companies need to attract customers - i.e. make their lives better. Usually there are more consumers than employees - so I think that measure works quite well with optimising for humans. Profit is a side effect of taking over the market. But actually to have any employees companies need to optimize for workers lives anyway. And it seems that cooperatives are not any better in this area - otherwise everybody would work for cooperatives.

kerkeslager 2y ago
> To take over the market companies need to attract customers - i.e. make their lives better. Usually there are more consumers than employees - so I think that measure works quite well with optimising for humans. Profit is a side effect of taking over the market. Quantity of people benefitted isn't the only measure: magnitude of benefit is also relevant. The customer at a 7Eleven benefits in that they get to... what, buy snacks conveniently? Versus the worker who receives their entire livelihood and benefits, it becomes obvious that workers are the primary beneficiaries of a company. > But actually to have any employees companies need to optimize for workers lives anyway. This is quite obviously false. All companies have to do is present a united front on keeping pay low and benefits nonexistent to prevent workers from having better options. I.e. USA 2024. > And it seems that cooperatives are not any better in this area - otherwise everybody would work for cooperatives. Why is that exactly?
- throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
  >All companies have to do is present a united front on keeping pay low and benefits nonexistent to prevent workers from having better options. I.e. USA 2024. Can we leave the cynical antiwork comments out? They aren't helpful. This is obviously not the case for a majority of companies and anecdotes don't help. Everyone is for the highest pay possible until they run their own company and have to provide payroll.
  - ClumsyPilot 2y ago
    > Can we leave the cynical antiwork comments out? They aren't helpful. This is obviously not the case for a majority of companies and anecdotes don't help. Major companies are regularly prosecuted for conspiracy to suppress wages. It if weren't for government intervention your wages would be much lower and there wouldn't be anything you can do about it. This blind faith that billion dollar corporations would behave ethically is highly inappropriate https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-jobs-settlement-20150903-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-jo...
    - lupusreal 2y ago
      Most companies aren't "major companies". I'm for busting up the big monopolies, but I'm not for throwing the baby out with the bath water and imposing communist reforms on all businesses, most of which are small and generally well behaved, just because some big ones with pathological behavior exist.
      - specialist 2y ago
        There's A LOT of daylight between liberal capitalism and communist socialism. The social democracies, a middle path, as the Nordic countries have experimented with, seem to have done quite well. And there's now strong evidence that our system (neoliberalism) has stunted economic growth. Regardless... I support simple social reforms, like sovereign wealth funds (Alaska, Norway) and universal healthcare, greatly reducing the tension between labor and capital. Then these labor, employment, and ownership reforms wouldn't be so fraught.
        lupusreal 2y ago
        This discussion is about the proposal to, by law, force all businesses to be workers cooperatives. That's not the liberal capitalism found in Nordic countries, it's communism.
        2y ago
piva00 2y ago
> But actually to have any employees companies need to optimize for workers lives anyway. And it seems that cooperatives are not any better in this area - otherwise everybody would work for cooperatives. There's much more at play than just "cooperatives are not any better". Cooperatives don't get as much funding from investors because investors won't be owning a larger share of them, and taking their returns, they instead invest in a traditional company because then they can extract as much as possible from their investments. That by itself already puts small scale cooperatives at a competitive disadvantage, you can't raise as much capital as the non-cooperative startup, even if their product could be better and their employers could be happier the lavishly monied startup will try to outcompete them by throwing money away until they get a larger share of the market. If somehow this situation was improved where cooperatives are not immediately disadvantaged from an earlier stage we could see more of them popping up, right now there's not nearly enough cooperatives for this comparison to be possible, simply because they get extinguished by others with more capital.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > There's much more at play than just "cooperatives are not any better". Cooperatives don't get as much funding from investors because investors won't be owning a larger share of them, and taking their returns, they instead invest in a traditional company because then they can extract as much as possible from their investments. Unions should put their money where their mouth is and invest in cooperatives.
  - piva00 2y ago
    > Unions should put their money where their mouth is and invest in cooperatives. Unions aren't structured for investing, and that's not their reason to exist. I don't know where you are from so I can't comment on how unions function in your society, where I live they're definitely not in the same realm as a potential investor for cooperatives. You are also asking for unions to compete against VCs, and banks, let's be realistic that even a large and wealthy union is not even close in terms of wealth management as a small to mid-size bank/investor. On top of that the union has responsibilities to provide benefits to all members, a bank or investor has none of that, tilting the scale even more in disfavor of an union assuming the role of investment. It's a good thought though, another entity such as a credit union supported by workers in an industry which also takes the role on investing in cooperatives to foment them, would still be an uphill battle but if some good cooperatives came out of it maybe it could be another viable (albeit smaller) model to start companies.
li2uR3ce 2y ago
> companies need to attract customers - i.e. make their lives better. Companies need to sell the *idea* of making lives better. They don't actually have to make a customer's life better and many don't despite selling lots of product. Profitability is not a strict function of quality. If it were, we'd not give the slightest fuck about monopolies. It takes a great amount of effort to get companies to compete on "making lives better." If bettering lives is not the most profitable it is very often eclipsed by what is. It's much more complicated than the simple lie that "you get what you pay for."
- WalterBright 2y ago
  Do you buy things you don't want?
  - unbalancedevh 2y ago
    People get convinced in the heat of the moment that they want something, when if they had time to reflect/research/etc. they might very well conclude that their money is better spent elsewhere. Marketing in a capitalist system is highly motivated to make you think you want or need something more than you actually do. One tactic that some people find helpful when they want to buy a discretionary item is to wait a few days/weeks, and make sure that it's not just a whim that they'd regret.
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      Watch TV commercials over the years. The older ones are laughable. They steadily get more sophisticated as the years go by. That's because the customers get more sophisticated, too. You might call it evolution in action :-/ Political campaigns also get more sophisticated. Scott Adams has an interesting podcast where he breaks down the latest manipulative persuasion techniques used.
  - rangerelf 2y ago
    No, but it's very probable li2uR3ce bought things that were portrayed as being much better than they actually were. These days "profitable" for the seller rarely equates with "good value" for the buyer.
shkkmo 2y ago
People like doing meaningful work that benefits their customers. I think that employee owned businesses tens to treat their customers better than companies that are owned by private equity, pension funds or other investors who never touch the product or interact with the customers.
- nradov 2y ago
  When United Airlines was employee owned they didn't treat their customers better than competitors. https://www.forbes.com/sites/fotschcase/2017/04/17/uniteds-troubles-could-have-been-avoided/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/fotschcase/2017/04/17/uniteds-t...
  - shkkmo 2y ago
    The article you linked doesn't say anything to backup your claim. United was employee owned for a total of only 6 years. Employee ownership was institued over some employee objections and wasn't fully supported by management. The labor relation issues that caused the pilot strike and slowdown duering that period predated the employee ownership initiative. Nobody is saying that employee ownership is a magic bullet that fixes organization disfunction but data from that first year does show that it can have a positive impact of performance and customer satisfaction.

by zby 2y ago

kerkeslager 2y ago

> To take over the market companies need to attract customers - i.e. make their lives better. Usually there are more consumers than employees - so I think that measure works quite well with optimising for humans. Profit is a side effect of taking over the market. Quantity of people benefitted isn't the only measure: magnitude of benefit is also relevant. The customer at a 7Eleven benefits in that they get to... what, buy snacks conveniently? Versus the worker who receives their entire livelihood and benefits, it becomes obvious that workers are the primary beneficiaries of a company. > But actually to have any employees companies need to optimize for workers lives anyway. This is quite obviously false. All companies have to do is present a united front on keeping pay low and benefits nonexistent to prevent workers from having better options. I.e. USA 2024. > And it seems that cooperatives are not any better in this area - otherwise everybody would work for cooperatives. Why is that exactly?

throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
>All companies have to do is present a united front on keeping pay low and benefits nonexistent to prevent workers from having better options. I.e. USA 2024. Can we leave the cynical antiwork comments out? They aren't helpful. This is obviously not the case for a majority of companies and anecdotes don't help. Everyone is for the highest pay possible until they run their own company and have to provide payroll.
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  > Can we leave the cynical antiwork comments out? They aren't helpful. This is obviously not the case for a majority of companies and anecdotes don't help. Major companies are regularly prosecuted for conspiracy to suppress wages. It if weren't for government intervention your wages would be much lower and there wouldn't be anything you can do about it. This blind faith that billion dollar corporations would behave ethically is highly inappropriate https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-jobs-settlement-20150903-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-jo...
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    Most companies aren't "major companies". I'm for busting up the big monopolies, but I'm not for throwing the baby out with the bath water and imposing communist reforms on all businesses, most of which are small and generally well behaved, just because some big ones with pathological behavior exist.
    - specialist 2y ago
      There's A LOT of daylight between liberal capitalism and communist socialism. The social democracies, a middle path, as the Nordic countries have experimented with, seem to have done quite well. And there's now strong evidence that our system (neoliberalism) has stunted economic growth. Regardless... I support simple social reforms, like sovereign wealth funds (Alaska, Norway) and universal healthcare, greatly reducing the tension between labor and capital. Then these labor, employment, and ownership reforms wouldn't be so fraught.
      - lupusreal 2y ago
        This discussion is about the proposal to, by law, force all businesses to be workers cooperatives. That's not the liberal capitalism found in Nordic countries, it's communism.
        2y ago

piva00 2y ago

> But actually to have any employees companies need to optimize for workers lives anyway. And it seems that cooperatives are not any better in this area - otherwise everybody would work for cooperatives. There's much more at play than just "cooperatives are not any better". Cooperatives don't get as much funding from investors because investors won't be owning a larger share of them, and taking their returns, they instead invest in a traditional company because then they can extract as much as possible from their investments. That by itself already puts small scale cooperatives at a competitive disadvantage, you can't raise as much capital as the non-cooperative startup, even if their product could be better and their employers could be happier the lavishly monied startup will try to outcompete them by throwing money away until they get a larger share of the market. If somehow this situation was improved where cooperatives are not immediately disadvantaged from an earlier stage we could see more of them popping up, right now there's not nearly enough cooperatives for this comparison to be possible, simply because they get extinguished by others with more capital.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> There's much more at play than just "cooperatives are not any better". Cooperatives don't get as much funding from investors because investors won't be owning a larger share of them, and taking their returns, they instead invest in a traditional company because then they can extract as much as possible from their investments. Unions should put their money where their mouth is and invest in cooperatives.
- piva00 2y ago
  > Unions should put their money where their mouth is and invest in cooperatives. Unions aren't structured for investing, and that's not their reason to exist. I don't know where you are from so I can't comment on how unions function in your society, where I live they're definitely not in the same realm as a potential investor for cooperatives. You are also asking for unions to compete against VCs, and banks, let's be realistic that even a large and wealthy union is not even close in terms of wealth management as a small to mid-size bank/investor. On top of that the union has responsibilities to provide benefits to all members, a bank or investor has none of that, tilting the scale even more in disfavor of an union assuming the role of investment. It's a good thought though, another entity such as a credit union supported by workers in an industry which also takes the role on investing in cooperatives to foment them, would still be an uphill battle but if some good cooperatives came out of it maybe it could be another viable (albeit smaller) model to start companies.

li2uR3ce 2y ago

> companies need to attract customers - i.e. make their lives better. Companies need to sell the *idea* of making lives better. They don't actually have to make a customer's life better and many don't despite selling lots of product. Profitability is not a strict function of quality. If it were, we'd not give the slightest fuck about monopolies. It takes a great amount of effort to get companies to compete on "making lives better." If bettering lives is not the most profitable it is very often eclipsed by what is. It's much more complicated than the simple lie that "you get what you pay for."

WalterBright 2y ago
Do you buy things you don't want?
- unbalancedevh 2y ago
  People get convinced in the heat of the moment that they want something, when if they had time to reflect/research/etc. they might very well conclude that their money is better spent elsewhere. Marketing in a capitalist system is highly motivated to make you think you want or need something more than you actually do. One tactic that some people find helpful when they want to buy a discretionary item is to wait a few days/weeks, and make sure that it's not just a whim that they'd regret.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    Watch TV commercials over the years. The older ones are laughable. They steadily get more sophisticated as the years go by. That's because the customers get more sophisticated, too. You might call it evolution in action :-/ Political campaigns also get more sophisticated. Scott Adams has an interesting podcast where he breaks down the latest manipulative persuasion techniques used.
- rangerelf 2y ago
  No, but it's very probable li2uR3ce bought things that were portrayed as being much better than they actually were. These days "profitable" for the seller rarely equates with "good value" for the buyer.

shkkmo 2y ago

People like doing meaningful work that benefits their customers. I think that employee owned businesses tens to treat their customers better than companies that are owned by private equity, pension funds or other investors who never touch the product or interact with the customers.

nradov 2y ago
When United Airlines was employee owned they didn't treat their customers better than competitors. https://www.forbes.com/sites/fotschcase/2017/04/17/uniteds-troubles-could-have-been-avoided/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/fotschcase/2017/04/17/uniteds-t...
- shkkmo 2y ago
  The article you linked doesn't say anything to backup your claim. United was employee owned for a total of only 6 years. Employee ownership was institued over some employee objections and wasn't fully supported by management. The labor relation issues that caused the pilot strike and slowdown duering that period predated the employee ownership initiative. Nobody is saying that employee ownership is a magic bullet that fixes organization disfunction but data from that first year does show that it can have a positive impact of performance and customer satisfaction.