5 ms·

It's fun to think about, but if you want to really reign in the C-suite, you need to start setting up systems within companies that allow for the rank-and-file

It's fun to think about, but if you want to really reign in the C-suite, you need to start setting up systems within companies that allow for the rank-and-file to replace bad CEOs. We've spent the last 80 years (ostensibly) talking about how great representative government is, then we let people own a majority of voting shares so that they can run companies like dictatorships. I've worked at a company that could have remained more competitive (and done a better job of maintaining software that is critical to human life) if there had been more uptake of ideas from workers instead of simply trying to make shareholders happy.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
> We've spent the last 80 years (ostensibly) talking about how great representative government is, then we let people own a majority of voting shares so that they can run companies like dictatorships. I think it’s basically admitting that the right dictator, if they are there based on merit, can really perform better than someone who wins by their skill at campaigning. Forget voting shares - even when a single person doesn’t have that amount of control, you have a small board elected by shareholders who is essentially electing a dictator. Personally I think most companies would do far worse if rank and file employees selected the CEO. But I haven’t thought much about it. Curious what ideas HN has on this aspect.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  I don't see it much of an admission of anything, personally. The admission would have had to come as an answer to a question that was never asked. To me, it's more of a way to keep the ruling class in place. It used to be done through government, now it's done through corporations. And honestly, the corporation is a far more attractive model if you're in that racket. Rioters don't burn down corporate HQs, they burn down police stations. Public sector pay sucks. The corruption would be far too obvious... well, it would have been until relatively recently.
- benxh 2y ago
  To prove you right, you can read up on the incredible giga-brained countrywide experiments by Kardelj in Socialist Yugoslavia [0]. The result being a country where no-one wanted to work, and everyone had a great standard of living (while the IMF didn't call in its loans). And then the entire country collapsed all at once under the accumulated mismanagement. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management#Yugoslavia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management#Yug...
  - bdndndndbve 2y ago
    It's wild to me that despite tremendous resources and 100+ years of time capitalism still kills millions of people a year with starvation and preventable diseases. But every right winger has a pet wikipedia page about a failed communist state with no critical examination of why they failed beyond "communism bad". To clarify my stance I'm an anarchist and that page has a lot of good examples of successful worker owned collectives.
    - zemvpferreira 2y ago
      To me it's equally as wild that you say such a thing when no system in human history did as much as capitalism to alleviate hunger and disease. In fact all other systems combined still can't touch the progress we've made to eradicate famine and disease while "under capitalism".
    - satvikpendem 2y ago
      There are good critically examined rebuttals if you actually look for them beyond Wikipedia which is not designed for that purpose. I read a book recently called Socialism: the failed idea that never dies, and while it has a clickbait title, the arguments are pretty cogent as to why people throughout history want to enact socialism based systems and why they eventually fail.
    - chii 2y ago
      > capitalism still kills millions of people a year with starvation and preventable diseases as if somehow, it's the responsibility of those capitalists to ensure those starving people have food and diseases cured - for nothing in return.
- wat10000 2y ago
  The advantages of democracy are a peaceful transition of power and non-violent outlets for political action. That is to say, you don’t have to worry about a succession war when the king dies, and if people don’t like what the government is doing they tend to advocate and vote rather than try to overthrow it. These advantages don’t really apply to companies. Your life isn’t tied to a company the way it is to your government, so if you don’t like how they chose the leader or what they’re doing, you can leave.
  - Slackwise 2y ago
    > Your life isn’t tied to a company Health insurance isn't tied to a company? Your ability to survive and feed your family isn't tied to your company? Lack of opportunities in the job market? Lack of equal salary/benefits at alternative companies? Non-competes, H1-B visas.... > so if you don’t like how they chose the leader or what they’re doing, you can leave. Just one small thing Ben: leave to work for who? Who isn't hiring CEOs and running businesses the same way as everyone else?
    - wat10000 2y ago
      Please don’t quote half a sentence and then argue with it when the second half is an important qualifier.
    - t-writescode 2y ago
      Many of these are uniquely American problems, and the many of the people and especially the highest in power in the United States have chosen and continue to choose to bind all of that to the company you work for (or don't).
      - satvikpendem 2y ago
        Yes, it's ironic that a democracy has exactly created the situation they lament about, the lack of universal healthcare. Unfortunately there is no political will to do it, while ironically an autocrat could cut through the red tape and get it done, as it had been enacted in several Asian countries in the last half century.
- glitchc 2y ago
  You truly do get the best and the worst with dictators, as history has shown.
- furyofantares 2y ago
  > I think it’s basically admitting that the right dictator, if they are there based on merit, can really perform better than someone who wins by their skill at campaigning. Sure. But also there are big differences between companies and countries/government. Companies compete in a market. There isn't much of a marketplace for country/government. This is a check on individual power, and forces the company to perform somewhat in alignment with what we want as a society. Concentration of power (monopoly) is still an issue in a market and so we regulate the market. The "dictator" of a company answers to both the market and to regulators, making it less dangerous as a concentration of power than an actual dictator. Related, it is totally okay for companies to fail, and they regularly do. We are a lot less okay with governments failing. Companies can also serve a niche. Governments need to serve their entire population. Governments are tasked with all sorts of collective action problems for diverse groups with varying opinions; companies get to pick their market. It's unclear that CEOs tell us much about a dictator trying to serve a population with a range of opinions.
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    > The "dictator" of a company answers to both the market and to regulators, making it less dangerous as a concentration of power than an actual dictator. Well, kind of. On occasion they participate in regulatory capture making them really only accountable as they care to be given the circumstances. If you have a market cornered on AI-powered, autonomous, robotic leg-equipped chainsaws, and the regulatory environment is weak because you've lobbied for the right rules and the right enforcers of those rules, you could very possibly just have a bad quarter if those chainsaws' AI sees people as trees and starts chasing them around. Maybe not even that. Meta would be a good real-world example. It's just less interesting to imagine.
number6 2y ago
Strange that economic power is still handed down the generations like political was in the days of kings
- aylmao 2y ago
  +1. I do think there's certain efficiency gains in concentrating decision-making in companies, but nepotism and hereditary power are strange characteristics to keep from feudalism
  - ASalazarMX 2y ago
    A company is an authoritarian regime, not a democracy. Real power is kept within a small circle. Since employees can ascend, it might look like a meritocracy, but that is only allowed if it strengthens the regime.
woah 2y ago
This is called a cooperative, and it is completely legal. However, they tend not to be very successful in the marketplace, outside of a few outliers. If you separate revenue and control (employees get to vote on decisions, but investors get the revenue), then employees will be incentivized to maintain the status quo instead making decisions to make the company successful. The employees have almost no incentive to make difficult decisions like cutting unsuccessful lines of business etc. I would be very uneasy about investing anyone's retirement savings into such an organization. If you keep revenue and control combined (a simple share structure, where each share gets a piece of the revenue and a vote, and employees get shares when they join), then you have other paradoxes. To make this work, you need to prohibit employees from selling their shares to investors, otherwise you're back to a conventional corporation. You also need to take the shares away from employees when they leave the company, otherwise former employees become a de facto investor class that you wanted to avoid. As an employee, I would prefer to work at a company where my equity does not have these restrictions placed on it. You may say "but if we all just tried a little harder to believe in a better world it could be possible". But it is possible now. Cooperatives work easily under existing corporate law, and are even incentivized in some places. They just aren't very successful for the reasons above. The only widespread form of cooperative is doctor's and lawyer's practices, which are legally required to be organized as cooperatives through a limited liability partnership structure. To make cooperatives work in the broader marketplace, you'd have to force employees to accept restrictions on their equity or force savers to put their money into cooperatives managed by employees who are not incentivized to invest it well.
- Hasu 2y ago
  All of your points are premised on the idea that the only purpose of a corporation is to make as much money for its shareholders as possible. But that isn't true, especially in the case of a cooperative. Most companies make decisions based on a list of priorities: they care about their shareholders/investors first, upper management second (upper management is usually bribed by the investors with equity, aligning their interests with the shareholders, so this is maybe a distinction without a difference), rank-and-file employees third, customers fourth, and anyone not involved with the company last. The point of a cooperative is to flip this incentive structure on its head: the customers or workers are owners, so they get prioritized. The purpose of the company isn't to dominate the markets and become the biggest company ever, it's to make a better life for the people working for and patronizing the company, instead of just the people who own it. > As an employee, I would prefer to work at a company where my equity does not have these restrictions placed on it. Well obviously, if you're talking about equity in a company as something you can own and profit from without ongoing labor, you are definitionally a capitalist and you will be opposed to cooperatives. > I would be very uneasy about investing anyone's retirement savings into such an organization. The primary purpose of a cooperative is not to make profits for passive investors. This is like judging a fish on its ability to climb a tree.
stuaxo 2y ago
Have a look at what Mondragon does in the Basque country for a cooperative of coopertives.
ActionHank 2y ago
CEOs aren't there to serve the rank-and-file, they're put there to serve the board and investors.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  And therein lies the problem.
  - chii 2y ago
    and why is that a problem? The shareholders are the owners of the company. They (indirectly) dictate what the company ought to do; which is to make profits for them.
cess11 2y ago
It's called a union. If workers unite and refuse to suddenly supply their labour it'll cause a lot of changes fast, and sometimes the capitalists just leave and the workers can appropriate the company. Though it is often a good idea to start small and get a little win, and then wait and recruit, and then push for another small change, and repeat. That way the union establishes credibility, solid membership and a reasonably sized war chest for things like getting rid of a CEO, which will take more time and effort than for example protective gear or longer pauses in the work.
satvikpendem 2y ago
Considering the state of current democracies, I don't think I could trust my peers to make sound financial decisions at an organizational level collectively. It's different from a democracy in government because I can, without much friction, leave a company at any time if I feel that the company is not doing well, not so with a nation-state. I personally have started and run a coop, but that worked because we were all friends who wanted to collectively pool our resources to get new clients as a software agency, if it were a larger cooperative, I would agree with the sibling commenter that they generally do not work as well as top down corporations.
renewiltord 2y ago
One of my favorite attributes about left-wing activism is that the solution to everything is to overthrow the system. It's like the whole "we have tech debt; we need to rewrite everything". Zero threat.
- Hasnep 2y ago
  You don't need to overthrow anything to have worker owned companies, they exist right now.
gmerc 2y ago
You want to take control away from the board and give it to employees? https://ai-ceo.org https://ai-ceo.org has a plugin for that!

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

> We've spent the last 80 years (ostensibly) talking about how great representative government is, then we let people own a majority of voting shares so that they can run companies like dictatorships. I think it’s basically admitting that the right dictator, if they are there based on merit, can really perform better than someone who wins by their skill at campaigning. Forget voting shares - even when a single person doesn’t have that amount of control, you have a small board elected by shareholders who is essentially electing a dictator. Personally I think most companies would do far worse if rank and file employees selected the CEO. But I haven’t thought much about it. Curious what ideas HN has on this aspect.

lenerdenator 2y ago
I don't see it much of an admission of anything, personally. The admission would have had to come as an answer to a question that was never asked. To me, it's more of a way to keep the ruling class in place. It used to be done through government, now it's done through corporations. And honestly, the corporation is a far more attractive model if you're in that racket. Rioters don't burn down corporate HQs, they burn down police stations. Public sector pay sucks. The corruption would be far too obvious... well, it would have been until relatively recently.
benxh 2y ago
To prove you right, you can read up on the incredible giga-brained countrywide experiments by Kardelj in Socialist Yugoslavia [0]. The result being a country where no-one wanted to work, and everyone had a great standard of living (while the IMF didn't call in its loans). And then the entire country collapsed all at once under the accumulated mismanagement. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management#Yugoslavia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management#Yug...
- bdndndndbve 2y ago
  It's wild to me that despite tremendous resources and 100+ years of time capitalism still kills millions of people a year with starvation and preventable diseases. But every right winger has a pet wikipedia page about a failed communist state with no critical examination of why they failed beyond "communism bad". To clarify my stance I'm an anarchist and that page has a lot of good examples of successful worker owned collectives.
  - zemvpferreira 2y ago
    To me it's equally as wild that you say such a thing when no system in human history did as much as capitalism to alleviate hunger and disease. In fact all other systems combined still can't touch the progress we've made to eradicate famine and disease while "under capitalism".
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    There are good critically examined rebuttals if you actually look for them beyond Wikipedia which is not designed for that purpose. I read a book recently called Socialism: the failed idea that never dies, and while it has a clickbait title, the arguments are pretty cogent as to why people throughout history want to enact socialism based systems and why they eventually fail.
  - chii 2y ago
    > capitalism still kills millions of people a year with starvation and preventable diseases as if somehow, it's the responsibility of those capitalists to ensure those starving people have food and diseases cured - for nothing in return.
wat10000 2y ago
The advantages of democracy are a peaceful transition of power and non-violent outlets for political action. That is to say, you don’t have to worry about a succession war when the king dies, and if people don’t like what the government is doing they tend to advocate and vote rather than try to overthrow it. These advantages don’t really apply to companies. Your life isn’t tied to a company the way it is to your government, so if you don’t like how they chose the leader or what they’re doing, you can leave.
- Slackwise 2y ago
  > Your life isn’t tied to a company Health insurance isn't tied to a company? Your ability to survive and feed your family isn't tied to your company? Lack of opportunities in the job market? Lack of equal salary/benefits at alternative companies? Non-competes, H1-B visas.... > so if you don’t like how they chose the leader or what they’re doing, you can leave. Just one small thing Ben: leave to work for who? Who isn't hiring CEOs and running businesses the same way as everyone else?
  - wat10000 2y ago
    Please don’t quote half a sentence and then argue with it when the second half is an important qualifier.
  - t-writescode 2y ago
    Many of these are uniquely American problems, and the many of the people and especially the highest in power in the United States have chosen and continue to choose to bind all of that to the company you work for (or don't).
    - satvikpendem 2y ago
      Yes, it's ironic that a democracy has exactly created the situation they lament about, the lack of universal healthcare. Unfortunately there is no political will to do it, while ironically an autocrat could cut through the red tape and get it done, as it had been enacted in several Asian countries in the last half century.
glitchc 2y ago
You truly do get the best and the worst with dictators, as history has shown.
furyofantares 2y ago
> I think it’s basically admitting that the right dictator, if they are there based on merit, can really perform better than someone who wins by their skill at campaigning. Sure. But also there are big differences between companies and countries/government. Companies compete in a market. There isn't much of a marketplace for country/government. This is a check on individual power, and forces the company to perform somewhat in alignment with what we want as a society. Concentration of power (monopoly) is still an issue in a market and so we regulate the market. The "dictator" of a company answers to both the market and to regulators, making it less dangerous as a concentration of power than an actual dictator. Related, it is totally okay for companies to fail, and they regularly do. We are a lot less okay with governments failing. Companies can also serve a niche. Governments need to serve their entire population. Governments are tasked with all sorts of collective action problems for diverse groups with varying opinions; companies get to pick their market. It's unclear that CEOs tell us much about a dictator trying to serve a population with a range of opinions.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  > The "dictator" of a company answers to both the market and to regulators, making it less dangerous as a concentration of power than an actual dictator. Well, kind of. On occasion they participate in regulatory capture making them really only accountable as they care to be given the circumstances. If you have a market cornered on AI-powered, autonomous, robotic leg-equipped chainsaws, and the regulatory environment is weak because you've lobbied for the right rules and the right enforcers of those rules, you could very possibly just have a bad quarter if those chainsaws' AI sees people as trees and starts chasing them around. Maybe not even that. Meta would be a good real-world example. It's just less interesting to imagine.

number6 2y ago

Strange that economic power is still handed down the generations like political was in the days of kings

aylmao 2y ago
+1. I do think there's certain efficiency gains in concentrating decision-making in companies, but nepotism and hereditary power are strange characteristics to keep from feudalism
- ASalazarMX 2y ago
  A company is an authoritarian regime, not a democracy. Real power is kept within a small circle. Since employees can ascend, it might look like a meritocracy, but that is only allowed if it strengthens the regime.

woah 2y ago

This is called a cooperative, and it is completely legal. However, they tend not to be very successful in the marketplace, outside of a few outliers. If you separate revenue and control (employees get to vote on decisions, but investors get the revenue), then employees will be incentivized to maintain the status quo instead making decisions to make the company successful. The employees have almost no incentive to make difficult decisions like cutting unsuccessful lines of business etc. I would be very uneasy about investing anyone's retirement savings into such an organization. If you keep revenue and control combined (a simple share structure, where each share gets a piece of the revenue and a vote, and employees get shares when they join), then you have other paradoxes. To make this work, you need to prohibit employees from selling their shares to investors, otherwise you're back to a conventional corporation. You also need to take the shares away from employees when they leave the company, otherwise former employees become a de facto investor class that you wanted to avoid. As an employee, I would prefer to work at a company where my equity does not have these restrictions placed on it. You may say "but if we all just tried a little harder to believe in a better world it could be possible". But it is possible now. Cooperatives work easily under existing corporate law, and are even incentivized in some places. They just aren't very successful for the reasons above. The only widespread form of cooperative is doctor's and lawyer's practices, which are legally required to be organized as cooperatives through a limited liability partnership structure. To make cooperatives work in the broader marketplace, you'd have to force employees to accept restrictions on their equity or force savers to put their money into cooperatives managed by employees who are not incentivized to invest it well.

Hasu 2y ago
All of your points are premised on the idea that the only purpose of a corporation is to make as much money for its shareholders as possible. But that isn't true, especially in the case of a cooperative. Most companies make decisions based on a list of priorities: they care about their shareholders/investors first, upper management second (upper management is usually bribed by the investors with equity, aligning their interests with the shareholders, so this is maybe a distinction without a difference), rank-and-file employees third, customers fourth, and anyone not involved with the company last. The point of a cooperative is to flip this incentive structure on its head: the customers or workers are owners, so they get prioritized. The purpose of the company isn't to dominate the markets and become the biggest company ever, it's to make a better life for the people working for and patronizing the company, instead of just the people who own it. > As an employee, I would prefer to work at a company where my equity does not have these restrictions placed on it. Well obviously, if you're talking about equity in a company as something you can own and profit from without ongoing labor, you are definitionally a capitalist and you will be opposed to cooperatives. > I would be very uneasy about investing anyone's retirement savings into such an organization. The primary purpose of a cooperative is not to make profits for passive investors. This is like judging a fish on its ability to climb a tree.

stuaxo 2y ago

Have a look at what Mondragon does in the Basque country for a cooperative of coopertives.

ActionHank 2y ago

CEOs aren't there to serve the rank-and-file, they're put there to serve the board and investors.

lenerdenator 2y ago
And therein lies the problem.
- chii 2y ago
  and why is that a problem? The shareholders are the owners of the company. They (indirectly) dictate what the company ought to do; which is to make profits for them.

cess11 2y ago

It's called a union. If workers unite and refuse to suddenly supply their labour it'll cause a lot of changes fast, and sometimes the capitalists just leave and the workers can appropriate the company. Though it is often a good idea to start small and get a little win, and then wait and recruit, and then push for another small change, and repeat. That way the union establishes credibility, solid membership and a reasonably sized war chest for things like getting rid of a CEO, which will take more time and effort than for example protective gear or longer pauses in the work.

satvikpendem 2y ago

Considering the state of current democracies, I don't think I could trust my peers to make sound financial decisions at an organizational level collectively. It's different from a democracy in government because I can, without much friction, leave a company at any time if I feel that the company is not doing well, not so with a nation-state. I personally have started and run a coop, but that worked because we were all friends who wanted to collectively pool our resources to get new clients as a software agency, if it were a larger cooperative, I would agree with the sibling commenter that they generally do not work as well as top down corporations.

renewiltord 2y ago

One of my favorite attributes about left-wing activism is that the solution to everything is to overthrow the system. It's like the whole "we have tech debt; we need to rewrite everything". Zero threat.

Hasnep 2y ago
You don't need to overthrow anything to have worker owned companies, they exist right now.

gmerc 2y ago

You want to take control away from the board and give it to employees? https://ai-ceo.org https://ai-ceo.org has a plugin for that!