4 ms·

This is why corporations need to be owned and operated by the employees.

by banach 5mo ago

tjpnz 5mo ago
You'll also be less exposed in privately owned companies.
asdfsa32 5mo ago
Have you look at how efficient your local government is?
- ethanwillis 5mo ago
  When local governments are captured by corporate interests this isn't the argument you think it is.
  - asdfsa32 5mo ago
    "captured by corporate" is a feature. It is either Corporate or the Vanguard. We are almost agreeing.
- Kadecgos 5mo ago
  Yeah - the answer is that the cost to deliver a service from my local government is a lot cheaper than it is when it's coming from the private sector. People meme on 'lol government efficiency', but actually sit down and calculate your marginal cost for the services you pay for that are funded by taxation. It's not even close - the cost to operate these services per person is crazy low. In fact, you don't even have to look that far for government-adjacent programs. Co-ops for utilities are notoriously cheaper for their service area than a private utility, almost without exception. So yeah - the government is not perfectly efficient. It's not going to give you exactly what you want all the time, but it's still 2-3x more efficient than the private sector when it comes to actually absorbing the costs as a citizen or user of a service. "Lol government efficiency" is not the burn you think it is.
  - fc417fc802 5mo ago
    The flip side is that sometimes things go poorly and the (lack of financial) incentives are such that costs might not get reined in for a long while.
  - asdfsa32 5mo ago
    You're making it sound like I am not already paying taxes for those "absorbing of costs".
    - Kadecgos 5mo ago
      That is where the income is coming from, of course. That is also exactly what I'm saying. The tax cost of paying for a public service tends to be, nearly universally, less than the cost of paying for the same service in the private sector. While there are some pretty easy examples here, the easiest one is probably health care: The country that pays the most - by far - for 'average-ish' health care is the one where the system is privatized.
      - asdfsa32 5mo ago
        Healthcare is an exception because it is insurance in disguise and it is one of those things where a monopoly can be cost effective. This works because the actual service is not monopolised by the state but rather a large pool of providers. This doesn't apply to other services.
        Kadecgos 5mo ago
        Except that public and Co-Op utilities are also noticeably cheaper to operate than private sector utilities. And also, public roads are basically universally cheaper than private roads (as rare as they are). And public schools. And public communication infra. The list just goes on and on. It's not 'just healthcare' and the amount of data on this is so staggering that to suggest that the private sector running things somehow results in an efficiency gain of some kind is borderline brainwashed rhetoric from Fox News more than it is any kind of defensible position.
- alistairSH 5mo ago
  Reasonably efficient. Local schools are good, local roads are good, job market is solid, housing is being built and the urban planning is better than most areas. Taxes are high, but not NJ/NYC high.
simianwords 5mo ago
these corporations would never work because they would optimise for the wrong thing - they would get their face eaten by other more efficient and ruthless corporations
- dgb23 5mo ago
  These corporations exist and do work. Worker owned companies have their own challenges and their own advantages. For example they tend to be more stable during crisis, because workers tend to vote for lowering salaries/benefits temporarily rather than doing layoffs. So they retain talent better. But they also tend to have difficulty to grow quickly, for obvious reasons. Besides full on coops, there are also plenty of examples that are hybrids (partially worker owned). > they would get their face eaten by other more efficient and ruthless corporations You're possibly of assuming that a company needs to have an adversarial relationship to their workers in order to be competitive. I don't think that's generally true. This approach has advantages in specific situations, but disadvantages in others.
  - simianwords 5mo ago
    Im literally saying the opposite that no adversarial relationship needs to exist. That’s exactly why you don’t need worker owned companies
danw1979 5mo ago
For the last 15 years I’ve been telling anyone who would listen about my idea for a John Lewis (British retail chain) model IT consultancy- employee owned, everyone is motivated, high quality, etc. Except last month I met someone who worked there and got TUPE (involuntary contractual transfer of employment) to Wipro (Indian outsourcerer) a few years ago. So even though this corporation is owned by the employees, and is one of the best examples of this in the UK, it seems you also need some kind of management structure that is also immune to the usual senior leadership trolls to avoid it turning out to be shitty.
- skinfaxi 5mo ago
  Even under non-hierarchical systems someone has to take out the trash.
- poncho_romero 5mo ago
  I don't know anything about John Lewis, but Les-Tilleuls (https://les-tilleuls.coop/en/the-co-op https://les-tilleuls.coop/en/the-co-op) sounds exactly like what you're talking about. Completely employee owned IT shop full of talented contributers. I'm not sure about their consulting work, but they're behind a ton of innovative open source projects in the PHP sphere.
Scroll_Swe 5mo ago
No, this never works... The socialism glaze on HN amazes me... I am Swedish, in Sweden, and we are a market economy combined with unions. Companies can do layoffs but for a 3month agreement, they have to notify basically, WARN.
lbreakjai 5mo ago
If 51% of the employees would benefit from firing the other 49%, you'd be as good as gone anyway. Not saying it would be worse, but the same incentives are at play.
- acdha 5mo ago
  No, because the average employee has both a lot more in common with their peers and because the gains are lower for people whose stock shares are orders of magnitude lower. Joe from accounting isn’t laying off a department so he can sell shares worth the price of a Corolla before taxes.
  - lbreakjai 5mo ago
    "Joe from accounting" would perhaps do it for free, if he thought it would affect the slackers. I've seen colleagues cheer at the news of layoffs because they saw themselves as the rockstars being dragged down by "useless office drones".
- throwaway0123_5 5mo ago
  Presumably ~100% of the employees want to feel secure in their jobs, so I don't think this would happen unless the benefit to the 51% is extreme.

This is why corporations need to be owned and operated by the employees.

by banach 5mo ago

This is why corporations need to be owned and operated by the employees.

tjpnz 5mo ago

You'll also be less exposed in privately owned companies.

asdfsa32 5mo ago

Have you look at how efficient your local government is?

ethanwillis 5mo ago
When local governments are captured by corporate interests this isn't the argument you think it is.
- asdfsa32 5mo ago
  "captured by corporate" is a feature. It is either Corporate or the Vanguard. We are almost agreeing.
Kadecgos 5mo ago
Yeah - the answer is that the cost to deliver a service from my local government is a lot cheaper than it is when it's coming from the private sector. People meme on 'lol government efficiency', but actually sit down and calculate your marginal cost for the services you pay for that are funded by taxation. It's not even close - the cost to operate these services per person is crazy low. In fact, you don't even have to look that far for government-adjacent programs. Co-ops for utilities are notoriously cheaper for their service area than a private utility, almost without exception. So yeah - the government is not perfectly efficient. It's not going to give you exactly what you want all the time, but it's still 2-3x more efficient than the private sector when it comes to actually absorbing the costs as a citizen or user of a service. "Lol government efficiency" is not the burn you think it is.
- fc417fc802 5mo ago
  The flip side is that sometimes things go poorly and the (lack of financial) incentives are such that costs might not get reined in for a long while.
- asdfsa32 5mo ago
  You're making it sound like I am not already paying taxes for those "absorbing of costs".
  - Kadecgos 5mo ago
    That is where the income is coming from, of course. That is also exactly what I'm saying. The tax cost of paying for a public service tends to be, nearly universally, less than the cost of paying for the same service in the private sector. While there are some pretty easy examples here, the easiest one is probably health care: The country that pays the most - by far - for 'average-ish' health care is the one where the system is privatized.
    - asdfsa32 5mo ago
      Healthcare is an exception because it is insurance in disguise and it is one of those things where a monopoly can be cost effective. This works because the actual service is not monopolised by the state but rather a large pool of providers. This doesn't apply to other services.
      - Kadecgos 5mo ago
        Except that public and Co-Op utilities are also noticeably cheaper to operate than private sector utilities. And also, public roads are basically universally cheaper than private roads (as rare as they are). And public schools. And public communication infra. The list just goes on and on. It's not 'just healthcare' and the amount of data on this is so staggering that to suggest that the private sector running things somehow results in an efficiency gain of some kind is borderline brainwashed rhetoric from Fox News more than it is any kind of defensible position.
alistairSH 5mo ago
Reasonably efficient. Local schools are good, local roads are good, job market is solid, housing is being built and the urban planning is better than most areas. Taxes are high, but not NJ/NYC high.

simianwords 5mo ago

these corporations would never work because they would optimise for the wrong thing - they would get their face eaten by other more efficient and ruthless corporations

dgb23 5mo ago
These corporations exist and do work. Worker owned companies have their own challenges and their own advantages. For example they tend to be more stable during crisis, because workers tend to vote for lowering salaries/benefits temporarily rather than doing layoffs. So they retain talent better. But they also tend to have difficulty to grow quickly, for obvious reasons. Besides full on coops, there are also plenty of examples that are hybrids (partially worker owned). > they would get their face eaten by other more efficient and ruthless corporations You're possibly of assuming that a company needs to have an adversarial relationship to their workers in order to be competitive. I don't think that's generally true. This approach has advantages in specific situations, but disadvantages in others.
- simianwords 5mo ago
  Im literally saying the opposite that no adversarial relationship needs to exist. That’s exactly why you don’t need worker owned companies

danw1979 5mo ago

For the last 15 years I’ve been telling anyone who would listen about my idea for a John Lewis (British retail chain) model IT consultancy- employee owned, everyone is motivated, high quality, etc. Except last month I met someone who worked there and got TUPE (involuntary contractual transfer of employment) to Wipro (Indian outsourcerer) a few years ago. So even though this corporation is owned by the employees, and is one of the best examples of this in the UK, it seems you also need some kind of management structure that is also immune to the usual senior leadership trolls to avoid it turning out to be shitty.

skinfaxi 5mo ago
Even under non-hierarchical systems someone has to take out the trash.
poncho_romero 5mo ago
I don't know anything about John Lewis, but Les-Tilleuls (https://les-tilleuls.coop/en/the-co-op https://les-tilleuls.coop/en/the-co-op) sounds exactly like what you're talking about. Completely employee owned IT shop full of talented contributers. I'm not sure about their consulting work, but they're behind a ton of innovative open source projects in the PHP sphere.

Scroll_Swe 5mo ago

No, this never works... The socialism glaze on HN amazes me... I am Swedish, in Sweden, and we are a market economy combined with unions. Companies can do layoffs but for a 3month agreement, they have to notify basically, WARN.

lbreakjai 5mo ago

If 51% of the employees would benefit from firing the other 49%, you'd be as good as gone anyway. Not saying it would be worse, but the same incentives are at play.

acdha 5mo ago
No, because the average employee has both a lot more in common with their peers and because the gains are lower for people whose stock shares are orders of magnitude lower. Joe from accounting isn’t laying off a department so he can sell shares worth the price of a Corolla before taxes.
- lbreakjai 5mo ago
  "Joe from accounting" would perhaps do it for free, if he thought it would affect the slackers. I've seen colleagues cheer at the news of layoffs because they saw themselves as the rockstars being dragged down by "useless office drones".
throwaway0123_5 5mo ago
Presumably ~100% of the employees want to feel secure in their jobs, so I don't think this would happen unless the benefit to the 51% is extreme.