3 ms·

You’re making the case for worker-owned cooperatives. Love it — we need more of them!

nemomarx 4mo ago
The problem is that knowing the right people to get investment does seem to have utility coops struggle to get, I think? maybe CEOs are basically like producers on movies who are just there to network for you.
zeroonetwothree 4mo ago
Don’t you still need someone to make high level decisions?
- nathan_compton 4mo ago
  Worker owned cooperatives have a variety of ways of doing this. Voting directly, electing people, etc. The main difference is that the cooperative typically doesn't buy the myth that the person making the high level decision needs to be paid 1000x the workers.
- shimman 4mo ago
  No, look at functioning democracies. They don't need authoritarian rulers, only those that want to be authoritarians argue elsewise.
  - matwood 4mo ago
    > They don't need authoritarian rulers Yet they seem still inclined to elect them.
    - Henchman21 4mo ago
      Given the zeitgeist is controlled by a handful of Capitalists who also happen to be sociopaths intent on bringing back feudalism and chattel slavery... No. "The People" are so propagandized that we simply cannot know what The People would do unless we turn off the great distraction machine constantly inundating us all with propaganda.
nickpinkston 4mo ago
I'm very sympathetic to cooperatives, have traveled/know the Mondragon people (largest coop federation), etc. However, I think there's a reason why coops seem to succeed at smaller scales, but there are essentially no large innovative coops. There are a few large boring coops, and some small innovative ones, but seemingly something is making the CEO/investor board model the one large innovative companies are all using. I suspect that it's both (1) access to capital is far harder for coops, and (2) that workplace democracy and hardcore mission focus aren't fully compatible. That is, "you cannot serve two masters" without losing focus on one of them.
- marcosdumay 4mo ago
  If a company accumulates capital, it becomes vulnerable to the principal agent problem, and coops are way more vulnerable here than centralized companies. If a company doesn't accumulate capital, it doesn't scale in complexity. It can grow by having more people do more of the same things, but it can't move into markets that demand anything complex.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
- mplanchard 4mo ago
  This seems hard to tease out from the fact that a) the majority of companies do not survive, b) the large, large majority of companies that do survive do not wind up being large or innovative, and c) there are far fewer coops than regular companies. If you assume equal chance of success between them, you’d still see vanishingly small numbers of large, innovative coops, because a small percentage of a small number is small.
- dartharva 4mo ago
  Coops can definitely succeed and even dominate at large scales with some minimum government protections. The largest dairy producer in the world is a coop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amul
oytis 4mo ago
In software I can imagine a worker-owned consultancy, but not a product company. It would imply staying in one place working on one product for your whole life, which doesn't sound inspiring
- dragonwriter 4mo ago
  A company need not be a single product, and working in a worker-owned cooperative need not be a lifetime commitment to a single firm (though cooperatives ideally will have less turnover than firms owned by capital separated from labor.)
- shimman 4mo ago
  No, it implies that you give workers the means to dictate the direction of the company. That is what workplace democracy does: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_democracy Acting like centrally planned dictatorships is a good form of collaboration is just so off base. There's no reason to think that introducing democracy into the work place wouldn't immediately benefit both workers + customers. If this sounds crazy the C suite + board already vote on who gets hired into the executive team, vote for the direction of the company, and vote for their compensation packages (hint, they never decrease them). Why shouldn't workers be legally enabled to do the same? What is the justification to this? I'm curious to hear it because the only way people can justify the current system is declaring that some people are actually more deserving of prestige, money, and benefits while others deserve to suffer. With income inequality increasing, healthcare outcomes worsening, and children literally becoming stupider isn't it time to question the current system and ask ourselves if this is the society we truly want?
  - jimbokun 4mo ago
    Where’s your real world evidence of all these benefits of coops? Because I would love for it to be true.
    - shimman 4mo ago
      Well workplace democracy has only been tried in a few corporations. If you want an interesting business case look into Semco Partners in Brazil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler#Semco_1990%E2%80%932004 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler#Semco_1990%E2%8... There is academic research on this too if you're curious but it's mostly in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. But yes, there isn't much "evidence" because this system hasn't been tried en masse; however if you look at our current neoliberal hellscape, it's pretty hard to imagine it doing worse. Also neoliberalism wasn't really "tried" either, it was thrusted upon us by a group of individuals that wanted it. One thing to keep in mind is that society can change quite quickly if you want it to. I'm sure the children that died working in factories during the 1800s never imagined such a society where children are valued, cared for, educated, and protected but it did happen. It has happen before and it can happen again. It only happened because people were willing to fight for it. The rules are allowed to be changed at anytime if we deem so, a better world is possible.
AnimalMuppet 4mo ago
Maybe, but not necessarily for this reason. Even in a worker-owned coop, someone sets the overall direction. And how is that person going to be selected? It's still going to be largely politics.
- jimbokun 4mo ago
  Politics among the workers vs politics among the shareholders.
jimbokun 4mo ago
What are the concrete benefits? Do they tend to make greater revenue or profits? Pay higher wages and offer greater benefits to employees?
- munk-a 4mo ago
  Coops tend to have better aligned incentives for employees on every step of the ladder. They'll tend to be more conservative about R&D but ensure that money that's being spent is being productive for the continuing health of the company since instead of that budget being "corporate's money pile" it's your potential profit share. I think there's also a tendency towards longer tenure and higher value employees due to the investment in the company's future being a sort of central tenant of their attractiveness.
  - jimbokun 4mo ago
    Any data to support those claims?
    - fuzzfactor 4mo ago
      Not usually the kind of data that the greediest capitalists would appreciate. There are some case studies here, but it's only one professor in a largely non-capitalist approach overall: https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooperative/comments/1bm5s5s/richard_wolff_videos_on_worker_coops/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooperative/comments/1bm5s5s/richar...
      - jimbokun 4mo ago
        Thanks for the link, but Reddit is blocking it as if it’s adult content or something. But if I use the app, it will suddenly be OK. Very strange.
- dartharva 4mo ago
  Generally, yes. Also the gap between the employee and executive class is a lot smaller instead of unnaturally inflated like it is in most private equity companies.

The problem is that knowing the right people to get investment does seem to have utility coops struggle to get, I think? maybe CEOs are basically like producers on movies who are just there to network for you.

zeroonetwothree 4mo ago

Don’t you still need someone to make high level decisions?

nathan_compton 4mo ago
Worker owned cooperatives have a variety of ways of doing this. Voting directly, electing people, etc. The main difference is that the cooperative typically doesn't buy the myth that the person making the high level decision needs to be paid 1000x the workers.
shimman 4mo ago
No, look at functioning democracies. They don't need authoritarian rulers, only those that want to be authoritarians argue elsewise.
- matwood 4mo ago
  > They don't need authoritarian rulers Yet they seem still inclined to elect them.
  - Henchman21 4mo ago
    Given the zeitgeist is controlled by a handful of Capitalists who also happen to be sociopaths intent on bringing back feudalism and chattel slavery... No. "The People" are so propagandized that we simply cannot know what The People would do unless we turn off the great distraction machine constantly inundating us all with propaganda.

nickpinkston 4mo ago

I'm very sympathetic to cooperatives, have traveled/know the Mondragon people (largest coop federation), etc. However, I think there's a reason why coops seem to succeed at smaller scales, but there are essentially no large innovative coops. There are a few large boring coops, and some small innovative ones, but seemingly something is making the CEO/investor board model the one large innovative companies are all using. I suspect that it's both (1) access to capital is far harder for coops, and (2) that workplace democracy and hardcore mission focus aren't fully compatible. That is, "you cannot serve two masters" without losing focus on one of them.

marcosdumay 4mo ago
If a company accumulates capital, it becomes vulnerable to the principal agent problem, and coops are way more vulnerable here than centralized companies. If a company doesn't accumulate capital, it doesn't scale in complexity. It can grow by having more people do more of the same things, but it can't move into markets that demand anything complex.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
mplanchard 4mo ago
This seems hard to tease out from the fact that a) the majority of companies do not survive, b) the large, large majority of companies that do survive do not wind up being large or innovative, and c) there are far fewer coops than regular companies. If you assume equal chance of success between them, you’d still see vanishingly small numbers of large, innovative coops, because a small percentage of a small number is small.
dartharva 4mo ago
Coops can definitely succeed and even dominate at large scales with some minimum government protections. The largest dairy producer in the world is a coop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amul

oytis 4mo ago

In software I can imagine a worker-owned consultancy, but not a product company. It would imply staying in one place working on one product for your whole life, which doesn't sound inspiring

dragonwriter 4mo ago
A company need not be a single product, and working in a worker-owned cooperative need not be a lifetime commitment to a single firm (though cooperatives ideally will have less turnover than firms owned by capital separated from labor.)
shimman 4mo ago
No, it implies that you give workers the means to dictate the direction of the company. That is what workplace democracy does: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_democracy Acting like centrally planned dictatorships is a good form of collaboration is just so off base. There's no reason to think that introducing democracy into the work place wouldn't immediately benefit both workers + customers. If this sounds crazy the C suite + board already vote on who gets hired into the executive team, vote for the direction of the company, and vote for their compensation packages (hint, they never decrease them). Why shouldn't workers be legally enabled to do the same? What is the justification to this? I'm curious to hear it because the only way people can justify the current system is declaring that some people are actually more deserving of prestige, money, and benefits while others deserve to suffer. With income inequality increasing, healthcare outcomes worsening, and children literally becoming stupider isn't it time to question the current system and ask ourselves if this is the society we truly want?
- jimbokun 4mo ago
  Where’s your real world evidence of all these benefits of coops? Because I would love for it to be true.
  - shimman 4mo ago
    Well workplace democracy has only been tried in a few corporations. If you want an interesting business case look into Semco Partners in Brazil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler#Semco_1990%E2%80%932004 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler#Semco_1990%E2%8... There is academic research on this too if you're curious but it's mostly in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. But yes, there isn't much "evidence" because this system hasn't been tried en masse; however if you look at our current neoliberal hellscape, it's pretty hard to imagine it doing worse. Also neoliberalism wasn't really "tried" either, it was thrusted upon us by a group of individuals that wanted it. One thing to keep in mind is that society can change quite quickly if you want it to. I'm sure the children that died working in factories during the 1800s never imagined such a society where children are valued, cared for, educated, and protected but it did happen. It has happen before and it can happen again. It only happened because people were willing to fight for it. The rules are allowed to be changed at anytime if we deem so, a better world is possible.

AnimalMuppet 4mo ago

Maybe, but not necessarily for this reason. Even in a worker-owned coop, someone sets the overall direction. And how is that person going to be selected? It's still going to be largely politics.

jimbokun 4mo ago
Politics among the workers vs politics among the shareholders.

jimbokun 4mo ago

What are the concrete benefits? Do they tend to make greater revenue or profits? Pay higher wages and offer greater benefits to employees?

munk-a 4mo ago
Coops tend to have better aligned incentives for employees on every step of the ladder. They'll tend to be more conservative about R&D but ensure that money that's being spent is being productive for the continuing health of the company since instead of that budget being "corporate's money pile" it's your potential profit share. I think there's also a tendency towards longer tenure and higher value employees due to the investment in the company's future being a sort of central tenant of their attractiveness.
- jimbokun 4mo ago
  Any data to support those claims?
  - fuzzfactor 4mo ago
    Not usually the kind of data that the greediest capitalists would appreciate. There are some case studies here, but it's only one professor in a largely non-capitalist approach overall: https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooperative/comments/1bm5s5s/richard_wolff_videos_on_worker_coops/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooperative/comments/1bm5s5s/richar...
    - jimbokun 4mo ago
      Thanks for the link, but Reddit is blocking it as if it’s adult content or something. But if I use the app, it will suddenly be OK. Very strange.
dartharva 4mo ago
Generally, yes. Also the gap between the employee and executive class is a lot smaller instead of unnaturally inflated like it is in most private equity companies.