4 ms·

Sorry to be so confrontational about your intentions, however I just see way to often good businesspeople (like Elon Musk) talk about how they are changing the

Sorry to be so confrontational about your intentions, however I just see way to often good businesspeople (like Elon Musk) talk about how they are changing the world, while using this to underpay their workers. Now as a theoretical worker at your company, I think I couldn't care less about what other people make, the question for me is would my pay be competitive with my other options. If however your company is based on the idea that normally I would be paid 100k and the janitor 20k, but in yours both of us will earn 60k, well I hope you can understand why I would be less than enthusiastic about this proposition.

FD3SA 12y ago
A co-op is basically the default corporation. As in, everyone shares the profits and liabilities equally. This means that if you're making 1 million a year in profit, and you have 10 employees, everyone gets 100,000. But it also means that if you have to pay 1 million a year as interest service payments on your bank loan, and your profit is 2 million, you still only make 100,000 per person. To address your point, the salary is set by every current employee based upon the financial condition and strategy of the company in real time. If sales are down for a quarter, salaries will go down. If the company is saving for a big investment, salaries will be lower. It all depends on how the owner-employees decide to allocate the funds. As such, you wouldn't so much be an "employee" looking for a competitive market salary, as the 25th co-founder signing up for whatever the current compensation/investment package the present owner-employees have decided upon within the financial strategy of the company. Basically, expenses and costs are shared equally across the company. As in, every single worker is a co-founder. This is an ideal model and I'm surprised it hasn't taken off more in tech. We are rapidly approaching the point where talent and capital are the two fundamental bottlenecks to innovation, profits and progress. Offering Engineer #1 one percent compared to the co-founder's 30% seems absurd in this climate. The engineer will just go and co-found his own company, and charge for consulting services. The co-op is the natural end state of a capitalist society where the only means of progress is through hard innovation, research and optimization. This is the only solution when there is no more easy sweat-shop exploitable work which prints money. Personally, this future can't happen fast enough. Most talented people I know are fed up with the tyrannical power structure of startups and corporations in general.
- SolarNet 12y ago
  You can also set it up like a small democracy as the company gets larger. Have the coop (that is all the people in it) evaluate different jobs and adjust salaries accordingly (or perhaps pay people based off of the jobs they could fill rather than the ones they are filling). Have steering committees make decisions about where to place manufacturing and design studios, etc. Keep it all very internally (and externally?) transparent.
TaylorAlexander 12y ago
The point of the cooperative model is to find people who do not necessarily prioritize profit over all else. Teachers for example tend to value the social good of their work over pay. Worker coops would offer people like that a way to actually produce goods rather than just educate people. But the worker coop model is not for people who want the most profit. However we cannot simultaneously have a world where no one is exploited but the most capable maximize their profit. In order to have more income equality the elite would have to accept less pay. We see major inequality because those who could have taken as much profit as possible. That kind of thinking would need to end if we are to end worker exploitation. However there are non-pay related benefits to working for a coop and we would find people who appreciate those benefits more than money. Certainly this is not for everyone. But what if the coop makes millions and every worker gets $500k per year? That would be an awesome place to work.

FD3SA 12y ago

A co-op is basically the default corporation. As in, everyone shares the profits and liabilities equally. This means that if you're making 1 million a year in profit, and you have 10 employees, everyone gets 100,000. But it also means that if you have to pay 1 million a year as interest service payments on your bank loan, and your profit is 2 million, you still only make 100,000 per person. To address your point, the salary is set by every current employee based upon the financial condition and strategy of the company in real time. If sales are down for a quarter, salaries will go down. If the company is saving for a big investment, salaries will be lower. It all depends on how the owner-employees decide to allocate the funds. As such, you wouldn't so much be an "employee" looking for a competitive market salary, as the 25th co-founder signing up for whatever the current compensation/investment package the present owner-employees have decided upon within the financial strategy of the company. Basically, expenses and costs are shared equally across the company. As in, every single worker is a co-founder. This is an ideal model and I'm surprised it hasn't taken off more in tech. We are rapidly approaching the point where talent and capital are the two fundamental bottlenecks to innovation, profits and progress. Offering Engineer #1 one percent compared to the co-founder's 30% seems absurd in this climate. The engineer will just go and co-found his own company, and charge for consulting services. The co-op is the natural end state of a capitalist society where the only means of progress is through hard innovation, research and optimization. This is the only solution when there is no more easy sweat-shop exploitable work which prints money. Personally, this future can't happen fast enough. Most talented people I know are fed up with the tyrannical power structure of startups and corporations in general.

SolarNet 12y ago
You can also set it up like a small democracy as the company gets larger. Have the coop (that is all the people in it) evaluate different jobs and adjust salaries accordingly (or perhaps pay people based off of the jobs they could fill rather than the ones they are filling). Have steering committees make decisions about where to place manufacturing and design studios, etc. Keep it all very internally (and externally?) transparent.

TaylorAlexander 12y ago

The point of the cooperative model is to find people who do not necessarily prioritize profit over all else. Teachers for example tend to value the social good of their work over pay. Worker coops would offer people like that a way to actually produce goods rather than just educate people. But the worker coop model is not for people who want the most profit. However we cannot simultaneously have a world where no one is exploited but the most capable maximize their profit. In order to have more income equality the elite would have to accept less pay. We see major inequality because those who could have taken as much profit as possible. That kind of thinking would need to end if we are to end worker exploitation. However there are non-pay related benefits to working for a coop and we would find people who appreciate those benefits more than money. Certainly this is not for everyone. But what if the coop makes millions and every worker gets $500k per year? That would be an awesome place to work.