If worker ownership would produce superior outcomes it would prevail in the market. But in reality all practical experience shows that it does not. The old left excuse that workers are poor and can not start business can no longer works.

The solution to the problems of the world has never been and will almost certainly never be worker ownership of the means of production.

I don't really mind what you say (don't care about the issue), but I do care when someone very confidently extends a trend into the future, here even into eternity, based on nothing but "it never worked before". That's just extreme intellectual laziness, which is fine, until you start commenting and pretend you know more than you do. There is way too little argument in your argument.

I said 'almost certainly' because after a 200 year trend that is a reasonable thing to say. Plus we have theories of economics of the firm that analyses the problems with these sort of organsiations.

So I feel reasonable confident saying 'almost certaint'.

> because after a 200 year trend that is a reasonable thing to say

I don't think you understand how history works. Don't know if this is merely risible or sad.

The market will be irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

You are putting far too much trust into speculative market forces.

Modern-style companies have existed for a couple hundred years now. For some reason, co-ops (employee ownership) has had very limited success in that whole time, and across all free market countries. Could that reason be that it's a less effective method of providing value? In economics terms, I think what we have here is the tragedy of the commons - if all employees equally benefit from improving company's situation, what incentive I as an industrious and creative employee have to make the company better? - I'll do the hard work and will only reap a tiny fraction of the reward. Contrast that with an industrious and creative owner, who reaps a large part of the reward, and thus has a huge incentive to constantly improve his company. It is very visible in communist economies - the companies are owned by everyone so people care about them as much as they care about the pavement on the street or a public toilet.

> It is very visible in communist economies - the companies are owned by everyone so people care about them as much as they care about the pavement on the street or a public toilet.

In existing and past "communist" economies the companies are NOT directly owned by people who work there. They are owned by the government who employs the workers.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism

The idea is that the people are the owners and the government is only managing the work.

Which is not the same as direct ownership. It's similar to the dynamic of democracy at work in the US at federal level vs. local municipal level. If large-scale federal level democracy doesn't work too well, we're not immediately dismissing democracy outright, right?

Worker owned does not mean everybody earns the same.

Congrats, you just invented the modern tech company.

Modern tech companies are usually not worker owned, they give away stocks to investors.

The public bailed out the mistakes of the capital class in 2008, and will do so again

The bailed out 'the capital class'? That is total nonsense. They bailed out specific industry that have good political connections.

That has abosolutly nothing to do with why worker owned coops don't succede in the market.

They do own the results of their efforts. It is called their remuneration. If they want to own part of the company they can buy stock in it. It is public. No one is stopping anyone from working at a worker coop if they so desire.

> Until the people who painstakingly build the stuff are allowed to own the results of their efforts

Seriously? Haven't we learned anything from the 20th century and the deadly effects of collectivization? We're talking millions of death here.