I don't think a company's purpose is necessary to eat the world but that's going into opinions so I will refrain.
It asked why couldn't development firms be organized like how doctors or lawyers often organize themselves, as partnerships with the PMs, etc like nurses or paralegals.
In some jurisdictions, there are limits that make it harder for outsiders to employ doctors or lawyers and sell their services like you would employ programmers.
(In eg Germany, that even applies to pharmacists.)
Just because anyone can be an engineer, it doesn't follow that we can't form partnerships. I could be wrong, but those doctors and lawyers who are in partnerships don't seem to be using that structure due to lack of employment opportunities under other structures.
Another argument I heard was that partnerships are required in certain fields due to liability concerns so that risk can be contained to individual partners. But this only explains why they must, not why we can't.
A big part of the regulation of doctors and lawyers is the part that keeps the competition out. Google or your favourite startup can't just train up a few neural networks and start dispensing legal or medical advice; even if that advice was much better than what you'd get from your median human lawyer or doctor.
The organisation into partnerships might be more about who's excluded, than what the people in the club are allowed to do?
You are right about liability concerns playing a role, too. And then there's also tax issues.
I agree. I just mention it because the companies that 'eat the world' will be the ones people have heard of. And those are not collectives.
The article and the conversation here suggests that the Silicon Valley model is a good way to give developers more leverage and also to get more out of them.
That model is generally far from cooperatives and still has plenty of hierarchy.
Getting 'organised' and into cooperatives might still work, I don't know? I'm just saying that the available evidence here points to a very different direction.
(Cooperatives have been tried, and there are some software companies inside and outside of Silicon Valley that work along similar principles. But by-and-large they aren't the companies eating the world.)
Matt Levine's Money Stuff often harps on the theme of investment banks being run like workers' cooperatives in practice.