Re:The Drivers Cooperative
by andrepd on Friday March 26, 2021 @09:10AM
(#26591687)
Your comment is a perfect illustration of problems with the capitalist model of private ownership of capital. Notice what you're saying: one person starting a for-profit enterprise can get access to the capital they need to start their business, but a group of thousands of people starting a co-operative enterprise are unable to get a similar credit even in a collective name! This highlights the deep injustices people face in access to capital which hamper their ability, among other things, to start competing businesses.
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I'd say it's not the capitalist model per se but particular preferences of the investors. The same way as investors preferred young white male founders (maybe until recently) to all the other combinations of the three parameters. Similarly they prefer entrepreneur-owned companies to collectively owned ones for whatever reasons they have in mind.
In fact it's perfectly possible to raise money for a coop, or a steward company [1], i.e. not owned by anyone, or owned by the employees but via non-economical shares. You issue special class of shares for the investors - could be redeemable for example - and make a commitment as an elected executive of the company.
[1] https://medium.com/bettersharing/steward-ownership-is-capita...