That's what laws and regulations are for: ensuring that entities that are trying to do the right thing and make life better for actual humans aren't "outcompeted" by entities that are trying to make things better for themselves at everyone else's expense.

That might be what their proponents intend them to be for, but the extent to which they actually achieve their goals -- especially goals at odds with the manifest intentions of the actual market participants, including workers themselves -- is another story entirely.

If reality works one way, but aspirational idealists are trying to "ensure" that it works in some other way, then their attempts will falter. Many regulatory interventions are at best performative rituals that measure their success in terms of creating the appearance that something is being done, with the question of whether what is being done actually resolves the actual problem (if there is one) barely being considered. In the worst case, these performative interventions create harmful unintended consequences at the same time, leading to them being a net negative.

It's worth noting, also, that nothing other than "actual humans" are involved in any aspect of this. There are no non-human "entities" in existence that have autonomous agency and participate in economic exchange. Every question here is about interactions among humans, and the organizational models that humans use to coordinate their activities are not separate "entities" with independent intentions.

We actually have two mechanisms: laws/regulations and customers voting with their wallet.

Since we see that a majority of customers consistently go with the cheaper option, we know how they feel. So the "better" firm gets outcompeted.

So regulation, you say. But those regulations are set by governments voted in by the same consumers. Their preference for lower prices is clear, and government follows their preference.

Is your suggestion that the government go against the will of the people and apply those pro-worker-coop regulations anyway?

> Is your suggestion that the government go against the will of the people and apply those pro-worker-coop regulations anyway?

This litmus test is absurd. If more consumers buy products manufactured with child labour, is it "going against the will of the people" to ban child labour? Not in any meaningful way, certainly.

We already do this in lots of areas. It would be "cheaper" - and doubtless more profitable; lots of people would choose them! - to produce / buy, say, bicycle helmets that are made out of cardboard and nails, but we collectively recognize that would be counter-productive and require that only the "expensive" types be offered for sale. I'm sure there are some people who are upset by this.

It would be hard to sell bicycle helmets made out of cardboard and nails, so no collective recognition is necessary.

I made a more-substantive reply to a sister post, but... Have you seen what people buy? The front page of HN on any given day teems with posts about tech-sector equivalents to cardboard helmets. The buyers usually supply their own nails.

No, I don't think that's right at all. I don't think anyone is "collectively recognizing" anything, and the reason why bicycle helmets made of cardboard and nails are not being sold is because people -- as individuals and not "collectives" -- do not in fact want them.

Forgive me some exaggeration for comic effect. What we'd actually see are helmets which advertise themselves as safe, and which look safe to uninformed external examination, some (but not all) of which are very, very cheap, but any of which (and good luck guessing which ahead of time) might as well be made out of cardboard and nails, and so when you bump it your head explodes. (Alert: black comedy again.)

Instead, in the US the DOT or the CPSC (can't be arsed to look up which) says: "every helmet sold must meet this standard of safety", and then backs that up with guns. Now you're free to price-compare, with the assurance that your head won't explode. (Yah: I keep doing it! Sorry. I like injecting levity into serious subjects. Try not to get distracted.)

Consumers, acting as individuals, have negligible influence over corporate behavior, and are easily misled.

People, acting collectively (in this case as a "government", but as other collective organizations, too - including "corporations"), can stand up to other collectives and force them to adjust their behavior in pro-social ways.

Success and viability within a system that is mutable

> There's a large economics literature on this: worker-owned cooperatives have not taken over the market, although they are an available institutional form, because (a) they find it hard to raise capital

There are any number of ways of making it easier for co-ops to raise captital.

> (b) they tend to make decisions that maximize worker welfare rather than profit, e.g. they won't sack underperforming divisions or expand in ways that dilute existing workers' stake.

You could make a similar case that making decisions solely around stock price leads to underperformance as well, if we quantify "performance" in terms of value provided to the broader economy. Mass layoffs are great for stock price, but they deal serious damage to your institutional knowledge base. Rather than simply shuttering an underperforming division, if you buy out the ownership stakes of the people working there, they'll have cash to re-train with. If we find that co-ops have a tendency to avoid doing that when necessary, we can tweak the incentives and subsidize a portion of the buyout, under certain circumstaces. Subsidies to tweak incentives are nothing new.

> This isn't something that anyone can decide upon

Yes, it is. Policy can change which strategies predominate in the market, by shifting incentives, by controlling streams of investment, and simply by regulating undesirable strategies out of existence. Mixed economies can be very effective. The notion that the market is a force which out to go untampered with is ideological, and it doesn't serve us well.