Strange that economic power is still handed down the generations like political was in the days of kings

+1. I do think there's certain efficiency gains in concentrating decision-making in companies, but nepotism and hereditary power are strange characteristics to keep from feudalism

A company is an authoritarian regime, not a democracy. Real power is kept within a small circle. Since employees can ascend, it might look like a meritocracy, but that is only allowed if it strengthens the regime.

> We've spent the last 80 years (ostensibly) talking about how great representative government is, then we let people own a majority of voting shares so that they can run companies like dictatorships.

I think it’s basically admitting that the right dictator, if they are there based on merit, can really perform better than someone who wins by their skill at campaigning. Forget voting shares - even when a single person doesn’t have that amount of control, you have a small board elected by shareholders who is essentially electing a dictator.

Personally I think most companies would do far worse if rank and file employees selected the CEO. But I haven’t thought much about it. Curious what ideas HN has on this aspect.

I don't see it much of an admission of anything, personally. The admission would have had to come as an answer to a question that was never asked. To me, it's more of a way to keep the ruling class in place. It used to be done through government, now it's done through corporations.

And honestly, the corporation is a far more attractive model if you're in that racket. Rioters don't burn down corporate HQs, they burn down police stations. Public sector pay sucks. The corruption would be far too obvious... well, it would have been until relatively recently.

To prove you right, you can read up on the incredible giga-brained countrywide experiments by Kardelj in Socialist Yugoslavia [0]. The result being a country where no-one wanted to work, and everyone had a great standard of living (while the IMF didn't call in its loans). And then the entire country collapsed all at once under the accumulated mismanagement.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management#Yug...

It's wild to me that despite tremendous resources and 100+ years of time capitalism still kills millions of people a year with starvation and preventable diseases. But every right winger has a pet wikipedia page about a failed communist state with no critical examination of why they failed beyond "communism bad".

To clarify my stance I'm an anarchist and that page has a lot of good examples of successful worker owned collectives.

To me it's equally as wild that you say such a thing when no system in human history did as much as capitalism to alleviate hunger and disease. In fact all other systems combined still can't touch the progress we've made to eradicate famine and disease while "under capitalism".

There are good critically examined rebuttals if you actually look for them beyond Wikipedia which is not designed for that purpose. I read a book recently called Socialism: the failed idea that never dies, and while it has a clickbait title, the arguments are pretty cogent as to why people throughout history want to enact socialism based systems and why they eventually fail.

> capitalism still kills millions of people a year with starvation and preventable diseases

as if somehow, it's the responsibility of those capitalists to ensure those starving people have food and diseases cured - for nothing in return.

Why else do we even bother making a society?

The advantages of democracy are a peaceful transition of power and non-violent outlets for political action. That is to say, you don’t have to worry about a succession war when the king dies, and if people don’t like what the government is doing they tend to advocate and vote rather than try to overthrow it.

These advantages don’t really apply to companies. Your life isn’t tied to a company the way it is to your government, so if you don’t like how they chose the leader or what they’re doing, you can leave.

> Your life isn’t tied to a company

Health insurance isn't tied to a company? Your ability to survive and feed your family isn't tied to your company? Lack of opportunities in the job market? Lack of equal salary/benefits at alternative companies? Non-competes, H1-B visas....

> so if you don’t like how they chose the leader or what they’re doing, you can leave.

Just one small thing Ben: leave to work for who? Who isn't hiring CEOs and running businesses the same way as everyone else?

Please don’t quote half a sentence and then argue with it when the second half is an important qualifier.

Many of these are uniquely American problems, and the many of the people and especially the highest in power in the United States have chosen and continue to choose to bind all of that to the company you work for (or don't).

Yes, it's ironic that a democracy has exactly created the situation they lament about, the lack of universal healthcare. Unfortunately there is no political will to do it, while ironically an autocrat could cut through the red tape and get it done, as it had been enacted in several Asian countries in the last half century.

You truly do get the best and the worst with dictators, as history has shown.

> I think it’s basically admitting that the right dictator, if they are there based on merit, can really perform better than someone who wins by their skill at campaigning.

Sure. But also there are big differences between companies and countries/government.

Companies compete in a market. There isn't much of a marketplace for country/government. This is a check on individual power, and forces the company to perform somewhat in alignment with what we want as a society. Concentration of power (monopoly) is still an issue in a market and so we regulate the market.

The "dictator" of a company answers to both the market and to regulators, making it less dangerous as a concentration of power than an actual dictator.

Related, it is totally okay for companies to fail, and they regularly do. We are a lot less okay with governments failing.

Companies can also serve a niche. Governments need to serve their entire population. Governments are tasked with all sorts of collective action problems for diverse groups with varying opinions; companies get to pick their market. It's unclear that CEOs tell us much about a dictator trying to serve a population with a range of opinions.

> The "dictator" of a company answers to both the market and to regulators, making it less dangerous as a concentration of power than an actual dictator.

Well, kind of. On occasion they participate in regulatory capture making them really only accountable as they care to be given the circumstances.

If you have a market cornered on AI-powered, autonomous, robotic leg-equipped chainsaws, and the regulatory environment is weak because you've lobbied for the right rules and the right enforcers of those rules, you could very possibly just have a bad quarter if those chainsaws' AI sees people as trees and starts chasing them around. Maybe not even that.

Meta would be a good real-world example. It's just less interesting to imagine.

This is called a cooperative, and it is completely legal. However, they tend not to be very successful in the marketplace, outside of a few outliers.

If you separate revenue and control (employees get to vote on decisions, but investors get the revenue), then employees will be incentivized to maintain the status quo instead making decisions to make the company successful. The employees have almost no incentive to make difficult decisions like cutting unsuccessful lines of business etc. I would be very uneasy about investing anyone's retirement savings into such an organization.

If you keep revenue and control combined (a simple share structure, where each share gets a piece of the revenue and a vote, and employees get shares when they join), then you have other paradoxes. To make this work, you need to prohibit employees from selling their shares to investors, otherwise you're back to a conventional corporation. You also need to take the shares away from employees when they leave the company, otherwise former employees become a de facto investor class that you wanted to avoid. As an employee, I would prefer to work at a company where my equity does not have these restrictions placed on it.

You may say "but if we all just tried a little harder to believe in a better world it could be possible". But it is possible now. Cooperatives work easily under existing corporate law, and are even incentivized in some places. They just aren't very successful for the reasons above. The only widespread form of cooperative is doctor's and lawyer's practices, which are legally required to be organized as cooperatives through a limited liability partnership structure.

To make cooperatives work in the broader marketplace, you'd have to force employees to accept restrictions on their equity or force savers to put their money into cooperatives managed by employees who are not incentivized to invest it well.

> If you keep revenue and control combined (a simple share structure, where each share gets a piece of the revenue and a vote, and employees get shares when they join), then you have other paradoxes. To make this work, you need to prohibit employees from selling their shares to investors, otherwise you're back to a conventional corporation. You also need to take the shares away from employees when they leave the company, otherwise former employees become a de facto investor class that you wanted to avoid

This describes most “partnerships” to a varying degree. Lots of professional firms operate that way, e.g. law firms, accounting firms, engineering firms, consulting

Yes, a large percentage of of the consulting / services business that you would know the name of are organized like this. For services / consulting it makes a lot of sense.

I've been part of a few (Canadian) cooperatives. The incentive structure is completely different, it's akin to admitting you prefer great working conditions than having a chance to chance it rich. If a company is startup-sized, anything else is a sucker's bet.

If I didn't like my working conditions, I would look for a different job.

>I would look for a different job.

I know some experienced, socially adept, smart, etc. friends who have been doing this exact thing for about 8 months now.

How is that not the same in a coop? If they don't like the conditions they'd still have to leave the job and find a new one.

In a coop everybody's job is to always be looking for a job (for the coop)?

Not sure what you're talking about, I was replying to a refutation of the following quote by the grand parent commenter:

> If I didn't like my working conditions, I would look for a different job.

because all your friends are 10s

What's your point? That my friends aren't the literal best in the world in their field of study? Of course they aren't. If that was a job requirement, there would be like 20 job openings world-wide.

What an odd comment.

Sometimes the bad jobs are crowding out the good. Like gig work crowding out traditional full-time positions with benefits, as companies prefer cheaper, on-demand labor. Slave labor needs to be outlawed at the society level, not at the individual level "why dont you just find another job".

gig work is not slave labour - slaves had no choice.

gig work is popular because the people doing it are finding that it is the best of all alternatives available to them.

"slaves had no choice"... Um, do you think most people can choose not to work?

Gig work is "popular" because wealth-driven systemic pressure is replacing FTE with gig jobs in order to fatten the bottom line.

> do you think most people can choose not to work?

they have the choice - because they have agency. Slavery is literally taking that agency away. Having agency doesn't mean being immune to the consequences.

The consequences of a slave "choosing" to not work is punishment and death.

The consequences of a gig worker choosing not to work is to claim basic benefits (but hardly will die). It's uncomfortable, and i will bet most people will choose to work, but it doesn't mean someone is forcing them.

Look at the rest of his comments. Can't reason with him, so just move on.

This "take it or leave it" problem seems to be exactly what a cooperative seeks to solve.

Of course, but being in such a choice position is already being very privileged if we take things at their global level.

What was the incentive structure, and how was your experience overall (esp. comparing to traditional companies if you’ve worked at those)?

All of your points are premised on the idea that the only purpose of a corporation is to make as much money for its shareholders as possible. But that isn't true, especially in the case of a cooperative.

Most companies make decisions based on a list of priorities: they care about their shareholders/investors first, upper management second (upper management is usually bribed by the investors with equity, aligning their interests with the shareholders, so this is maybe a distinction without a difference), rank-and-file employees third, customers fourth, and anyone not involved with the company last.

The point of a cooperative is to flip this incentive structure on its head: the customers or workers are owners, so they get prioritized. The purpose of the company isn't to dominate the markets and become the biggest company ever, it's to make a better life for the people working for and patronizing the company, instead of just the people who own it.

> As an employee, I would prefer to work at a company where my equity does not have these restrictions placed on it.

Well obviously, if you're talking about equity in a company as something you can own and profit from without ongoing labor, you are definitionally a capitalist and you will be opposed to cooperatives.

> I would be very uneasy about investing anyone's retirement savings into such an organization.

The primary purpose of a cooperative is not to make profits for passive investors. This is like judging a fish on its ability to climb a tree.

> The purpose of the company isn't to dominate the markets and become the biggest company ever, it's to make a better life for the people working for and patronizing the company, instead of just the people who own it.

That's perfectly fine, and also the reason why cooperatives are a pretty niche thing: they don't prioritize growth.

This is only half the answer. Cooperatives are niche in the US because they don't prioritize growth, and they exist in a legal and financial framework that does. If conventional corporations didn't receive massive amounts of investor cash and preferential government treatment to stay unprofitable for years or decades while scaling, one imagines coops would be more competitive.

They are investors for a reason, they expect a return. If a coop does not produce good returns, especially as compared to standard corporations, why would one expect investors to invest?

Exactly. Investors will always constitute a force against cooperatives; countries with successful coops (Spain, Italy, the Nordics, even Canada) provide other funding mechanisms to prevent private investment from dictating the entire market. The United States chooses not to do this. It is a choice, not the natural result of having a finance system.

The US government has a lot of funding mechanisms, the economy does not rely solely on private investment. It is just that the scale of venture investment dwarfs a lot of even governmental investment in most other countries, money made from previous ventures so of course they'd deploy that capital.

> provide other funding mechanisms to prevent private investment from dictating the entire market.

if this funding comes from the gov't, then you're just forcing taxpayers to subsidize a less profitable funding mechanism. It's merely a wealth transfer (from taxpayers to these coop owners).

Since 1980 the top 1%’s share of national income nearly doubled, while the bottom 50%’s share fell from 20% to 13%. Real wages for most workers stagnated despite productivity rising 62% (1979-2019), ALL of that went to investors.

People who claim funding co-ops is a "wealth transfer" ignore existing policies which already funnel taxpayer money upward. Redirecting a fraction of subsidies like bailouts and fossil fuel breaks and the endless war machine... instead to worker owned models that reinvest profits locally and tie wealth to labor... that isn’t a new transfer but a correction. Co-ops reduce reliance on exploitative private equity (e.g., hedge funds buying 40% of U.S. rental homes) and ensure economic gains stay with the people generating value.

I have the controversial opinion that people who work should get money, not the people who don't work.

> people who work should get money

and they do.

> not the people who don't work

and they don't. With the exception of some basic welfare payments, which i am not opposed to, what you mentioned is what currently happens.

But you're unilaterally classifying capital as not being work would be wrong. Capital is solidified work from previous/earlier times, but unconsumed and saved.

I think they're referring to the class of people who profit from capital rather than their labour. That class profits from the labour of others. They don't have to exploit their bodies, experience, and skills (labour) to realize profits. They're the ones who, "don't work."

They're not talking about people who "don't work," and collect welfare.

Capitalists don’t work. That’s what they meant.

They don't prioritize growth for the same reason healthy cells don't prioritize growth.

You need to be cancer or a public corporation to think growth is the most important thing.

This oft-repeated analogy to biological systems doesn't make much sense, human individuals biologically stay homeostatic with nature, but human groups have grown exponentially, building civilization as you know it. If we didn't prioritize growth, we'd still be hunter gatherers.

There isn't any value judgement here. There are not more cooperatives because they don't prioritize growth. Who are you angry at?

>However, they tend not to be very successful in the marketplace, outside of a few outliers.

What would you consider to be successful, and what is marketplace naming here?

Cooperatives are going to be the main thriving organizational structure when the political agenda in place favors them, and the very same statement apply for resource omni-capture oligopolies. Look at who have hands on the political schedule, and that’s all nailed.

Living in France, I never worked for any structure that would provide any equity (not saying this doesn’t exist at all). But France still has a very different non-wage labour costs compared to US (or common-law in general I guess), so employment tradeoffs are very different.

There are a few food companies that are partially or completely employee owned that I'd consider "very successful". But this business model is not typical and examples are rare.

https://inequality.org/article/5-workerowned-food-firms-riva...

And most of those companies are low three-digit employee counts. I mean, I like King Arthur and tend to visit their store when I'm in the area, but it's only a relatively significant employer by the standards of Norwich, VT.

Why do folks think that is? Are there some US-specifics that make them less likely?

For example, the Mondragon Corporation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation, in the Basque region of Spain is pretty huge (70,000 employees) and I watched a short news documentary about Mondragon and in general the employees there sounded legions happier than corporate drones in other companies.

> then employees will be incentivized to maintain the status quo instead making decisions to make the company successful.

Therein lies the problem.

Capitalists believe these two things are exclusionary to one another. They believe that you cannot have an unsuccessful product line, or "status quo" and still be successful. They want to see comfy upward trending lines on their charts and graphs.

But nobody stopped to consider that;

1) If the business is operating with positive cashflow, and,

2) If the business is meeting it's commitment to consumers, shareholders, and employees, and,

3) If the business has no direct existential threat to it's market share, then;

That business is successful. By your own definition. Stop trying to take over the world. It's selfish, unsustainable, and pedantic. Support your workers. Well. Put value back into the economy. Stop being a greedy POS.

There is no secret conspiracy stopping cooperatives from working. They simply do not supply a large portion of the products and services that people want, due to the fact that they are by definition not set up to do so.

Who are you angry at? You are yelling into the wind.

If all these 3 are true, then that seems to me like a definition of a monopoly.

Specifically the condition 3 is practically never true in well functioning market. If you're successful, you'll be copied and you'll have competitors, so you always have to be a step ahead. Maintaining the status quo is how you slowly become irrelevant

Some people just like going to their favorite chain restaurant, bar, corner store, etc.

Not everything is a fight.

It seems pretty bizarre to pick restaurants and bars as an example, that's insanely competitive market. It's quite literally a fight for survival, restaurants go out of business all the time here. (Central Europe).

I currently watch the exact case from the comment above in our street - new coffee place showed up, and the old one, which kept the status quo for very long time is now left empty as people go to the new one instead.

It's also a good example of how growing and merging into larger chains is a working defense strategy for the market share threat.

> they tend not to be very successful in the marketplace

...because other companies boycott coops.

Have a look at what Mondragon does in the Basque country for a cooperative of coopertives.

CEOs aren't there to serve the rank-and-file, they're put there to serve the board and investors.

And therein lies the problem.

and why is that a problem? The shareholders are the owners of the company. They (indirectly) dictate what the company ought to do; which is to make profits for them.

It's called a union. If workers unite and refuse to suddenly supply their labour it'll cause a lot of changes fast, and sometimes the capitalists just leave and the workers can appropriate the company.

Though it is often a good idea to start small and get a little win, and then wait and recruit, and then push for another small change, and repeat. That way the union establishes credibility, solid membership and a reasonably sized war chest for things like getting rid of a CEO, which will take more time and effort than for example protective gear or longer pauses in the work.

Considering the state of current democracies, I don't think I could trust my peers to make sound financial decisions at an organizational level collectively. It's different from a democracy in government because I can, without much friction, leave a company at any time if I feel that the company is not doing well, not so with a nation-state.

I personally have started and run a coop, but that worked because we were all friends who wanted to collectively pool our resources to get new clients as a software agency, if it were a larger cooperative, I would agree with the sibling commenter that they generally do not work as well as top down corporations.

One of my favorite attributes about left-wing activism is that the solution to everything is to overthrow the system. It's like the whole "we have tech debt; we need to rewrite everything". Zero threat.

You don't need to overthrow anything to have worker owned companies, they exist right now.

You want to take control away from the board and give it to employees? https://ai-ceo.org has a plugin for that!