What are you talking about? It's not some "skin in the game," it's a business that the workers control outright. Businesses make profits and declare bankruptcy all the time, regardless of who's running it. What's the difference? — Xtrix
When they declare bankruptcy the owners are on the hook for that. New, inexperienced employees could be permanently damaging their financial future. — BitconnectCarlos
Who said anything about "new, inexperienced employees"? The fact that your mind goes immediately to a scenario like this, where "workers control the business" equates somehow to "inexperienced employees" is very revealing, and pretty standard. — Xtrix
Ok, I might have misunderstood you. When you say something like 'all workers should have ownership in the company' then yeah, obviously my mind goes to all the employees having that privilege. If that's not what you're saying then feel free to clarify.
I don't have anything against co-ops either. If a company wants to do that, that's fine. If you were to force every company to be structured like that that's where I'd take issue. — BitconnectCarlos
I am talking about all employees, yes. All employees run the company. How they choose to structure it, who they assign various responsibilities or leadership roles to, etc., are their business. Votes are conducted for various positions, and everything is decided democratically. — Xtrix
When you think about it, there are all sorts of entropic forces rotting wealth. What forces it to go the other way? Isn't it that in a free society, there's nothing to stop people who just put their whole souls into acquisition? — frank
When I look at it however, I see that in the country i live in, wealth survives in dynasties ofttimes for many hundreds of years. — unenlightened
Ok, I think I understand you better now. I'll say if an owner wants to structure his corporation like that I don't have any problem with that, it's the owner's choice. — BitconnectCarlos
That's fine by me, when you have your own company you're free to tell your employees that they can vote whoever they want to be in charge. — BitconnectCarlos
The "owners" (if you want to call them that) are the workers themselves. — Xtrix
The workers are the businesses. — Xtrix
If everything that existed now, in terms of business, factories, etc., was collectively owned what business do you think would remain and what would go? What would survive and what wouldn’t. What would happen to Goldman Sachs for instance, or coal mines? Apart from workers owning the capital how would the landscape change? — Brett
Back to my original question then: Wouldn't all workers then be on the hook for debts in the case of bankruptcy then? Also, lets say there's 10 workers and 7 of them vote to take out a loan, do the other 3 have to chip in? — BitconnectCarlos
The workers are the businesses.
— Xtrix
Sure, and the CEO just sits up in his gold suite all day with his top hat and goes swimming in piles of gold coins while the workers do all the hard work. Apparently higher level employees like the founders and CFO or CTO just don't do anything all day. — BitconnectCarlos
It’s very interesting as a thought experiment. I was really wondering, though I didn’t make it clear, how the business landscape would change morally. What would either away and what would thrive? — Brett
For instance in relation to an event like climate change how might people, workers/owners, view coal mines as a business venture? — Brett
Are the owners of a local maintenance company not "on the hook" for bankruptcy? What happened to those "on the hook" for bankruptcy over at GM in 2009? Would the result had made much of a difference if it were worker-owned? Why not first ask that question. — Xtrix
No one is saying "higher level" employees aren't workers. They are. And they have their own set of responsibilities based on their capacities, interests, talent, etc. Just as every state has state representatives and state senators that the people vote to send to the capital, the employees should vote for their leadership -- from the CEO on down. Their compensation should be appropriately adjusted, with certain limits (at Mondragon, I think it's no more than 8 or 10X higher than the lowest compensation). There are plenty of good supervisors, administrators, etc. Why should they be chosen based on a handful of major shareholders rather than the people who actually produce for and (essentially) run the company? — Xtrix
As long as no one is forcing people to structure their companies this way then I'm fine with you having this preference. — BitconnectCarlos
I believe the point is that the present system is forcing the people who actually run the companies -- the workers -- to accept the management preferences of a small group of people who may or may not actually be doing any of the work of running the company. — Pfhorrest
The 1% are parasites. — StreetlightX
Does being a certain kind of person make you rich, or does being rich make you a certain kind of person? There are probably at least a few causal relationships in each direction, but I would suspect that wealth has a far greater impact on personality than personally has on wealth, because there are many other systemic factors besides personality that are causally influential on wealth, but most of the factors that causally influence personality are in turn themselves influenced by wealth. — Pfhorrest
It is absolutely the case that anyone is susceptible to this. The goal is to design social mechanisms which blunt or neutralize the effects, rather than entrench of exacerbate them - as exists currently. — StreetlightX
The goal is to design social mechanisms which blunt or neutralize the effects, — StreetlightX
There is arguably no point in human history in which that power has been exercised to the degree that it currently is, on the scale and reach that currently exists. — StreetlightX
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