A distraction from the election: The case for employee-owned companies
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/column-the-case-for-employee-owned-companies
“Ellerman has for years made an argument as startling as it is hard to refute: “the labor theory of property.” It’s that employees should own the firms they work for because of very simple logic: If they’re responsible for the consequences of their actions while on the job — committing a crime, say — how can it be that they’re not responsible for the positive things they do?”
I worked at a place that rolled out employee ownership after they were like 250 people. If you can’t offer ownership right away, you can offer a decent profit share (requires some amount of financial transparency to help communicate the value to the employee).
But the founders are the ones risking their capital to start the business. This sounds like socialize the gain, privatize the losses.
The founders can hold more or all non-voting preferred stock in the worker coop to represent their larger stake and investment. They can also use a separate corporation, which only the founders own, with no employees to hold their capital and then lease it the worker coop
@politics