The executives can be paid more. In a system where all firms are worker coops, it would be a much more compressed difference between the least paid and most paid worker in a firm than the absurd pay differences we see today.
A manger in a worker coop has the same decision-making rights as in any company. The difference is that they are democratically accountable to the workers instead of being accountable to the employer, an alien legal party. Essentially, workers hold all voting shares
You said a bunch of nice things, but you ignored the core of the problem. If workers hold all voting shares, what happens when they’re split on an issue? Who can tell them to STFU for the better of the company?
Another similar question: What if there’s an issue that will lead to half of them getting fired? Like, say, a technological advancement? So if work can be optimized by 200% by adding computers, but then 50% of the people are useless then. Wouldn’t the workers vote to stay employed/paid instead of saving the company that can be destroyed in a competitive market where better, faster companies can emerge if this company doesn’t adopt the newer tech? Who will make that decision?
Like I said, its like workers hold all the voting shares in the company, so these issues would resolved the same way that they are resolve in corporations owned by shareholders.
The rational action would be to adopt the new tech and instead of firing half of the workers, which is socially irrational due to the social costs of unemployment, dividing the remaining work among the existing workers. The extra time that each worker has could be used for producing something else
Like I said, its like workers hold all the voting shares in the company, so these issues would resolved the same way that they are resolve in corporations owned by shareholders.
You’re ignoring a key point I’m trying to make: The workers have a conflict of interest, unlike shareholders. The workers want to minimize their work and maximize their gain, which is mutually exclusive in one company. While shareholders in the current system just want to maximize their gain (regardless of whether that’s good or bad). So why would the worker strive to learn new things instead of keeping the status quo? Most people don’t see the big picture and don’t want to read a book to learn a new thing. How many people around you come from work and spend their evenings reading new things to stay up in their job? This is one problem.
Like I said before to another guy, if you keep dividing the extra without firing anyone, given a limited growth, eventually there won’t be enough money to go around. Everyone will go bankrupt. How do you solve that problem too?
“Better” is in your opinion. I need answers based on concerns and problems that happens in the real world. A fast-paced world.
Assuming the revenue of the company doesn’t have massive growth (which is the normal situation unless a breakthrough happened), we need to hire more people who have the skills needed to keep up with the market. So, assuming we want to keep everyone (including useless people who’d rather have beer instead of reading a book to learn the new stuff), the income of everyone will just go down over time. Eventually, with no one getting fire there won’t be enough money to go around to feed them. What am I missing here?
Worker coops are better ethically not just based on opinion. The workers are jointly de facto responsible for using up the inputs to produce the outputs. By the usual ethical principle that legal responsibility should be assigned to the de facto responsible party, the workers should jointly be legally responsible for the produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs.
Worker coops can fire people.
Worker coops can charge initial membership fee when a new worker joins.
OK, at least we agree we can fire people. That answers my question. The circumstances aren’t important. This idea that people can’t be fired is just ridiculous.
Do you think communities will be happy seeing their friends/family being fired, and not understanding why? This actually reminds me of the movie Casino (1995), where Robert De Niro fires that Texan guy for incompetence, and then hell breaks loose due to relatives not understanding how that works. This is human nature. People will always prefer to keep an incompetent relative vs firing them for a good reason, no matter what.
Agreed. It’s a nepotism problem. I’m just drawing the picture that removing money from the picture basically makes relationships the new currency. It’s basically how life used to be a long time ago, and those who were closer to the leader got better jobs with perks. People will always find a way to benefit and will centralize power eventually. I can’t say much about hypotheticals and whether your coop will fix that, but in my opinion, history suggests that we’ll just end up with a new system of power.
What you are talking about is called social capital accumulation, which is a problem in any system.
A justification for worker coops is the moral principle of assigning legal responsibility to the de facto responsible party. In an employer-employee relationship, the employer receives 100% of the legal responsibility despite the employee being inextricably co-responsible. This violates the aforementioned principle
See you’re still trapped within the logic of capitalism which maximizes profits and expansion over other concerns.
So, assuming we want to keep everyone (including useless people who’d rather have beer instead of reading a book to learn the new stuff), the income of everyone will just go down over time. Eventually, with no one getting fire there won’t be enough money to go around to feed them. What am I missing here?
That’s OK. I’m not looking to “win” here. Just think about what I said, and next time you have this discussion, have good answers. Maybe you’ll change your mind one day and understand why the world we live in is the way we live in. Not that things can’t be improve or that we’re drowning in corruption. But that’s another topic for another day. Have a good one.
You haven’t presented a valid argument. 2+2 is simple, but it works. When someone says the 2+2=10^50, and money falls from the sky, and everyone being lazy leads to growth, I’ll ask them to justify.
Unfortunately in the case of econ 101, you are taught that 2+2=5 most modern econ is neoclassical, which means operating on pre-marx economics and just ignoring marxist critiques of the political economy.
and money falls from the sky, and everyone being lazy leads to growth, I’ll ask them to justify.
Thats a mighty strawman you invented. Workers are going to do the bare minimum to not get fired when it literally doesn’t matter how much they work, their income will be the same. When workers are invested in an organization, they do more work.
The executives can be paid more. In a system where all firms are worker coops, it would be a much more compressed difference between the least paid and most paid worker in a firm than the absurd pay differences we see today.
A manger in a worker coop has the same decision-making rights as in any company. The difference is that they are democratically accountable to the workers instead of being accountable to the employer, an alien legal party. Essentially, workers hold all voting shares
You said a bunch of nice things, but you ignored the core of the problem. If workers hold all voting shares, what happens when they’re split on an issue? Who can tell them to STFU for the better of the company?
Another similar question: What if there’s an issue that will lead to half of them getting fired? Like, say, a technological advancement? So if work can be optimized by 200% by adding computers, but then 50% of the people are useless then. Wouldn’t the workers vote to stay employed/paid instead of saving the company that can be destroyed in a competitive market where better, faster companies can emerge if this company doesn’t adopt the newer tech? Who will make that decision?
Like I said, its like workers hold all the voting shares in the company, so these issues would resolved the same way that they are resolve in corporations owned by shareholders.
The rational action would be to adopt the new tech and instead of firing half of the workers, which is socially irrational due to the social costs of unemployment, dividing the remaining work among the existing workers. The extra time that each worker has could be used for producing something else
You’re ignoring a key point I’m trying to make: The workers have a conflict of interest, unlike shareholders. The workers want to minimize their work and maximize their gain, which is mutually exclusive in one company. While shareholders in the current system just want to maximize their gain (regardless of whether that’s good or bad). So why would the worker strive to learn new things instead of keeping the status quo? Most people don’t see the big picture and don’t want to read a book to learn a new thing. How many people around you come from work and spend their evenings reading new things to stay up in their job? This is one problem.
Like I said before to another guy, if you keep dividing the extra without firing anyone, given a limited growth, eventually there won’t be enough money to go around. Everyone will go bankrupt. How do you solve that problem too?
Better to have them making the decision than capitalists, who make more money for paying employees less
Also who says half of them have to be fired? Can’t everyone just work less?
“Better” is in your opinion. I need answers based on concerns and problems that happens in the real world. A fast-paced world.
Assuming the revenue of the company doesn’t have massive growth (which is the normal situation unless a breakthrough happened), we need to hire more people who have the skills needed to keep up with the market. So, assuming we want to keep everyone (including useless people who’d rather have beer instead of reading a book to learn the new stuff), the income of everyone will just go down over time. Eventually, with no one getting fire there won’t be enough money to go around to feed them. What am I missing here?
Worker coops are better ethically not just based on opinion. The workers are jointly de facto responsible for using up the inputs to produce the outputs. By the usual ethical principle that legal responsibility should be assigned to the de facto responsible party, the workers should jointly be legally responsible for the produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs.
OK, at least we agree we can fire people. That answers my question. The circumstances aren’t important. This idea that people can’t be fired is just ridiculous.
Do you think communities will be happy seeing their friends/family being fired, and not understanding why? This actually reminds me of the movie Casino (1995), where Robert De Niro fires that Texan guy for incompetence, and then hell breaks loose due to relatives not understanding how that works. This is human nature. People will always prefer to keep an incompetent relative vs firing them for a good reason, no matter what.
I never said that people couldn’t get fired.
The incompetent relative example seems to be a problem with nepotism
Agreed. It’s a nepotism problem. I’m just drawing the picture that removing money from the picture basically makes relationships the new currency. It’s basically how life used to be a long time ago, and those who were closer to the leader got better jobs with perks. People will always find a way to benefit and will centralize power eventually. I can’t say much about hypotheticals and whether your coop will fix that, but in my opinion, history suggests that we’ll just end up with a new system of power.
I never said anything about removing money.
What you are talking about is called social capital accumulation, which is a problem in any system.
A justification for worker coops is the moral principle of assigning legal responsibility to the de facto responsible party. In an employer-employee relationship, the employer receives 100% of the legal responsibility despite the employee being inextricably co-responsible. This violates the aforementioned principle
See you’re still trapped within the logic of capitalism which maximizes profits and expansion over other concerns.
These are all massive assumptions
Sorry but you’re evading my questions.
That’s OK. I’m not looking to “win” here. Just think about what I said, and next time you have this discussion, have good answers. Maybe you’ll change your mind one day and understand why the world we live in is the way we live in. Not that things can’t be improve or that we’re drowning in corruption. But that’s another topic for another day. Have a good one.
This from the person who is spouting econ 101 nonsense.
You haven’t presented a valid argument. 2+2 is simple, but it works. When someone says the 2+2=10^50, and money falls from the sky, and everyone being lazy leads to growth, I’ll ask them to justify.
Take a step back and evaluate your ego.
Unfortunately in the case of econ 101, you are taught that 2+2=5 most modern econ is neoclassical, which means operating on pre-marx economics and just ignoring marxist critiques of the political economy.
Thats a mighty strawman you invented. Workers are going to do the bare minimum to not get fired when it literally doesn’t matter how much they work, their income will be the same. When workers are invested in an organization, they do more work.