this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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Obviously you’re including say billionaires
But would you believe this about a small family who starts a co-op?
Just curious, and my mouth tastes like tea not boots ;)
Specifically not for a co-op. Literally every business in America should be a co-op where the active laborers benefit proportionate to the company's profits.
"DAWI estimates that there are closer to 1,000 worker co-ops operating in the U.S., with 10,000 workers."
https://www.fiftybyfifty.org/2022/02/latest-worker-co-op-survey-shows-more-co-ops-but-fewer-workers/
That said, co-ops in the US almost don't even exist, because the capital laborers would have to start such things together is eaten by the oligarchs by design. Part of the whole maintaining a monopoly on the means of production and keeping workers separated from said means thing that capitalism is all about.
Not to mention our entire economy and tax structure was designed to benefit private owners that sit above their workers imbibing capital gains taxed at a lower rate, not cooperative/communal(gasp!) ownership and profit.
10,000 workers is a rounding error here. Co-ops reflect almost no American's circumstances at large.
Thanks!
1,000, incredible. Each with an average of ten workers.
Glad I saw this reply before asking my next question. I know someone like this user’s dad. Are they parasite class?
We’re removing co-op from the equation but keeping small family.
Is a family in and of itself a parasite if they sell lemonade on their front lawn and split the profits at the end of the day? No.
Is the Walton family a family of Parasites? Obviously.
State your point if you have one. Also your link lead nowhere for me.
Just gathering one data point for my own brain. I know really good people who are doing everything right - but you could dock them for not having gone the co-op route. (Wonder if they had, if they could’ve extracted all profits until breaking even on their enormous capital investment, but that’s something I could research.)
I’m used to “eat the rich” ideas but wanted to dig into your comment to understand whether the little guys garner your ire. ‘cause, gosh, the particular little guys in mind are tiny. And wonderful in every way* *(minus the cooperative model, but inclusive of fair wages and excellent management, etc.).
My link went here.
Honestly I'd need more data. What did the family make annually relative to the non-family workers, etc.
That said, I wouldn't consider them the primary villains, possibly more symptomic of a larger problem. Kind of a when in Rome situation of "well I have enough capital to start something small, and I won't exploit my workers as badly as faceless corporations, which makes me good by comparison" kind of thing.
I don't believe the people that throw money from previous capital gains at a proposal to build the means of production deserve as much back as the people that LABOR day in and day out to run those Machines and produce value from them, let alone orders of magnitude more than the laborers as they do.
I think being a business owner/investor should mean getting a tiny cut of the final net profits, most of which goes to the people whose blood, sweat, and time they'd rather be spending elsewhere produced widgets of value that society wanted.
So no, if your family payed anyone who wasn't family less than family despite them running or accounting or whatever their role was harder than your family LABORED, merely because the family owns/leases the building and machines, the worker deserved more of the net profits than your family on the projects they labored on. Not Bezos evil, but not right either.
I think it's deeply, deeply wrong for someone to just throw money they got from god knows where and who they hurt to get it at a potential profitable business, walk away and not be part of building it using their own hands and headaches, and then expect not only a lot, but most of the net profits. It's perverse that our society rewards such activity and punishes doing the work by comparison.
"is this specific example a good person" calculus doesn't really help anybody. Are they exploiting workers? Will they stop? End of question.
Helped me - made it real!
They’re “exploiting” workers by not planning to evenly split profits once, years from now, they’ve hopefully made a return on their enormous capital investment.
I do not know whether the knowledge that they would not have to evenly split profits, but rather could pay a fair wage, was a necessary incentive for them to start their business. But I am curious. This is a copout line of thinking for say the Waltons. But again, it is real for me – I know this very small handful of people, their large investment, their respect for the triple bottom line.
Reflecting now, I’m comfortable judging them based on the obvious good decisions they’ve made. Respect for employees in treatment and pay, respect for customers and the environment - I would not readily accept failings there.
Not joining the 0.015% of small businesses who went the co-op route? Defensible. (Relying on the figure from the earlier commenter, and Statista 2020.)
btw I’ve generally yearned for UBI but now I’ll give more thought to forcing co-op structures and potential unintended consequences :)
If you start a business and you cannot make money paying a fair wage and making a work environment people want to be in you shouldn’t have a business.
Easy for me to say, right, why don’t I go out and try?
I don’t have to. I watched my dad run a small business over the last 25 years. People don’t leave, they retire. People are treated with respect and paid fairly for the work they do. Bonuses are given when sales are exceptional. People are told to go to their kids soccer game, it’s more important to be there than at work, we will cover you.
Are people still unhappy with the idea of having a job? Yeah I think that’s pretty universal. But the culture they have makes it a lot better than many alternatives, and it turns out you can make enough money to be doing well and still pay your people well if your business is sound.
Awesome. I know somebody like him!