As if workers give a shit about customers.
They do when they work in a cooperative and have a stake in the business being successful.
My question is always: so if me and 10 other people have a great idea for a business, where does the money to start it come from? Most businesses take years to turn a profit, so in this collective, are we all just pouring in our savings until it takes off?
What if we all bust ass for 3 years, never getting paid because we’re building the product, we launch and start getting orders, and find that we’re getting a lot more orders than we expected, so we hire / bunch of people to help fulfill orders. Do those new hires all get an equal share, even though they weren’t there for the 3 years of unpaid R&D? Do they have to contribute money when they get hired for the share of the building that the rest of us already own?
I’m all for workers rights, and workers standing together collectively to get fair wages and working conditions, but when people say “workers should own the means of production”, they can never seem to explain how that would actually work.
Two things stand out about this comment:
You’ve framed the idea of worker ownership in the context of profit maximization. It’s important to keep that in mind when running a business because you gotta know how your opponents are thinking and making decisions, but the point of worker ownership isn’t profit but instead agency.
I find it hard to believe that in always asking this question no one has ever answered with an overview of the different collective ownership forms that have existed throughout recorded human history or even a brief synopsis of how your country’s corporate law structures allow for it.
Simply, the central bank can play the role of a VC where people with great ideas apply for loans or grants.
That would be an improvement actually, because the customers of these companies are not users, they are other companies looking to advertise or buy users personal data. The users of for profit social media are in fact the product, not the customers.
Workers don’t give a shit about customers because that’s how the incentive system is set up. Give workers the profits, you give them a good reason to give a shit about how clients feel.
You skipped over the part where he says “You think I own this business? You think I own IKEA?” implying he would care if he actually had any skin in the game which he would if his job operated as a worker co-op.
Workers care about their jobs, and driving away customers isn’t the best way to ensure job security. Reddit is trying to IPO so that the investors can cash out. They might destroy Reddit in the process, but they don’t care because they got rich. If you’re an employee at an employee-owned company, then you would be more concerned about long term success.
