General Discussion

Sooo... the working class should own the means of production?

I work in an esop. It's pretty cool in that we own the company in shares based on tenure, it's not like a union though.

We don't vote on the CEO or the board, we have third party trustees that manage the esop account.

We aren't beholden to external shareholders, which is the absolute best part. Line doesn't go up, it really just affects our retirement accounts, but even then our valuation takes into account stuff like cash on hand and contract stability. So... We have pretty fiscally conservative management, which is a great thing for us.

This sounds like a worker cooperative which is a classic socialist concept that could be applied to modern social democrat capitalism.

Since I straddle the line in my political views between Marxism and social democracy I'd like to share an approach.

Mandatory profit sharing and workers always have a certain proportion of the board elected democratically. Simple as that. CEO bonuses should be made illegal and all of those profits should be funneled to the workers. People will be a lot more involved in the corporate governance and it will align the will of the workers with that of the shareholders.

Economists say that in the long run productivity is everything and worker's having a for-profit voice that will make arguments like "we're losing our best workers because of low pay" to increase salaries is important. This will make each person higher paid and more productive.

You guys know about Walmart, that one rose to success by profit sharing but capitalism got the better of it and now so many workers both time and money poor because they work there.

I work in consultancy and have a dream of forming a small elite company of consultants, employee owned, just 10 or so people who are shit hot at their jobs.

I would plan for it to always be 10 people, deliberately no growth. Do the job well, take a good wage, have some parties.

It's when companies look for massive growth and shareholder value that everything starts to go to shit.

If the original owner can do it better on their own they should go into business for themselves rather than create an LLC, once LLC it should be mutually beneficial, not just there to protect the owners private assets

I guess but it doesn't really solve many problems. Much more importantly, every company should be held to strict standards by a democratic institution of laws.

For examples:

1. Both workers rights and pay rates need to be regulated to a bare minimum, because there will always be cases of some people (or groups of people) who try to abuse others and work around the rules. Example: Uber skirts employee benefits by not having "employees", large companies have "subsidiary companies", etc.

2. Even if a company of 500 people always look out for themselves and each other, they might still become a detriment to the larger society or hostile towards similar companies.

Having both tight regulatory bodies and strong union/cooperatives are fine, but regulation comes first imo.

How does an Employee Stock Ownership Plan work? How do partners/employees make money with it? When you hold stock, don't you need to sell it/liquidate it in order to make money?

And how do you hire somebody? Do you sell your shares to the person at no cost or something?

I'm confused.

So I get the idea that companies shouldn't be slaves to shareholders or the whims of a few people, but would the employees owning the company mean they are shouldering financial risk? Like if my company goes bankrupt I just lose my job, I am not responsible for covering their losses.

this is the least someone should get for devoting their whole life to a company

Combine an ESOP with a Public Benefit or B-corp and you get a pretty spicy variation on how a business can be organized.

Or... What if we just stopped working? https://youtu.be/2i0RrGx_GrE

By 2030, you will own nothing and be happy!