Topic: Richard D Wolff: Democratize the Corporations (Read 515 times)

Off, I bookmarked this that day but it got late and then I forgot about it.

As I said it, even before Marx there was cooperation between manufacturers or farmers, in different forms. From the Roman empire to the guilds in medieval times people have always associated themselves, although not for the utopian principles of socialism but in order to compete and gain an advantage against the competitors, the principles of power in numbers. The best example of this is all of Europe's old and let's call them traditional regional products, people from different villages were competing against other villages and they were forming different types of associations to get their products better known and sell more at a more expensive price. Cooperation in anything, from agriculture to manufacturing doesn't mean socialism, socialists try to forcefully show these as a product of their ideology but it's obviously false.

Good idea? ..as you asked..
Of course yes, it has been shown to work in the past it will work in the future, the problems that I was addressing is when you start to impose this cooperation on parties unwilling to do so and when you run a business on other principles than economics. At that point, it turns from cooperation into bankruptcy.

To build huge farms, let's say for a cocoa plantation, capitalists need to acquire a vast area of land in the first place. There are two options (1) rent, which is uncommon due to the small profit margin, and (2) buy, which IMHO is too expensive for most capitalists.

Thus, the farmers/landowners create a co-op to gather all cocoa crops so that the chocolate factory can process it. Farmers get paid based on how many tons of cocoa they can produce. They can also buy fertilizers, insecticides, etc., in bulk with that co-op to get discounts so that farmers can save more money.

Good idea?

People have tried various socialistic models for workers-owned businesses so many times already, and practice shows that they only work on a small scale. Corporations like Microsoft, Apple and Amazon have started as small private businesses and grew into the global giants, but co-ops can rarely become even a medium-sized company. And it's not like "teh evil capitalists" have some conspiracy to kill every alternative company, it's just that the model isn't competitive enough.

Agree fully, but I think the state of our society currently is having a problem with this, and instead of working toward a meritocracy corporations are being strongly influenced by those so-called diversity quotas and other left-wing political ideas.  The net result is that companies are not always hiring the right person for the job, and I find that to be a shame.

I haven't watched the videos OP linked to, but I have to say that socialism has been tried and it doesn't work.  It's not going to ever work.  There certainly are problems with capitalism, but I think it is far superior to socialism/communism/anything else currently in operation. 

That about sums up my feelings--socialism sounds so great in theory, but when put into practice it always falls apart into various abuses of power, unrest, and ultimately becomes a system which is inferior to capitalism.

Yeah, it works, but there is a problem, sometimes it stops working and all the socialist Marxist bs doesn't mean shit and 2000 people are left unemployed
https://www.ft.com/content/26740e3e-2aee-11e5-acfb-cbd2e1c81cca

Even in the case of Mondragon, there is no worker's vote, no matter how they try to paint it's still a corporation, it's still a place where if business fails workers get the boot, it's a place where only a few take decisions and the rest obbey.
Marketing sells, and just as people are willing to buy things made by individuals or fresh stuff from the countryside they also become clients of Mondragon because it's about the people, not profits ! Until it's not anymore!  


Hmm, agriculture, agriculture, and profits...
Agriculture is no longer profitable without machinery and pretty soon there will be no more workers, the heavy work will be done by only a few and the real battle will not be with the weather but with the caterers and the chain stores or merchants who buy your stuff. Farming has become a sector where efficiency means everything, a few cents will make the difference between survival and bankruptcy, what you need are no longer workers who know how to plow but salesmen, probably of all sectors I see it as the less capable of keeping its same number of employees for a long time.

Local cooperatives as they were well before Marx maybe, guild-like business again maybe, but on a larger scale and keeping all the teachings of Marx, nope. It hasn't worked in the past it won't work in the future.

You mean like this?

Source

To be fair, there are many famous cooperatives, including Mondragon et al., so the plan must have some merit in it. Perhaps it will works in agriculture as it's not profitable without massive scaling.

Oh, this time it will work! Of course, this time we have the perfect plan!  
It will certainly not fail like the other quadrilion times we tried!

My first reaction when I read the title was something like, how about we democratize your ******* my dear profesor.


Makes perfect sense, you have 10 designers and 100 janitors so the next car will come with triple screen wipers, two fridges, and no seatbelts or airbags because real men want to die like real men, not pussies who spend all their times in an office and are afraid of hard work that makes a real man.


No problem, you'll just end up producing stuff 10 times more expensive and you will not sell any and go bankrupt.
But that's when socialism kicks in since the entire company is owned by workers, there will be no bankruptcy, everyone can come with money from their own pockets and keep the business alive....hmm, I have a feeling this plan has a flaw but I can't pinpoint it.  


Of course, they aren't because they've failed. Every leader that embraced marxism didn't embraced the real one, that's why it ended in failure.

Imagine that you live in a world where homeless populations are swelling in numbers off of the working class being screwed 24/7.

Imagine that CEO's gave themselves the raises that were supposed to go to the working class over the past 4 or 5 decades.

Imagine that a campaign is being pursued to replace human workers with robots. Workers are under attack and have been for a long time to an indifferent and apathetic public that remains asleep and has not noticed.

...

Now imagine that one day those responsible for these anti worker policies came to you and said "let's give workers more power by eliminating powers traditionally held by CEOs or shareholders".

Would you believe they care about workers after they spent the past 50 years killing jobs, killing wages and otherwise attacking the prosperity of the working class to such a ridiculous degree that homeless populations were significantly growing in size?




I bet china won't adopt this. The EU won't adopt it.

Its a USA only proposal. Innovation and progress are what makes america's economy and gdp great. Marxist professors aren't proposing this because they want capitalism to succeed, their goal is and always has been the opposite.




Socialism routinely throws trillions of dollars at untested ideas with no proof of concept.

Capitalism demands both testing and proof of concept before throwing even a million dollars at ideas.

.....to what end?

these ideas have roots in anarcho-syndicalism, going back to the 1800s. they weren't invented to strip jeff bezos of power.

the entire reasoning behind worker self management is the conflict between shareholder and worker interests. why would workers be interested in self-management otherwise?


revolutionary concepts don't usually work like that.

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma was forced to step down from Alibaba.

One might say he stepped down so that the chinese communist "workers party" could take control of it, indirectly.

This is happening right now to existing companies in various forms.

One might say the SEC tried to do this to Elon Musk utilizing different methods to reduce the control and influence he has over tesla.

The media is also trying to do this to amazon to some degree. Trying to force amazon to utilize unions and accept other measures to whittle away the control Jeff Bezos has over it.

Did I miss the part of the discussion were it was suggested to apply this idea to existing companies? Serious question, one loses overview quickly.




Or suppose someone proposed creating a currency, using a radical method that had never been tried or tested before...

The goal isn't to improve status quo for workers.

Its to strip majority share holders like Jeff Bezos(amazon) and Elon Musk(tesla) of control of their own companies. (And there are worse implications.)

Remove intelligent and competent leadership. Replace with unqualified puppets. Innovation and progress stalls as a result.

If anyone cared about the implications, they could test this on a small scale, on a trial basis to collect data on how it performs.

When people propose implementing wide sweeping measures that have never been utilized or tested before on a large scale. Isn't it a tiny bit suspicious?

If someone proposed building a house, using a radical method that had never been tried or tested before. Would it sound like a good idea to risk everything on a one shot solution people know nothing about.

Would people be willing to gamble the stability of their economy and job markets on a "solution" that was never vetted through a testing process.

Sorry, I'm late to join the party.
I've been busy guessing the slots 

One person, one vote, is the principle of democracy. In the election, a billionaire vote weights the same as a peasant vote. Just like government-level democracy, not every decision requires a vote.

Relax mate. It's only an idea

Let's take UBI out of the equation for a moment, since this case is still at the corporation level. To change a government is the ultimate goal of this experiment.

There are some success stories other than the infamous Mondragon Corporation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cooperatives

Furthermore, Legend says that FC Barcelona is a fan-owned cooperative.

True!

I don't think anyone is suggesting that, it would be absurd. Worker representation at board level would not mean pick a random worker, or even consult every worker, merely have someone (or more than one) person there who represents the interests of the workers rather than the interests of the executives or the shareholders.

I may be cynical, but I suspect this is often a token PR gesture. Difficult to imagine a board discussion running along the lines of "We've made an extra $1bn this year!" "Great! Let's give half of it to charity!"

I'm not suggesting that companies don't have costs, of course they do. The question is more about whether companies should be run solely for the benefit of shareholders.

Yes, exactly. And if the company contributes to the wealth and well-being of wider society, too.

worker ownership doesn't imply every executive decision requires a company-wide vote. i don't see why they couldn't elect perfectly capable operational executives.

think of it this way. shareholders just extract profits from the company. they don't actually provide any value. so what's wrong with cutting them out? if the goal of a company is not to generate profit for shareholders but to provide a good living and workplace for its workers, what's wrong with that?

I'm sorry but these are the most irrelevant examples-you compare warm with soft. All that you have described will not return for the simple reason that it is a passed stage that has shown its inefficiency in comparison with the current model.

And for the rest - with the proposed scheme in the post, it is impossible to reorganize any of the existing companies because otherwise it will collapse in a week.
If you set a requirement for such an organization for new companies , there will not be a single successful example. People will stop wanting to start a business because no one wants to. Imagine yourself-you want to eat a salmon sandwich, but before you buy it in subway, you need to ask permission from your parents, your wife and children, all relatives. If you get it - then the employee at the checkout must get permission from EVERYONE in the company and only then if the stars converge you will get your sandwich.
Such a management system generates an unthinkable and unreasonable amount of both paper and organizational work.
And finally - do you really want a cleaner with an elementary school education to have a voice in decisions about the company's development? I don't want to because it's already not a company but an anti-cafe where everyone discusses [something] and then goes home without coming to a consensus.


Many companies are engaged in charity work. Many companies have salary grades and all sorts of bonuses for employees. Google, for example. Do you think that it is cheap and free to maintain an entire corporate campus? Everything in this world has to be paid for, either with money or without it. And you know very well that it is better to choose the first option than the second..

Imagine chinese communists sitting around a boardroom table. Smoking weed and brainstorming ways to convince americans to destroy their own economy. So that china can emerge as the #1 global power.

....

"Americans love democracy. Let's convince them granting unqualified, uninformed, uneducated and undisciplined workers executive power to make key business decisions is a good thing."

"Would they fall for that?"

"We spent decades lowering their educational standards. Feeding them unhealthy GMO food to stunt their intelligence. Bombarding them with cultural garbage like the kardashians in an effort to diminish their cognitive capacity and common sense. There is a chance it could be successful."

sure, as some sort of band-aid solution. it will keep people from starving in the streets, basically.

it's just not an answer to the systemic economic problems we face, especially with the specter of large scale job automation constantly hanging over our heads. it's a simple expansion of the welfare system, which itself only exists as a way to give poor people just enough to subsist. it doesn't fundamentally change anything. it's just a way to offset the effects of rising costs of living and rising unemployment.

If you leave it to the market to determine what is fair, in a society where there are more people than there are jobs, then this leads to exploitation. Should we really allow wages to be forced down to (or below) bare subsistence level? Should we allow monopolies and cartels? Medieval feudalism? Indentured servitude? Excessive inequality is bad for everyone. Rich people hoard money. Poor people spend all of it and keep it circulating in the economy. There needs to be something in place to act as a brake on the excesses of capitalism. Whether this should entirely be government responsibility, or whether it should start by changing company structures and cultures instead is open to question. But surely something is required. People who are more talented, have great ideas, have more drive etc, do deserve to be paid more. But the people at the bottom deserve to at least be treated like humans. Remember we are talking about people working long hours for low pay.

I agree with you on this part. If a job can be automated out, then do so. Inefficiency is stupid. But instead of removing a job and putting the profits in the hands of the already wealthy bosses, why not use the money instead to fund a job that benefits society as well as keeping someone in employment?

There are success cases and failures; it depends on which one gets cherry-picked. For me, if incompetent (and lack of commitment) people gather in a group to build something, they will fail whatever the system they use, and vice versa.

But Marxists argue that Leninism and Stalinism aren't pure Marxism, and the first Capitalism that replaced Feudalism ended in failure as well, so maybe after several trials, there will be a successful Marxism case. We just don't have enough experiments because of the deep love of Capitalism. Even Democrats are capitalist; they just pushed for more "socially responsible capitalism."

Err, you sound like a Marxist

It definitely happens but I don't think it's always intentional. Sometimes it's just incompetence, sometimes it's a good idea with bad execution. Sane regulation mostly seems to work though, despite all the edge cases that sometimes come up. But that's what courts are for.

Take GDPR for example. Poster child of good idea / bad execution. Annoying as fuck? Sure! But it's the first time I've seen companies big and small actually caring about how they handle their customer's data.



Isn't that the current state of the system though? Just enough people earning just enough money so that just enough people have too much to lose to risk any actual change?

One thing that UBI brings to the table is that it could help people break out of their current hamster wheels. If you're working your bones off to make it from paycheck to paycheck there's little time to think about improving your situation. Take that necessity out of the equation and people can consider taking different paths. Consequently employers would also need to improve how they treat and pay their low-skilled workers, otherwise no one would work for them. In this respect UBI enables free market economics in areas where they were previously missing -- people would not get coerced into shitty jobs anymore because they need to survive but are given a choice to either earn something extra or take a pass unless being offered adequate working conditions.



That's the thing. The only way to get long lasting change is slow and steady by carefully tweaking the incentives. A brute direct restructuring of society and property only leads to reactionary counter-movements.

Wow, some Marxist is suggesting that workers participate in making important decisions in the Corporation!
No this is a disgusting idea and it should be given maximum disapproval and the Professor himself should be ostracized by now.
If in order, then
1) Since when should a cleaner have a voice? She does not know how the date differs from the big date what kind of voice is it?
2) create your own company and decide for yourself what to produce and when. And if you are an employee - you can either work or go fuck yourself, if you want to climb where you are not even asked to look.
Once again, create your own company and decide what to do there. Your profit is your salary that your employer pays you. If you disagree with this and think that you deserve more/you are not treated well, then look for another place or launch your shit startup with a brilliant idea that will bring a revolution to the world. No one is bothering you!
Great for the sake of cleaners and low-skilled staff, I will keep people at work and pay them money instead of buying a batch of robot vacuum cleaners and a batch of CNC machines that will replace all this stuff with better production. But the barmaid will be happy that it was not replaced with a buffet!
In General, this is another example of fucking and innovative ideas from those people who have never done anything large-scale themselves in their lives, other than lifting a volume of Marx in one hand and Lenin in the other. The proposals are a complete mess, the implementation is even worse.
That's about it. I was triggered.

It probably depends on how it's implemented. If we are considering a huge economic downturn due to Covid19, and vastly increased unemployment, then a UBI at a sufficient level to enable people to work part-time, and so spread the available employment across more people, might be desirable. Of course as you raise the level of UBI, you raise the cost to the government, which suggests increased taxation of the wealthy (as increased taxation of the poor would defeat the object). The various trials so far have been implemented in various ways, and have mixed results... there is no point in my quoting evidence for anything, as it is easy to find evidence that supports the opposite side. But a sufficient level of UBI might lessen the importance of money in the eyes of many, and be a first step towards pointing society to a different goal. You may be correct that UBI might initially be implemented as a sticking-plaster that is barely sufficient... but even so, anything that reduces inequality reduces the psychological power of money, even if only slightly.

If we look longer-term, then I would argue it is likely that unemployment will be extremely high as more and more jobs are automated, and there are ever fewer jobs that can be done better by people than by machines. And inequality will increase as the labour costs of the rich disappear. UBI funded by taxation of the rich may be inevitable eventually. Some of the ultra-rich are already getting a bit twitchy about levels of inequality... see for example the below, from Robert Johnson, a Soros hedge fund manager.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich

it's not just businesses. those loopholes are intentionally built into the law. most regulations are structured to hurt small businesses and benefit large corporations under the guise of protecting consumers. that should come as no surprise since it's support from big corporate lobbyists that is getting politicians elected in the first place. quid pro quo....


doesn't UBI just treat the symptoms too? it doesn't restructure the class system or property ownership. it just doles out a small entitlement---just big enough to keep the population from rioting and revolting.

There has been several attempts at this on the past as well and as you may guess it has not ended well. This is a link to one of those attempts.

https://fee.org/articles/marxism-on-the-menu-why-the-communist-restaurant-failed/

It is precisely because of this that communism gets imposed from the top and then it goes down from there, while capitalism imposes itself from the bottom and then goes up, this is how capitalism ends up corroding any attempt to create a fully communist country as black markets emerge that are simply more effective at pricing things and obtaining revenue, while many think of black markets as the economic activity related to illegal goods, the truth is that under a communism dominated society capitalism itself becomes illegal and it has no place to go except the black markets.

The discussion about communism vs capitalism should have ended long time ago when the US defeated the USSR not through war but thanks to their superior use of their resources, a.k.a. capitalism.

Yes, agreed. It's a matter of closing loopholes faster than they can exploit them, and is an endless task.


Thank you! Every time I've mentioned UBI on this forum I've been shot down; this is the first time I've found someone else who thinks it might be worth a go.

Unfortunately companies get really creative when it comes to circumventing regulation.

Introduce a limit to executive pay ratio? "Outsource" cheap labour to an "external contractor".

Introduce a limit to how many people a company can hire without actually employing them? "Downsize" your company and buy cheap labour from multiple "external contractors" that all "follow regulation".

Note that I'm not arguing against regulation, but pointing out how tough it is to get companies to follow them.



To me this seems like the only way to get real change, as everything else is merely trying to treat the symptoms rather than the root cause. The introduction of universal basic income seems to be the only way to get there though.



Very interesting indeed, thanks for the link!

+1. consider credit unions vs banks. when shareholders are cut out of the equation, cooperative members split the spoils among themselves. in the case of credit unions, that means lower interest rates for borrowers and higher interest rates for depositors. this model can theoretically be applied to most sectors.

worker-owned businesses is a nice idea, but i still have trouble seeing how we get there from here on a large scale.

mondragon is probably the most interesting example of large scale worker cooperatives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

He's the expert and has given it a lot more thought than I have... but I've always thought that a vital part of the government's role in current Western societies is to act as a brake on the excesses of capitalism. I'm generalising, but people who run big businesses tend to be interested more in personal remuneration than in the welfare of their lowest-paid employees - which is part of why unions are useful. If you ask companies to make these changes, maybe some will, but a lot won't. There is the possibility that some companies will implement such changes as a PR exercise - Fairtrade is an example here. But I don't think it will become socially unacceptable for companies to exploit workers, because public opinion is driven largely by mass media, which is controlled by self-interested rich people (which is a reason that right-wing parties generally do better than left-wing parties in elections). Whereas if a government implemented a limit on executive pay ratios, or demanded worker representation on boards, then companies would have no choice but to fall into line.

What I am saying is that I wouldn't trust the board of a company to work towards fairness and wellbeing - history demonstrates that they will instead work to line their own pockets. Whether this is because of their innate nature, or because we are indoctrinated into believing that money is the ultimate objective and the ultimate barometer of success is perhaps a question for a different time. Either way, the answer would be for government to create a barrier to their innate nature or to restructure society so that money is not the ultimate aim. I don't think we can rely on this to just happen by itself.

I think a reason that communism failed is that it is so easily corruptible. I think that people who are more talented, who work harder, who are willing to take risks and responsibility, should be rewarded more than others. I am in favour of a degree of inequality because that gives people something to strive for, and a sense of recognition for their achievements. But inequality beyond a certain point becomes undesirable because of the social problems it creates. I think that inherited wealth is a huge problem that creates inbuilt privileges. Wealth as a whole should be taxed. As for Marxism, it is good in principle but will I think become outdated as increasing waves of automation arrive. The power of the proletariat does not exist in a society where there are fewer jobs than there are applicants. Smart contract cryptos such as Ethereum may hasten the demise of workers through automation of white-collar jobs (mortgage broker the oft-cited example). But this is not a bad thing - efficiency makes sense. There is no point to keeping workers in jobs that can be done better by machines - just allow jobs to be automated out, and use the resulting profits to create jobs that benefit society. There is no sense in being a Luddite. Progress through change is desirable.

I suppose, simply, I am in favour of a meritocracy, but with a limit set on how much inequality is permitted.

I think capital comes from the "tax," where each worker gives some amount of money. Also, the community can utilize excess capital from a particular member. For example, Mr. X has a big house with big rooms, then the community can use one of his rooms.

Not every decision gets to the voting mechanism because voting is usually the last resort to solve the problem. Now, the key is about collective decision making so we as the community can discuss the problem to reach a consensus agreement. The programmer can persuade/educate the janitor to reach the consensus agreement.

The professor argued that this democratic corporation needs to be implemented first. Then the government will follow and not the other way around. That said, problems or obstacles should be solved within the community as a whole. Surely the decision will be for the best interest of the community.

Interested in socialism?

What I do not see in any of those points is where the capital is going to come from? In order for a business to function you need at least two things, you need capital and a workforce, it seems this professor is not taking into account that those that put forward the capital are taking a greater risk than the worker that just shows up to work, the owner is risking his life savings and his time while the worker is only risking his time, that is a big difference.

Just as an example, in December of the last year a new restaurant opened near my home, 7 months later that restaurant has closed its doors, while whoever worked there lost their job they have moved on and probably already got a new one, while the owner is probably dealing with the fallout of his decision, every economy based on common sense dictates that whoever risk the most should get most of the rewards otherwise it is not worth to take the risk, and this is why communism keeps failing as deep down it does not make any sense.

I am sorry that I don’t get how few things are feasible? How can the skilled workers and the janitors have the same votes?
I will only say they should have the same rights in other ways but not in decision making that has to do with running the company.
Those skilled workers have a task they were employed to do in that company, and they have the right to make full decisions when it comes to those tasks; everyone should only have a say in the areas they are skilled at... A janitor can’t make the decisions for a programmer.

Thing is, the suggested approach is more extreme than anything that was ever realized in communism. Arguably this might be why communism failed for the most part (ie. wrong implementation of the aspired ideals), however it goes to show how radical and hard to implement such an approach would be.

I hadn't found the thread

This is a good idea and is often suggested by the left. Worker representation on remuneration committees would help, too. But there are limits to what we can expect a company to do, if we don't change the framework within which it is operating. Certain changes need to be implemented at government level, such as legislation on executive pay ratios.

I'm not sure. This suggests that it is better to work inefficiently. There is a difference between keeping a worker in a job, any job, and keeping a worker in a worthwhile job. If efficiency gains are shared more equally, then there is no need to maintain jobs just for the sake of it. If an office worker's job can be automated out, then should we a) keep the worker doing a job that can be done for $0 by a computer, or b) give the job to the computer, take the money saved and use it to pay the worker to do a job that helps society? Again this is a change that would need government-level support.

Cooperatives don't have to be in the food industry, it's just the organizational structrure.

I couldn't see a single marxist supporter here? What happened?

People are forgetting that running a country and running a business are different things that matter to different people. Now for example when you are running a country all of the nation is in charge of that because everyone gets affected by it, but when you are running a company only that company will be affected, basically you can bankrupt it all and it would still not matter to too many people unless you are bankrupting a huge 100k+ total worker global company. That is why you wouldn't want democracy in a company, you would want the worst type of fascism if you can, the only reason for that is the fact that only one person (or multiple) will be affected when they profit or when they lose.

If the owner gives the rights of ownership to workers, what is the point of owning a business, that is basically a bunch of people working together and starting a business, which you can totally do.

No, it's a bad idea, if only because the workers and other auxiliary staff don't have the leadership skills of top management. They did not take management courses, and thus do not know how to lead a corporation in a crisis, e.g. let's say company X is a democratized corporation that suddenly gets a ligitation from company Y for various allegations, will all the workers voting on whether to get a mediator or go to court arrive at the best decision? The decision the workers make is usually guided by groupthink and opinion, which have clear conclusions, but very, very vague and unclear reasoning and motivation behind it, and not by facts.

Or let's take the example of an Executive Vice President of products, if everyone, instead of him and a select other few, were to decide what products will be made next then everyone will be consulting their own opinion for this, ignoring market trends, because most of them don't and aren't supposed to have access to them as per their job role, and if you don't choose a product to make or improve based on market trends then you are gambling in that industry and will almost always fall behind competitors' equivalent products.

There's a reason Gartner's market reports are expensive to buy, because they have tons of valuable information in them that only business leaders understand. You can't show any employee a whitepaper full of research and expect them to retain most of it, if any of it at all, because that is not their expertise.

Then you have the problem of workers voting some way because another person told them to do that, or they vote out of enmity of a fellow co-worker. So suddenly all business decisions become embroiled in office politics and the corporation will be unable to do their business affairs in a timely manner and this will affect its solvency as without conducting affairs and making cash flow it gets more in debt.

Looking at the bigger picture, it's hard for me to imagine this concept in the corporate world simply because not all employees or workers will think of the benefit of the company as a whole. Usually, employees at the lower-level management would only think of themselves and their own benefits (if they are getting the right salaries and such) since it's not their job to focus on the company's status.

It's a nice idea to give every worker the same opportunity or right to vote for something. But since it's a business where they are competing in hundreds of other businesses in the industry, I think it's more appropriate to give that right to "vote" for those who have knowledge in that field or area.

It takes a lot of decision making what to do with the profits and how they will manage the flow of cash in business so just like what I said, it needs knowledge about a certain field. If all workers get a chance to choose what to do with the profit, I don't think companies will have a concrete plan on running the whole business.

With technological innovation, businesses really need that in order to operate smoothly. But it does not mean that it will replace employees because most jobs still require manpower and direct labor.

---

it's not that I'm completely disagreeing with this concept, I just can't picture it out yet. But I really got curious about that one video, I just find it too long to watch it right now. I will try watching it at another time and maybe it can change my perspective.

It's possible to have an open cooperation and make multilateral decisions based off opinions of others. But there exists a core need for a management team to decide what is voted on. They draw up the best possible options based on their experience and expertise. This would also need to be done across various layers; a cook at a restaurant could no very little about the best means of advertising, but would be able to decide on the recipe for a dish.

So technically, one would build an industry from scratch with their capital and every subsequent employee would automatically become a shareholder? This would greatly discourage investments; financial and intellectual.

I can agree with a business which isn't entirely financially motivated but concerned with the livelihood of iits community of workers

It has some merit but I can hardly see it implemented except of course with some compromise. The problem seems to stem from the higher class doing one over the bottom. If decision making was split across the various levels within an organization with each bringing a representative(s) looking after their interests and ultimately that of the organization we could have a healthy work environment.

On the first point, I do not think it is right for skilled workers to have the same voices as cleaners, there are some delicate issues in production that cleaners cannot fully grasp because their experience is so little and does not allow them to determine what is best for production or other technical matters.
There is a difference between justice and equality. All people are equal in terms of their rights and duties, but they are different in terms of their qualifications and capabilities and therefore they must be distinguished on this basis.
I agree that there is equality between the skilled worker and the cleaning worker, but not in all things but rather some general matters and the interests and rights of workers. As for production, it must be decided by the most skilled and experienced workers.

This sounds a bit like the organizational structure of food cooperatives:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_cooperative

However food cooperatives are a special case in that the owners / members are also the customers, so I'm not sure how well this concept can be applied to other businesses.



This sounds good in theory, but in practice the question will be where to draw the line on what to vote on. How much to produce? How to market the product? How the ads should look like? Running a business involves a lot of decision making and usually you delegate the concrete implementation of strategies to stratified levels of specialized management units for a reason.



I guess to some extend you see this with start-ups where founders and sometimes key members of the team get shares or options. The challenge that fully democratized corporations would face in this regard is incentivizing founders to actually start one. Why bother starting a corporation where you only own a fraction of the profits if you could start one where you can take as much as you want?



Profit doesn't need to be the primary focus but refraining from the usage of machines that could make a job easier doesn't sound practical. I don't think there's a farmer in the world that has complained about new equipment cutting his work time in half.

I think the votes of skilled, experienced or the best workers/customers in fields they are familiar with should be stronger. But we should be able to determine who is qualified or is best by rating them on how well they do their jobs, how satisfied people (especially customers) are about their works, how well/fast they do their jobs without compromising on good standards or without breaking any of the good rules... or without breaking too much rules.



Assuming a business want to vote on what new foods to start selling to their customers, how will they prevent voters from voting for bad/unhealthy foods? And how do they determine what food is actually bad/unhealthy, or what makes food bad/unhealthy? I think they will need to get the opinion of qualified people in that area, get the opinion of consumers on what food makes them healthy, full of energy, thinks clearly, happy etc. The consumers will need to explain how they really feel in particular period of time after consuming such foods. And people who are qualified/skilled/experienced in good food or nutrition should be available to verify/research/experiment on the claims to determine if the food do what people claim they do, with little to no side effects/problems to the consumers health.
So, such qualified people must have gotten lots of positive feedback or good reputations from users who have tried their  recommendations and have quickly become healthy/better on relatively cheap costs or for free. Their recommendations should be peer reviewed by other qualified people.

I think this and more can work pretty well with decentralized consensus driven businesses or companies. Can easily be corrupted in centralized system.

Everyone (worker and customer) should be rewarded according to how well they do their jobs. Just get everyone to agree on safe/good boundaries that should not be crossed, then reward them based on how well they do their jobs without crossing the boundaries

Marxist professor, Richard D Wolff lays down a plan for companies in a socialist economy. Here are some of the points he made about  "Democratize the corporations:"

- One worker, one vote
The decision about what to produce, when to produce, etc., is a collective decision instead of the top management decision. This means skilled workers have the same vote as the janitors.

- Workers-owners
The workers are also the owners of the company; therefore, they get to choose what to do with the profits.

- Not profit maximization
Worry about machines replace your job because it will lower costs? It's not a problem with this democratic corporation since the goal is to keep the workers happy.

Do you guys like this concept? I smell at least a part of the spirit is present in the DAO or DeFi. Feel free to comment

Source:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OzV6jtc9OQ
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynbgMKclWWc