I’ve known a few in the U.S., and even worked at one. Maybe people won’t become billionaires doing this, but why wait for a complete overhaul of society to implement more of what are good ideas.
I’d also like to see more childcare co-ops, or community shared pre-k schools. Wheres the movement to build communities and pool resources around these business models in the US? In short, co-ops are the closest socialist/communist business model that’s actually implemented in the U.S., so why are more leftists not doing this?
The kind of people who would start a business (to enrich themselves) and the kind of people who value co-ops and employee-owned businesses (to enrich others) does not have much overlap. I love the idea of coops, but I do not have the skills or ambition to start any kind of business.
Human greed is the common point of failure in any of societal systems. In any system … capitalism, socialism, religious, commune, authoritarian … the common thing that holds it together is concentration of power. The problem that it suffers from is … concentration of power.
No matter what group you create, power eventually gets concentrated to smaller groups of people and it only attracts a certain group of individuals who only understand the need to want power and control over everyone and everything to the detriment of everything else.
Once we find a way to build a societal system that is able to distribute power and keep any one or group of people from dominating everyone else, then we might have a chance of developing a sustainable civilization. In the meantime, no matter what you want to call it or do with it, if the end process just concentrates power to a small group of fallible ignorant humans, nothing will ever work.
Do you think it would be viable to make it law for a business to slowly start becoming a coop once the founder had made a fixed amount of money (say, mil.s of dollars) from it?
Because corporations will sweep in and take all the business by taking a loss just long enough to put the others out of business.
Because he who controls the capital, controls the legal structures of capitalism.
Aka pedons ain’t got no money, boy
This doesn’t make sense, there are people already doing this and making millions, at least.
Maybe people won’t become billionaires doing this,
I think the first bit is a big part. Keeping generated wealth is a main selling point for capitalism.
but why wait for a complete overhaul of society to implement more of what are good ideas … I’d also like to see more childcare co-ops, or community shared pre-k schools.
I think this is one part lack of resources. Those who can spare the most for a pool don’t see the need too. Those who need these things the most are still inside a market that does not reward such things. You would need way more low income people to fund the preK and the staff could do better working somewhere else, unless there is an element of altruism to working with low income communities.
A lot of things are market driven in the US and markets are not as good at selecting good ideas as our myths around them suggest. Right to repair is a good example of this. Everyone is better of being able to fix stuff; even if most chose not to. More people would be better with community this or that, but most people do not know about them, or they won’t know how to organize.
It is going to be hard to pick a pragmatic approach that can survive pressures from a for profit market that might have and that people will culturally accept today.
Unknown! Profit share is something I’ve done with my own business and feel like it produces better outcomes for everyone (we measure our impact on customers, employees, owners, the business and community to make sure we are serving all of them). I’m looking into actually granting shares, so it is more real for the employees. Maybe other owners don’t do it because it does require some amount of effort and transparency into company performance. IMO, owners can be really lazy.
