Why don’t more people start profit-sharing companies or co-ops?

Comments

• spongebue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  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.

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  • ininewcrow@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    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.

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  • RedditRefugee69@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Don’t forget money. Can’t just decide to fart out a co-op.

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  • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    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?

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    • Num10ck@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      only if it were global. otherwise those with money would start a business elsewhere.

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• AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  I actually tried to do this with a bar I owned back in the day. It was exciting / hopeful.

  It went into effect January 1st, 2020. January for bars is rough because people do “dry January” so we hoped February and March would be good.

  We all know what happened. It didn’t survive. Spent a good year or so continuing to pay wages and healthcare out of my own pocket, but I hit a point where I had to call it (mostly because I ran out of money and couldn’t get any more loans).

  I plan to try again in the future, once I have the loans paid off and some padding saved again.

  I also dream of a day where somewhat self-sustaining communes become more prevalent. Everyone living together on a shared plot and exchanging goods & services instead of money. Maybe it’s a pipe dream? I don’t know. I feel like it’ll become necessary over the next 4 years though.

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  • nightofmichelinstars@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    That’s damn bad timing. Wishing you luck for the next one.

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  • scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    We’ve gotten so far away from that communal living spirit, culturally. Look at the way people get into snits with their neighbors over little things like fence repair or whatever. It’s been a long time since people depended on the folks next door for survival, and we’ve forgotten how to give a shit. It can be relearned, and there are little candles of that spirit burning here and there still. But it ain’t the old days in the farming village anymore.

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  • RBWells@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    This is what I’d want to do (the bar not the commune) if I won the lottery.

    So yes I agree with the top post here, it’s lack of access to capital that limits this. Farm cooperatives happen because people own farms. It’s very difficult to grow these from the bottom. You would have to buy your share, with money or work.

    We need more co-op businesses and also more entrepreneurship from the bottom and small business grants can help with that. You can’t only yank wealth from the top, they got it from us, we can make more and keep it in our communities.

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  • UmeU@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Hippie 1: Right now we’re proving we don’t need corporations. We don’t need money. This can become a commune where everyone just helps each other.

    Hippie 2: Yeah, we’ll have one guy who like, who like, makes bread. A-and one guy who like, l-looks out for other people’s safety.

    Kyle: You mean like a baker and a cop?

    Hippie 1: No no, can’t you imagine a place where people live together and like, provide services for each other in exchange for their services?

    Kyle: Yeah, it’s called a town.

    Hippie 1: You kids just haven’t been to college yet. But just you wait, this thing is about to get HUGE.

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  • deafboy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Everyone living together on a shared plot and exchanging goods & services instead of money.

    Can’t imagine looking for an alcoholic shoemaker willing to exchange a pair of shoes for 10 liters of vodka.

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• surewhynotlem@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Poor communities already do this to support each other. They watch each other’s kids. They run errands for each other. They don’t keep track and charge cash and create an LLC. But community support is real.

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• Azzu@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  People who would start co-ops are usually decent and don’t care about profits that much. They wouldn’t exploit their workers or other obvious strategies that would put profit more important than wellbeing.

  All the companies that don’t care about this have much less costs. Thus the companies that don’t care about morality can offer lower prices than the co-ops, and since most customers care about that more than anything else, the co-ops are driven out of business much more often.

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  • chillinit@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    All the companies that don’t care about this have much less costs. Thus the companies that don’t care about morality can offer lower prices

    Non sequitur. You forgot that the “cost” of satisfying stockholders is far less than the cost of labor even if wages are doubled.

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• ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  They are run out of business, most simply.

  The operation that does not focus their profits on building further capital and establishing monopoly will fail in the arms race of those that do.

  For example: there are countless community and public efforts establishing childcare and pre-k through pooled resources. They are in direct competition with things like Bezos’ childcare academies. (Personal anecdote: they bought out my kids’ building for public pre-k and evicted them.)

  And a successful co-op will get pressure to be bought out like a start-up. (Often starts as a great way to expand! Then the expansion changes the culture, the new location feels corporate and the original location is later shut down and left vacant. -Also personal anecdotes for a grocery co-op and an employee owned operation I once worked at.)

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  • nifty@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    I am sorry, but what does bought out mean? The person running it simply didn’t have to sell. If you’re saying “money was too tempting”, then isn’t that an inherent flaw in any Marxist Leninist theory in practice? So let’s say, the business wasn’t run by someone who cared enough about others and got greedy, so why not start one where you pick the right people? If you can’t do that, then why should any state ever cede over production to workers? How would we ensure greed doesn’t take over then?

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    • yarr@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      If you’re saying “money was too tempting”, then isn’t that an inherent flaw in any Marxist Leninist theory in practice?

      HA, yes, yes it is. Marxist Leninist works most effectively when everyone is moralistic and considers the larger picture. It doesn’t work when you have a world of selfish money grubbers. Notice which system is winning today?

      I’d like to see you own a small business and get offered 10x its value by a large corp. Then you can see whether you want to maintain your praxis or retire on a nice beach somewhere the rest of your life.

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    • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      In the one example with the grocery co-op: I can assure you, few if any, of the people involved with the co-op were Marxist-Leninists, let alone comfortable with Marxism or the ‘S’ word. So that was kind of a critical flaw in any Marxist-Leninist theory in practice.

      A lot of people practice forms of community action without having any sort of class consciousness. A wealthy philanthropist can offer a bunch of money with strings attached and people will jump at the promises without second thought and rarely keep up with the follow-through.

      Point I was making nonetheless was these operations tend to exist under seige from competing and profiteering interests. If I remember correctly the grocery co-op was having issues making the skyrocketing rent payments for the commercial lot. That was the problem the money solved: the one created by the landlord.

      So in a sense I was saying ‘the pressures of capital tend to be too great’ than money being tempting or greed from the community.

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    • Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      In that model they wouldn’t be able to sell without the workers agreement.

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  • TheBrideWoreCrimson@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Not every business needs to expand, though. There are quite constrained markets for very specialized goods or services. I know several B2B companies that have 10-20 employees, serve several dozens up to few hundred rather small, regional customers, and they’re perfectly happy with that.

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• Twoafros@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  I think a lot of people don’t know what co-ops are. I have been pretty left leaning my whole life and I only found out co-ops in my late 20s and the majority of people I talked to in real life have no idea what coops are. And from that few that do know, many dont know how big cooperatives can be.

  For the uninitiated, I am sharing the [International Cooperative Alliances definition of coops here: ica.coop/en/cooperatives/what-is-a-cooperative

  and the list of largest coops in 2023 here: ica.coop/en/…/world-cooperative-monitor-2023

  Screenshot of the top 10 coops based on turnover in USD from the report here:

  Image

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  • TheBrideWoreCrimson@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    FWIW, according to this site, 24% of Germans are co-op members. The number of co-op employees is only a fraction of this, however.

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• chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  They don’t have access to capital (means of production). Consider the following scenario:

  All of the employees at a car manufacturing plant are sick of being paid a fraction of the total sale price of the cars they make. They decide, in solidarity, to quit en masse and start a worker co-op car plant instead so that they can all enjoy sharing 100% of the profits themselves.

  So they quit. Now what? Well, knowledge isn’t an issue because they already knew how to operate all the machines in a car plant. The problem is that they don’t have the money (or the land) to build a new car plant. We’re talking billions of dollars and a huge piece of land which ideally should be located on a railroad line so that parts (which are very large and heavy) can be delivered affordably by rail.

  So where are they gonna get the money? Not from private investors, of course, since that nixes the worker only profit sharing arrangement. Not from banks either because these workers, while highly knowledgeable and motivated, don’t have any collateral to put up for the bank loans. The banks do not want to be in the position of repossessing a bunch of specialized manufacturing equipment and trying to resell it at a loss.

  The common response to this is: the government. But think about that. Do you want your government giving billions of dollars to a few hundred people so they can start a car plant and then keep all the profits?

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  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    And they’d have to buy parts and materials from the same suppliers feeding the major automakers who have already streamlined their logistics and costs from the smelter to the finished product - and you know they’d exploit those efficiencies and supplier connections to create financial hardship on the upstart automaker. Same way airlines use fare wars to undercut competitors to pressure them out of a market.

    There’s nothing the business world hates more than a well treated and well paid workforce. They’ll band together to crush the idea.

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  • Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    And even if you don’t need billions in startup capital for land and buildings and machinery, you’ve still got cash flow concerns.

    Say you want to make software, and you know you can make it in 3 years with 20 people. What are you going to use to pay the bills until you’ve finished making whatever it is? Where are you going to find people who will go without money for that time? What if there’s no market for it by the time you’ve done?

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    • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Even something very simple like a coffee shop is difficult to run as a co-op.

      Yes, if you have a few friends who are all passionate about coffee it’s possible for you all to get loans / mortgages to pool together enough money to buy/lease a small commercial property and open a coffee shop together. The only really significant pieces of equipment are the espresso machine and coffee grinder, both of which can be bought used for a few thousand dollars.

      But here comes the issue: suppose it’s you and 4 friends who started the coffee co-op with $200k each (total $1 million) to buy the real estate and all of the furniture and machinery. Now the 5 of you work in the coffee shop and it starts growing more successful so that you need to hire more baristas (or pastry chefs or sandwich artists) to work there. How many baristas can you find who can afford to put up $200k to buy into a share of the co-op?

      Or even more fundamentally: what if 2 out of the starting 5 decide that working in a coffee shop is too exhausting and they don’t want to do it anymore so they quit? Now the other 3 need to put together a total of $400k to buy them out? Or do you have a clause in the contract which says they forfeit their investment if they quit? Now I dunno about you, but as much as I love using my espresso machine I would never want to enter a contract like that! I’d much rather keep my $200k in the bank and work as a regular employee barista knowing I could quit any time I want.

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    • Venator@lemmy.nz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Even for software there’s still equipment needed to host it, whether that be your own or rented from AWS or Azure etc. unless you’re looking to sell it as an on prem solution(but that’s not what most customers will be expecting in the current year so probably won’t sell very well).

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• intresteph@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Because corporations will sweep in and take all the business by taking a loss just long enough to put the others out of business.

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• partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  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?

  Starting a business (that is based on a sound and viable business plan that has even a snowball’s chance of surviving its formative early years) is really REALLY hard. It takes massive amounts of money or debt, the early years promise years of having no income for yourself (or paying yourself below minimum wage), it means a staggering amount of hours you need to put in to keep it going, forgoing vacations and important family events, loss of friendships because you’re having to put all your time and energy into the business without socializing, having to work when you’re incredibly ill, incredible amounts of stress (which increases by 10 times when you have employees that now depend on you for their livelihood) and even if you do everything perfect your business can fail leaving you with nothing for the years that you put into it, and potentially also with tens of thousands or millions of dollars in debt. It means many times being force to make decisions that massively affect other people’s lives (your employees or your customers). It can be versions of the Trolley Problem time and time again.

  “According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), approximately 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45% during the first five years, and 65% during the first 10 years. Only 25% of new businesses make it to 15 years or more.” source

  So ask yourself if you want to go through all of that, and instead of wealth you can live on and support your family with at the end of it, you get simply a “thank you” for building a co-op.

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  • nifty@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    These are great points, and looking at some of the other responses I get the sense that it’s a time and skills issue. So, what exactly do communists and socialists imagine will happen when “workers seize the means of production”?

    I don’t want to discourage anyone from pursuing these ideas, I think at least in the U.S. it might be cool to have a consultancy or non-profit which helps connect such founders and provides them with education, training and startup resources.

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    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      These are great points, and looking at some of the other responses I get the sense that it’s a time and skills issue. So, what exactly do communists and socialists imagine will happen when “workers seize the means of production”?

      I admit I’m not a scholar in this area, but my college reading of Marx and Engels they were taking about nation-state levels of “seizing the means of production”. As in, the entire nation’s ability to produce goods, grow and transport food, facilitate communications, etc. Doing so on such a grand scale that the elites/bourgeois would be forced to cede control of the levers of power because society effectively halts with the means of production in the hands of the working class (proletariat).

      Marx wasn’t talking about a socialist group starting up a competing grocery store to the entrenched established players in that market space.

      I don’t want to discourage anyone from pursuing these ideas, I think at least in the U.S. it might be cool to have a consultancy or non-profit which helps connect such founders and provides them with education, training and startup resources.

      There are educational resources for starting non-profits organizations (and I’m assuming co-ops). The real resource any org (for-profit or nonprofit) needs to start up is: large amounts of money. In for-profit ventures (assuming your business plan is respectable) you can get bank loans or outside investors. Both of these groups expect a return on the money they’re giving you to get started up.

      With a co-op, I’m guessing the only sources of startup capital are: government grants, philanthropic donations, or a founder that already has amassed their own fortune.

      Edit oh and some of the other points are that one wouldn’t get rich doing this. So what?

      At those really dark times for your business you ask yourself “why the hell am I even doing this?” for most business owners the answer is “so that at some point in the future my life will be much easier”. For a co-op, there has to be a very deeply held belief that what you’re doing is extremely meaningful and your sacrifice will be “worth it” somehow. While those people exist with almost a religious level of obligation to their cause or their community, I think they are extremely rare.

      I don’t envy the leadership in a struggling co-op. Running an organization is hard enough at the best times as a single owner. Having to run it by committee when it is crumbling sounds like a painful death.

      I’ve already seen people look down on wealth accumulation, so I think it’s fair to say that the motives for someone who’d start such a business venture are different, which is valid and reasonable.

      You may already have your answer. In your first post you said: “I’d also like to see more childcare co-ops, or community shared pre-k schools.”

      What is stopping you from you creating a child-care co-op?

      Secondly, I don’t think market forces will impact such businesses because if you’re creating communities around them, then people will choose what they know and trust.

      This is naive. Market forces (and other externalities) can have massive impacts on your organization irrespective if you’re a for-profit or co-op. Just think of what COVID did to many organizations. Though nothing change in the business model or service offering, thousands of companies went under because the conditions of the market changed through no fault of the organization owners/leaders.

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  • TheBrideWoreCrimson@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Yes, I agree, it is very hard. The perspective and the idea of the co-op however is completely different from what you describe: to distribute the hardships, the risks and rewards right from the start on many shoulders. There’s no more “my company, my sacrifices” etc.

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    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      The perspective and the idea of a co-op however is completely different from what you describe: to distribute the hardships, the risks and rewards right from the start onto many shoulders. There’s no more “my company, my sacrifices” etc. It’s all we.

      That sounds great, but how does that translate into real-world scenarios that organizations experience? As an example:

      How do co-ops decide who needs to be fired when there isn’t enough money to cover payroll?

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• grue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Maybe people won’t become billionaires doing this

  And that’s exactly why. Even if the founder wants to be altruistic, the venture capitalists he depends on to get his business of the ground sure as Hell don’t.

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  • nifty@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    People upvoting this have no idea, VCs aren’t the only way to fund a business

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  • treadful@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    True, but if it’s not a traditional business but a coop, you’d probably prefer to have the original investors bee the members. Guess it really depends on if they can scratch up enough to cover startup costs.

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• communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  co-ops don’t get loans. It’s hard to start a business without loans.

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  • mightyfoolish@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Loans are also the reason houses are usually so expensive.

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• agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Starting a business requires resources and coordination. It is easier for one individual with many resources to get the ball rolling than for many people with few resources to do the same. Even if you need to take out a loan, it’s simpler to do as an individual than as a group. Most people who front at the resources for a business are going to want creative control over the structure and operation, and consequentially to the profit. It’s much easier, logistically, for one person to roll existing capital into a new business than to coordinate a board of founders. Democracies are much slower at making decisions than dictatorships, obviously.

  I am 100% pro co-op. I’d love to see credit unions offering start-up loans to groups of founding members, specifically designed to develop co-ops. It’s just currently uncommon, so the infrastructure isn’t there. Without that financial infrastructure, you’re relying in everyone fronting a portion of the start-up funding.

  So, in short: it’s more complicated, financially and logistically. I’m all for it, but before we see co-ops carve out a must significant market share, we’ll need to see some chipping away at thesr barriers to entry.

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• Venator@lemmy.nz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  They tend to get out competed by companies with enough investment funds to undercut them without making a profit until they have a stranglehold on the market and can jack up prices.

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• mke_geek@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Lots of people have ideas, few people actually want to implement ideas. This is why there’s more workers than business owners.

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• litchralee@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  The short answer is that starting or incorporating is the easy part, and the hard part is guiding the seedling of an idea through a array of hazards, any of which can quickly sink the plan.

  For clarity, I will use the term “organization” to broadly refer to a group of people and resources dedicated toward a goal, which includes what you described as profit-sharing companies and co-ops, as well as the predominant business structures like for-profit corporations (ie INC, LLC) or non-profits charities, plus groups that use those structures in non-conventional ways, like 501©(4) “social welfare organizations” that incorporate for flexibility but constrain their operations to what is within their remit (eg DSA, NRA). Although it might seem that I’m focusing on tax-exemption by referencing the American IRS tax code, this is more a short-hand to refer to organizations voluntarily constraining themselves by their own terms, in contrast to even narrower types of entities which are constrained by law. The latter might include a Limited Liability Partnership, which in California is only granted for a union of lawyers, architects, or accountants.

  As for why I’ve expended a whole paragraph to describe the different ways that organizations can form themselves, it’s because the formation often has little to do with the intent of the organization, the current or future size of the endeavor, or whether they’re likely to make it off the ground. Any and every organization enters this world as a small, tender operation, and neatly falls into what the US Small Business Administration (SBA)'s Office of Advocacy would describe to as a “small business”. This includes any prospective co-op or even a one-person venture, and unfortunately the odds are heavily stacked against small businesses.

  Since co-ops and profit-sharing companies would play in the same capitalist environment, I think it’s fair to equate these organizations with “small businesses” at large, for the purpose of this analysis. From that SBA document, only two-thirds (67.6%) of new businesses last longer than 2 years, and less than half (48.9%) make it past 5 years. And of the businesses led by minorities – specifically women, veterans, Black, Hispanic, and Asian descendants – their percentages were even lower.

  When you think about it, a successful organization requires 1) genuinely visionary leaders, as well as 2) the staff to carry out the objective, plus 3) resources to enable the organization, plus 4) a measure of luck. Much like in a game of Settlers of Catan, it is rare to hold all the requisites at once, let alone at the very start of the game. Whereas conventional stories of capitalist success generally focus on a genius or lucky young upstart that upends the business world through shrewd business acumen – thus providing their organization with the first requisite – I think the co-op and profit-sharing models start with having the second requisite, usually forming the initial group of dedicated employees.

  And I don’t disagree that there are lots of community-minded individuals that are able and willing to come together towards a common cause. But the crux of an organization is that it, er, organizes people and resources in an efficient manner for that common pursuit. I am of the opinion that true leaders with the necessary impassioned drive and ability to inspire and rouse their organization’s staff are far and few between. And that’s even before considering their core competencies in addressing organizational crises, their handling of public relations, and their personal and business roles in the socioeconomic environment.

  We need only look at the conventional business world to see where corporate leaders absolutely drop the ball and pull the organization downward, be it Boeing’s various CEOs following the MD merger, to convicted fraudster Martin Shkreli of Turing Pharmaceuticals, and more. But while there are a lot of really awful leaders taking their organizations down with them, there must also be run-of-the-mill leaders who do actual leadership, whether for manufacturing, charities, food banks, actual banks or credit unions, and more. The problem then for requisite #1 is a matter of incentive: for those leading successful capitalist organizations with nation-wide scope, what would attract them to help lead a smaller organization to provide daycare and pre-K at the local level? If there is a genuine shortage of qualified leaders, then capitalist incentives would mean they seek out bigger operations to use their skills, not smaller ones.

  That, of course, just means that communities need to be producing more people that are qualified to be leaders (requisite #1), in addition to forming the communities that will become the staff of those organizations (requisite #2). I will not dwell on the third and fourth requisites, as it’s fairly obvious that even with good leaders and good people, if the means of production aren’t present, there’s not much to be done.

  As a closing food-for-thought, much of what I’ve discussed above is very American-centric, as our notions of organization are both democratic yet republican in nature. That is, we want to enable the masses to participate (requisite #2), but we also expect leadership to be singular individuals (requisite #1). This does work, and certainly dates back the eras of kingdoms and empires – have you thought of the Roman Empire today? – but it may be worth exploring leadership that is also democratized.

  Switzerland comes to mind, as their Federal Council – the closest equivalent to the US President or a company chief executive – is actually seven people, whom all serve as the collective head of state and head of government for the country. Note that this is not equivalent to a company Board of Directors, which is more analogous to the Federal Assembly of Switzerland, which is the parliament with legislative powers to set policy. Furthermore, this is not to be confused with direct democracy, which the Swiss also do, by way of referendums.

  It’s possible that rather than needing to develop more skilled leaders, an alternative is to assemble a small, core group of individuals who together have enough skills to competently lead a co-operative organization. This would certainly be more tractable, although I haven’t given enough consideration as to how this would work, and whether there are any existing models to look at. It might or might not mirror the qualities needed from existing, successful co-ops and profit-sharing companies, with REI and WinCo Foods coming to mind.

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• Mango@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  I can’t afford it and it’s hard to get people to agree on things, especially where their money is concerned.

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• RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  If I share profits, then how do I, a lowly CEO, keep all of the profits for myself?

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• spaduf@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  It’s not uncommon in a lot of industries for more signal enterprises to refuse to do business with these sorts of companies.

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  • nifty@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    I don’t understand, can you give some examples?

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  • clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    “Signal enterprises”?

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    • AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      I’m guessing it is meant to say “single” but I’m honestly not sure.

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• EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  As others have already stated, it’s expensive to start, expensive to maintain, and very high-risk.

  Most startups fail within the first two years, and an organization that doesn’t focus first and foremost on profit is I imagine even more likely to fail within those first couple of years.

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• rowinxavier@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  This requires capital to do and the traits that drive having capital in the first place under capitalism also drive making capitalist structures to get more capital. It takes acting against your interests in capitalism to make a co-op.

  That said, as a group a bunch of people could invest equally and have a fair amount of capital, especially with access to business loans. The key problem here is accessing finance and legal structures. The structure of an LLC is not really ideal for a co-op as it assumes individual ownership not group ownership. This can be worked through in a few ways but it is always a workaround, just something to make it work in the current system. The ideal would be some sort of shared, maybe creative commons, legal frameworks written up and cross checked by a bunch of lawyers. I think it could be done and very successful, but making that structure would require input from a bunch of people with experience with co-op structures. That said, once it is done they can all benefit for future endeavours and so can anyone else.

  The other issue is culture. The USA has a culture of avoiding interdependence and being very individualistic. This is great for atomising workers and preventing unions, so it is encouraged from all capitalist sources including western media such as film and TV but also in things like which books are published and which are passed on. Nobody wants to produce media that will result in their own loss of financial wellbeing or status. Finding a way of shifting the culture is definitely a hard and currently unsolved problem.

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• pineapplelover@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Rei says it’s a coop.

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  • Liz@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    It’s a consumer co-op (barely) not an worker co-op.

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  • noxy@yiffit.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    a union busting so-called that, at that.

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• jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  They’re extremely popular in the US, especially in banking (credit unions). I have yet to find any country in Europe or South America with US-style credit unions snf it drives me crazy

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  • 5714@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    I have yet to find any country in Europe or South America with US-style credit unions

    Huh? Maybe I don’t know what a US-style credit union is, but the German-language countries have large banking Genossenschaften (cooperatives), often called People’s bank. Many of them have origins in farmers lending each other money.

    I don’t know about Fennoscandia, but it would surprise me if there aren’t equivalents, given the cooperationist history in very local economies.

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    • jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Yeah, I’ve lived in Germany and those are terrible. Most charge monthly fees.

      Credit unions are nonprofit banks that are coops. Everyone who is a member votes on what to do with the excess revenue, which usually gets paid as dividends back to the members (everyone with a bank account) or gets reinvested to cover cool services like ATM refunds, free travel/phone insurance, etc.

      Its curious that the ides of a credit union was born in Germany but their credit unions suck

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    • antimidas@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Not sure about others in fennoscandia, but at least Finland has multiple large co-ops. One of the largest banks, OP ( literally named co-op bank) is a co-op which many own a part of. Many of my friends are part of the co-op.

      Also, Finland’s largest retail chain (with 48.3 % market share of retail in Finland) is a consumer co-op, which is also causing a very difficult situation for all other businesses in retail, as they’re able to undercut practically everyone since they have less of a profit incentive. 2.4 million people have a membership, which is quite a sizable amount in a country of under 6 million (though I’m not sure if the number includes Estonians as well)

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  • SmoothOperator@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    They’re also very popular in Denmark.

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    • jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Do they have monthly fees? If not, I wouldn’t say they exist

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  • MrMakabar@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    American banks offering credit card have the highest profit margin of ANY US industry. In most other countries cash is still king. Hence credit unions in those countries need to charge fees and offer worse services.

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    • jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      If EU “credit unions”:

      1. Are not nonprofits,
      2. Everyone with a bank account isn’t an equal member and voter in meetings,
      3. All members aren’t given the opportunity to present proposals and decide how to spend excess revenue

      …then it seems like that’s the problem

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• sunbrrnslapper@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  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.

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• prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Look into Germany’s co-determination laws for an example of this being required to a certain degree, in every corporation.

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• phoneymouse@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  It’s a good question OP. I think about this too.

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• EleventhHour@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  First of all, most people have no understanding or conceptual of even what the hell you’re talking about. Second of all, setting up, co-ops, etc., is extraordinarily difficult, as is becoming part of one. Most people believe it isn’t worth the effort, regardless of the reality of it.

  The government makes the entire concept of a co-op, extremely difficult to exist, mostly because the government favors capitalism and punishes anything that runs against it. And, most notably, if there is anything the government can do to stop helping poor people and or minorities, that is always the first to target. Because people in control of our government are extra extraordinarily shitty.

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• MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  We have different company styles here (Swiss, but Germany, Austria, France similiar).

  From the name: there was this company i worked in, it had a pool of investment money with other companies together. Another one, that makes accounting & finances, lrojects with companies under their wing.

  Is it something like that?

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• Oaksey@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Effort, risk

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• compostgoblin@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  I have an idea for a co-op enterprise that I’m really excited about, but it’s difficult for a few reasons: time outside of work to develop the business plans, lack of connection to others to build with, and lack of financial capital to get off the ground. I’m not opposed to putting in the effort to try fixing those, but they are all challenges.

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  • TheBrideWoreCrimson@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Well, then there’s a business idea for another co-op right there: one that does nothing but connect potential co-op founders. A marketplace of ideas and abilities, if you will.
    Also, your co-founders will contribute time as well as capital to free you. The challenge then becomes decision-making. IMHO, if you can come to terms with relinquishing control, you can be part of a successful business in a co-op easier than in a classical setup.

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• bear@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  For the same reasons you haven’t done so yourself. Also if you’re the owner you can still share profits or vote or whatever else you want.

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  • nifty@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Why should an owner share profits equally if they’re responsible for most of the startup push?

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    • witten@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Because the initial startup push is a time-limited effort. Once the company is more established and the risk is lower, why should a founder get to continue reaping outsize rewards off the backs of others’ labor… indefinitely? Surely there comes a point when their initial risk and effort becomes fully repaid, and a founder has been made whole.

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    • bear@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Looks like you’re answering your own question now. I wouldn’t but you can if you want.

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