Money.
If its becoming a co-op then you aren’t, you’re giving part of it to those who have been helping build it and the original owners also still have a share in it. If none of the employees are non-family, then nothing is really going to change other than how ownership is distributed between those family members who work for the business.
History can’t tell you much about things that haven’t been done yet.
so you floated when you jumped off the roof?
People have jumped off roofs before. Also political science doesn’t have set observable laws like physics.
right, history never repeats… you shouldn’t think the rest of us are jumping into socialism with you
What on earth are you talking about? There are variations of socialism that haven’t been done before. When you look at the history of failed socialism none of them failed because private ownership was replaced with collective ownership. They failed because of mismanagement, illiberal governments, and corruption. As I said before:
just as there are variations of roof jumping that have never been tried before…
if you wish really really hard and flap your arms just right…
This is a really inaccurate analogy and is not helping your point.
Actually the secret is to jump and miss the ground.
Of course it can. What you’re suggesting is exactly what people have been suggesting for decades… yet every time it comes to implementation, it turns into a debacle. Then we get to hear “but this time it’ll be different “ for the umpteenth time.
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You can’t claim market socialism will fail based on the results of a centrally planned economy. You can’t claim democratic socialism won’t worked based on the results of authoritarian socialism. You can’t claim worker co-ops won’t work based on state ownership. You can’t claim a slow gradual democratic transition to socialism won’t work based on sudden transitions by revolution.
Of course I can claim that and history backs me up. Each time we talk about community owned resources, it devolves into state control. What the hell do you think the premise of Communism is?
Aside from history, HERE is why it won’t work.
Take my organization as a great example. If everyone gets a vote in all decisions, we’re paralyzed by the decision making process. A product I took over a few years ago is a great example. We spent 24 months dumping money into it prior to my engagement and engineers had weekly meetings to discuss priorities, features and capabilities. At the end of 24 months, we had a product that we couldn’t build or sell. There was no unified direction with the rest of the company and we flat out had no input from our customers. So the VP of engineering engaged me and asked me to take it on as a new product line. Day 1, I had a meeting to discuss the current capabilities and there was no unified product definition. I spent a week doing research, talking to customers, creating a feature template and finding out what the market wanted. I spent another week creating a functional design requirement document. I rolled that out to engineering and from their design, we started migrating into a marketable design. 3 months later, we rolled out demo’s to the VP (keep in mind, we had a great team of engineers, they just needed a unified direction) and he signed off on it. 3 months after that, we rolled the final product to market. We’re 2 years into it now and I’ve trained our sales team on it and orders have come through the door left and right. We’ve now put almost 30 of them in the field and our backlog is out 18 months now. What’s the point? Community owned and run businesses don’t work. There has to be a decision maker or you run into operational paralysis.
What you suggest sounds all warm and fuzzy because one guy doesn’t get overly rich but in realty, it’s a crappy system that produces nothing but human misery.
Jump and miss the ground? Sounds like jumping off a cliff, which is exactly what Socialism is… but eventually, you hit the ground… you know… because of gravity. (Reality)
It’s a reference to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, which anyone who hasn’t read it should read it.
Fair enough, just had to razz ya. 
Actually the premise of Communism is that the state control of Marxist socialism is no longer needed and the state “withers away”. But I’m not talking about Communism or Marxism.
Co-ops don’t preclude organizational structures. The difference is that instead of having an owner at the top who makes decisions or decides who to hire below them to make decisions regardless of the opinions of their employees, the workers vote on and have say in who makes the decisions.
You’re talking about collective ownership which was the basis for Communism. Just never turns out that way because people in power don’t just walk away.
Well, this is where we’ll never agree. I believe in private property rights. You don’t get a vote what happens on my land, or in my company. The risk is shouldered by ME so I’m making the damn decisions. Period. Not up for negotiation. Don’t like it? Don’t work for me. If you want a real co-op, then everyone stick money into a hat, build a company and now you have a vote. I certainly take the opinions of employees in the business I own and I take the opinions of my workers into consideration in my product line that I run but don’t own. They’re just that though. Opinions. I make the decisions. Why? In the case of my normal job, I was hired to make those decisions based on 30 years of experience. In the case of my company, I make the decisions because I have money in the game and no one else does. If I hire a contractor, I’ll get his opinion as to what needs to happen but I do NOT give him a vote in the final say.
Ultimately, people that think employees deserve a vote flat out don’t understand the financial dynamics of a company. I’m debating right now and I’m thinking I’m going to start a gun store next. I’ll hire people to work for me and I’ll hire competent people that get to make decisions I trust them with but I’ll make the financial decisions because I’m the one taking the risk.
Communism is collective ownership plus a bunch of other “features” that all forms of socialism don’t necessarily share.
I believe in private property rights as well (though, FYI, Socialism makes a differentiation between private property and personal property and in many forms of socialism land is considered personal property unless you are operating a business with it). Everything you wrote makes perfect sense under a capitalist system where you use your own capital to start your own business. You’re not proving anything or giving me novel information. I’m not arguing that socialism is the ideal system for Army33T or even that its the ideal system for America, just that there are more forms of socialism other than the Marxist authoritarian kind that has been tried many times over to much misery. And I don’t see remotely enough Americans in favor of going full socialist required to actually change the laws and constitution to make it possible anytime soon.
There isn’t enough money to compensate them and how is that going to work out with your attempts to redistribute wealth to begin with?
How much money is needed?
My attempts? Why are you trying to make this personal?
Wealth would be redistributed by virtue of salaries being more evenly distributed among the workers at a company.
After your family puts four or five generations work into a farm or business come back and tell me.
You’re the one promoting socialism here so yes, I directed it at you.
The goal of socialism is an equal redistribution of wealth among the proletariat so how is that going to work out with your plan of transferring great amounts of wealth to those you are going to force to sell out their farms, ranches and businesses built over generations.
