Hacker News Reader

Comment by waingake | Hacker News Reader

Corporate America stopped building nationality once it realised it could offshore to failing states with populations who's alternative to wage slavery was starvation.

If you want to build for good, we need alternatives such as worker owned business where insentives align with the interests of the communities they are from.

View on HN

I genuinely want to believe that these are alternatives to the shotfalls of capitalism, but I find the evidence pretty sparse. When you say this, what is the best example you are thinking of that makes you believe it can work? I'm not asking you to do research for me, but I am curious if others have clear examples in mind when they suggest these.

An example for worker-owned might be Mondragon [1]. I don't know how well that works in different settings and how easy it is to replicate. I do know that cooperatives, even if not worker-owned but customer-owned do work quite well in Germany. They serve their customers, as their customers are also their members/owners, so their interests are aligned. They often also have social sub-goals (their primary goals being servicing their members).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

You might compare the experience of being a member of a credit union to being a customer of a major bank. The CU, as a member owned non-profit, has fewer incentives to screw you over with hidden fees and high transaction costs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com