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Comment by zby | Hacker News Reader

I don't know - there are cooperatives - it is not like you need to risk your life to work at one. Somehow they are not that popular. There are also partnerships - which are kind of close to cooperatives, when they employ only the partners and for example outsource office cleaning and stuff. In some industries they do pretty well - for example in law.

Why cooperatives do poorly? Maybe people usually are not very good at governance, that's understandable, you can have trade-offs - slightly worse pay for better working conditions, or better dignity. Does it work like this?

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>Why cooperatives do poorly?

I don't think you have evidence to back this up. The reality is that cooperatives are very rare, so 99% of people don't even have to option to work for one. It's probably not even clear to the vast majority of workers that such a thing is even possible. This says nothing of the extreme aversion to anything even remotely resembling collectivism in the US.

Education

Maybe they're less popular because they're less well-known, their benefits and downsides are as well, and so they're less likely to be considered by people incorporating a new business? Or maybe they're less advantageous to the founders so that's why they're simply not pursued?

> Why cooperatives do poorly?

I have seen economist claim that cooperatives tend to be pretty inflexible. Slack was a communication tool for what is now a failed gaming company. If the company was owned by game developers, artists, and story writers, how many of them would have voted to sack themselves and pursue a chat application?

Is that what actually happened? Or did some early Slack employees pivot? Regardless, they would've been a minority of the workforce.

cooperatives dont necessarily "do worse" but they do face unique challenges compared to non-coops, the biggest being raising capital

https://www.co-oplaw.org/finances-tax/financing/

In my limitied view, this seems to be one of the biggest obstacles. I'm heartened to see new cooperative investment funds coming online, like Evergreen Cooperatives (http://www.evgoh.com) and accelerators, like Start.coop (very new)

it really is needed, i hope they do well, and thanks for the links ^^

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