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Comment by saled | Hacker News Reader

These points are solved by the workers electing an executive or directors who makes those decisions, until the workers are sick of them and replace them in an AGM or an emergency meeting.

Works the same as shareholders.

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In the long run, that is bound to generate a separate managerial class, with all that it entails. It's how most cooperatives eventually die: they turn into regular businesses.

Well said.

Good co-ops that last have the decisions made by those working there.

And it's a lot of work.

And I'd guess that a restaurant doesn't have the scale to shoulder a management tier and the costs involved.

Sure but nobody is pretending that there shouldn't be some kind of way of making decisions in these organizations. The point is that the people making those decisions were chosen by and accountable to the workers at the firm, not external shareholders. The incentives are completely different.

I mean, that’s fine, no? As long as regular non-manager employees are still on the corporation’s Board, the managerial class (CEO et al) still all have the Board’s sword of Damocles dangling over their neck at all times.

In theory. In practice things will evolve in subtle ways that will effectively insulate managers - scheduling meetings at unconvenient times, passing rules that allow for fewer and fewer people to make big decisions, etc.

I mean, even regular businesses in practice end up this way - nominally with lots of shareholders, practically run by (and for) a few powerful individuals. That's why we have a concept of "activist shareholder" - in theory all of them should be "active" but in practice almost no one is, so the few who do are labelled (and often "bought" one way or another).

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