General Discussion

Yes, but let's try to achieve that without state ownership of the means.

I work at an ESOP as well. Honestly I'm glad I fell into this. I have a feeling that I may actually be able to retire. If not early. Probably one of my best moves in my career.

While many socialists supported worker coops in the interim, an economy of exclusively worker coops comes more so from the classical laborists such as Proudhon.

@general

I mean, I'm a single-member LLC (electrician). I'm not sure what you mean.

Every year I get shares from my company. The vesting period is typically longer. For me it took 7 years to be fully vested. But I was accumulating every year. When I leave the company, the company will pay out my shares and I can tell them where to put the funds. But the higher base salary I have, the more shares I get. Also the people retiring or leaving the company, the shares get bought back by the company and redistribute to the employees. At least that's how it works at the ESOP I work at. Kinda a simplistic view of it.

When someone is hired, they don't get shares. They are enrolled into the ESOP program. Then after some time, they will eventually start accruing shares on a regular basis.

Don't take this the wrong way, but this made me bust out laughing...

When you hold stock, don't you need to sell it/liquidate it in order to make money?

Boy, if that isn't just a perfect example of the perversion of our economic system. "You can't make ACTUAL money with it, you can only make money by participating the meta gambling game."

No, stock entitles you to dividends, which is just a fancy way of saying "a share of the profits". Like, a company brings in A amount of money (gross income) in a year, spends B of that on payroll and whatnot (expenses), maybe puts away C of that into a savings or spending account, and everything that's left, D, gets given to the owners. If you have stock in the company, that's you.

Of course, dividends are generally very small (like, think savings interest) compared to what you can make trading and speculating, so it's never good enough for the rich.

It's also rather common for companies to pay no dividends, because they just put all the leftover money into C. Which isn't even necessarily bad, it's generally built on the idea that keeping the money in the company will give the company more room for growth, I.E. raising the stock price, with the assumption that that will be worth more than the dividends may have been. But for so many companies, that just never ends. Sooner or later, the growth won't be sustainable, and many companies just collapse under their own weight, leaving the stock worthless.

I think the liability would still be limited. If a company goes bankrupt it’s not like they’re going after shareholders’ personal assets to pay creditors.

Are you under the impression that private business owners have to cover losses..? Like that’s what a LLC is, a limited liability company. If it goes bankrupt the private owners are only liable for a part of it.

If a private business owners goes bankrupt, he just has to, gasp, find a job.

If a worker loses their job they might go fucking homeless.

There would still be limited liability. Furthermore, they can share risks with investors, and self-insure against risk as well @general

One of the most successful breweries in America is owned by its employees. New Belgium.

They did not crumble and fall apart because of "evil socialism". They flourished because every single worker had a vested interest in making the business grow.

Executives wonder why their employees are so unmotivated. Give them motivation. Not pizza parties

Employee ownership would save this nation from its spiral towards indentured servitude. 60% of the population currently lives month to month. You're telling me every single one of them is lazy? Bullshit.

The American dream has been stolen from us, it will take it back one way or another.

You can keep sucking on the nuts of billionaires pretending you will be one of them, I will fight for the working class.

Please elaborate. Co ops already exists. And guild models existed for millenia.

Like what?

Haven't watched the video yet, will do somlatwr, but if no one worked, we would over amshort time literally return to the stone age.

Who would make for for all? Would we have to scour for our own food again, each on their own? There is a reason we do farming, it is MUCH more efficient. A hand full people can make grain, beef, flour, and bread for hundreds of thousands, if not millions. It liberates all those other people to work on other things and make society grow.

If we all do our own food then in no time growth will stagnate, loads of people will fail to make their own food and decide to get it from others, and since there is no police anymore either (they're busy making and finding their own food) there is no protection either.

We would to have time to keep up infrastructure. More fertilizer would mean that there wouldn't be enough food produced for everyone, the world would go back to about 2-3billion humans. In on itself not a bad thing, there are too many humans, but 5-6 billion humans starving to death sucks.

No more modern medicine, no ody is working anymore, remember? Sucks to be a diabetic, bye bye. If you're trans, you're outta luck, you got bigger fish to fry.

We CAN'T stop working, we'd die out. If that video means something else, then the title is wrong.

What we can do is redistribute wealth. Nobody should need to work two jobs and still not be able to meet rent, that is absurd.

This is the Centerpoint strategy for maintaining the Houston electric grid

RTFA

Every year, those employees get a percentage of their salaries in company stock. During Central States’ worst year, employees earned the equivalent of 6 percent of their pay in stock, during their best they earned 26 percent. Last year, an employee earning $100,000 a year received $26,000 worth of stock in their account. As the company has grown, the value of that stock has averaged 20 percent returns annually, outperforming the stock market.

no, you just tie share ownership to employment

Usually, in co-operative businesses, the members have to agree to hire someone.