Ask HN: Do/did you ever work for a profit-sharing business?
I work in a worker-owned carpentry co-op. We do anything from making little knick knacks to remodelling a house, whatever people need done.<p>Personally I think it&#x27;s the only legitimate way to run a business. Shareholders are scum and do not deserve the free ride they get off the backs of real workers. Workers should own and control the means of production directly, not shareholders and certainly not the government.<p>&gt; How is it?<p>It&#x27;s nice. Take all the things you hate about working for a capitalist, and it just magically goes away.<p>Instead of working to make someone else rich, you work to make you and your fellow workers <i>a good and reasonable amount of money</i>. Everyone except the capitalists make more than before, and if the capitalist was also a worker they make a reasonable amount now too. The fundamental difference is that there isn&#x27;t someone claiming ownership of stuff that belongs to others.<p>Instead of having an almighty ruler who dictates things because they have a subconscious need for control and no self awareness, things are decided by the people actually doing the work, who actually know the knowledge required to make good decisions. How many times has a superior forced you to make a stupid decision?<p>There is no strict set of hours you must work. There is no strict limitations for what role you play in the company. There are no unreasonable rules you must follow. There is no fear of having your family&#x27;s source of ability to live taken away from you just for making some arbitrary mistake or questioning some grown-up child&#x27;s authority.<p>This isn&#x27;t limited to just small firms. Check out companies like the Mondragon corporation with over 80k employees in 2019 (latest data I could find).<p>&gt; Do you think it could motivate employees?<p>Yes, and several studies have reported higher job satisfaction in worker-owned firms. Worker-ownership leads to higher productivity because, unlike in capitalist firms, working harder benefits the workers.<p>There is also greater satisfaction from having more control over the work you do. Humans have a desire to be the cause behind things.<p>&gt; Is there any way to do it wrong?<p>Yes, absolutely there are ways to do it wrong, but first let&#x27;s talk about the right way. The right way would be for every employee to have exactly 1 share of the company, and no one else has any shares whatsoever. It is acceptable for there to be a new-hire probation period, and it is acceptable to still have a variable hourly-wage or salary system (or not, that&#x27;s even better), but the <i>profit</i> itself must be divided amongst everyone evenly.<p>Letting some sub-group claim some kind of higher status than everyone else. This is especially wrong if said special group gets a bigger cut of the profits or has authority over everyone. That just makes it a regular company at that point.<p>Trying to make every decision be voted on by the whole company is another way to go wrong. Things should be decided by the people who work with and know about that particular thing. There&#x27;s no reason for the office staff to have input on what type of welding gloves we should stock, for example. To allow this is what I&#x27;d call <i>tyranny of the majority</i>, the biggest flaw with the authoritarian democracy which permeates our society. It allows people who don&#x27;t know what they&#x27;re talking about to ruin things that could have been great.<p>Trying to copy what &quot;the big companies&quot; do is especially bad for a worker-owned co-op, because the big companies are explicitly built around the domination of laborers by a superior class. Worker-owned companies should lead to more dynamism, not more of the same bureaucrap.<p>Not having a solid grasp on procedures of consensus democracy will lead to ruin. It will either lead to gridlock during meetings or domination by a sub-group. Ideally you would have consultants from an already-existing worker-owned co-op come in and run&#x2F;advise the first few meetings to get things started in a good way.<p>&gt; Why don&#x27;t more businesses do it, in particular lower wage-type businesses, like fast food, that seem to struggle with employee motivation?<p>Because that fundamentally goes against what capitalism is for, and what capitalists are doing in general with their lives. Capitalism encourages shareholder profit above all else, that&#x27;s why we&#x27;re stripping and contaminating the entire planet for useless trinkets and more ability to work ourselves into the grave. They won&#x27;t allow worker co-ops to form under their noses because it&#x27;s the one thing they fear the most: less profit for them to throw down their bottomless pit.