Software companies usually form as worker coops directly rather than using an ESOP mechanim

Here is a list worker coops: https://www.usworker.coop/directory/

There are some software companies in there under technology

Worker coops can delegate decision-making to managers and executives. This can ensure speedy decision-making. Having workers control the firm doesn’t mean that every decision must be made by referendum. There can be delegation and more representative democracy

@politicalmemes

There are anti-capitalist liberals though

@politicalmemes

At its core, liberalism is fairly anti-capitalist. There are many arguments against capitalism from liberal principles such as the principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match. The workers in the firm are jointly de facto responsible for using up inputs to produce outputs, but receive 0% claim on the positive and negative production while the employer solely appropriates 100% of the positive and negative result of production

@politicalmemes

It gets even more confusing when you consider anti-capitalist classical liberals

https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Classical-Liberal-JurisprudenceJune2018.pdf

@politicalmemes

https://www.nceo.org/articles/employee-ownership-100

@politicalmemes

Worker cooperatives don’t have to have a flat structure. Smaller cooperatives might use a flat structure, but larger companies will delegate business decisions to management. The main difference is that the board of directors represent the workers instead of outside shareholders making it democratic

@politicalmemes

Any company that receives government subsidies or is bailed out because it’s too big too fail or whatever the reason should be mandated to become a worker coop

@politics

The founders can hold more or all non-voting preferred stock in the worker coop to represent their larger stake and investment. They can also use a separate corporation, which only the founders own, with no employees to hold their capital and then lease it the worker coop

@politics

It would definitely be easier in an economy where this was the only way of doing things.

I am not a lawyer.

Based on the underlying economic theory and ethical arguments for worker coops/employee-owned companies, what you could do in such a situation is make a separate legal entity for the worker coop, and then lease the assets of the current legal entity to the worker coop. You and your partner maintain exclusive ownership of the original legal entity

@politics

Or we could abolish the employer-employee contract and mandate that all firms be worker coops, so that no one could appropriate the positive and negative fruits of other people’s labor

@news

https://www.usworker.coop/en/

@politicalmemes

There is information in it. Namely, that it itself is false. It is fully grammatical. Similar sentence are obviously valid such as:

This sentence has five words.

That is a true valid grammatical sentence.

I didn’t invent the paradox. Philosophers have been contemplating this paradox for a long time.

The problem it gestures at is very deep and similar paradoxes showed up in the foundations of mathematics in the 20th century. It can’t be dismissed easily.

@general

I am an anti-capitalist.

To get rid of capitalism, you don’t have to abolish absentee ownership of capital. A worker coop can lease capital from third parties and remain a non-capitalist democratic worker coop. Abolishing capitalism just requires abolishing the employment contract and common ownership of land and natural resources. Without the employment contract, everyone is either individually or jointly self-employed, so every firm is a worker coop

@196

I’ll write one. The talk argues that employment contract is invalid due to inalienable rights. Inalienable means can’t be given up even with consent. Workers’ inalienable rights are rooted in their joint de facto responsibility in the firm for using up inputs to produce outputs. By the norm that legal and de facto responsibility should match, workers should get the corresponding legal responsibility, but in employment, workers as employees get 0% while employer gets 100% of results of production

David Ellerman’s modernization of the classical laborists’ argument against capitalism is significantly more powerful than modern Marxism.

Marx’s claim that private property is the root of capitalist appropriation has been disproven in modern theories of capitalism’s property rights structure. Private property plays a role in giving bargain power to get favorable terms, but the ultimate legal basis of capitalist appropriation is the employer-employee contract

@politicalmemes

Postcapitalist systems can use market prices and, in principle, be Pareto optimal on non-institutionally described states of affair

@politicalmemes

You just mention the community in the post

@politicalmemes

What would be a more appropriate community?

@politicalmemes

Because most liberals don’t consistently apply their own principles. A principle that liberals are inconsistent with is the juridical principle of imputation, the norm of legal and de facto responsibility matching. They ignore this norm’s routine violation in the capitalist firm. Here, despite the workers joint de facto responsibility for production, the employer is solely legally responsible for 100% of the positive and negative results of production while workers as employees get 0%

@asklemmy

The academic definition would be the systems of the historical Eastern Bloc countries or a hypothetical society that has somehow completely abolished commodity production

@leftymemes