Comment by Grombobulous
17 hours ago
That’s a weird thing to say about “coup attempts.”
Funny that we picked democracy for our government but we just left corporations as little feudal kingdoms. It seems like quite the oversight.
In the world of AI I imagine that Automattic’s core business model is in turmoil.
> Funny that we picked democracy for our government but we just left corporations as little feudal kingdoms.
Ianal but I don't think the laws care about governing structure of corps. You can start a new corp and run it democratically all you want. There are co-ops and other interesting structures out there
Afaik corps can only have board voting on the basis of share ownership ("one share one vote"), but you can mess around with how many votes each share class gets.
Co-ops can have more democratic voting arrangements, and usually have "one shareholder one vote" principles, though other options are available, and you can mess around with how many votes each shareholder gets.
We picked democracy because it is very difficult for a citizen to move to a different country/start their own if they are unhappy. Democracy is a fix for that power imbalance.
By contrast its relatively easy to quit and start a new company if you feel like it. That is the control for a company.
Companies have a largely democratic component at the top, called the board. Voters (those who own the company) have representatives on the board. Some boards also have representatives from the employees, that varies.
It's not one person, one vote, so it's not democracy. It's very explicitly plutocracy (rule by money) as the operating principle of voting power is one share, one vote.
Except there's also a bunch of companies with special dual class share structures, where the founder gets way more voting power than everyone else and you can't even buy your way in. A lot of tech companies do this. This is, functionally speaking, an autocracy.
If you want an actual corporate democracy you would need to assign voting rights to everyone working at the company, aka build a co-op. Co-ops are a great corporate structure in a lot of cases but you can't really raise capital that way because VCs all want on your cap table, so all the big companies wind up being plutocracies.
It's one share, one vote. And you have a choice: You can ask the company to pay you (ie. apply for a job there), or you can pay for a share in the company. Either way, the decisions are made by those who pay. And that can include you — anyone and everyone has the right to start a company and to employ others, anyone and everyone has the right to ask for shares in the company as part of negotiating compensation.
I employed a painter a few months ago, and I decided what colour the kitchen now is.
7 replies →
> It's not one person, one vote, so it's not democracy
Voting is a democratic instrument, but a blunt one and not the most important.
"...those who spend five minutes voting every three years and call it democracy..."
Majoritarianism is undemocratic in that any desire less than 50% + 1 is deprecated.
If you care IMO the most important feature of a democracy is rule of law and access to the courts.
Who do you think pays for the political election campaign theater of all theses "democratic candidates" though?
I often have to think of Bane putting his hand on the shoulder of that Ben Mendelsohn character in The Dark Knight Rises while asking if he feels in charge. Reminds me of living in a western democracy.
> Funny that we picked democracy for our government but we just left corporations as little feudal kingdoms.
Doesn't this just boil down to planned vs free market economy? I think we've seen over an over again which one works and which one doesn't.
> Doesn't this just boil down to planned vs free market economy?
Not at all. Market vs planned economy is about how the economy is set up. Are there businesses that offer products that you can choose between? That's a market economy. You can have that with democratic governance of corporations. The workers can own the means of production and you can have a market economy.
You don't need ownership by idiot dictators with money to have a market.
> The workers can own the means of production and you can have a market economy
How? Will you also advocate to killing a bunch of people to get from now to the state where workers own the means of production like Trotsky and friends?
Democracy in business would be worker co-ops or employee ownership schemes. It would still be fully market-based, not planned.
Is that a settled question? China isn't exactly struggling right now.
China has succeeded so much by moving away from a planned economy when they were fully planned they were one of the poorest nations in the world. Most successful nations are mixed economies and yes, this is a settled question.
7 replies →
If you look on Alibaba or AliExpress and see different companies competing and undercutting each others prices, I don't really see it as a planned economy.
2 replies →
> China isn't exactly struggling right now.
Have you asked people in China about this?
It's allowed to do a more democratic business in most countries, it's called a:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative
There have been some govts that mandated this type of organization for part of their economy; we usually refer to that as communism.
(no value judgement here, there are day's when I'm quite a commie myself)
> Funny that we picked democracy for our government but we just left corporations as little feudal kingdoms. It seems like quite the oversight.
Congratulations you have reinvented communism from first principles! And you are completely correct in your analysis.
[dead]
Regulation of corporations and the internal/external harms they do isn't communism.
That's a hilarious leap.
Actually you reply to a comment that makes a lot of sense.
Look into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative
And in Russian I believe such a company is called a "Soviet". They idea that the main part of the economy is run by this kind of organizations is one of the best parts of the USSR's attempt at communism.
1 reply →