this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
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This problem could be solved with a co-op structure even within a free market. If ten workers in a co op produce $100 bucks of extra money, they all get voting power over ten buck, and as long as any new hires can carry their weight so everyone still gets ten bucks surplus to command, they will hire them if you follow the game theory incentives. Once companies get big enough to have diminishing returns, like a new employee could only produce 5 bucks of surplus, then hiring that person would make everyone have a smaller piece of the pie (adding him to our first ten means the share drops to 105/11 or 9.5 dollars.) If the pie(surplus) all goes to one person they can keep adding workers until the worker doesn't produce any surplus over the cost, bloating the departments. Because of this co ops tend to expand to peak productivity, (surplus per worker), rather that peak output (produce as much as we can until it becomes unprofitable to produce)
You are assuming two things:
In a small company, none of this is true.
Also that each worker supplies the same surplus. While forecasters will assume this, this is rarely the case in engineering.
All I said was 10 workers produce 100 dollars of surplus. Nowhere does that imply each produced 10 dollars. Only that their voting power commands 10 dollars of surplus. Read it again.
So you have a system that doesn't reward increased productivity between members, or even provides some metrics for measurement. You can have a successful project with non-performing members.
Co ops directly reward increased production, increased production would lead to increased surplus, and the surplus is democratically allocated, weather that's bonuses or investments, raises even if they see the increase is surplus as permanent. All of thats extra money that everyone gets to decide what to do with. Thats more incentive than ive seen more than most workers in top down systems get.
I don't see that getting implemented in an engineering company.
There are employee owned companies out there given the economics of creating an engineering company, but I don't see a co-op format scaling. At most, it is going to be employees choosing leadership.
Google Mondragon corporation and you can see a co op scaling up over history. You dont have to imagine, it's already happened and you can read about it.
Edit: and here's all their industrial co-ops under the one large Mondragon co-op. https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/en/we-do#negocioIndustria