this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
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(WEEKLY) Capitalism / Economic Systems (lemmy.ca)
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This week’s Weekly discussion thread will be focused on Capitalism / Economic Systems. Here is the definition we will be using so everyone can use the same terminology. If your argument does not use that definition, we ask that you reframe so that it does so that everyone can work within the same framework.

Here are some questions that should help kickstart things:

  • Is capitalism effective? Is it good, or as evil as some Lemmy instances will have you believe?
  • Are there better alternatives, and why are they better?
  • How could we realistically move toward those alternatives?
  • Is there anything you do not understand or would like to discuss about Capitalism / Economic Systems?
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Hrm. I don't know if I agree. I am the C.E.O. (and an Economist) of a medium-sized I.T. firm in Canada and designed the company to be as ethical as it could possibly be from the ground up.

  1. All employees have equal votes after their initial 3 months is up in any part of the company that they are engaged in. I can (and have) been outvoted.
  2. After employees are here long enough (3 years), they can purchase shares if they like.
  3. I am the lowest paid full-time employee at the company by design. I do not take dividends.
  4. We operate on a Matrix org chart meaning that the "boss" on every project changes based on who is best suited to lead it and who has experience in that area.
  5. We have it in our charter that there are never any outside shareholders allowed. If you leave the company, your shares are purchased by the company for current market value. This includes myself.
  6. We have acquired other companies. We have never had to pay for one. Our procedures and ticket counts are astronomically low compared with other I.T. companies (which are called MSPs) because we're exceptionally thorough that they literally give themselves to us.
  7. We are as environmentally conscious as we can be. We redo and donate old systems to nonprofits and schools where we can. The only waste we put out is literally dead hardware - no forced upgrade cycle. Electricity bills also drop dramatically at clients we take over due to more efficient machine use.
  8. During COVID, we gave away over $500k in free support. I figured it was more important that our nonprofit clients stay open than we stay open.
  9. We have a full FOSS stack that we can deploy if a company is open to it (and would like to save a bit of cash to boot).
  10. In nearly ten years, we've never had an employee leave, and never had a client leave (well, we had one restaurant client close during COVID, but I don't count that).
  11. We have full benefits.
  12. We have zero interest in "infinite growth" as it's not a functional model. We have turned down clients because they don't "get" us and would be a headache for our staff.

All that being said, I'm not bragging, I'm genuinely asking... what if other companies were run the way I run my company? What's the ethical issue? And no, this isn't theoretical, this is how we actually operate. There's no hidden evil.

I understand that not every business owner is "good." With proper regulation, however, we can make them at least behave way, way the fuck better. It's a form of Social Capitalism and it's exceedingly functional from my experience.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Our major difference is terminological.
What I mean by abolishing the employer-employee relationship is the legal system protecting workers' inalienable rights and mandating worker coops. In a worker coop, all workers are jointly self-employed. Your firm sounds more ethical than the norm under capitalism.

If I were starting a firm, all workers would have equal voting shares. These shares would be inalienable. Non-voting preferred stock would be treated as tradable property @actual_discussion

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Which I understand. It's why I called the company a "firm" as I feel it's a more accurate descriptor. The main difference is that we don't let employees just starting their trial period vote or lead a team yet until they get a feel for how we operate. We're quite a large swing from what normal companies do and it takes time to adjust and understand, not to mention that our processes are a complete rethink of how it is anywhere else.

The shares can be sold to other shareholders, but not to anyone outside the company. Unlike most corporations, we don't want solely financially invested shareholders as they're in business to extract value. They are parasites.

I've built this model out in hopes it will catch on. I feel that if most companies operated under Social Capitalism that we'd be substantially better off. Certain aspects of it are so important and such a step up from the norm that I don't understand how they weren't obvious to other owners. But... greed I guess. Greed hurts every system it's in.