What business is run democratically? You might mean an anarcho-syndicalist commune or an autonomous collective.
this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
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Depending on who you ask, Capitalist countries aren't truly democratic because of this, and Capital's influence on government.
I'm proud of you for asking a difficult question that you won't get a satisfying answer to.
Its almost like asking "why doesnt everyone share cars?" You probably aren't using one all the time, they're expensive to maintain, why not distribute the load to society and just have fleets of cars you borrow whenever you need one? Like a vehicle library.
Some people will love this idea, it would work very well for them. Some people will hate this idea and rail about how its the death of freedom and personal choice. And some will very rightly wonder "why are we talking about cars? Trains solve this problem 1000x better!"
Privately owned business is a problem, and a major component of the problem is that petite bourgeoisie small business owners believe they're part of the broader "business class" which doesn't exist. They're exploited smallholders who serve the interests of the truly rich and powerful by ideologically aligning with them against workers, whom they universally believe are too stupid, selfish, and myopic to properly make decisions for themselves or anyone else.
Why would you expect them to be?
If my family starts a restaurant and hires additional workers to, for example, help clean, bus tables, wait tables, and so on, I think it would be kinda weird to share the decision making between all employees. It makes more sense for employee owned corpos, but most small businesses have an owner or owners whose main job is steering the business.
It would only seem weird because you are used to it. Not because it is right.
The person "steering the business" should be in that position at the behest of the workers. If you can't run a business literally by yourself, you should share power with the people hired to help as if you would a partner.
Yeah I just don't agree with you.
There is certainly a broad set of circumstances where businesses can share ownership between employees, but that does not mean there are not other circumstances where work is done purely in exchange for money, benefits, or both.
If you and 4 friends want to start a pizza shop, cool do it democratically. If I do a business selling a product all myself and every other Sunday I pay someone to come lick my stamps for an hour so I can spend time with my kids, that person is not an equal partner.
Edit: to be extra clear, democracy is based on the concept that people are all functionally equals in capability, information, and perspective. Basically that countrymen are homogenous. Inside a specialized enterprise of any kind (especially small ones) this need not be true.
Edit 2: or if that's insufficient and all businesses must be democratic, then I necessarily must be allowed to hire based on whatever criteria I so choose. Work ethic, want to keep the company aligned with my interests, religion, ability, height, anything. That's the only way to guarantee a homogeneous pool and may also be the democratic will of the group of people who begin the business.
Here's the problem with your analogy. I am talking about full time 40 hour workers that everyone does. Your example is a one hour gig worker.
You had to devalue the concept of "worker" so hard to literally an hour long stamp licker to make your concept seem valid.
Reducto ad absurdum for making the clearer version of a point.
Regardless, a full coterie of 40 hour workers STILL may not be full of votes of equal quality for every topic. Representative democracy? Sure why not. Welcome to the concept of a board of directors. Picking general leadership for businesses at scale? Sure why not. General decision making and steering by direct democracy? No thanks.
It makes no sense to equally weight the opinion of your IT team and your marketing department on the next product to launch or who the target audience should be. And I can make as many of that style example as you like without devaluing in any way what it means to be a worker.
Ah got it. You see no difference in a 1 hour gig job and a 40 hour worker. You believe them to be equally invested in the job, and equally unsuited for having any decision making power.
Just really showing the kinda corpo ass brain washing you have deep in your soul brother.
Using a 1 hour gig worker shows different investment, time contribution, experience, and perspective in a clear way. The 40 hour case shows only differing experience and perspective which is not as cut and dry an example, but still perfectly applicable.
There's absolutely no reason to be a dick about it.
There is a reason to be a dick about it. Because I see your perspective as a moral failing. A flaw in your personality that shows a high degree of selfishness. It's like saying "there's no reason to be a dick" when a racist kindly explains his ideals. They are abhorrent and that reflects onto the speaker.
You belittle the worker and in turn me, and everyone I hold dear. Abstracting it and dehumanizing the concept of labor so that you can maintain control of your own lil slice of the world on the backs of your workers is abhorrent to me.
Because I would expect people in democratic nations to value democracy and see it as worth exercising in business. This is in part as I see democracy as a formal way of referring to being open to discussion of opinions and ideas in organizing any group.
Why would you want to be part of any group that may reject open discussion of its organization?
In a democracy you vote on what happens with a shared resource that belongs to all of you, like a country. If a business has several owners they might steer it democratically, like a family business deciding together what to do. But if that business hires employees, the employees don't vote, because it's not their shared resource, so why would they have power to decide on it?
Of course that doesn't preclude open discussion. Many businesses decide together with their employees, it's just based on discussion and exchange of ideas, not on voting. Why would you hire an expert and then vote among employees instead of letting the expert decide on their area of expertise?
The fact is not everyone has an informed perspective and in business there are very good reasons to not give the entire staff access to finances or company secrets.
As not all employees have the same information then not all employees are going to be able to see that larger picture and thus not giving the guy with 5% of access to the picture the same say as the guy with 95% doesn't make sense.
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