Corporate Democracy

[FoolOfWorms]

So I've been mulling on this topic for years now, and the more I really think about it the more I realize corporations, and conglomerates especially, aren't really money making ventures as much as they are the modern day lords and ladies of whom go largely unchecked, unregulated, with borderline monarchical levels of power in their field and especially in terms of succession, where they typically give away their company to their biological heir and only see criticism by those they consider equals in their advisers in the form of the board of directors, and I'm thinking, we've already been through this song and dance before in regular government, so why wouldn't democracy work in a company too? 
Now necessarily a company that elects their CEO would not have shareholders that own cooperate stock since its antithetical to the idea of a mutually owned and maintained organization of workers (I'll stop beating around the bush and say directly I'm probably what most would consider a syndicalist), but beyond that, how would a corporate democracy, that is to say, a form of labor or simply a corporation that is ran by a board of elected representatives voted for by the entire company, run? There are very few examples of this from what I've seen so far and they seem to have their own variate of flaws, additionally unions, while aiding workers, do not, themselves, own any company from what I know, which is likely a flaw in my own knowledge.
Now Ideally, it would not be President CEO situation, since an individual with executive power can easily abuse said power without checks and balances that are too complex for most except the biggest of companies and conglomerates to execute, so lets assume it is a board of directors kind of deal that each can cast votes for the direction the company goes in the future in terms of growth, expansion and regulation.
That still leaves us with a couple of questions

1: How would votes, ideally, be tallied? I'm not concerned with voter attendance since I think most people are more directly interested in politics if it directly effects their paychecks, so how would votes be tallied? Would people who have been at the company longest, or people who are considered indispensable due to their expertise have a greater value for their vote? Should there be a new hire period where a person can't vote unless they've been with the company for a certain amount of time? How often would votes take place? is this a question that differs for each kind of job and company? Etc.

2: Is this something that should be implemented, ideally, nationwide? Are there places where important exceptions must take place? For example, is the idea too bureaucratic and slow to allow to be implemented in the military? I assume it would be a strange thing to have it apply universally, since family ran mom and pop stores don't have the population necessary to need this, so what would be the ideal tipping point in terms of company size? Etc.

3: If this works, should these democratic company be able to send representatives to government and make decisions on behalf of the people who work in those companies? I mean, corporations already lobby the shit out of congress now, so having an elected "diplomat" of sorts be a part of congress and voting for legislation on their companies behalf isn't that far off from that. Is that even a good idea? If it became its own "branch" of government that vote on how the government spends its money on corporate ventures and economic growth in certain sectors, would there be corporation types that should be exempt, like entertainment?
There are more questions I'm sure, and this post is getting too long to show them here, but I mostly wanted to share to hear everyone's thoughts on this idea.

[HeartaceX]

We live at the inception of "Techno-Feudalism" dog, look at 

the intellectual property law for instance, IP law has always

been quite controversial and historically considered 

anti-capitalist, however in modern time they have become a

Tithe to the corporate lord making money on creations 

made by dead people.

I Could go on for ages really.

Here I discuss some of these dynamics, in relation to

videogames, specifically CP 2077

 

Also, Corporate Democracy is an Oxymoron, the corporation

is a totalitarian institution.

Edited December 16, 2021 by HeartaceX (see edit history)

[kerdios]

I think you are basically describing a co-op.
I am not very literate on the subject, but you are welcome to read about it more on wiki and then ellaborate on the difference between your suggestion and the current existing system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative

[FoolOfWorms]

On 12/16/2021 at 1:25 PM, kerdios said:

I think you are basically describing a co-op.
I am not very literate on the subject, but you are welcome to read about it more on wiki and then ellaborate on the difference between your suggestion and the current existing system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative

Yeah, a workers cooperative seems pretty close to what I'm imagining on the ground level honestly, and funnily enough it references the Paris commune which is one of the inspirations for the idea, even if I should do more research on it.
In terms of wide scale implementation however it just scratches the surface of what can be done.
What I'm thinking, In a broad scale, is for there to be basically sub-governing bodies that are comprised of multiple smaller Cooperatives that elect representatives to do more large scale decision making in a form of congress.
Like lets say we have a couple of farmers Cooperatives in California or whatever, these organizations would jointly elect a representative for their corner of California, in a sort of big union meeting, who would meet up in LA or wherever to discuss matters such as political representation, expansion, and pool funds to aid worse off areas of the overall collective so that none of them are able to fall to a bigger capitalist organization or general bankruptcy.
Then this process can go a step further to encompass all of the united states, maybe even the world, and guarantee world wide workers rights by collectively lobbying across borders.
Something like that.

Edited December 16, 2021 by FoolOfWorms (see edit history)

[kerdios]

On 12/17/2021 at 12:43 AM, FoolOfWorms said:

Yeah, a workers cooperative seems pretty close to what I'm imagining on the ground level honestly, and funnily enough it references the Paris commune which is one of the inspirations for the idea, even if I should do more research on it.
In terms of wide scale implementation however it just scratches the surface of what can be done.
What I'm thinking, In a broad scale, is for there to be basically sub-governing bodies that are comprised of multiple smaller Cooperatives that elect representatives to do more large scale decision making in a form of congress.
Like lets say we have a couple of farmers Cooperatives in California or whatever, these organizations would jointly elect a representative for their corner of California, in a sort of big union meeting, who would meet up in LA or wherever to discuss matters such as political representation, expansion, and pool funds to aid worse off areas of the overall collective so that none of them are able to fall to a bigger capitalist organization or general bankruptcy.
Then this process can go a step further to encompass all of the united states, maybe even the world, and guarantee world wide workers rights by collectively lobbying across borders.
Something like that.

 

So like a City of London (the part of London metropolitan area that withstood british and viking control) comprised entirely of co-ops?
 

 

[FoolOfWorms]

On 12/16/2021 at 6:34 PM, kerdios said:

So like a City of London (the part of London metropolitan area that withstood british and viking control) comprised entirely of co-ops?
 

 

Honestly yeah that sounds about right, maybe without the whole mayoral election business to cut down on how byzantine it seems, even if a figurehead would do well for advertisement.

[Mira]

On 12/16/2021 at 3:17 AM, FoolOfWorms said:

Would people who have been at the company longest, or people who are considered indispensable due to their expertise have a greater value for their vote? Should there be a new hire period where a person can't vote unless they've been with the company for a certain amount of time?

I find this whole idea very sympathetic but this specific problem could really break it, I fear. You probably wouldn't want to hand out voting rights to employees who are still in a "preliminary period" when it's unlikely if they'll stay with the company long enough to even see the effect of their votes, but then that might incentivize the higher-ups to fire employees before said preliminary time is over (in my own country, the law says that when companies hire people for a temporary year-long contract, it can only be extended for one other year beyond that before the company is obligated to hire them for an indefinite time; while sympathetic on paper, this has led to companies simply letting people go after two years and hiring new employees to start the process over again).

Similarly, would "independent" contractors and freelancers hired by the company have a right to vote? If not, wouldn't that incentivize certain companies to do away with their officially registered employees as much as possible in order to re-hire them as or replace them with gig workers?

[kerdios]

On 12/21/2021 at 10:29 AM, Mira said:

I find this whole idea very sympathetic but this specific problem could really break it, I fear. You probably wouldn't want to hand out voting rights to employees who are still in a "preliminary period" when it's unlikely if they'll stay with the company long enough to even see the effect of their votes, but then that might incentivize the higher-ups to fire employees before said preliminary time is over (in my own country, the law says that when companies hire people for a temporary year-long contract, it can only be extended for one other year beyond that before the company is obligated to hire them for an indefinite time; while sympathetic on paper, this has led to companies simply letting people go after two years and hiring new employees to start the process over again).

Similarly, would "independent" contractors and freelancers hired by the company have a right to vote? If not, wouldn't that incentivize certain companies to do away with their officially registered employees as much as possible in order to re-hire them as or replace them with gig workers?

Here we have something similar, and instead of hiring new people they dissolve the company, reopen it under a new name and rehire all of the original employees (who want to because they usually can't find something better) with their seniority payment reset to 0.

[FoolOfWorms]

On 12/21/2021 at 3:29 AM, Mira said:

I find this whole idea very sympathetic but this specific problem could really break it, I fear. You probably wouldn't want to hand out voting rights to employees who are still in a "preliminary period" when it's unlikely if they'll stay with the company long enough to even see the effect of their votes, but then that might incentivize the higher-ups to fire employees before said preliminary time is over (in my own country, the law says that when companies hire people for a temporary year-long contract, it can only be extended for one other year beyond that before the company is obligated to hire them for an indefinite time; while sympathetic on paper, this has led to companies simply letting people go after two years and hiring new employees to start the process over again).

Similarly, would "independent" contractors and freelancers hired by the company have a right to vote? If not, wouldn't that incentivize certain companies to do away with their officially registered employees as much as possible in order to re-hire them as or replace them with gig workers?

It is absolutely a difficult thing to manage and is probably the biggest hurdle to overcome in the short term. We absolutely cannot assume moral agents here since it will be inevitable they will have to leave as some point, and preferable sooner than later ironically, if this is to be in its most ideal form.
One way to deal with in off the top of my head is a contractual obligation not to fire someone before their preliminary term comes up, which could lead to legal action against the cooperation if they fail to own up to it. This however has obvious flaws. Say the people currently working the cooperation, in a bid to secure their position, change the word of the contract allowing for the above to take place anyways under a loophole they can abuse, hiding this reality from the workers through short term benefits that allowed them to take power to make this change in the first place.
Granted if this did occur, then the workers could very openly oppose the current regime and try to get them to leave sooner through a vote of no confidence, essentially impeaching the the offending party. Though, again this could be solved through the very same method you proposed as well, simply firing the dissenters and going back to good ol' America union busting if they try to strike against you.

another way to do it is to have a workers value, at least initially, be determined by fellow employees, rather than by a management position who is mostly concerned with resource distribution rather than camaraderie among the employees. This also has a very big flaw though in the form of bias and discrimination. It will be a lot easier to ostracize outsiders and minorities from the cooperation when there is no single individual to lay blame upon from discrimination sadly. Group think and mob mentality could run rampant and could be very easy to manipulate.
A form of weighted compromise between the two might work? when the management or human resource position could have final say over the opinions voiced by fellow employees? This could lead to a lot of bureaucratic issues and doesn't really get rid of the group think problem since a sufficiently bias work force might have enough pressure against the manager and human resource manager to enforce a bias anyways, but you could argue that at least in that situation there would be an individual culpable of blame and legal responsibility. This would also still have the prior stated obfuscation problem, which is becoming its own issue I realize, which you could possibly, ideally, be able to deal with by having the workers capable of calling a vote en masse to have a sort of citizen trial determining the value of those in highest management and their laws, but this, in of it self could be abused, though I dont see that becoming a problem unless the system has become so complex and byzantine that is wouldn't be inaccurate to call it an independent nation to itself, which would require more changes and considerations than just this comparatively little caveat used as a last resort.

Sorry for  the walls of text, this is something I am legitimately thinking about.
Independent contractors though

[FoolOfWorms]

Ok so here is the thing with independent contractors. it is impossible to really determine in this situation whether or not an independent contractor is really "independent", which means an independent contractor could theoretically be a bunch of "shell employees" designed to weight the voting rights of the cooperation in full favor of a foreign corporation that does not have the greater interest of the cooperation in mind and will use it an another branch of the greater conglomerate, if not simply attempt to absorb them into it anyways. In order to fight against this you would either need to not let independent contractors vote, which leads to the issue you stated

On 12/21/2021 at 3:29 AM, Mira said:

I find this If not, wouldn't that incentivize certain companies to do away with their officially registered employees as much as possible in order to re-hire them as or replace them with gig workers?

OR, hire private investigators whos job it is to research and background check the employment history of the independent contractor to determine whether or not they can be trusted as a true independent as part of their contract, which im not sure in of itself is legal or moral frankly, but might be necessary? I really dont know, we're getting into real big hypothetical.

[BTGBullseye]

Sounds kinda like you're thinking of a republic of cooperatives... That was kinda the idea of the USA to begin with, but you see how that turned out.

 

The problem is that humans were never designed to be in large communities without conflict. The largest viable community size that humans are able to cooperate cohesively in is around 2000. (most work better down in the <200 range) This is basic human nature. If there are too many humans around, someone will ALWAYS try and impose their will on all the rest, sometimes even proclaiming it to be "for their own good". Sometimes they really are trying to help people, sometimes not, but it always ends up leaving minorities trampled on.

 

Essentially what I'm getting at is, this stuff sounds great on paper, but can't work in reality because it's got humans involved.

Edited December 31, 2021 by BTGBullseye (see edit history)

[FoolOfWorms]

On 12/31/2021 at 1:31 AM, BTGBullseye said:

Essentially what I'm getting at is, this stuff sounds great on paper, but can't work in reality because it's got humans involved.

Not to sound rude but I hate that answer so god damn much, because its such a non answer. we went to the god damn moon on a rocket ship but having a large scale society that doesn't suck is too hard because "human nature just be like that". I feel like that's just a massive excuse not to do anything or try to dream big.

At the risk of sounding like I'm saying "I know they failed but I'm different" I'm going to go out there and say the vast majority of the time the reason why is seems like only a handful of governing systems work is because experimenting is hard and dangerous for everyone involved, not because there isn't something better. You can't just declare you podunk town independent and start establishing rules unique to it, people will get nervous about if they'll get fed, and the surrounding governments will either get pissed or greedy if you somehow succeed. Thats half of the reason why a system like this hasn't worked right there. The other half is because of technology and resources. You wanna know the difference between articles of confederation America and now? Mass production, general education, Massive logistics keeping computers, the ability to have roughly 5% of the population dedicated to farming rather than 70% like we used to.
Also I have to say citation needed on the republic of cooperatives in the first place because I have to doubt that early America was ran by cooperatives instead of landowners and contemporary corporations ran by stock holders or a handful of individuals like the CEO and their cousin rather than the whole workforce with board members elected through democratic practices. My biggest source of doubt on that claim is that well over half of the people who were in politics at the time were slave owners, which isnt really telling me they cared about listening to their workforce much if they didnt have to.

Edited December 31, 2021 by FoolOfWorms (see edit history)

[BTGBullseye]

On 12/31/2021 at 1:46 AM, FoolOfWorms said:

Not to sound rude but I hate that answer so god damn much, because its such a non answer.

And yet it is the most accurate answer to why things don't work at large scale in governances.

On 12/31/2021 at 1:46 AM, FoolOfWorms said:

we went to the god damn moon on a rocket ship but having a large scale society that doesn't suck is too hard because "human nature just be like that". I feel like that's just a massive excuse not to do anything or try to dream big.

Going to the moon is great, but is nowhere near as complex as governing hundreds of millions of people for a prolonged time. Going to the moon only required the dedication of a few thousand for a few years, not millions forever.

On 12/31/2021 at 1:46 AM, FoolOfWorms said:

Also I have to say citation needed on the republic of cooperatives in the first place because I have to doubt that early America was ran by cooperatives instead of landowners and contemporary corporations ran by stock holders or a handful of individuals like the CEO and their cousin rather than the whole workforce with board members elected through democratic practices. My biggest source of doubt on that claim is that well over half of the people who were in politics at the time were slave owners, which isnt really telling me they cared about listening to their workforce much if they didnt have to.

Since when were we talking exclusively about things that have previously existed as a government in the USA?

[FoolOfWorms]

On 1/10/2022 at 9:55 AM, BTGBullseye said:

Since when were we talking exclusively about things that have previously existed as a government in the USA?

Since you brought it up in your post?

On 12/31/2021 at 1:31 AM, BTGBullseye said:

Sounds kinda like you're thinking of a republic of cooperatives... That was kinda the idea of the USA to begin with, but you see how that turned out.

ok look m8, imma be honest with you, you really arent contributing to this conversation constructively. You aren't saying anything or providing resources that can be debated you are just saying you're right because X reason which isn't even true.
My logic is that you can apply a democratic/republic model onto cooperatives and corporations but you seem to thing I want total anarchy or something. Your point about a cooperative community size is a non-sequitur that I think its probably born from semantics rather than actually reading the context of the conversation we are having.
I WANT people to be leaders and to take charge and do things on behalf of others because I don't think everyone is willing and able to be experienced enough to make political and financial decisions as well thought out as every single one of their piers since thats fucking exhausting. not everyone wants to be a leader and bear the weight of the world on their shoulders, and not everyone has the energy to have an opinion on every little thing that goes on in their community. I just want the CEO/Board of Directors to be elected in the workplace rather than not like we are now, but I'm not asking for complete community cohesion.

You seem to think I want an anarchic state of some sort, which has its own success stories in a way but is mostly unrelated to the topic at hand.

[BTGBullseye]

On 1/10/2022 at 8:43 AM, FoolOfWorms said:

Since you brought it up in your post?

Can't you handle a side note in the same paragraph without blowing it up into an argument?

[FoolOfWorms]

On 1/10/2022 at 3:08 PM, BTGBullseye said:

Can't you handle a side note in the same paragraph without blowing it up into an argument?

You barely had an argument to begin with.

[rairii]

On 1/10/2022 at 9:55 AM, BTGBullseye said:

Going to the moon is great, but is nowhere near as complex as governing hundreds of millions of people for a prolonged time. Going to the moon only required the dedication of a few thousand for a few years, not millions forever.

Which is why you're here arguing for or against the efficacy of different systems of governance instead of explaining all of the complexities of engineering and mathematics that went in to the moon landing, right?

At the end of the day you're a layman, which makes comments like this all the more embarrassing:

On 1/10/2022 at 9:55 AM, BTGBullseye said:

And yet it is the most accurate answer to why things don't work at large scale in governances.

It's not an answer, it's a dismissal. If you want to explain why a political system wouldn't work you need to explain why in detail. First of all, all I can extrapolate from "it's got humans involved" that you believe there's some inherent tendencies people have that are fundamentally incompatible with certain systems of governance which is conjecture at best and essentialism at worst. Second, even granting you that notion, it's not enough to stop at "this fails when humans get involved", you need to be able to explain in detail why that is the case, what element of human behavior is incompatible with x system and why does it cause this system to fail? Selfishness? Again, conjecture at best and essentialism at worst. You'd be correct in saying that human behavior is very unpredictable in ways which may cause certain systems to failure but that's literally what political and social science is for, and in this respect, again, you're a layman. You're not the right voice to make a judgement call on what systems are or aren't doomed to fail.

[BTGBullseye]

On 2/14/2022 at 12:51 PM, Riles said:

At the end of the day you're a layman

At the end of the day, everyone is in this respect. Even professionals have these same troubles determining what will and won't work, and they are the ones that are saying "it can't work because humans". It's such a huge dynamic variable conglomeration that there literally is no better way to put it, short of writing several hundred books worth of information that the vast majority of humans already inherently know due to being a living human.

On 2/14/2022 at 12:51 PM, Riles said:

If you want to explain why a political system wouldn't work you need to explain why in detail.

Why? It's not like typing out several hundred post's worth of info is going to actually going to change anything, or convince people of anything they already very vocally disagree with, especially on a subforum of a forum populated solely by fans of a youtube video series' creator.

 

None of us have any hope of actually changing anything, though I will be trying in the next couple years. (running for US President in 2024, barring medical issues or a seriously good candidate being in the running)

Edited February 15, 2022 by BTGBullseye (see edit history)

[rairii]

On 2/15/2022 at 8:28 AM, BTGBullseye said:

At the end of the day, everyone is in this respect. Even professionals have these same troubles determining what will and won't work, and they are the ones that are saying "it can't work because humans". It's such a huge dynamic variable conglomeration that there literally is no better way to put it, short of writing several hundred books worth of information that the vast majority of humans already inherently know due to being a living human.

The point of pointing out you're a layman is to highlight you have no clue how the complexities of a moon landing compare to the complexities of social sciences. Feel free to try to prove me wrong on that. Also, "professional" and "layman" are definitionally mutually exclusive.

On 2/15/2022 at 8:28 AM, BTGBullseye said:

Why? It's not like typing out several hundred post's worth of info is going to actually going to change anything, or convince people of anything they already very vocally disagree with, especially on a subforum of a forum populated solely by fans of a youtube video series' creator.

Sorry if I was mistaken but I was assuming your participation in this topic indicated that you at least had some intention of constructing sound arguments instead of just sharing conjecture. Worth keeping in mind that you don't need to type out a several hundred page essay to make a decent point by the way.

On 2/15/2022 at 8:28 AM, BTGBullseye said:

None of us have any hope of actually changing anything, though I will be trying in the next couple years. (running for US President in 2024, barring medical issues or a seriously good candidate being in the running)

Truly a nightmare scenario.

[Im_CIA]

Riley and BTG are at it again?
At last, spring has returns to the Serengeti