Just gathering one data point for my own brain. I know really good people who are doing everything right - but you could dock them for not having gone the co-op route. (Wonder if they had, if they could’ve extracted all profits until breaking even on their enormous capital investment, but that’s something I could research.)

I’m used to “eat the rich” ideas but wanted to dig into your comment to understand whether the little guys garner your ire. ‘cause, gosh, the particular little guys in mind are tiny. And wonderful in every way* *(minus the cooperative model, but inclusive of fair wages and excellent management, etc.).

My link went here.

[–] KepBen@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

"is this specific example a good person" calculus doesn't really help anybody. Are they exploiting workers? Will they stop? End of question.

[–] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 months ago

Helped me - made it real!

They’re “exploiting” workers by not planning to evenly split profits once, years from now, they’ve hopefully made a return on their enormous capital investment.

I do not know whether the knowledge that they would not have to evenly split profits, but rather could pay a fair wage, was a necessary incentive for them to start their business. But I am curious. This is a copout line of thinking for say the Waltons. But again, it is real for me – I know this very small handful of people, their large investment, their respect for the triple bottom line.

Reflecting now, I’m comfortable judging them based on the obvious good decisions they’ve made. Respect for employees in treatment and pay, respect for customers and the environment - I would not readily accept failings there.

Not joining the 0.015% of small businesses who went the co-op route? Defensible. (Relying on the figure from the earlier commenter, and Statista 2020.)

btw I’ve generally yearned for UBI but now I’ll give more thought to forcing co-op structures and potential unintended consequences :)

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