Antifa

[GodsGrace]

I would like more collective (worker, not state) ownership of work places, and would prefer a more democraticly elected system of company management instead of CFO/CEO structures. This is beyond the scope sole proprietary.

My stance is that people should have more control of large organizations to reduce alienation. Im not saying that companies should be forced by the fed to adopt this model however. This should be a decision made by the people who work in the said conditons.

OK. But who would be in charge?

 

[Milk-Drops]

OK. But who would be in charge?

Of a workplace? The people who work there. Possibly a democraticly elected representative to head the company.

 

[GodsGrace]

Of a workplace? The people who work there. Possibly a democraticly elected representative to head the company.

All the people cannot be in charge.
It would last a week if all went well.

A democratically elected rep would end up being like a CEO which you don't like.

CEO's work with a board of directors --- but there's always one that has more power.
I think I'm older than you Milk-Drops....I don't know of any system that is fool-proof.

I've come to the conclusion that capitalism is the best system --- even with all its downfalls.
But let's not change the subject....

 

[JLB]

I think we should all pray fervently for Biden's good health....
Look at his replacement....

It’s not so much Biden or even his replacement that concerns most Americans, but the people who are pulling their strings.




JLB

 

[daninthelionsden]

Mexicans are technically Americans too. I mean, they live in what we call North America.

Are you American?

Can a Texan truly be an American if they are always threatening to secede from the Union?

I confronted a Texas politician on Parler (pre-ban) and said he was only touting secession in order to be free of those pesky constitutional protections regarding workers/disabled or anyone else they label undesirables.

 

[daninthelionsden]

I think we should all pray fervently for Biden's good health....
Look at his replacement....

Yep. You see what's coming.

 

[daninthelionsden]

It’s not so much Biden or even his replacement that concerns most Americans, but the people who are pulling their strings.




JLB

Absolutely!

 

[Milk-Drops]

All the people cannot be in charge.
It would last a week if all went well.

Worker cooperatives already exist throughout the US and Europe and are quite healthy.

A democratically elected rep would end up being like a CEO which you don't like.

What i don't like about CEOs is not that they are CEOs, but how CEOs are assigned and who their loyalty is focused.

CEO's work with a board of directors --- but there's always one that has more power.
I think I'm older than you Milk-Drops....I don't know of any system that is fool-proof.

I di think I am younger. I dont hold that any sytem is full proof. I just hold that systems should have as much responsibility and control to the people that are effected and work for it.

I've come to the conclusion that capitalism is the best system --- even with all its downfalls.
But let's not change the subject....

I agree that capitalism is a very robust system. I want to take the best part of it and continue to grow as humanity.

 

[stovebolts]

Was it not the Lord who said think not that I come to bring peace, but rather division. As the sheep are divided from the goats, as the tare matures before the wheat; how do you suppose those divisions would occur?

I believe the division which occurs is a natural division between those who seek Gods will and those who actively defy it.

 

[stovebolts]

Of a workplace? The people who work there. Possibly a democraticly elected representative to head the company.

Ohh, you mean kinda like a Union.

 

[Milk-Drops]

Ohh, you mean kinda like a Union.

Basicly, combined with partial ownership. The point would be to give everyone a vested interest in the success of the company or venture.

 

[WIP]

Basicly, combined with partial ownership. The point would be to give everyone a vested interest in the success of the company or venture.

Just buy company stock and you have a vested interest.

People are often misguided in thinking that having partial ownership gives them some kind of managerial control. I could talk with a broker and purchase shares in 3M but that would not give me any control of the company. It would just give me a partial ownership. If you think obtaining partial ownership of a company gives you some kind of administrative power, you're mistaken. That's not how it works.

Even in our company, being 100% employee owned, we employees didn't have managerial control. There is still a chain of command, as it were, such as a board of directors, CEO, department directors, department managers, and so forth. I could be fired just like any other employee.

One big difference that I found in our situation was that since we employees owned the company as a trust and our managers were also employee-owners, we had regular quarterly meetings to share company progress. The goal was transparency by keeping all employee-owners abreast of company financial statuses, goals, marketing strategies, etc. It was almost like a quarterly share-holder's meeting. The idea was to bring employees into the ownership mindset so that by better understanding our stake in the company we would increase productivity and it was effective.

Prior to forming the trust and buying the company we still had something at stake. The company provided profit sharing so we could get a kickback when yearly profits exceeded a certain level. The goal was to give us incentive to be more profitable and to add to our retirement accounts. It was that profit sharing account that I was able to invest to help buy the company.

 

[stovebolts]

Basicly, combined with partial ownership. The point would be to give everyone a vested interest in the success of the company or venture.

The corporation I work for has profit sharing, which is ample interest for the success of the company. They also have many career opportunities so one doesn’t get stuck doing something that they have little to no interest in. We have the tools to do our jobs and the freedom to venture out of the box. Actually, we are driven to innovate and are rewarded for being creative. Most employees of the company averaged almost $10 k in profit sharing last year alone. In years past we received 18k.

 

[WIP]

I also think people are misguided into thinking they deserve partial ownership without any risk of investment and that it is somehow owed to them. That's something that is easily forgotten. As employees we receive our agreed upon compensation for the work we put into it but we don't have any other investment on the line.

When I started working for my last company in 1990, it was already well established with 450 employees. It goes without saying that our CEO probably received a somewhat lucrative salary plus he shared in the ownership of the company so if it is ever sold for a profitable sum, he would benefit that way too. But his situation didn't come easily. I was talking to our CEO one time about the history of our company and he shared some rather interesting details.

The company was started by his uncle in a garage. He liked to tinker with machining and managed to secure a sale of a small machine that he built in his garage. Soon after that he contacted our CEO and his brother to join him. Our CEO was an electrical engineer and his brother had a propensity for sales. They teamed up and soon had more orders. As time went on they outgrew their garage and moved into larger spaces a couple times before buying a piece of land to build a new facility.

All of this takes money and there were times when money was not so easy to come by. He told me about at least three situations when they didn't get paid for the machines they built. These were industrial packaging machines so they require a rather significant investment of cash to obtain parts, materials, buildings, labor, and other expenses to build them. Having invested so much money to build them it put them in dire straights with bills to pay, payroll, and other business costs. Not knowing whether they could keep the business alive they put up their homes as collateral to come up with the money to stay afloat. That's an extremely risky prospect for if that didn't work out, they would lose their homes. A businesses future is never guaranteed. He told me there were times when they didn't have much in the way of food and they struggled to make the bills.

You could say they were running on faith. Their faith in God played and continues to play a major role in their business ventures.

 

[WIP]

My ex-wife started a home-based business one time. She was a bit of an artist and in 1985 decided to buy a knitting machine for $450.00 and use her talents to create outdoor designs to knit into sweaters. It was a hand-operated machine so it required labor to operate. To simplify the business accounting and record-keeping she also purchased a an Apple IIe computer for about $400.00.

Using the machines we made sweaters in parts (front, back, sleeves, collar) and then sewed them together. To do that, we found a used antique Singer treadle sewing machine that we purchased for $150.00. My ex-wife didn't know how to sew with a machine but I had some experience so I helped her out sewing the parts together in the evenings after my work and weekends.

In addition to these expenses we also had to invest in materials like yarn, thread, bags for packaging, gasoline and meals for my wife's sales travels as she cold canvased outdoorsy retailers around the state of MN.

So far we had about $1,000.00 invested in machinery plus other costs. Doesn't sound like a lot but consider our situation at the time. I was working in the logging industry making the equivalent of about $5.00 per hour. My take-home pay was about $165.00 per week after withholdings. We had a $350.00 mortgage payment, our 2-year old son's hospital bills that hadn't been paid down yet, a student loan, a car loan, and regular living expenses. The investment was a huge risk for us.

With a lot of hard work and many hours committed, we managed to make it work. Over the four years we were in business, I quit my job to work full-time at the business, we purchased three other machines, hired four employees to run them, and eventually I dedicated my time to managing the day-to-day production, packaging, and shipping while my wife took care of sales, accounting, and bookkeeping. We worked well as a team until she decided to jump over the fence to greener pastures so-to-speak. That's not a happy memory so we'll just stop here.

My current wife also decided to try her hand at owning a business in 2000. She and two other partners bought a bar/restaurant. When they were looking at it, they were told by the authorities that some updates would be required to meet current code but they would have up to 6 years to comply. So they were excited to be getting things under way.

About 6 weeks after they opened, they were visited by the state health inspector, a new inspector, and he changed the rules giving them 6 months to comply. Suddenly they had a huge investment to make that they were not prepared for in order to stay in business. It nearly ended their aspirations before they could even get started. One of the partners pulled out asking for her investment back and the other partner gave up his ownership but allowed her to keep his investment but rewrote it as a loan. My wife was left to run it herself. She managed to get another investor that allowed her to pay it back without interest and used credit cards to finance the updates that were needed so you can bet with those interest rates, that was not cheap and that increased pressure even more.

We had just bought a home computer so I helped out by setting things up and managing the accounting and bookkeeping for her. I kid you not, she couldn't afford to hire too many employees so my wife typically worked Monday - Saturday from about 10:00am until about 2:00 the next morning. For the first three years she never made it into the black (profitable). Everything she made was reinvested into running the business and paying down business debt. I remember during her fourth year in business congratulating her when she actually got into the black one month. It was a milestone showing things were moving in the right direction, albeit, very slowly.

Unfortunately, the company I worked for made some changes that required me to go back on the road in field service and my wife made the decision to sell the business because she felt it would be too hard to manage the business that was demanding so much of her time when we had two grade school girls at home. There wasn't enough profitability to justify me quitting my job and working with her full-time either.

The point is, starting a business is not easy and takes a huge investment in money, stress, and time on the part of the owners, often times with little or no pay until possibly years later. When employees think they deserve a piece of the pie without the investment, it sounds a bit like entitlement to me.

 

[Milk-Drops]

The corporation I work for has profit sharing, which is ample interest for the success of the company. They also have many career opportunities so one doesn’t get stuck doing something that they have little to no interest in. We have the tools to do our jobs and the freedom to venture out of the box. Actually, we are driven to innovate and are rewarded for being creative. Most employees of the company averaged almost $10 k in profit sharing last year alone. In years past we received 18k.

Thats pretty good. My company has weathered the pandemic pretty well, and the benefits are great. I am just advocating for more options in the market.

 

[GodsGrace]

Worker cooperatives already exist throughout the US and Europe and are quite healthy.


What i don't like about CEOs is not that they are CEOs, but how CEOs are assigned and who their loyalty is focused.


I di think I am younger. I dont hold that any sytem is full proof. I just hold that systems should have as much responsibility and control to the people that are effected and work for it.


I agree that capitalism is a very robust system. I want to take the best part of it and continue to grow as humanity.

Well, can't disagree with that!
The only problem as I see it is that we do not learn.
Our human nature seems unable to change.
Every generation makes the same mistakes over and over.
Children do not learn from their parents...
they must hit their nose against the wall in order to learn.

I'd like to grow as humans too -
I think we're better than hundreds of years ago...
Maybe there's hope!

 

[Milk-Drops]

Just buy company stock and you have a vested interest.

That is not always a viable option. I understand it and do have shares in the company I work for, but that also required my company being publicly tradable.

[Quite]People are often misguided in thinking that having partial ownership gives them some kind of managerial control. I could talk with a broker and purchase shares in 3M but that would not give me any control of the company. It would just give me a partial ownership. If you think obtaining partial ownership of a company gives you some kind of administrative power, you're mistaken. That's not how it works.[/quote] Yes, I 7nderstand where you are comming from, but you are comming from and investment vs managerial point of view. The position i hold is that people should have both partial ownership and democratic control of their work place.

Even in our company, being 100% employee owned, we employees didn't have managerial control. There is still a chain of command, as it were, such as a board of directors, CEO, department directors, department managers, and so forth. I could be fired just like any other employee.

Yes, that is why I stand with the combination of both ownership and democratic control.

One big difference that I found in our situation was that since we employees owned the company as a trust and our managers were also employee-owners, we had regular quarterly meetings to share company progress. The goal was transparency by keeping all employee-owners abreast of company financial statuses, goals, marketing strategies, etc. It was almost like a quarterly share-holder's meeting. The idea was to bring employees into the ownership mindset so that by better understanding our stake in the company we would increase productivity and it was effective.

That is great and I definately see that a step 8n the right direction.

Prior to forming the trust and buying the company we still had something at stake. The company provided profit sharing so we could get a kickback when yearly profits exceeded a certain level. The goal was to give us incentive to be more profitable and to add to our retirement accounts. It was that profit sharing account that I was able to invest to help buy the company.

That is where I am at at my current work place. I am investing in shares, 401k, and other various benefits to aid in my future as well.
[/QUOTE]

Thank you for your insight

 

[daninthelionsden]

I confronted a Texas politician on Parler (pre-ban) and said he was only touting secession in order to be free of those pesky constitutional protections regarding workers/disabled or anyone else they label undesirables.

I meant to say I said he was only touting secession blah blah blah and not he said blah blah blah.