| The article mentions it, but don’t insist on it. Duralex is now quite a special company: they were a renowned and beloved brand that was heading toward bankruptcy, until last year when the company was bought by its own workers and turned into a cooperative. Since then, they have stayed afloat, probably thanks mainly to people wanting to support a worker-owned business by buying their glasses, but still, it works. It’s a pretty positive story so far, and I hope they’ll continue to thrive under this new structure. |
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| ▲ | griffzhowl 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They did survive. There are thousands in Spain and Italy especially. One of the most well-known is the Mondragon Corporation from the Basque country, one of Spain's largest comanies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation | | |
| ▲ | Cyph0n 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I am particularly interested in coops as a model for a tech startup. How would one go about structuring a new corporation to best ensure it remains a coop? | | |
| ▲ | nextos 21 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Igalia (https://www.igalia.com), also Spanish, is a fairly prominent tech company that is also a co-op. Galois, Inc. (https://www.galois.com) is employee-owned, and they do lots of great formal methods work. But not sure whether this model is appropriate for a startup. I guess splitting stock more evenly is a good starting point. | |
| ▲ | saxenaabhi 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Plenty of worker owned software consultancies in germany, and specially in Hamburg for some reason. From the site of one that I that I used to work for(they are very friendly so you can hit them up if you want some advice on setting up one) > How exactly are you structured? > In our search for a structure that consistently implements the principles of responsible ownership, we came across the veto-share model. First, the principles are enshrined in the company's articles of association. Then, company shares are transferred to a controlling shareholder. This controlling shareholder is granted veto rights, which must be used to prevent any future deviation from the principles. We are delighted to have the Purpose Foundation on board as our controlling shareholder! > We want to offer every (new) team member the long-term prospect of assuming entrepreneurial responsibility as a co-owner. The criteria for this are already defined in the articles of association. To simplify joining and leaving, we have established dyve Trust eGbR, a partnership that holds 99% of the voting rights in dyve. https://dyve.agency/warum-wir-es-tun | | | |
| ▲ | griffzhowl 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Look for successful models I guess https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tech-startup+cooperatives&ia=web | |
| ▲ | lo_zamoyski 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Mondragon is a federation of worker cooperatives. You sound like you might be interested in distributism [0][1][2][3][4]. The author, John Médaille, also spoke at Google [5]. [0] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-... [1] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-... [2] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-... [3] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-... [4] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-... [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1PtStipIsc | | |
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| ▲ | cess11 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Such companies are more common than you think. | |
| ▲ | KetoManx64 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The main they don't survive is not due to capitalism. (Capitalism is just trade without use of force at the end of the day) but due to the lobbying power of corporations. Corporations constantly lobby the government for more regulation and rules, which they just budget for, but smaller companies don't have the funds to meet so they cannot stay in business.
Look at the first couple of years of COVID for example, Walmart, Target and the big box stores lobbied the government to stay open because they were "essential" while all the small businesses got wiped out due to their lack of lobbying power. The solution is to stop giving corporations the ability to lobby governments, and stop using the government to control/fund markets. Not to blame it on capitalism. | | |
| ▲ | Aunche 36 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > the small businesses got wiped out due to their lack of lobbying power Small businesses have a lot if lobbying power (NFIB, US Chamber of Commerce to a certain extent) especially during the pandemic. The PPP loan forgiveness program was ridiculously generous. Despite it being marketed as a way to save jobs, only a third of the money ended up going towards jobs that were at risk. | | |
| ▲ | KetoManx64 6 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Those are good points, but it again shows how government getting involved does more harm than good.
The government forced the lockdowns instead of letting people make their decisions about their health, then they tries to aid the businesses they caused to suffer, and most of the money didn't end up where it was supposed to. So many examples of this over and over when you look at government involvement.
> The fantastic 7 tech companies, get billions of dollars from the government grants, tax breaks, business
> We have 4 ISP's that monopolize the market, due to the government giving them billions of dollars to expand infrastructure, which they misappropriated and then uses for lobbying against small ISP's
> The SNAP program subsidizes big companies like Walmart, target, etc due to them being able to eat the costs of all the massive regulatiom around it.
> etc. etc. etc. |
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| ▲ | powerclue 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | That's not what capitalism is... or it's a very elementary understanding of it. Trade without force existed prior to and contemporary to capitalism. (See markets and mercantilism for more history there.) Capitalism is specifically the sort of mercantilism under which maximizing one's capital (typically the money commodity) becomes the aim. Historically, money commodity was used to mediate exchange between two other commodities - I sell my wheat, get money, use money to buy pork. I'm buying commodities because I intend to use them or share them. Commodity -> money -> commodity. Capitalism inverts this -- the goal is to maximize money. I start with money, I convert it to a commodity that I can sell for a greater value, to get larger money. Money -> commodity -> money. You see Amazon operate this way: "if we can put one dollar in and get $1.01 out, do it". Highly recommend this book on the transition in England and France from agrarian and feudal mercantilism into capitalism in the 18th and 19th centuries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Capitalism | | |
| ▲ | skylurk an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Not sure about the currency vs commodity argument, but I agree with this argument linked article: > Thus it argues that the origin of capitalism lies fundamentally in social property relations rather than in trade and commerce. Capitalism is fundamentally a framework for ownership and property. | |
| ▲ | KetoManx64 39 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Thank you for that correction, I did oversimplify it. > Capitalism inverts this -- the goal is to maximize money. I start with money, I convert it to a commodity that I can sell for a greater value, to get larger money. Money -> commodity -> money. You see Amazon operate this way: "if we can put one dollar in and get $1.01 out, do it". Yes, that is correct and there is nothing wrong with this as long as there is no coercion happening (eg. Government involvement, lobbying and over regulation). Every person on earth should have the right to put in $1 into something and try to get $1.01 from it. You and I and every other individual get to then decide if we want to give that business owner that $1.01 or go to a competitor. In a truly free market, that business owner only earns that $1.01 profit by providing a good or service that voluntary customers value at more than the price they pay. The profit is the reward for creating value for others We currently live in a crony-capitalist world which has a lot of issues, but it's still much better than the 200m+ that have died under Marxism and Communism in the last 100 years. |
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| ▲ | mytailorisrich 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is a very strange take, like high school politics. Ultimately the only way to "change the entire market philosophy" for the result you suggest is called the USSR. That's how it ends and then it decays and collapses. As long as people have individual freedom, both in what they can buy and in what they can create companies which don't have products that people want and don't make a profit to survive and thrive will go under. It is strange amd concerning to read all this socialist ideology in 2025. I get it's not uncommon in young people as a "phase" but I think it's also because younger generations don't know what it means because they never saw it. | | |
| ▲ | anigbrowl 20 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | The whole article documents a product that people do want and like so much that they're willing to donate 4x what the owner-operators of the company asked for. It's odd to see you expressing disdain for 'high school politics' and 'because younger generations don't know' while also displaying such ignorance or disregard of the subject matter, like watching factual waves roll in and dash themselves on the rocks of obdurate opinion. | |
| ▲ | powerclue 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You realize there's an entire spectrum of socialist ideology between liberalism and authoritarian planned economies, yeah? It's not a Boolean, and it's not a slippery slope. We could have broadly liberal markets owned and run by the workers, and without the authoritarianism. | | |
| ▲ | mytailorisrich an hour ago | parent [-] | | This is a slippery slope... The comment I replied to is an example of that: specifically on this aspect, it doesn't really matter whether a company is owned and run by the workers (we can have thay today and we do), but if it operates in a free market then it has to compete. Wishing that there wasn't competition is the slippery slope that ends badly, always. Obviously mandating workers-ownership is authoritarian in itself. Socialism can indeed only ends one way and that is the removal of individual freedoms. | | |
| ▲ | anigbrowl 13 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Wishing that there wasn't competition is the slippery slope Nobody is doing that. The article specifically mentions pursuing opportunities in the export market. Obviously mandating workers-ownership is authoritarian in itself. The workers bought out the previous owners, presumably due to frustration with the firm having had 4 near-collapses in the last 20 years under the capitalistic management approach.Your objections seem conditioned rather than considered; did you actually think any of this through, or are just just reacting to concepts that make you uncomfortable while overlooking the facts? | |
| ▲ | shkkmo 37 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | > but if it operates in a free market then it has to compete There is no such thing as an actual "free market", nor should there be. Markets need rules to operate otherwise you get fraud and "unhealthy" competition like sabotage and assassinations. > Socialism can indeed only ends one way and that is the removal of individual freedoms. That's like saying that capitalism only ends one way and that is slavery. In reality, there is no inherently slippery slope in either direction. There is a spectrum of ways to aporoach market regulation and individual freedom with various tradeoffs. Blind partisan rhetoric like yours doesn't help uncover what those tradeoffs are so we can make good decisions. Instead it spreads ignorance and division. |
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