| ▲ | embedding-shape 4 hours ago |
| Yeah, as long as you remove the "for-profit" part, it's essentially that. Once it's a for-profit business, it perverses the incentives, and it'll be a race to the bottom or a race to see what subscribers can survive the highest prices, which is exactly what we wanna avoid :) |
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| ▲ | ecshafer 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Non-profits don't really stop any of that. Plenty of non-profits are after perverse incentives to gather as much money as they can to just pay higher ups more money, and use the non-profit status to pay employees less. |
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| ▲ | TimTheTinker 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Maybe there's a third way. What about a company owned by a "perpetual purpose trust" - i.e. a trust with a defined purpose that is legally binding. It's the only shareholder, so no extracting value and all profits have to comply with the trust's bylaws in how they are used. Patagonia (US company) is one example of this; it's profits are legally bound to go toward environmental causes. Bosch and Zeiss in Germany are comparable - they are Verantwortungseigentum (Steward-Ownership). | | | |
| ▲ | embedding-shape 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Plenty of non-profits are after perverse incentives to gather as much money as they can to just pay higher ups more money Where is this specifically, in the US? Usually the laws of the country prevent this, since they're you know... Non-profits... But wouldn't surprise me there are a few leftover countries who refuse to join the modern world. | | |
| ▲ | ecshafer 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | The US has this problem. There aren't really rules on paying executives as much as you want, or having bonus structures based on fundraising, as long as the board okays it and considers it as contributing to the mission. It is non-profit because it doesn't pay out profits to investors. This is a large way corruption happens in the US, ie a lot of those "X politician foundations" pay modest amounts of money to some cause, but a large percentage of the donations go to the executive as a salary for running the corp, the executive is the politician. Its a big shell game. | | |
| ▲ | embedding-shape 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yeah, seemingly a local problem rather than a problem with non-profits, unfortunately :/ Hope things get better over there over time! |
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| ▲ | philipallstar 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| You just find the optimal point for the most people if it's for profit. |
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| ▲ | nerdponx 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I think that only holds if company ownership is not close with company leadership. Is a "subscriber owned" newspaper model possible? Like how co-op stores are at least nominally owned by their customers. I could also imagine a system in which a local newspaper was actually run as a public utility by an independent corporation, but explicitly chartered and subsidized by a town/city/county. | |
| ▲ | embedding-shape 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I doubt that's true in practice, although I know many capitalists know that to be true in theory. |
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