Even when I was living in a very liberal area, there were only a small handful of stores that advertised as worker co-ops. It’s funny too because those co-op stores were all incredibly popular and successful, so I don’t understand why they are so comparatively rare? The organizational structure seems simple to maintain, and has a high incentive for regular workers to go above and beyond since they directly benefit from the business being successful, so what’s the deal? I am speaking from a US centric view, so maybe things are different in Europe, but even with my limited knowledge I feel like they are relatively unpopular there too, but maybe not? I dunno.
It’s expensive to start a business. You’d need some seed money to start the thing for rent, products, salary and more. If a bunch of people go together, pool their money, sure they might get it to work, but they also share all the risk of failure. Also, who decides if there is conflict? Who has the final say? Not everything can be solved by compromise.
Damn. If only there were some method where a group of stakeholders could collectively invest their money into a corporation and make decisions. Maybe we could say each stakeholder has a share in the business and they could take shareholder votes to make decisions and maybe we could set up some sort of limited liability laws to determine who and what are liable for which things. Just a dream 🙄
Not to mention the regulatory environment in many places is custom tailored towards traditional corporations, leaving co-ops with often unclear regulatory standing or significant material disadvantages compared to corporations. In effect, the state makes it easier to start a single or few owner business than they do a worker owned collective.
Can you give examples of this?