Richard Wolff's talk on worker coops

Defense of my arguments:Once more, quotes by my opponent will be italicized:First, a group of people should not be prevented from organizing any enterprise, in any form, and government force should not be used to promote or discourage any voluntary business form.I do completely agree with the second half of the statement. I don't believe it is the role of the government to prevent people from organizing a tradiitonal business, for example. And I don't believe Richard Wolff promoted this either. I would personally support a group of people choosing to forcefully make a business a worker coop, but I believe this is besides the point since we are discussing what Wolff said, and he didn't promote this idea in his speeches.1) Worker coops are democratic...especially enterprises based on one person's vision, democratic decision making framework will be an undermining force.I think this should be elaborated on and supported with logic and/or evidence, otherwise I don't see why this opinion should be accepted. ...just look at America's congress...Using Congress as an argument against democracy doesn't exactly work. In our country, certain people have more influence over our government than others. The wealthy elites have the most influence over our politicians' policy decisions, and I do have a source that supports this idea: this scientific study on the matter concluded that the average citizen has little to no influence over politics, while the wealthy elites have the most influence[9] In an actual democracy, everyone would have an equal voice. Groupthink leads to the least imaginative and safest option to be selected. This is an unsubstantiated claim. In fact, this statement, along many others in this round, would be ipse dixits[10]Although you made a claim without providing evidence, I could just leave it at this and point out that it is a weak argument since it is a logical fallacy, but instead, I will also provide evidence to the contrary of what you suggested here. In this peer-reviewed article by Ramon J. Aldag and Sally Riggs Fuller, their evaluation "...indicates that research does not provide convincing support for the validity of the groupthink phenomenon or for the suggestion that groupthink characteristics lead to negative outcomes".[11]RE: Mon dragon having a president makes it undemocraticActually, if you were to go to the mon dragon website(I can't link it here because I always have trouble linking any source with the word mon dragon in it) and go to Cooperative experience, then FAQ's, it explains under the question "what is the basic structure of the Mon dragon corporation?" that they have a congress. What business has a congress? This congress represents each of the cooperatives they have and the workers that work there. The CEO is elected by the congress. So, yes, modragon corporation doesn't have a direct democratic control of their business, but it is still democratic. If you look up the definition of democracy on wikipedia, it states that democracy is "a system of government in which the citizens exercise power directly or elect representatives from among themselves to form a governing body, such as a parliament."[12] By this definition, this would make mon dragon corporation a democracy, and thus a worker coop still. There is a difference between direct democracy and democracy in general. 2) Worker coops are morally superior to traditional businessesBusiness only has a few ideas to follow in order to be moral. These principles are don't lie, don't hurt people, don't take their stuff, and follow agreements. (emphasis added)And, as I would argue, workers are entitled to the product of their labor. A product of their labor is the growth of the business. Thus a portion of the business is rightfully theirs. A business owner "takes the workers' stuff" by not allowing the workers to share in ownership of the Re: Business owners are important because of the risk factorI'm not sure if you're quite getting it. Maybe if I clarify a little better, you'll know what I mean: there is no reason to have a sole business owner. In a worker coop, the business owners are the workers, and thus the people who are putting money at risk are the workers themselves. There is nothing that a sole business owner does that the workers themselves can't do. That's what makes the position of a sole business owner unnecessary. I do also agree with removing government regulations and requirements on businesses, by the way.Just suppose, that a group of people come together make a plan to be competitive. This plan includes, that the group will work for less than minimum wage, longer than legal hours, and in terrible possible dangerous conditions. Everyone in the group is in agreement and willing to execute under this plan. It has 100% support and is voluntary. Would you support this type of worker co-op?Yes, I would support that type of worker coop, I am personally opposed to minimum wage laws, maximum work hour laws, and business regulations. That is something many people may find odd about me since I'm a socialist. I'm just a socialist who opposes government involvement. That's what makes me a libertarian socialist: opposed to government, but supportive of democratic economics such as cooperative individualism. I also wouldn't mind a form of syndicalism, provided there is little to no government involved. At any rate, I would like to point out that I don't think it's possible to limit the workers down to below minimum wage(assuming there is a minimum wage, again, I would personally prefer not to have one). Again, with a worker coop, you don't have a single business owner at the top taking a percentage of the profits, so that would be split among the workers. Their wages would naturally be higher than normal businesses. The only way they would have a wage below minimum wage is if they employed many more workers than they need and thus the amount of profits each worker gets is so divided up and low, and/or if they way overpaid any managers they decided to have. Worker coops can still have managers, though they would be voted in by the workers or representatives of the workers. It just seems unlikely that they would have low wages. I suppose it's possible though, and I see nothing wrong with it if the workers choose to have that low of a wage. I only see problems when wages are low when it's someone other than the workers forcing their wages to be low. Sources:[9] https://scholar.princeton.edu... [10] https://en.wikipedia.org...[11] http://s3.amazonaws.com... [12] https://en.wikipedia.org...