Cooperatives are better than traditional businesses

You see, you seem to be of the attitude that it's better to benefit a few people rather than the majority. Always remember, also, that if you make claims, you need to back them up. You claimed "The traditional business model is the single most effective way of raking in money for the investors." However, where is your evidence for this? Even if that is true, why should we want a few people to benefit from a business at a much greater value than the majority, hard-working workers? Workers are just as important as investors for a company, for without either, a company cannot exist. In a cooperative, the investors typically are the workers themselves. In a comparative study performed by Gabriel Burd"n and Andr"s Dean, where they looked into how cooperatives performed in the Uruguayan economic crisis between 1999-2001, it was found that Workers cooperatives employment index rose, while their capitalist counterparts fell in employment. [1, pg. 520] In addition to this, average wage remained higher in worker cooperatives than in capitalist businesses. [1, pg. 523] Next, I will point out that it is possible for worker cooperatives to be extremely successful and that they can turn over profit at a rate as good, or even often better than traditional businesses. Mon dragon Corporation is the largest cooperative in the world and "is the tenth-largest Spanish company in terms of asset turnover and the leading business group in the Basque Country." [2] Therefore, it is not the case that traditional businesses have a monopoly on profit turnover. Next you argued, "In a hierarchical structure, it is easier for the counter-productive members of the group to be purged. In a cooperative, everyone needs to be gathered together for every single decision. If they aren't, then someone is making more decisions than they should." However, I would argue it is the opposite. With cooperatives, the people you work with are the ones who will be letting you go or firing you. In a hierarchical structure, it is someone in a higher position. The person who is in a higher position, is not always around to see what a specific worker is doing, however, the workers are. Because of this, in a hierarchical structure, the manager or boss doesn't know which worker is slacking off, all they know is productivity is down because products are not being made at the same rate or something. Since the co-workers are there constantly and able to see whether someone is productive or not, whereas a manager or a company owner is not, it means they can more effectively reprimand or fire the person in a cooperative. When a person is working and knows their boss is watching, they will work harder than if they weren't watching. However, since in a cooperative, the people who can fire you are always around, that worker will always be working hard since they know their co-workers are able to see them work. In addition, "Two studies... find that on average overall firms can produce more with the technology of employee-owned firms. In other words, the way worker co-operatives organise production is more efficient. Fakhfakh et al (2012) show that in several industries conventional firms would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they adopted the employee-owned firms" way of organising production. In contrast, they find that worker co-operatives would always produce at least as much with their own technology as with conventional firms"[3] Therefore, there is likely no problem in cooperatives that some workers are less productive than others, since results show that cooperatives are as good or better than traditional businesses when it comes to productivity. Finally, I wish to ask, what right does someone have to subjugate workers beneath them, and then take a large percentage of the profits of a company the workers built up through their own hard work? What legitimizes this power the company owner has over the workers? I consider the burden of proof to be on the one claiming that such power is legitimate. Sources: [1] http://disjointedthinking.jeffhughes.ca... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org... dragon_Corporation#cite_note-AR2012-3 [3] http://www.uk.coop...