Cooperative/socialist businesses(pro) versus Traditional/capitalist Businesses(con)

2. My intent wasn't to specify a type of cooperative I was talking about, but I was going for a general idea. However, now that you mentioned that producer co-ops are worker-owned, maybe I still didn't even fully understand what the term cooperative means. Doesn't it already mean it is worker-owned, since it's democratically controlled and jointly-owned? I thought that was the definition of a co-op, or at least how I understoodd it. That's the definition I provided in the first round, and it seems to imply that. Are you saying there are other companies that aren't worker-owned that claim to be coops? I think this should be discussed in the comments on this debate so that we don't waste debate space on this. Rebuttals to con's points:Quotes from con's argument will be italicized and I will respond accordingly. Moralityrestricting a persons opportunity to achieve their best for what they do is unjust. If I work harder then my co-worker, I deserve more money then he. It is my dueI don't see how this is a problem with coops, you didn't explain how a coop limits the amount of money you earn. Co-ops controlled by the worker is giving the worker jurisdiction in matters that he does not deserve to control. A group of workers that are lazy or un-knowledgeable could reduce or eliminate work incentives, or destroy the company. Then the majority of workers could vote to have them fired. People are still fired and let go in cooperatives. It's not like they are going to stay. And if majority of the people in the coop are lazy or un-knowledgeable, then that coop will probably fail, but since 80% of coops survive the first 5 years in business(see previous round for source), I don't think this is the case. The only way a Producer Co-op can work is through having an executive area. As with any executive area, they can become corrupt and bend the pay rules into his/her favor. And how does this not happen with capitalist companies? The business owner can make pay rules in his/her favor, with a cooperative, instead of one person doing it, the majority has to agree to it. And no, there doesn't necessarily need to be an excetuive with coops, I challenge that claim and you need to offer evidence. At any rate, tt's better that majority of the workers are consenting to someone having "unfair" pay than no one else consenting to it when the business owner does it. Also when a person chooses an employer they can quit to join that employers competitor.Explain to me how that is feasible. Anyone who has applied for jobs should know that it takes many applications to different places before one even graces you with an interview, this has been my experience at least. The chances are not high that the competitor will hire you, and there's no guarantee the competitor is offering a better wage anyways. Wages can only be so high in order for the company to make a reasonable profit, if you still disagree with the wages when all companies are offering the maximum wages they can in order to make a profit still, then you're forced to settle. However, cooperatives make it so that the cap on maximum wage goes up because there is no business owner taking a percent of the profits, so instead of settling for the lower wage that capitalist businesses offer, you could have a higher wage from cooperatives. Also, workers can unionize for better conditions.Unions can also only do so much. Again, as I said above, if the company is already offering employees a maximum wage possible in order to still have a reasonable amount of profit in the end, then the union can't possibly negotiate with the business owner for a better wage for the workers. A cooperative would get rid of the business owner who is taking some of the profits, and it would then go to the workers who would now make more because of the business owner being gone.Co-ops do not give each their due while a traditional business does.I believe I already refuted this with my previous points Co-ops are more corruptible then traditional business.How is it more corruptible to try to corrupt majority of workers of a cooperative, than a single business owner? That doesn't make any sense. Remember: every worker has a vote in a cooperative for what the business does. It's easier to corrupt one person(the business owner) than it is majority of the workers of a single company. That could be dozens of workers we are talking about(and it often is dozens of workers with cooperatives as I pointed out before, whereas capitalist businesses tend to be smaller in employment size)Co-ops [do not] harm the national economy. When you distribute profit evenly across a company you disable opportunities for new company creation.This doesn't necessarily happen in a cooperative. Some workers can be paid more than others in a co-op. This seems to be a strawman since I was never advocating for every worker to be paid the same, and I'm actually opposed to the idea. This is why the United States, the home of capitalism, has the highest GDP by far(13.77 Trillion), while sudo-communist China only has 9.24 trillion GDP despite having almost three times the population. Actually, a huge majority of the US's GDP growth happened since 1970(we didn't even have 1 trillion dollars of GDP prior to that) [10] and that was long after we gave up on pure capitalism. The United States has had a mixed economy ever since the great depression; we never saw such growth while we were purely capitalist, and no country has. Every country has a mixed economy of some sort; as you can see, no country ranks a perfect "10" in economic freedom [11] which would be what pure capitalism is. What I said here seems to refute everything you've said for this part, so I shall move on The effect of a failed co-op are [not] felt even more by the nation.In a traditional business economy, business have a low success rate. This is a good thing. In a capitalist society which businesses survive and those that don't are decided by the consumers.This means that the ones that do survive are custom made for the consumers buying the products at the end of the day.This applies to coops too. If no one is buying the goods of a specific coop, then that coop will probably fail. How exactly would a coop who no one is buying things from survive? What you said seems to imply that this idea only applies to traditional businesses, but you didn't explain why it doesn't apply to coops. In a co-op the initial invests are the workers, and when a co-op does fail the effects are more dramatic. Instead of just one bad financial year, former workers not only do not have a job any longer, but have lost any savings they have built up throughout their lifetimes.But does this happen in reality? You should provide factual examples of this, otherwise the argument all seems theoretical. I could offer a theory of my own: since the workers are the ones who are now earning the money that the capitalist would have been taking, they all have more money. They could, theoretically, each pull together and offer a certain amount of capital they own to keep the business afloat. Instead of just one rich guy doing it and offering a substantial amount of money, it is now a whole bunch of middle-class workers offering a smaller sum of money individually, but enough that could easily be enough to pay for the damages. Since cooperatives tend not to fail, as I've shown before, it would seem to indicate my line of thinking might be correct, or that there is at least correlation between this theory and the fact that cooperatives tend not to fail. As for the Spanish government offering support to Mon dragon cooperatives, this could easily be because they are worried that a big business would fail. I mean, the United States government often helps big businesses too(I'm sure I don't need to offer a source about the stimulis bills and other ways the US government helped big traditional businesses along, this should be common knowledge since we all lived through it, unless you're under 10, in which case you shouldn't be on this site anyways), so either way, tax payer dollars are being used to help out a big business if you have crony capitalism, or I guess, if we have an economy of cooperatives where success of them depends on government assistance, it would be crony socialism. This doesn't seem to be a problem unique to cooperatives, since a large traditional business also takes tax payer dollars, so this seems like a pointless argument to bring up since large traditional businesses are supported by the government too. Unless even small cooperatives are being sent tax-payer money, this point that con brought up seems to be refuted now. Your first through third impacts at the bottom you listed are refuted by what I said in the above paragraph.Impacts:1) Capitalist businesses cause workers to be paid less than they could be paid if there was no business owner, as proved by how wages remained high in coops in my second round main argument, and what I discussed earler in this argument.2) "Too big to fail" businesses seems to apply to both cooperatives and traditional businesses, so this is an impact my opponent can also use, but this impact would cancel out theirs if they name it, and vice versa3) The capitalist business model makes it that a person who wasn't chosen democratically is in a position of power, one that determines whether you will be paid and given a means by which you can survive. I consider this position of power more important than government leaders, since this one literally chooses whether or not you will be able to feed yourself at night. Yet, we make political leaders, who don't make the choice whether you eat at night, democratically elected, but traditional business owners are not... seems odd. Bottom line, the value of democracy that we hold is violated by having traditional businesses.Sources:[10] http://www.tradingeconomics.com...;[11] https://en.wikipedia.org...;