If my family starts a restaurant and hires additional workers to, for example, help clean, bus tables, wait tables, and so on, I think it would be kinda weird to share the decision making between all employees. It makes more sense for employee owned corpos, but most small businesses have an owner or owners whose main job is steering the business.
It would only seem weird because you are used to it. Not because it is right.
The person “steering the business” should be in that position at the behest of the workers. If you can’t run a business literally by yourself, you should share power with the people hired to help as if you would a partner.
There is certainly a broad set of circumstances where businesses can share ownership between employees, but that does not mean there are not other circumstances where work is done purely in exchange for money, benefits, or both.
If you and 4 friends want to start a pizza shop, cool do it democratically. If I do a business selling a product all myself and every other Sunday I pay someone to come lick my stamps for an hour so I can spend time with my kids, that person is not an equal partner.
Edit: to be extra clear, democracy is based on the concept that people are all functionally equals in capability, information, and perspective. Basically that countrymen are homogenous. Inside a specialized enterprise of any kind (especially small ones) this need not be true.
Edit 2: or if that’s insufficient and all businesses must be democratic, then I necessarily must be allowed to hire based on whatever criteria I so choose. Work ethic, want to keep the company aligned with my interests, religion, ability, height, anything. That’s the only way to guarantee a homogeneous pool and may also be the democratic will of the group of people who begin the business.
Because I would expect people in democratic nations to value democracy and see it as worth exercising in business. This is in part as I see democracy as a formal way of referring to being open to discussion of opinions and ideas in organizing any group.
Why would you want to be part of any group that may reject open discussion of its organization?
In a democracy you vote on what happens with a shared resource that belongs to all of you, like a country. If a business has several owners they might steer it democratically, like a family business deciding together what to do. But if that business hires employees, the employees don’t vote, because it’s not their shared resource, so why would they have power to decide on it?
Of course that doesn’t preclude open discussion. Many businesses decide together with their employees, it’s just based on discussion and exchange of ideas, not on voting. Why would you hire an expert and then vote among employees instead of letting the expert decide on their area of expertise?
The fact is not everyone has an informed perspective and in business there are very good reasons to not give the entire staff access to finances or company secrets.
As not all employees have the same information then not all employees are going to be able to see that larger picture and thus not giving the guy with 5% of access to the picture the same say as the guy with 95% doesn’t make sense.
Why would you expect them to be?
If my family starts a restaurant and hires additional workers to, for example, help clean, bus tables, wait tables, and so on, I think it would be kinda weird to share the decision making between all employees. It makes more sense for employee owned corpos, but most small businesses have an owner or owners whose main job is steering the business.
It would only seem weird because you are used to it. Not because it is right.
The person “steering the business” should be in that position at the behest of the workers. If you can’t run a business literally by yourself, you should share power with the people hired to help as if you would a partner.
Yeah I just don’t agree with you.
There is certainly a broad set of circumstances where businesses can share ownership between employees, but that does not mean there are not other circumstances where work is done purely in exchange for money, benefits, or both.
If you and 4 friends want to start a pizza shop, cool do it democratically. If I do a business selling a product all myself and every other Sunday I pay someone to come lick my stamps for an hour so I can spend time with my kids, that person is not an equal partner.
Edit: to be extra clear, democracy is based on the concept that people are all functionally equals in capability, information, and perspective. Basically that countrymen are homogenous. Inside a specialized enterprise of any kind (especially small ones) this need not be true.
Edit 2: or if that’s insufficient and all businesses must be democratic, then I necessarily must be allowed to hire based on whatever criteria I so choose. Work ethic, want to keep the company aligned with my interests, religion, ability, height, anything. That’s the only way to guarantee a homogeneous pool and may also be the democratic will of the group of people who begin the business.
Because I would expect people in democratic nations to value democracy and see it as worth exercising in business. This is in part as I see democracy as a formal way of referring to being open to discussion of opinions and ideas in organizing any group.
Why would you want to be part of any group that may reject open discussion of its organization?
In a democracy you vote on what happens with a shared resource that belongs to all of you, like a country. If a business has several owners they might steer it democratically, like a family business deciding together what to do. But if that business hires employees, the employees don’t vote, because it’s not their shared resource, so why would they have power to decide on it?
Of course that doesn’t preclude open discussion. Many businesses decide together with their employees, it’s just based on discussion and exchange of ideas, not on voting. Why would you hire an expert and then vote among employees instead of letting the expert decide on their area of expertise?
The fact is not everyone has an informed perspective and in business there are very good reasons to not give the entire staff access to finances or company secrets.
As not all employees have the same information then not all employees are going to be able to see that larger picture and thus not giving the guy with 5% of access to the picture the same say as the guy with 95% doesn’t make sense.
Because you can easily swap companies, but you can’t easily swap countries.