Interesting - Publix is 255k and it says it’s ‘employee owned’. In fact most of the big ones are all Supermarkets for some reason. But it’s an outlier in many ways, the next biggest is 22k, and the vast majority, 88%, are under 10k.
The rest are services (ambulance, call centers, tree services, maintenance) or for some reason architecture and engineering.
There’s no software companies on there that I saw, which I think speaks, at least in part, to the issues I mentioned above about speed of decisions.
I would say the software industry’s long running undercurrent of libertarianism and anti-worker/anti-collective action is a bigger deterrent to co-ops not forming there.
For an example that does exist there, see Motion Twin.
I’m aware of the Peter Thiels of the world and (prior to that, Bill Gates) and so on, but it’s also where FOSS lives and Open Source itself is a collectivist process, albeit a very slow one in most cases.
The lack of co-ops is (IMO) more likely due to timely processes related to decision making. New code can be deployed instantaneously, but direction and all the bells & whistles all take time and it’s just about impossible in a traditional heirarchical organization. I’d expect if there was no single entity making decisions it’d take even longer to do basic things.
Interesting - Publix is 255k and it says it’s ‘employee owned’. In fact most of the big ones are all Supermarkets for some reason. But it’s an outlier in many ways, the next biggest is 22k, and the vast majority, 88%, are under 10k.
The rest are services (ambulance, call centers, tree services, maintenance) or for some reason architecture and engineering.
There’s no software companies on there that I saw, which I think speaks, at least in part, to the issues I mentioned above about speed of decisions.
I would say the software industry’s long running undercurrent of libertarianism and anti-worker/anti-collective action is a bigger deterrent to co-ops not forming there.
For an example that does exist there, see Motion Twin.
I’m aware of the Peter Thiels of the world and (prior to that, Bill Gates) and so on, but it’s also where FOSS lives and Open Source itself is a collectivist process, albeit a very slow one in most cases.
The lack of co-ops is (IMO) more likely due to timely processes related to decision making. New code can be deployed instantaneously, but direction and all the bells & whistles all take time and it’s just about impossible in a traditional heirarchical organization. I’d expect if there was no single entity making decisions it’d take even longer to do basic things.