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this post was submitted on 17 May 2025
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Asklemmy
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I'm not convinced of this. One could argue that profit is waste. It's an overhead of wealth delivered for value provided. If co-ops are less incentives towards profit, e.g. by not having a tradeable stock to manage, then the pursuit of profit is a lesser priority. This means the overhead is less, which could mean lower prices.
To put it bluntly, if you don't need to pay dividends to shareholders who deliver no value or huge bonuses to executives at the top, maybe the operating costs could be lower. Yes, the cooperative members would take some of that money as profit sharing among the members, but the working class tends to be less sociopathically greedy than those in power.
Definitely open to feedback. This kind of thinking is newer to me
Its not, its profit. Dividends to share holders are interest payments on vital loans which co-ops don't have access too. Those early investments provide more of an edge than not having to pay them. Otherwise firms wouldn't bother with investors at all.
You could say excessive c-suite salaries are a waste. But those high salaries gets you the absolute psychos who will squeeze more excess value from the workers than any co-op could. Co-op workers wont be as greedy with wages or benefits, but they will absolutely look to cut their workload and get more free time (actual freedom).
Part of being a Marxist is accepting that the capitalist theory of profit motive applying to everyone is true. Its not universally true to everyone in every instance. And its certainly not a moral imperative like capitalist ghouls believe. But when we're talking about statistics and large populations it absolutely does hold.
I may not be well informed, so feel free to cite sources that prove me wrong, but I'm not 100% convinced about the co-ops being equally competitive or that they'll be just as profit-seeking.
Yes, individuals outside of sociopathic executives are also driven by profit, but they're also more influenced by other factors. For example, most non-executives might opt for a more ethical solution over a more profitable solution. This may also carry over to efficiency: maybe a co-op could opt for a more efficient, if less profitable, solution in order to keep prices low. There are several incentives for this: long-term growth, social good of making things more affordable, personal pride in being the lowest price, general lack of desire to optimize for a single metric (profit). Now, these are all guesses. I don't know of any good studies about co-op behaviors in aggregate versus traditional corporations, but this sounds feasible to me.
All that said, it sounds like you're better read on this than I am, so I'd love to learn if you can throw some sources at me