[throwaway2a02]

> While Uber and Lyft make their money for Wall Street and Silicon Valley investors, we will be a co-operative. So any profits will go back to the drivers.

Can't they set it up as a non-profit? What almost always happens in these cases is that most of shares are owned by the first few workers, and ultimately a small group will control the whole business (at which point they will obviously won't drive for the app anymore). So it will inevitably turn into another Uber/Lyft this way.

[bloudermilk]

I've read several books on cooperatives including case studies on how fail and I've never heard this. Do you have some examples of where this was an issue?

One common issue I have heard about is early members acquiring disproportionate social capital, but that's a different problem with different solutions.

[boomboomsubban]

You don't issue permanent shares, working for the company gives you shares. I don't think registering as a nonprofit is necessary to stop that problem, though I wouldn't be surprised if they did end up registering as a nonprofit.

[clarkevans]

> What almost always happens in these cases is that most of shares are owned by the first few worker

I've not seen this to be the common case. It depends upon the organizational structure. At one extreme, a cooperative can be seen as a limited partnership; but at the other, membership is open to those who meet reasonable criteria.

In cooperatives, there is often a difference between investor shares (if any) and voting shares. Early owners might have some investor shares (notes to cover capital investment) but, their voting shares are often on-par with new members.

In some states, cooperatives are kinds of non-profits; others, such as Colorado, have their own statutory basis that permit investor shares (rather than only allowing notes at a fixed, say, 5% interest rate). The new Illinois worker-cooperative statute permits up-to 50% investor shares, for example -- just short of controlling interest.

Also, it's a bit of semantics here: I'd call this a platform cooperative rather than a worker cooperative.

[legulere]

Cooperatives (at least here in Germany) often have a maximum amount of shares that you can own and are open for people to get new shares.

[zouhair]

Aren't COOP supposed to grow to accommodate newcomers? You have to pay to get in so you end up with same shares as others. At least that's how I thought it works. Am I wrong?

[throwinreturn]

Some cooperatives mandate one worker one vote, rather than one share one vote. The most well-known example is Mondragon.

[Mauricebranagh]

Each worker has the same share in a coop its one of the key definitions so OMOV.