[taffer]

Workers have their own interests that are not necessarily aligned with those of the users/society, such as support working hours only from nine to five on business days, higher pensions and fewer new hires, more job security.

If you really want to align the interests of the company with those of the users, you need something like a cooperative where the users are also the shareholders and you have to buy a membership to use the product.

[nicoburns]

I don't want to align the interests of the company with users. I want to align them with society. And I think it's worth noting that members of society are not just users but also workers.

[southerntofu]

> Workers have their own interests that are not necessarily aligned with those of the users/society

Usually you will find that they are, because workers are also users and vice-versa.

> support working hours only from nine to five on business days, higher pensions and fewer new hires, more job security

I guess you're from the US? "Higher pensions" should have nothing to do with a company: that's a public policy matter and pensions can be mutualized across employers as is the case in France (despite past & present governments doing their best to dismantle that public service).

The 8h workday is established minimum standard across industries for over a century now (several centuries in some industries/places), and even when it was not (see Haymarket affair) it was considered a pretty weak/useless demand, more symbolic than anything. Thinkers of the time advocated that given the established technological progress at the time, it should be possible for everyone to work just a few weeks every year and still enjoy modern comfort. Some more modern thinkers believe the same applies today, considering how many resources/efforts are wasted annually.

Moreover, "fewer new hires" is not necessarily correlated to "more job security". It may be true on the scale of a single company, but on the scale of a whole society, a public policy of everyone finding opportunity for their contributions to humanity (that rarely yet sometimes overlaps with what's called a "job") leads to better "job security" for everyone and anyone.

If a government really wanted to tackle unemployment, there's many areas of life that need considerably more workers and resources, including education & health which are pillars of a healthy (pun intended) society. But capitalist policy is to generate misery in order to pit everyone against everyone else so a tiny minority can profit... and in this regard, capitalism works excellently.

> you need something like a cooperative where the users are also the shareholders and you have to buy a membership to use the product

That's how many non-profit organizations operate. You have to be a member (free or < 20€/year) to benefit from services provided by the association.

[taffer]

> Usually you will find that they are, because workers are also users and vice-versa.

I am sure that the owners and managers of Discord are also Discord users themselves, so I don't see any difference here.

> The 8h workday is established minimum standard across industries for over a century now An 8-hour workday does not rule out employees working shifts so that customers don't have to take a day off to interact with the company.

My point is that, contrary to OP's assumption, the interests of workers and customers are often at odds with each other. Another example would be when more employees are needed to meet increased demand, but the employees do not want their votes and wages to be diluted by the new hires.

[southerntofu]

> the interests of workers and customers are often at odds with each other

I've never heard any such stories from an actual workers coop. I'm not saying it can't exist from a theoretical perspective, but i don't think workers/users interests are "often at odds" since i can't think of a single real-life example.