[patrickyeon]

> Only founder led companies and family owned businesses can stand up to the immense pressure from the dogmas of modern finance.

How about worker-owned companies, co-operatives, and collectives? I totally agree the problem is that with the finance people steering the ship there's incentives to push up your short-term performance and collect bonuses and watch your publically-traded stock value go up. So don't go public; use the value an organization creates to pay the people in it, and invest in making it better for those people and the people you serve. The people who have say in the decisions are the ones who are most interested in having the organization continue to be healthy and a good place to work.

There are other ways. We don't even need to imagine them, they've already happened. We just need to resist the siren song of the lottery ticket and instead try to create systems and organizations that we want to be a part of.

[WJW]

The fact that there are so few of these types of company around probably means that they have trouble surviving in a world where the competition is supported by modern finance.

[JumpCrisscross]

> they have trouble surviving in a world where the competition is supported by modern finance

The problem with coöperatives is longevity. We have white-collar coöps of sorts: partnerships. They tend to disintegrate after a generation or become quasi-corporations over time because immortal entities can make plans and promises on time scales that ones that grow old and change priorities and die can't.

[spiralx]

Can you have a cooperative with limited liability? I'm sure you can emulate it with a limited company and particular arrangements of stock ownership and voting rights, but I doubt that's easy or cheap to set up.

The John Lewis Partnership in the UK is a public limited company whose shares are entirely owned by a trust that pays shares of profits to all of its employees, which isn't quite "ownership" but close, and they have a $15bn revenue. Publix Super Markets in the US has a $45bn revenue and is privately owned with all employees receiving stock.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/051316/6-succ...

Financing is probably an issue at a certain level but it doesn't seem to be limiting otherwise. They're just unusual, although if you consider startups giving employees a stake isn't that strange today.

[dragonwriter]

> Can you have a cooperative with limited liability?

Yes, in the US, at least. A coop can be a corporation or LLC (and a coop that is either the former or the latter when taxed as a corporation has special tax status with the IRS, under subchapter T, so occasionally they are referred to as “T corps” analogous to C or S corps.)

[Inhibit]

An S-Corp is the structure made for that sort of spread to a limited number of stakeholders. Not to say it's viable in some states with current regulation.

Also, LLP is a limited liability partnership. Wholly state entity, though, so the same caveat again. Member limits, etc.

And that's the USA of course. Your country may vary.

[dendrite9]

This is something that is interesting to me, I have been reading about various ideas for worker owned companies. Some friends and I have been talking about how we might organize a side business built around a similar structure and where it might fail for reasons that are not just the business side of things.

This climbing equipment company's stated values are an appealing target to me right now. https://www.totemmt.com/about-us/