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by AndrewKemendo 1115 days ago
The modern corporation is literally a dictatorship:

"form of government in which one person or a small group possesses absolute power without effective constitutional limitations."

Companies are *governed* by unimpeachable, unelected, all powerful groups that in practice treat employees like literal slaves (you don't have to be chattel or physically abused to be a slave). However because almost all employment agreements are exactly the same, it's the same law firms and laws that these orgs use over and over, essentially all corporations have colluded for this structure and type of employment power dynamic.

After all why wouldn't they, the "American dream" is to become a dictator in the capital class, free from exposure to dirty labor.

How do I know this?

I've been a CEO dictator for a company before and hated the structure. Now I'm trying to create a non-stock cooperative and all I get is head scratching from banks, lawyers etc... who have NO CONCEPT how to organize something that isn't in the boilerplate Delaware equity dictatorship construct.

3 comments

Oof, that is so cynical, yet I cannot help but agree with everything you said. I'm often reminded of how far we have come as a society, and how primitive we still are.
I'd love to hear more about your non-stock cooperative. How is it structured? I'm genuinely fascinated.
Thanks! See my reply above, I don’t want to repost cause it looks spammy.
It's an interesting structure! A couple of thoughts popped out as I read your articles of incorporation.

(1) Instead of saying a representative can't represent more than 10-100 people, have you considered making it a percentage of the membership? Making it a hard number seems potentially inflexible as the organization grows.

(2) Making it a requirement that the CEO be a part of the organization for 4 years before running would imply that either the first CEO didn't have to meet such criteria, or that there is no CEO for the first 4 years.

Very curious to follow your journey!

The challenge with any constitution is figuring out where to be inconsistent or not free from vulnerability and unfortunately there’s no right answer to how.

In both of those cases the spirit it to build structural breakpoints in such that it’s harder to accelerate than it is to stop. In my experience speed is what kills ethics.

So my guess is that we’ll be without a CEO for a while so our annual plan etc processes won’t really start in earnest until we’re at a certain size.

echoing nickelcitymario, would love to hear what you're working on
https://seegull.org/

You can read our “Constitution” / Articles in the link

We’re “fundraising” now which is basically just issuing debt based on a negotiated interest rate and due date, so if you know anyone with 5k or more to spare that would be great. Obviously regular capitalist investors want nothing to do with us, which just makes it harder/slower and that’s ok.