The Open Source Business?

Ted wonders: "Being an advocate of the open source software movement for some time, I'm wondering how and if the principles of open source software could be applied to a new type of open source business. In a world where people slave away for the sole profit of a board of directors and merciless shareholders, is there room for a new type of organization that throws away the archaic and monolithic organizational structure of today and from there form a company that has its direction dictated by all of the members that run it. An organization where everyone has an equal say in what goes on. There isn't any limit on how many people can be involved (the more the better, in fact) as long as they can be useful. Could this be the way of the future?"

Comments

Re:Leadership by committee? Doubtful.

[An Onerous Coward]

Your arguments only make sense in a world where business owners and laborers come to the table with basically equal negotiating positions. For the vast majority of employees, it's not a matter of voluntarily agreeing to exchange labor for a 'risk-free' reward. Instead, they come from a position of "I have to find some job somewhere, in order to avoid starving to death or being eaten by coyotes." Therefore, they take pretty much whatever terms the owners of capital are offering.

Nor is the exchange as "risk free" as you claim. Employees can be injured or killed on the job, which degrades or eliminates their ability to generate revenue in the future. Employees can have their wages cut, their jobs eliminated, their duties increased, or their working conditions degraded. Any one of those events changes the amount of reward that employees get for their efforts, which means it's absurd to talk of waged employment as a risk-free endeavor. Finally, once they have a job, they cannot back out of it without losing the initial investment that was required in finding the job in the first place.

Honestly, who is really facing the greatest risk? The venture capitalist who invests a few million in a startup, knowing that his other, less risky investments guarantee him high income for life? Or the person who takes a minimum wage job knowing that she could be fired in a couple of weeks and be unable to make rent, or spend the next two years working for a manager who likes to feel her up, or injure herself on the job and have to fight her employer tooth and nail to get her medical bills paid?

The business practices you're defending make the world a far suckier place for everyone, including the companies that practice them. Congratulations on that.