“I must say, the word ‘profit’ does seem to have dirty resonances for most lefties. I admit to feeling a tiny amount of resonant guilt.”

Well, it doesn’t have dirty resonances with me. I do take issue with people who try to convince me that greed is good, but that is a different issue.

I am fine with earning profit fromk your labour, but I am not against earning a profit from the investment of your capital either.

“What I’m really driving at is that a salary is not something that creates wealth for workers. A salary is a dangerous drug that disempowers workers.”

Life is complex. Helping a single other human bieng is tough, helping a larger group is even more difficult. People have different needs and motivations. I have worn quite a few hats in my working life so far and have kept my eyes open as well.

“Wealth creation for its workers, in my opinion, needs to be a priority for any company working in a capitalistic society, regardless of its socialist or leftwing leanings.”

Not ab bad goal, but unless you are lesective over who gets to be a worker in your company, you will ruin some people’s work ethic unless you have some way to help them with the problems that can arise with the empowerment of ownership.

“Here’s a question: ‘How do I, as an entrepreneur, make my workers wealthy?’ (And the question can be asked by any reader of this site.)”

Here is a simplistic answer:

Chose workers who are at a point in life where they are ready to be wealthy.

Here is another answer:

Change your, and their defination of what it means to be wealthy.

Here is another answer:

Help them to come to the realisation that their becoming wealthy is their responsibility.

“One of the answers I get to is this participation-collective”

I do have certain capatilistic leanings and I will put it like this:

People should be paid a wage, salary, whatever for their work. I would include a comission here as well, even bonuses. Profits should be split based on ownership in the enterprise. (Capital invested.) So, to empower the workers to participate in the profits, find some way to get them invested in the company. Find a way for the worker to be owners.

This is if you set up a fairly traditional corporation. I don’t have much experience with non-profits. I also remember reading once (I think back in the 80s) about a company that was organised as a commonwealth.

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to put together a list of various business forms for our joint consideration. I also think it is worth considering if the character of a corporation could be seriously changed with innovative articles of incorporation.

Rambling is ok, to my way of thinking, so is putting your foot in your mouth as long as you are not trolling and are well intentioned.

all the best,

drew

Thanks for your comment.

I must say, the word ‘profit’ does seem to have dirty resonances for most lefties. I admit to feeling a tiny amount of resonant guilt.

At the same time, I think it’s important to distinguish that ‘profit’ is NOT synonymous with ‘greedy capitalist pig slaughtering the masses’.

While it’s true that SOME capitalists give ‘profit’ a bad name, not all of them do. I think of Ricardo Semler, Ben & Jerries icecream, St Luke’s (London ad agency). All of them are capitalist concerns, aimed at generating wealth for their partners. In all of those cases (though I’m a little hazy about Ben & Jerries), the partners are the workers.

Profit is NOT in and of itself a bad thing.

I embrace profit because it makes me competitive. It makes the people I work with competitive. NOT competitive in the sense of ‘I’m going to kill my opposition’. Competitive in terms of ‘non-complacent’, ‘striving for excellence’. (I’m not trying to imply that not-for-profit companies are complacent or not committed to excellence. It’s simply my experience that many organisations of that kind simply rely on their own good-intentions. But I’m in deep water here, and will probably end up getting flamed for this! Ah well I admit that I’m being a little inflammatory.)

What I’m really driving at is that a salary is not something that creates wealth for workers. A salary is a dangerous drug that disempowers workers. Wealth creation for its workers, in my opinion, needs to be a priority for any company working in a capitalistic society, regardless of its socialist or leftwing leanings.

Here’s a question: ‘How do I, as an entrepreneur, make my workers wealthy?’ (And the question can be asked by any reader of this site.)

One of the answers I get to is this participation-collective, where people are rewarded for their efforts, and are encouraged by the systematisation of excellence to become more and more excellent. They get wealthy by default. Because of the two unit trust funds we create for that purpose.

I think I may be rambling incoherently at this point, so I’ll shut up now, and invite others into the debate. Please join in and let’s discuss this stuff.

Blue skies
love
Roy

“The other main point he makes is that we’re looking at something sustainable in terms of having a profit-motive. We DO indeed want to make a profit. But we want to do this in an open source way.”

I am not against having a profit motive either and I to am most interested if findting ways to join income production to the creation of Free Software, Free Art and other things what are released with Libre in mind.

That said, we should be aware that at least in some areas, it would be possible for a project’s participants to form a non-profit organization around the project, raise money, etc. for the project, pay themselves a wage to work on the project and so personally earn a living from the work on the project while all the time the project is a non-profit.

This can be, and from what I understand is, abused by some and for wider concerns of open business (other then producing Libre works) transparency in this area would be a must.

all the best,

drew
—–
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator:%22drew%20Roberts%22

The main takeout I get from reading his site in Babel Fish is that he’s impressed that the model we’re trying to develop doesn’t suffer from simplistic profit-splits common to other egalitarian projects. He notes that we’ve got mechanisms in place to encourage individuals to contribute if they so choose, and that they’ll be rewarded for these contributions.

The other main point he makes is that we’re looking at something sustainable in terms of having a profit-motive. We DO indeed want to make a profit. But we want to do this in an open source way.

His last point is that he hopes we’ll make our documents open source so that others may benefit from them.

Absolutely!!! That’s the intention, anyway!

Blue skies
love
Roy

I just ran a bablefish translation on this text, and I only partially understand the poiny Juan is making…

‘Industrial theater for business settings. An example of open business in construction…

Applying the organizing model and of development of poyectos they bid for source represents an important challenge, particularly in certain very far away environments culturally of this model. For example, is used to thinking itself that the open code signifies without spirit …

Anyone want to take a stab at engaging with Juan’s comment?

Blue skies
love
Roy
‘

Aplicar el modelo organizativo y de desarrollo de poyectos open source representa un reto importante, en particular en ciertos ámbitos muy alejados culturalmente de este modelo. Por ejemplo, se suele pensar que el código abierto significa sin ánimo …