>The more you contribute, the more you sacrifice by joining a coop. The less you contribute, the more you gain.

How do you think co-ops work? Are you imagining a flat organizational structure like Valve Software? An open source project plus invoices? Those are all interesting ideas, but co-ops presently work like employee-owned business and usually have managers and compensation structures that fit the obvious way those things work. HN's tendency to GPT whenever exposed to something it doesn't know about is driving me nuts today. :-)

The coop that I'm a part of (Quorum1) has been using game theory to play out just those scenarios. We've been at it for two years and you're right it's been like 10x as difficult as starting a normal company (I'm a serial entrepreneur and have started lots of traditional companies too). But we think the payoff is worth it, plus doing things differently is just straight up more fun, so there's that.

What we're finding is that if you start with the right culture and balance the incentives very carefully you can basically create a magnet-like mechanism where the more people join the network/coop, the greater the value derived for all members and the greater the opportunity cost for the remaining hold outs to not join.

> It's hard to imagine such an organization working out over the long term. The incentives are all wonky! The more you contribute, the more you sacrifice by joining a coop. The less you contribute, the more you gain.

If that were true, there would be no successful co-ops anywhere in any field of work. That's obviously not the case. Just look at this list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cooperatives#United_St... if you're from the USA, I'm sure you'll be able to recognize a name or two.

> The more you contribute, the more you sacrifice by joining a coop. The less you contribute, the more you gain.

You could say the same thing to describe working for any corporation.

Not sure of the co-operatives in software. I am from state of Kerala, India. We have a number of very successful and long running co-operatives.

1. Milma - Kerala Co-operative Milk Marketing federation. Virtually every household uses and trusts milma. It has been around for 53 years.

2. Indian Coffee House - It is a worker co-operative restaurant chain. Very successful and is around since 1958.

3. ULCCS - India's oldest worker co-operative. Operating from 1925, mainly in construction sector. It also has an IT wing.

The company Torchbox (creators of Wagtail CMS) are an interesting example of an employee owned company. In their case it was a matter of the founders selling/moving most of their ownership to an Employee Owned Trust (as opposed to starting as a coop from scratch) - EOT is an interesting option in the UK with tax incentives to make it work.

https://torchbox.com/careers/employee-owned-trust

https://baxendaleownership.co.uk/torchbox-digital-agency-mov...

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> Horray, effective altruism!

Yup, there we go

It's 10x harder because you are doing something counter-cultural and pro-social. The global economic system is structured to prevent you from doing precisely that.

The systems and processes for running a psychopathic corporation are laid out like the Netflix Paved Path for anyone who wants to play the game of "get as much as you can." This path will push you to build the most exploitative thing there is possible in order create maximum returns for capital (even if that becomes you). The end result is what you see: GE, Exxon, Amazon, Wal-Mart, BP Google, etc... an organization with no long term goal other than making money for investors. Is that your definition of "Working out over the long term?"

How about we build a real strong community where we're all owners and we have a say in how the process works, we share in the wins and the losses and don't screw anyone over ever. It's possible, yet somehow all of my fellow geniuses - despite all our ingeniousness - can't unpack this super simple problem that cooperatives around the world have been solving forever. Oh sorry, a few anecdotes about some failed ones and some old hippies that fight yet retain amazingly robust communities, means it will never work.

The systems and processes for "share everything from the beginning" - while working within the economic system that exists today - that's severely underdeveloped and needs thousands of former-capitalists like you and me to start putting the work in to change it.

Or you can build yet another private dictatorship cause it's "easier" for you.

A co-op doesn't mean everyone must share profits equally.

How about an internal market where people bid for tickets?

There are crypto projects facilitating governance of organizations. They could help both enforce and simplify keeping records. Example: https://aragon.org/

Edit: Earlier I suggested hiring people for internal-money, but that might be tax evasion. Don't do it without consulting lawyers in your country.

Have you actually ever seen a co-op work?

> why not retain creative control of your ideas and make millions at the same time?

Because there are (a lot!) of people who are more interested in an equitable work than extracting fortunes for themselves.

Because you "make millions" on the backs of the people you string along, and not everybody wants that.

> Horray, effective altruism! You mean the thing that allows you to ignore any current problem in favor of pretend problems a hundred years out? And conveniently includes making yourself rich, which is of course only happening to fix said pretend problem. And, well, your life really pleasant on the backs of others, but that's a rounding error.

> Meanwhile, if you start a software co-op... who exactly are you helping? One option here is helping an industry that's currently setting itself up for a marvellous collapse because it treats open source as an opportunity to extract only. (Until the maintainers give up, and then there'll wailing and gnashing of teeth)

Another side is helping people live a more sustainable live. There's nothing wrong with a co-op to e.g. ensure health care and pensions. While working reasonable hours.

Could this fail? Probably. Maybe even likely, because co-op folks tend to be a bit more idealist, which makes business survival a bit harder.

But let's not pretend there aren't a lot of people who wouldn't be willing to join a co-op, or that it generates absolutely no benefit.