Suppose I have studied for years to become a pastry chef. I set up my own bakery, investing my time, energy, and labour into procuring equipment and building up a reputation as a delicious place to eat. I run the entire operation myself as the sole worker. Eventually, after years of turmoil, word of my exceptional pastries spreads and my bakery becomes the number one spot in town. Soon there’s a line up around the block, long enough that I have to turn away customers on the regular.
Not wanting to have to send people home hungry, I decide that having someone to wash my dishes and somebody to tend to the counter would buy me enough time to focus on the main reason people come to my shop: my delicious pastries.
I do, however, have an issue. I worked really hard to build my bakery up to where it is today, and don’t want to have to give up ownership to the two people I want to bring onboard. They didn’t put in any effort into building up my bakery, so why should they have an equal democratic say over how it’s run?
Is there a way I can bring on help without having to give away control of my buisness?
Furthermore, what’s to stop the two new workers from democratically voting me out of the operation, keeping the store, name, brand, and equipment for themselves?
Well if you’re talking in an idealized world, where capitalism hasn’t driven business ownership deep into the psyche, it would be easy. You’re working for the greater good and you have no concept of what business ownership is.
Thanks for the response! In my scenario I consider ownership to be the ability to make executive decisions surrounding the business. This could range from what products we choose to sell, what the sign on the front says, who we buy our ingredients from, how much we charge customers for, how much we spend on cleaning supplies, the color of the wallpaper, when we decide to look for new employees, ect…
If I’m the sole worker at my operation, I have full authority over all these things!
With no profit motive I would assume the people who work with you are there because they either like the work or they wish to learn from you. In either case I’d imagine there would be disagreements, but that the intent of them working with you is to actually work with you. It’s not like they have to. I can’t speak to malicious intent, but I would believe that any sufficiently advanced socialist society would have a framework to deal with those scenarios.