The cult of the CEO must end.
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2024
316 points (98.8% liked)
News
23397 readers
3633 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Around the country, collective action is in a resurgence. I saw striking aircraft workers today. I believe it was Beech, but I’m visiting family and can’t say for sure as Wichita KS is a manufacturing hub.
Wichita is Spirit, the company that makes the plane bodies for Boeing. That's most likely part of the Boeing strike
What if we just made all the workers into CEOs?
Like the workers owned and operated the business? Their hard work would be rewarded with profit sharing? That would actually mean I'd have to care about the shareholders.
But what if those workers owned the business too? Like what if it was beholden to the same kind of person who goes to work every day like the people who worked there?
What a world that would be.
Let the age of microcorporations begin
That doesn’t work. You need a decision maker.
It’s not a terribly difficult job so they don’t need to get paid more than anyone else, but executive action by committee doesn’t work.
executive action by committee doesn’t work.
Is there actually any evidence for that? Isn't that basically what they have in Switzerland? And they are one of the absolute richest countries in the world.
Above the CEO is usually a committee called the board, which govern all stock companies, and by far the most successful big companies are stock companies.
Companies run by a CEO without responsibility towards a committe (board) have much higher risk of doing something incredibly stupid that ruin the company. And can't be removed no matter how incredibly stupid and harmful they are to the company.
For example as we see with Elon Musk and Twitter. Donald Trump and his Casinos. Pillow guy. Michael Dell.
Funny enough also Steve Jobs at first, but then taken in to rescue Apple successfully later.
You are muddling two different concepts in your Switzerland argument. You are probably referring to the fact, that Switzerland has a direct democracy for certain political decisions in addition to having a parliament. But that is not why it's a rich country. That's because of their big companies who are by no means anything else but die hard capitalistic and self serving. You might know some of them for their evil deeds, for example Nestlé.
I'd argue that a democracy is governing by committe on the biggest scale we have, namely a whole country. This is in contrast to dictatorships.
Are you arguing that dictatorship is better at governing than a democracy?
Switzerland is going by the biggest committee there is more than most, and is hugely successful.
... Please read my original comment again carefully. I said nowhere that a dictatorship is better at governing. I said that Switzerland is rich because of their companies being capitalistic assholes that would or better ARE right now fucking up the planet and the rest of humanity. You can read on Wikipedia about Nestle, the Nazi gold and tax haven, the Russian influence, etc. That is how Switzerland got really rich, not due to their direct democracy (which I find awesome).
You could argue that there is a small connection between both, since the neutrality of Switzerland was part of why so many companies and banks managed to get big.
You say Switzerland is rich because of Nestle, OK how much tax does Nestle pay in Switzerland? And how much is that of the total.
I didn't respond to your Nestle argument, because it's silly.
7 of the 10 richest companies in the world are American, so how exactly is Switzerland rich because of 1 company that is ranked 96 on fortune 500?
At very least, adopting the German model of having union reps on the board of directors would be a sensible step.
Yes that's a very good system, that actually increase stability of the company. It probably also prevents a lot of circle jerks out of contact with reality on the floor of the company.
A good example of how a group generally makes better decisions than an individual.
Executive by committee is different than a board that gets together regularly. The board usually gives the ceo direction.
It’s also why most countries have both a committee and an executive instead of just a committee.
In the case of Elon he usually makes shareholders lots of money. Sure he tanked Twitter but that was after they got paid.
I hope one day I can see labor universally organized. I sadly don’t think I will, but that’s the dream
One Big Union!
And average corporate profitability isn't much different than it was in the late '70s. So that means the CEOs are being massively overpaid, and there's a weakness in corporate governance that prevents shareholders correcting the problem.