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Comment by chatmasta | Hacker News Reader

I recognize the problem, but I’m very skeptical that the solution is a democratic process to elect directors. It optimizes for the completely wrong qualities necessary for a directorship, and I could easily see it hurting the workers more than helping them.

What I find amusing is that the same people who support this bill are upset that Trump was elected through a democratic process. Many of these supporters would say the democratic process failed the American people. So why would they want to apply the same framework to corporate governance? It seems a bit hypocritical to be honest.

The workers are free to start their own company whenever they want, btw.

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> It optimizes for the completely wrong qualities necessary for a directorship, and I could easily see it hurting the workers more than helping them.

No it doesn't (see other people can make completly unqualified statements too).

If the past election cycle has taught us anything, it’s that experience and job qualifications have little correlation with popularity. Basically Warren is advocating for director appointment via popularity contest. Can you really argue that the average Walmart employee, for example, has the necessary information to make the right decision on who should be COO of Walmart?

It reduces the process of choosing directors to a contest of who can make the most empty promises to employees.

So you're arguing against all democracy? If there are regular votes to keep/replace this director if they are not performing to the benefit of the workers I don't see an issue. Sure they're will be some bad choices sometimes but the existence of the position in itself will exert some pressure to consider worker issues that the company didn't have to think about before.

Treating low paid workers as interchangeable, disposable resources needs to change and this is a very small step towards giving them a little more control of their situation. It's not perfect but it's better.

No, I’m arguing against applying democracy as a solution to any problem that seems too hard to solve. “Fuck it, we’ll vote on it!” is a lazy solution.

> “Fuck it, we’ll vote on it!” is a lazy solution.

It's a far better solution than no option at all. If people make a bad choice they'll just be back to where they started, with people in charge who care little about their welfare.

Democracy is only selected as a solution to the problem of “how do we select among competing solutions when different people weigh the pros and cons differently”. It is not, itself, chosen as the solution to other problems.

Democracy is not a solution looking for a problem, it's a basic right.

Democracy is great at reducing corruption, but it's bad at finding the most qualified person for the job. That's why we don't vote for very technical positions in government (e.g. Director of the FBI, Supreme Court Justices, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, etc). If it made business sense to let workers vote, more companies would allow them to do so.

The piece states 40% of directors and gives some voices to the workers. There will still be many other technical voices leading the company and the elected people may still be technical. This adds some people that at least have to consider worker issues and adds some other incentives. The trade-off seems reasonable to me. This is a small change and anyone saying it's a big issue is overstating it's effect. It's a small step in the right direction.

It's not like all the management will be elected and if a large company can't handle some voices in it's upper management structure that arn't entirely focused on shareholder profit then something else is wrong with that organization.

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