Serious question: is there any evidence to suggest that non-profits and employee-owned businesses are on average better at serving the public good?
There are power asymmetries inside non-profits and employee-owned businesses, and these can lead to the 'power brokers' inside these organizations steering or commandeering the organizations for their own benefit.
With most citations being from: https://geo.coop/story/benefits-and-impacts-cooperatives
For example:
> Since most cooperatives are owned and controlled by local residents, it is more likely to promote community growth than an investor-oriented firm. Since cooperative business objectives are needs oriented, cooperatives are more likely to stay in the community (Zeuli, Freshwater et al 2003).
Even in software, once you're big enough to have a real user base you need infrastructure, servers, people to keep those servers alive, and on and on and it dilutes the mission because even while there's no scumbag investors, factions within the company will want more for less and vote that way internally.
What does that mean?