I don’t think your understanding how this works, the loan is on the co-op as an entity, not the individuals. A single person or group of people can form a co-op, just like how they form an LLC. That co-op can then take out a loan just like a company can take out a loan. That loan is the co-ops liability, not any of the members. If any or all of the original members leave that loan will still be on the co-op, the original members will not be responsible.

I think you have a misunderstanding of limited liability in general, per wikipedia:

Limited liability is a legal status in which a person’s financial liability is limited to a fixed sum, most commonly the value of a person’s investment in a corporation, company, or joint venture. … A shareholder in a corporation or limited liability company is not personally liable for any of the debts of the company, other than for the amount already invested in the company and for any unpaid amount on the shares in the company, if any—except under special and rare circumstances that permit “piercing the corporate veil.”

So yes you can just make an LLC , take out a huge business loan then leave and wipe your hands of it. The bank knows this and that’s why when they give out loans they evaluate whether the company can pay it back, not an individual. The loan will also probably come with stipulations ensuring some sort of corporate governance so you personally can’t just drain the company account and walk off with the money. Doing that would be embezzlement.

As for the communist question, were soviet style communist countries perfectly equal, no, but the situation your describing of a poor underclass and super rich upper class rulers is way more reflective of capitalist countries then communist ones. Yes there were high ranking beuracrats at the top but they weren’t living in the lap of luxury, the highest ranking soviet officials lived in the house on the embankment where the largest sized unit was 3,200 square feet and the average unit was 2,000 square feet. Compare that to a millionaires mansion in the u.s. Communist societies were far more equal then capitalist societies and the idea that there’s some gang of rich exploiters at the top hoarding all the resources is your projection.

only one person takes out the loan

No, a group of people would form a co-op, just like how people form a company, and the co-op would take out the loan. Entities can take out loans just like people can

but this is the same as all of the employees having stock in the business

No, stock is transferable and sellable, and not equal. If every employee got stock then one of them could / would sell it to someone with cash upfront. Now that new person is now getting money from the business without contributing any labor. They can then use that money to buy more stocks and make a passive income off the company. This leads to capital accumulation and a class of people making money off other people’s labor just because they have more money, or had more money at the start.

As for Amazon the average employee would be making a lot more then they are right now but they wouldn’t be billionaires. Billionaires never make there billions off working, they make it off capital gains, and since the shares aren’t sellable, and thus have no monetary value, there’d be no idea of capital gains for a worker in a co-op.

For the restaurant example I agree they may want to start a business for economic security, but thats not the same as getting rich. Economic security can be provided by a social safety net.

I also agree they may want to start one because they lack autonomy, but I’d say that’s largely the result of the alienation of working in normal stock owned companies where the owners make the decisions. If you are working in a co-op and get to have a say in all the decisions that alienation is partly ameliorated. If you want a hand in more decisions then you can “run” for a managerial position and get elected, administrative work would still be necessary in a co-op.

For the communist question most communist countries were more equal then the capitalist countries before the cold war ended. They were poorer, that’s partially due to inefficiency, but also due to the fact that most of them developed later then the capitalist countries there often compared to. If you look at one of the last hold puts in Cuba it could be argued that the quality of life for the poorest there is better then the poorest in the u.s. as they have better access to food, housing and healthcare. I’m not going to defend the oppressive political regimes of those countries, but the standard of living wasn’t as bad as a lot of people make it out to be.

Could you explain what financial risk is still there if you make an LLC? My understanding was the whole point of an LLC was to guard someone’s personal assets from risk if the company goes under.

why would anyone take out loans to start a business if there’s no way to pay the loan back?

The co-op would pay the loan back and treat it like any other cost of doing business, like buying components / ingredients or paying rent.

where is any profit from the business going

It would go to the employees. There would be no profit in the typical sense of revenue - costs - payroll, any excess after costs just goes to payroll

without ownership of the company there’s no reason for anyone to start a company and take on all the risk.

People start companies / organizations all the time where there main motivation isn’t profit. Your average restauranter is not doing it for the money, if they are they’re delusional. They do it because they like cooking / food or want to create a space for people to gather. Sure some people are motivated by making a profit and we’d miss out on there businesses, that’s the cost of a more equitable society. Marx himself praised the dynamism and creativity of capitalism but didn’t think it was worth it for the working class who could get far more of the pie if they weren’t giving a cut to the owners. This is becoming more true as that dynamism and creativity is going towards AI garbage and crypto and financial schemes

As for the risk, most of the financial risk of owning a business is shed when you create an LLC. The other risk of making no income while the business is getting off the ground can be mitigated by a social safety net that allows people to pursue these enterprises without worrying how they’re gonna eat or pay rent.

if they went underwater

Bankruptcy would work the same as it does with a stock company. Since Bankruptcy is just liquidating all a companies assets then forming a queue of people with claims to that money, with secured debt holders at the front of the line and stock holders at the back, you’d just remove the stock holders at the back, maybe replace them with the employees to give them a sort of “severance”

What your describing is a socialist revolution. Marx referred to it as the abolition of private property, which he said is the goal of communism. Private property doesn’t mean your phone or car or home or whatever, that is personal property, it’s stuff you own to use. Private property is something you own to make money from, stocks, bonds, rental properties etc. That type of property is based off power and exploitation, the power to kick someone out of there home if they don’t pay rent, or the exploitation of the working class by extracting there surplus value (profit) which goes to pay a stocks dividends, or to be reinvested in the business thus raising the stocks capital holdings and the stocks value.

In Marxism private property is the justification given to the working class for there exploitation, and abolishing it will free the working class and allow them to organize horizontally like you said with voting, without bourgeoisie property relations.

How would you get anyone to take risks and start a business

People create things all the time without a profit motive. Assuming they have a good safety net behind them that allows them to start up there ideas people will create. Case in point the app were on right now, it’s developed open source with no profit motive, no stocks, no company. It’s built by a bunch of hardline communist who believe in an open social network.

What banks

There are credit unions that function as co-ops with no stock ownership

they would have absolutely nothing as collateral

Co-ops can have collateral just like any other business, property of a store or factory, stock ( in the product sense ) etc. Yeah we wouldn’t have silicon valley with vcs betting millions on unproven tech, but do we really need that?

Also this is all assuming there’s no state involvement or planning. The state has a great credit line that it can use to backstop loans for small cooperative enterprises or just create the enterprises itself, eg. City run grocery stores like zohrans been pitching.

Don’t worry, trumps learning. Jan 6th insurrectionists are all getting pardoned right now meanwhile people are getting deported for saying free palestine.

That’ll cause competition with the private owned stores and force them to push down prices / raise wages until their profit margins are gone, putting them out of business.

The only entity that will buy the defunct stores will be the state , or maybe some actual non-profits , and now the state owns all the grocery stores and communism will be achieved. Then we get bread lines, is that what you want? /s.

Liberals: No one can even run in the primary against our geriatric dear leader since it could cause a rift in the party

Also liberals: This anti semite is too dangerous, we must save the voters from there decision with our favorite sex criminal.

Honestly that may be the best scenario for Zohran, Cuomo and Adam’s would split the corrupt corporate centrist vote and give him an easy win.

Maybe “communist” by the 60s definition as in anyone to the left of keynes then yeah I guess so, but MLK wasn’t a communist in any real political sense.

The analogy still holds though, many of the leaders OP is pointing out are regressive right wing nationalist who would naturally align with putin without being agents of the Kremlin.

Both these accusations tend to put the blame of these movements on foreigners meddling with our democracy instead of real strains of thought coming from that democracy that need to be addressed.

Yeah, and there were plenty of left journalists on the payroll of Moscow in the 60s. They tended to cover the civil rights movement and anti-war movement very positively, does that mean the leaders of those movements were also secretly agents of the communists?

Has there been any proof that the people OP mentioned have any connection to putin? Don’t get me wrong there all horrible people, but it’s not because there “Russian assets” and if they’re gonna go against this God awful war then good on them.

This is just “the anti Vietnam War protestors are secretly working for the soviets” for the modern era. There were just as many conspiracies that left liberals were secretly agents of Moscow in the 60s.

Probably not actually. All this was because trump was opening up talks for another Iran nuclear deal and Israel wanted to shoot down those talks, literally. Considering Biden didn’t do shit in his 4 years to try and get another deal, and kamala was saying she’d have the same foreign policy, I doubt kamala would’ve tried anything either.

Could someone explain why binding arbitration clauses are horrible? My understanding is that it keeps costs low on both sides as taking things to actual court can get expensive.

There’s also a video going around now of him in 2011 claiming Obama was going to start a war with Iran, due to his incompetence at negotiating, right before the election to boost his popularity.

He’s projecting more then an imax movie theater.

He is definitely able to do it. Over the past months he’s shown that he can act unilaterally on pretty much anything, especially on foreign policy, and no one stops him. He could stop weapons shipments to Israel tonight and if that happened Israel wouldn’t be able to support it’s 4 front war on the region and have to come to the negotiating table. He just doesn’t because he’s a coward and afraid of the Israel lobby.

He’s already stopped aid to ukraine, no reason he can’t do the same for Israel.

From what I’ve heard, their strategy has been to stall at being 6 months away from a bomb. They could’ve finished their program a while ago if they wanted to, North Korea did it with far less resources. They don’t do it because:

1. It puts them in the dangerous MAD nuclear game theory with Israel
2. It would make them into a pariah state like North Korea and close off any possibility of sanctions relief.

They still want to be somewhat ready though for situations like this where full scale war with Israel is inevitable so if they can survive the war for 6 months they can do a test, establish nuclear sovereignty and get Israel to back off.

Yeah, cause governments tend to implode when the countries arch enemy attacks them…

Hamas hasn’t even imploded, and the people have way more reason to blame them for their current situation than the Iranians can blame their government for pursuing a nuclear program that most of the country agreed with.

No matter how unpopular a government is there, they’re still going to be more popular than Israel, and people will rally around any flag to fight their flagrant aggression.

It’s not that borrowing money is free, zero interest rates means the government pays zero interest for its loans, not companies. It does put downward pressure on interest rates companies pay but they’re still going to have to pay a couple percent apy.

The reason zero interest rates are good for tech is because it forces capital to seek more long-term and risky investments. If I have a lot of money and can get 6% apy from loaning it to the US government, the safest bet on the market, why would I invest in something else? If i can’t get any money from loaning to the government (zero interest rates), and i cant get much from loaning it to other institutions because of that downward pressure, then maybe I’ll buy some more risky tech stocks because it’s possible for that company to grow more then the 1-2% id get from just lending my money. Most of techs financing is done through selling stock, not loans.