Agreed. Could you please elaborate on the “rise in popularity of worker collectives”? Curious what examples you’ve seen, especially in tech and business.
Few ungoing experiments in the US (that I know of), more hype in news articles and conversations about tech policy, which is why my optimism is still very cautious. There are a lot of things that sound good in theory but fall apart when tried out in practice. So I'd like to see more evidence that flat management structures really work at scale before I jump on that train.
But in principle it makes enough sense that when I see an article in Slate or similar[0] that's championing them, I don't dismiss it out of hand. I want to see more evidence that any working examples that do exist aren't just very rare, temporary exceptions to the rule that hierarchy is necessary. But the idea seems worth looking at.
This principle is the same reason I'm also very cautiously optimistic about ideas like UBI. I'm cautious of anything that sounds great in theory but that has comparatively little practical data behind it. My understanding is collectives are more common in Europe, but it's not clear to me how that experience will map to the US.
I never worked at one and whilst i think they were a lot more common here (Belgium-Flanders) given some of the old buildings with their business-name engraved in stone I'm interested as well. The biggest ones which could be a reference for scale if they're nice seem to be german and french.
I also suggest stay to keep a good eye on operation, rules and definitions when considering mapping that or any experience to the US.
It's become very apparent to me that discussion on concepts (for example unions or healthcare stuff) in the US often reference apparent success or failure in other countries without ever looking deeper into the workings and such.
Thus implementations often end up flawed or just not equivalent.
Someone who's attacking or defending unions for example should not consider my country an example for the style and workings of unions I often see described across the pond and if they do talk about the style of unions here they should to the environment and law constraints in which they exist all of which has a big impact.
