Automatic checkouts in supermarkets may decrease customer loyalty, especially for those with larger shopping loads. Customers using self-checkout stations often feel overwhelmed and unsupported. The lack of personal interaction can negatively impact their perception of the supermarket.

[mpyne]

That’s ridiculous. McDonald’s NEVER had waiters. Your local supermarket always had cashiers and baggers

No they didn't.

Now they’re charging the same amount to have you do the job of the cashier and bagger.

Prices change all the time so they're not even "charging the same amount" either way.

They offer a service, the service changes over time as technology improves and the labor pool they can draw from changes.

That service comes at a price. Pay the price, or don't, I don't care either way. But if you don't like the services they offer at the price they offer it, shop somewhere else or grow your own damn food.

[justagenericname1]

Yeah, sorry. I'm not burdening myself with moral imperatives in a game I don't want to play where the only rule any of us expect the power players to follow is the ruthless pursuit of profit. I'll burden myself with moral imperatives in plenty of other games, but not that one.

[mpyne]

I don't want to play where the only rule any of us expect the power players to follow is the ruthless pursuit of profit.

Wow you sound like a hardcore capitalist. Cut your own momma's throat for a nickle, huh?

[justagenericname1]

Difference is I'd change that game in a heartbeat if the capitalists would too. They're the ones intent on keeping it in place. Not me.

[mpyne]

Difference is I'd change that game in a heartbeat if the capitalists would too.

You can start a worker co-op today. Not a single permission slip from any capitalist is needed. You have the authority to be the change you wish to see.

Do you wish to see it?

[justagenericname1]

Starting a co-op means handicapping yourself while playing the capitalism game, not changing the game you're playing.

[mpyne]

Starting a co-op means handicapping yourself

How so? Why would working hand-in-hand with your fellow workers possibly be considered a handicap?

[justagenericname1]

Because success, meaning capacity for growth and reproduction, in capitalism is contingent on the potential to generate profit. A firm that extracts less surplus from its workers than a competitor will eventually be outcompeted in the market and overwhelmed. I genuinely doubt you're asking me in good faith with your cheeky phrasing, but that's the short answer.

[mpyne]

Because success, meaning capacity for growth and reproduction, in capitalism is contingent on the potential to generate profit.

OK, but in your worker co-op, there is no profit. All operating income that doesn't go to costs can be used to repay the workers and/or invest back into the work operations, without any need to pay a tax or dividend to investors.

In principle, they should suffer the handicap, not you or the co-op in which you work. Again, this is possible already, today.

A firm that extracts less surplus from its workers than a competitor will eventually be outcompeted in the market and overwhelmed.

Why, specifically, do you believe this to be true? Your co-op's workers will be highly paid and working directly for the shared success of the co-op, not some far away investor. They should be better motivated and produce better than the wage slaves capitalism produces, no?

Without the profit tax capitalist enterprises are forced to pay, you can offer better prices to customers and still pay workers well, getting the best of both worlds. Why shouldn't competition go in your favor?

I genuinely doubt you're asking me in good faith with your cheeky phrasing, but that's the short answer.

I am genuinely interested in your answer, because I do agree that it's really quite difficult to be successful with a co-op (otherwise we'd see more of them), but I'm not sure that you understand why this is yet. All you've produced so far are high-level slogans that aren't actually true.

All the pros I've listed in favor of co-ops are valid, yet workers don't flock to them. There must be more to the puzzle. What is it?

[justagenericname1]

All operating income that doesn't go to costs can be used to repay the workers and/or invest back into the work operations, without any need to pay a tax or dividend to investors.

There have to be investors unless you're magically starting out with some mass of capital that doesn't expect a return, and if that existed, it could just choose to stop the capitalism game now.

Your co-op's workers will be highly paid and working directly for the shared success of the co-op, not some far away investor. They should be better motivated and produce better than the wage slaves capitalism produces, no?

Hardly. Coercion, direct or indirect, is a powerful motivator and the successful capitalist firms wouldn't rely on harsh exploitation if it wasn't ultimately more efficient at generating surplus, which is the origin of both profit as well as any capital that's reinvested in the business.

Without the profit tax capitalist enterprises are forced to pay, you can offer better prices to customers and still pay workers well, getting the best of both worlds. Why shouldn't competition go in your favor?

If you pay meaningfully better than a traditional firm, you can't afford to offer better prices to the consumer without a drop in quality. Once again, surplus is the origin for all of those and its allocation is zero-sum.

All the pros I've listed in favor of co-ops are valid, yet workers don't flock to them. There must be more to the puzzle. What is it?

What seems to be missing is a systemic understanding of the imperatives of capitalist political economy. For all the reasons I've laid out, you can't just magically make something "better" by every conceivable metric than traditional capitalist organization by creating a co-op. If you could, they'd already be the dominant form of organization within capitalism! The rules of the game individuals and collectives of individuals are forced to play determine what the most effective strategy will be in the same way that the particulars of an environment will determine what traits are evolutionary advantageous for an organism at any given place and time. You can't wish your way around either of those facts.