keep investors/a for-profit structure out.

Putting these two in the same bag is a mistake, this is what OP and I are saying.

Context and scale matters. Even though both small and big companies depend “on profit”, the methods they use and incentives that drive them are wildly different.

therefore it’s better to create hierarchical organisations with some benevolent dictators.

That is a non-sequitur and a misrepresentation of my argument. I’m talking about having smaller independent software commercial providers, where the relationship between parties is guided mostly by free trade. Who is the “benevolent dictator” in this scenario?

I believe that power always corrupts so it’s not a good solution.

What makes you believe that cooperatives are free from power games and political disputes?

Ok. Could you maybe focus on the core point of the argument instead of “well, actually”-ing into the details of co-op structuring?

The point I’m trying to make is that the more “people-owned” any organization it is, and the more people are practically involved in the decision-making process, the less efficient it will be and the more costly it will be compared with a business that is solely focused on creating a financially sustainable operation.

So yes, you can certainly make a co-op with dedicated employees and not have all members involved in the governance apparatus. But if you are going that route, you are not that different from any other business and the “members” are not that different from regular stockholders who are just subject to an executive board. And if you are not going that route to show support for the process more than the actual service, you may end up with something “nice” but which will unquestionably cost a lot more (relatively speaking) than a simpler commercial alternative.

coops and non-profits and all sorts of structures exist for way more complex and difficult to quantify organizations

The fact that they exist does not imply that they were ever able to serve their community/customers/users universally. You either get some people being served well at an inefficient overall cost, or you get everyone being served poorly by a broken system which can not afford to provide adequate resources to workers.

IOW, I’m not arguing that “coops” can not exist. What I am arguing is we will never get rid of Big Tech if we keep forcing the idea that only community-owned services are acceptable models of governance.

You’ll never be able to compete with mega corps

I gave an example elsewhere on this post: cosocial (a coop) charges $50/year from its members for Mastodon access. mastodon.green (not a coop) charges $12/year. Communick (not a coop) charges $29/year for Mastodon and Lemmy and Matrix and Funkwhale with 250GB of storage. omg.lol charges $20/year for Mastodon, and some other cool web services.

All of these small and independent service providers are offering more than a coop, and they can not scale beyond a certain point. If the service is built on FOSS, then it means that if the business model becomes successful it will face competition.

Painting co-ops as the only alternative against Big Tech is the mistake, here. Smaller ISVs could make things cheaper, serve the market ethically and efficiently without requiring everyone to worry about “owner duties”.

Is it really that difficult to think we can financially quantify people’s roles?

In a centrally-planned system? Yes, it is very hard.

I was a freelancer for 15 years, I had to quantify jobs constantly.

I assume you mean that you had to give a quote to a client?

If that is the case, your client has sole decision-making power and has “only” to evaluate whether the price you were asking for your labor is lower than the value you’d be bringing them.

How does this compare with a coop, where (presumably) the member-owners have all to agree on the price of labor? Are they going to accept to pay market rate for the people working there? Are they first find whoever is willing to work for the cheapest and then set the price on that?

Why would it have to be cheaper?

“Being cheaper” is a very good proxy for “being more accessible” and “easier to be universally accepted”.

If the coop model gives you some (real or perceived) benefit to you, great. But if the cost of acquiring/maintaining those benefits are too high, it becomes more of yet-another status symbol than an actual development for society at large.

How do you decide “what they deserve”? What should be the payment for a moderator, or an instance admin? What of you have someone also making contributions to the software and as such is in a position to add features exclusive to one instance?

Can you make a list of coops that provide service to its members and is overall cheaper than the equivalent commercial offerings?

If your idea for a good way to spend your hard-earned money is “to own” a service provider that gives you the privilege of participating in absolutely low stakes meetings, then sure, go for it. If you want, I can set up a server for you and you get in charge of finding members to join. Deal?

It need to be people owned.

Sounds good on paper, but the practical implementations make them not any different than any other small service provider. cosocial.ca is a Canadian co-op for Mastodon. To become a member, you must pay CA$50 per year. What kind of “ownership” does that give to you as member? Nothing, really. You can not take control of the domain or the server.

At best, you’ll get some bureaucratic oversight and the “right” to make proposals regarding changes in governance: “use the money to upgrade the server or to pay the admin”, “Allow some members to get free access because they are facing some hardship, yes or no?” etc.

But at the end of the day, is any of that “ownership” making you (or the other members) better off compared to a service like mastodon.green, which simply charges $1/month and gives you an account?