Steam used to have (until 2016) a two tier regonal pricing in the EU (EU1 and EU2) but they had to stop it because it was discrimination that people in Sweden paid more for a game than people in Bulgaria. Now everyone in the EU pays the same as people in Sweden. And of course games haven't become cheaper either
There would be similar pushback if Steam started selling games for cheaper in Greenville, Alabama vs New York City. Plenty of regions in the USA have way worse economic disparity than the two you have highlighted. The point of being a single economic/political bloc is to be able to negotiate collectively and work towards a balance.
Eh you'd be surprised. GDP per capita in Bulgaria in 2024 was just $17,412 compared to $57,723 in Sweden (331% increase) while GDP per capita in Alabama was $61,846 compared to $116,883 in New York (189% increase). America's a lot more socioeconomically homogeneous compared to the EU due to Federal spending and a more integrated economy.
It seems like the US has really cheap pricing compared to Western Europe, especially when you consider the poorer countries such as Portugal, Italy, Spain etc.
I wonder if they can get away charging higher prices in these countries because chess is more popular there.
The sales tax is a fair point, but not the currency one. American companies are extremely quick to increase the Euro-denominated prices when this currency becomes weaker; six months would have been more than enough to perform the opposite adjustment. Anyway I can see how selling in the Europe has more friction (legal risks, costs of translations etc.), which must somehow be compensated.
I checked several states from the US and some from other countries. I did not find any discrepancies within a country but I didn't check every combination of course!
Great observation! This is definitely something they do. India is a good example where the price should be lower based on purchasing power, but it’s been increased since chess is really popular there and they can make more overall profit by increasing the membership price.
I’ve done the same thing for discovering cheaper billing profile on many services, e.g. Netflix or whatnot. Never thought to document it.
Finding it is a bit easy, processing the payment sometimes is geo locked by an account in that region (google/android) or having a form of payment in that country. Japan usually is paypay or a credit card with the BIN issued in Japan. There are many local payment providers though that do allow a foreign credit card so in the an China example:
It does get easier and very inexpensive if you do have foreign residencies and you can really rework purchasing.
Spotify for example is not sticky, but they are aggressive on if they aren’t sure you’re region specific to lock you into a monthly plan before allowing you to switch to yearly.
~
There was also great arbitrage for a while on providers that allowed switching to turkey residency and allowing foreign credit card billing but this ended due to the currency instability and now most software sellers anchor it to another region.
~
Also you’d be surprised about the minimum requirements to open up financial accounts in foreign countries. Linepay is pretty much open, but kinda sucks (Japan, Taiwan and Thailand) and it seems the LINE developers are maximizing at destroying their app and audience while WeChat and Alipay are amazing for what they are in general.
You can add foreign CCs to Alipay/WeChat, but you can't use it to add funds. Foreign CCs are also subject to a bunch of fees (network + card issuer + fx that seem to go up to 5%). There's no free lunch.
Thank you for this. Have you heard about PPP (Purchasing Power Parity)? Some pages sell products -50% in Poland because we don't earn as much as in other countries.
Lichess is incredible. I canceled my membership and deleted my chess.com account due to frustrations from disconnects and laggy movement. Lichess doesn't have these issues. It just feels way better to play vs chess.com.
Assuming you can self-host, you may be interested in OpenChess-Insights, abandonned but still working (on Linux, small error L420 in template/analysis.html).
Fascinatingly deep study. It shows the hyperoptimization needed to build these businesses: from all the work needed to calibrate pricing for each country, to technical safeguards like the fingerprinting. A lot of work had to be done here.
Eh, the pricing should be tailored to the individual. Give each individual exactly the highest price point they can handle. Regional pricing is so yesteryear...
> It is the goal of every business to maximise profits. As a business, it is your responsibility to price your products in a way that will yield the most profit.
This is how the article starts, and it might be somewhat off-topic, but I disagree. Plenty of businesses (at least privately held ones) have the goal of simply making enough for the owners to get by. Not to optimize for the absolute maximum. And why should they be responsible to do so?
Yeah, it's a myth, and a pervasive one. Decent description at [0].
Not only that, but people actually think they know that.
Since people believe it, it's "real to them".
IMO, this helps make it easier to go from "we're going to make the best widgets and be good, responsible, ethical corps" to "we will extract as much value as possible from customers, anything within the law is fair game, external consequences not being our concern".
Why is the idea of quality oriented “getting by” businesses popular here, but worker cooperatives generally scorned? A worker owned coop is more resilient to deciding to focus on quality and affordability than a business with investors and hierarchical ownership that can change (after a death or a sale etc)
I've never actually seen them criticized here but I'll bite since I've worked for one.
Worker owned companies are just a different shade of typical corporate politics. I worked for North America's largest sewer inspection and cleaning company. The company did about equal volumes of each type of work but since inspection is more technology based there were far more cleaners than there were inspectors and analysts. I'd been there about a year and I'd noticed that we were so far outpacing cleaning that we'd started to lapse on some of our contractual inspection storage commitments which required about ten years storage of raw inspection files. The inspection files were raw video with annotations. I drew up a proposal to build out centralized storage arrays and upgrade video processing site internet connections. Pretty baseline stuff to meet the needs of our contractual obligations. It went up for a vote because it'd effect the yearly budget which impacted dividends checks. It was unanimously voted down by the cleaners. I realized then and there that any business that's worker owned will be primarily be influenced by the largest in quantity labor group and haven't worked for one since.
Long way of saying that I wouldn't say it's any better or worse than other management structures.
There are different ways to structure worker cooperatives and decision making. Have you seen the consent-based framework sociocracy uses (rather than majority voting or consensus)?
It's hard to say without turning back time that this would've changed things. I could see a seasoned cleaner arguing that the diff of x and y dividends would be impactful to their lives and that I could be pressured to build a less efficient, decentralized system that compliments the existing decentralized system because when I signed up inefficiency was already built in.
Having voting power didn't actually change my position as someone making a proposal. It actually made it worse because now instead of convincing one slightly less informed king I'm trying to convince a room full of even lesser informed peasantry. It'd be like if the cleaners tried to convince me to buy the new line of vac truck with technology advancements that can clean a complex sewer in ten minutes instead of 30. Reflexively, having never dropped down in waders into a sewer I'd say, "Well, what's 20 more minutes of contractual time?"
That's ultimately the social mechanics that were at play: "Okay nerd, why do you need better efficiency and audit ability? This industry has gotten by just fine filing physical hard drives into physical filing systems for a long time." Without being required to empathize with the problem, and without being necessitated to have experienced decision making it's like democracy with pure bureaucracy and no subject matter experts.
As you mention, plenty of bakeries, grocery stores are worker owned. For example rainbow grocery is not _cheap_ but the quality is high and the bulk prices are not bad.
For some reason two of the biggest and best flour brands are worker owned: King Arthur and Bob’s Red Mill.
But if we’re talking bottom of the barrel prices, I don’t know many worker owned orgs that focus on that.
Turns out when operations are more democratic and left leaning (and all worker owned coops I know of in 2025 are left-leaning), workers are unlikely to support things that are cheaper but have negative externalities. So produce is more likely to organic (and expensive), farming practices are more likely to be ethical (and expensive), etc.
I’ve been on the lookout for worker owned clothing brands but they’re few and far between.
The post to which I replied was specifically about:
- worker cooperatives, and
- quality and affordability
I don't know whether worker cooperatives are more or less likely than a median business to generate negative externalities, so I won't comment on that part.
I wouldn't call Rainbow Grocery 'affordable'. It's been a long time since I bought anything there, but I recall it being much more expensive than every single chain supermarket (not just the lower end ones).
King Arthur and Bob's Red Mill are not 'worker cooperatives' as far as I can tell. They both have ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Plans), but I don't see anything suggesting they're run in a democratic (one employee = one vote) fashion.
https://www.bobsredmill.com/employee-owned Certainly many non-coop businesses have ESOPs but this says the goal is to transition to 100% employee-owned via the ESOP (rather than the typical single or low double digit employee grant pool). I recall reading that when Bob was dying he decided or had it in his will to transition his ownership fully to the employees.
edit: "100% employee owned / That happy day came in April 30th of 2020: as of our 10th anniversary, Bob’s Red Mill is now 100% employee owned, one of only about 6,000 businesses in the country to achieve this incredible feat."
Equal Exchange is a worker-owned co-op: https://equalexchange.coop their management leadership positions are rotating (across workers) and have compensation multiplier caps. The coffee at least is quite affordable compared with other specialty brands.
Thanks to zoning laws in Japan, whereby practically anyone is able to start a retail business with minimal capital and permitting requirements, there are many shops and food-related businesses that are worker-owned. Many are also highly affordable can be cheaper than chains or convenience options (apart from the very cheapest of chains).
Worker co-ops are scorned here? I think they just don’t come up much due to the nature of the industry.
Like all [citation needed] nerds I consumed a ridiculous amount of fantasy fiction growing up, and think programming is as close to magic as we’ll ever get in the real world. If somebody made a “Programmers Guild” in the style of a wizard’s guild, who among us wouldn’t join such a thing?
This isn't a "disagree or agree" topic. It's a "wrong or right" topic, and even at 13 years old I could've told you that you're right and they're wrong. Of course this isn't the goal of every business, and it's trivially verifiable.
They effectively put out a statement saying "the earth is flat, water is dry and sunlight is wet".
I agree. The objective of every business is to be decided by their owners. That claim is indeed not always valid. That might be the case for basically every publicly traded company but for sure not for many small businesses.
One can easily argue that by having flat pricing they're doing their fiduciary responsibility because it's setting the company up to succeed in the long run through strong consumer trust.
One can argue that by having regional pricing they're doing their fiduciary responsibility because it's setting the company up to succeed by having success in more markets.
The takeaway from Dodge vs Ford [1] is that not fiduciary duty means dollars at any cost. It's that you need to have a reason that is good for the shareholders. If you don't bother to claim it's good for the shareholders then you're not doing your fiduciary duty.
Yes! Dodge v. Ford is a tough one because Ford explicitly announced that he was using the company's money to advance his own philanthropic aim. That's essentially theft: it's the company's money, not his.
However, as long as management is running the company as a company (and not, say, the director's personal slush fund), the courts give them incredibly wide latitude. They're won't second-guess whether it was "correct" to prioritize long-term growth or short-term profit-taking, as long as either is vaguely in the company's interests.
A parallel case, Shlensky v. Wrigley, has absolutely bonkers facts. Wrigley wouldn't install electric lights at his ball field, clearly due to some...idiosyncratic...beliefs about how baseball "ought to be played." However, unlike Ford, Wrigley left open the possibility that this was also a business decision too: perhaps changing the neighborhood would drive people away, or the lights would cost too much to operate. Consequently, the court found in his favor even though one gets the sense they were not totally convinced it was a sensible business decision.
And the VC world is full of examples where shareholder want the company to prioritize marketshare or riding certain hypes or other activities that increase company valuation within the shareholder's investment horizon. In most VC funded startups maximizing revenue would be a violation of your fiduciary duty
"Shareholder primacy" implies that at any time a decision needs to be made that puts the interests of shareholders against those of anyone else, the shareholders' should take priority. Since pricing affects revenue and revenue affects shareholders in some way, pricing should be structured such that revenue is maximized. So it doesn't need to be the maximum price possible, but it does need to be whatever price yields the greatest revenue.
But surely it’s debatable whether increased short term revenue benefiting shareholders this year is better or worse than longer term plays with the chance of higher returns later, or that avoiding some sources of revenue for ethical reasons protects the brand’s reputation and image in the market.
If a decision puts at odds the interests of two different sets of shareholders at two different points in time, why should the interests of the more distant one be given priority over those of the current one?
There's no reason to speculate about who the future shareholder will be, nor is there any good reason to just assume that favouring short-term gains will favour the current shareholders more. It's also unknown if a shareholder would prefer long-, mid- or short term gains.
Favouring short term gains over anything else is obviously wrong – Amazon could sell AWS for 5 billion dollars tomorrow, but I don't think you'd argue that this would be in their interest at all, even though it's just giving priority to current shareholders over more distant ones.
>nor is there any good reason to just assume that favouring short-term gains will favour the current shareholders more
The reason is that it's a situation that's bound to happen. If I plan to be invested in a company for a specific length of time (for whatever reason) any decisions that benefit the company beyond that term do not benefit me. If those decisions actually harm the company in the short term then they work against my interests.
>Amazon could sell AWS for 5 billion dollars tomorrow
AWS isn't a product, it's capital. It'd be like a factory selling its machines. You only liquidate capital if you need cash right away, precisely because capital is worth more than its flat monetary value.
The current stakeholders probably have an interest in the company not going out of business long term as well.
Anyway, what’s the level of evidence required to sue somebody for working against the interest of their shareholder? I’d expect it to be something along the lines of: the CEO knowingly and maliciously worked against their interest… I mean, we can’t have made being bad at your job illegal, right?
The market is pretty clever, so there is at least room to believe that any move that plausibly would help long-term company health should also help short-term stock prices, right?
>The market is pretty clever, so there is at least room to believe that any move that plausibly would help long-term company health should also help short-term stock prices, right?
I don't know about that. Are the most valuable companies those planning for sustainable returns over many decades? It seems to me the stock market is just a hype machine where anything past 5 years just doesn't exist, and CEOs operate accordingly.
Trivially, the company can expect that it's current shareholders will hold the stock for a long time and so there's no reason to "juice" the current price at the cost of future price.
But also simply, making long term plans is easily arguable to be in fiduciary duty as a future shareholder would be willing to pay more to the current shareholder for a company in good health.
My question is about those cases when they're different.
>But also simply, making long term plans is easily arguable to be in fiduciary duty as a future shareholder would be willing to pay more to the current shareholder for a company in good health.
The future is uncertain. The future company may be in worse health even with this forward-thinking decision, for any number of reasons. One in the bag is worth two in the bush and all that. So as long as we consider fiduciary duty a valid priority, how can we argue against immediate extraction of value over all other concerns?
The timeline (short vs. long ) doesn't matter at all.
The current shareholders have chosen the management (e.g., by voting for the Board) and are consequently agreeing to follow their plan. If you don't like that plan, you have other remedies: sell your stock, run for a seat on the board, etc.
As you note, the future is uncertain, so courts don't want to be in the business of second-guessing facts and competencies.
>If you don't like that plan, you have other remedies: sell your stock, run for a seat on the board, etc.
That exact same argument could be used to dismiss the concept of fiduciary duty altogether. "If the company doesn't operate in a matter you like just divest your stock."
The company doesn't exactly have a fiduciary duty to you. It (or more specifically, its agents) have one to the company itself. This can be broken in cases of fraud, illegality, or conflict of interest. For example, in Caremark and Trans Union, the directors were so checked out that they should have known better--you can't sell a company for a random value picked out of a hat.
Beyond that though, the business judgement rule is supposed to protect against second-guessing plausible decisions.
The leadership team absolutely does not have any responsibility to maximize short-term profit, whichis the claim this thread is about.
It has a responsibility to not actively and intentionally destroy the company, and to not use the company's resources for purely personal gain in a way unrelated to the company.
That's it.
This is also why you never hear about any company getting sued for anything related to this (let alone succesfully). Because it doesn't happen, as it's not a thing and any lawyer would immediately tell you you don't have a case.
>Privately held lifestyle businesses don't, at least not as much.
Only because if they're the sole owner, there's nobody with standing to sue. There's no special legal classification for "Privately held lifestyle business". If such businesses have minority shareholders, you still have fiduciary duty to them, and can't use it as a personal slush fund, or manage it incompetently.
Funnily enough, when incorporating, "to make profit" is usually not part of the stated mission, usually it's something along the lines of "to make chess software"
Those missions are generally for employee alignment, recruiting, customer facing marketing. “Making money” doesn’t work for employees that don’t share ownership of the business and are paid at market rate (IOW as low as the market will bear)
Obviously money is important. We live in a capitalist world. It lets an org invest in future, greater service to its mission. But it's not WHY a business exists. It's just a measure. It's sort of like saying that you exist to breathe oxygen or pump blood. It's necessary and important, but suggesting that's your mission would be a little reductive.
The reasons are because it's their job to ensure the organization's future, and financials are the specifics of how the company plans to do that, and because providing financial information to more people than necessary increases the risk that it leaks to competitors and inside traders.
Not really, they are part of the charter granted by government and they bind the company in its legal capacities.
Companies are de jure entities, they exist not de facto, but by registration with the state. For many reasons, you or others cannot go to courts and claim different things about a company as a separate entity from its owners without previously having declared to the state and courts that such a company exists and what the rules of the company were.
The mission of a company are thus part of the rules defined for a company at creation, such that if an owner made its riches in oil prospecting, but also had a company whose mission was software development, then other partners of the second company, or creditors in case of bankruptcy, would have no claim to riches that came from oil prospecting. For example.
Chess.com is a scam anyway. Rather than comparing the price of Norwegian Chess.cok to Nigerian Chess.con you should be comparing to lichess.org. They have a better app and plenty of people to play with, without any paywalling or marketing or rent-seeking.
Just because you like an alternative better doesn't make it a scam.
Sure they are turning a profit. But when you pay, you get more features. You don't need to pay if you don't want those features or want them somewhere else.
And they use some money to sponsor events. Titled Tuesday is a staple in the worldwide chess community and most top players play there. Not really yo make money, but to stay relevant (it's great PR to play against Magnus Carlsen and last for more than 20 moves or even make a draw) or to have a constant supply of really good players which keeps you sharp. They provide streaming and top-class commentary for top events. They are also involved in tournament sponsorship.
So, please keep the hate to yourself and don't use "scam" lightly. You don't need to like them or ever use them. But once you come across an actual scam, it would be a pity if you burned that term.
Loads of top players play on lichess too, including Carlsen. Titled Tuesday is not a staple in the worldwide chess community. The world championships (classical, blitz and rapid) are.
Idk man, your definition of "scam" seems different from other people's.
"Old rope"? Is every non-EV a scam because it's "old rope"? Are people with cable TV subscriptions victims of scams because cable is "old rope"?
There is a difference between "in my opinion, there is no value" and "scam". Most items in the grocery store around the corner I don't buy, because they don't have value to me. But the store is not a scam. There is an element of directed deception and lying missing, in my grocery store and chess.com as well. Unless you have evidence to the contrary, then please present it.
It seems that people who express such strong, polarizing opinions often do so because they enjoy engaging in debate. If their goal were simply to communicate their perspective without confrontation, they could present their views in a more measured and considerate way.
With that in mind, it might be more effective to share your logical arguments with someone who is genuinely open to hearing them, rather than with someone who appears committed to their position.
Chess.com is fundamentally a scam operation masquerading as a premium service. They've built an empire by paywalking features that should be free - and ARE free elsewhere. Lichess proves every single day that unlimited puzzles, deep analysis, opening exploration, and even advanced features like studies and cloud analysis don't need to cost a dime. They're open-source, ad-free, and completely transparent about their finances.
So like Windows then? Cause a free alternative exists?
Or farmers markets? Cause you can just grow all those crops for free yourself.
Or carpenters? Just get some tools, do your home renovations for free.
Or sex workers? Cause you can just go to a bar and get it for free.
Oh, they are differences between the free and the pay options? The occupy different niches in the marketplace? You don't say. Maybe they are not scams after all, just cater to different tastes.
(I also prefer lichess over chess.com but that doesn't mean I think this is a reasonable argument.)
A better analogy: imagine if someone built a public water fountain, then chess.com set up next to it selling the exact same water for $100/year while limiting the public fountain to 1 cup per day through lobbying. Then they sponsored all the popular hydration influencers to only drink their bottled water on camera.
> Cause you can just go to a bar and get it for free.
Not at the same convenience, can you ;)
So they are selling convenience. Chess.com isn't selling convenience - both platforms are websites you access identically. They're not offering portability or solving a distribution problem. They're artificially limiting a digital service that costs them essentially nothing to provide unlimited access to.
If you know how to run such a platform for free, then I'm sure you could sell your knowledge for a lot of money. And the company running chess.com would be your highest paying customer.
In other words, I think you are underestimating the effort. Just ask the lichess guys.
I'm a big fan of lichess! Their developers are also super friendly and helped answer my questions when I was using their open source projects to build a hobby chess app. I donate regularly too.
This post was more about exploring regional pricing using a case study and lichess being free in every country wasn't a good fit :)
I used to subscribe to chess.com and now I only play on lichess, but in all fairness when you subscribe to chess.com you don’t just get to play games (that you can do for free), you get all the videos which I used to enjoy but now I got no time.
I was a Platinum subscriber for a few years. It's definitely not a scam, but in my opinion, they completely fail at detecting cheaters.
It's very frustrating when you lose a lot of games to cheaters. I cancelled my subscription and moved to Lichess — and although I still lose games, I don't feel like I'm being cheated nearly as often as on Chess.com.
I subscribe to chess.com and they do support a large chess universe of videos and contests.
Still, lichess.org has my heart. It’s free and the user interface rocks.
Well also the fact that America is a single country with a shared history.
I wonder if they can get away charging higher prices in these countries because chess is more popular there.
1. US prices don't include sales tax.
2. All prices are shown in USD, which has fallen ~12% in the last few months.
Adjust for both of these and Western Europe gets the plans for 20% cheaper.
Finding it is a bit easy, processing the payment sometimes is geo locked by an account in that region (google/android) or having a form of payment in that country. Japan usually is paypay or a credit card with the BIN issued in Japan. There are many local payment providers though that do allow a foreign credit card so in the an China example:
Download WeChat/alipay, add foreign credit card, Change region, ????, profit.
It does get easier and very inexpensive if you do have foreign residencies and you can really rework purchasing.
Spotify for example is not sticky, but they are aggressive on if they aren’t sure you’re region specific to lock you into a monthly plan before allowing you to switch to yearly.
~ There was also great arbitrage for a while on providers that allowed switching to turkey residency and allowing foreign credit card billing but this ended due to the currency instability and now most software sellers anchor it to another region. ~ Also you’d be surprised about the minimum requirements to open up financial accounts in foreign countries. Linepay is pretty much open, but kinda sucks (Japan, Taiwan and Thailand) and it seems the LINE developers are maximizing at destroying their app and audience while WeChat and Alipay are amazing for what they are in general.
£15 a month in the UK for an online chess game is crazy.
I've paid for 3 months but this is my last.
I'm only interested in Game review, but there are about 50 other sub-categories on their site that i don't use.
Only their top tier of membership provides game review and to be honest it's not even that good.
The game review is about the top 'computer' move, not what a human should do, and not one at my elo or to advance my elo.
It's a interesting PoC.
https://github.com/LinkAnJarad/OpenChess-Insights
(I think I'm kidding. Am I?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
Or in any basic market where you have to haggle for everyday goods such as food markets in poorer countries.
This is how the article starts, and it might be somewhat off-topic, but I disagree. Plenty of businesses (at least privately held ones) have the goal of simply making enough for the owners to get by. Not to optimize for the absolute maximum. And why should they be responsible to do so?
Not only that, but people actually think they know that.
Since people believe it, it's "real to them".
IMO, this helps make it easier to go from "we're going to make the best widgets and be good, responsible, ethical corps" to "we will extract as much value as possible from customers, anything within the law is fair game, external consequences not being our concern".
[0] https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-co...
Worker owned companies are just a different shade of typical corporate politics. I worked for North America's largest sewer inspection and cleaning company. The company did about equal volumes of each type of work but since inspection is more technology based there were far more cleaners than there were inspectors and analysts. I'd been there about a year and I'd noticed that we were so far outpacing cleaning that we'd started to lapse on some of our contractual inspection storage commitments which required about ten years storage of raw inspection files. The inspection files were raw video with annotations. I drew up a proposal to build out centralized storage arrays and upgrade video processing site internet connections. Pretty baseline stuff to meet the needs of our contractual obligations. It went up for a vote because it'd effect the yearly budget which impacted dividends checks. It was unanimously voted down by the cleaners. I realized then and there that any business that's worker owned will be primarily be influenced by the largest in quantity labor group and haven't worked for one since.
Long way of saying that I wouldn't say it's any better or worse than other management structures.
Having voting power didn't actually change my position as someone making a proposal. It actually made it worse because now instead of convincing one slightly less informed king I'm trying to convince a room full of even lesser informed peasantry. It'd be like if the cleaners tried to convince me to buy the new line of vac truck with technology advancements that can clean a complex sewer in ten minutes instead of 30. Reflexively, having never dropped down in waders into a sewer I'd say, "Well, what's 20 more minutes of contractual time?"
That's ultimately the social mechanics that were at play: "Okay nerd, why do you need better efficiency and audit ability? This industry has gotten by just fine filing physical hard drives into physical filing systems for a long time." Without being required to empathize with the problem, and without being necessitated to have experienced decision making it's like democracy with pure bureaucracy and no subject matter experts.
What might I buy from them?
(The only worker cooperative I knowingly buy from now is a local bakery/pizza place.)
For some reason two of the biggest and best flour brands are worker owned: King Arthur and Bob’s Red Mill.
But if we’re talking bottom of the barrel prices, I don’t know many worker owned orgs that focus on that.
Turns out when operations are more democratic and left leaning (and all worker owned coops I know of in 2025 are left-leaning), workers are unlikely to support things that are cheaper but have negative externalities. So produce is more likely to organic (and expensive), farming practices are more likely to be ethical (and expensive), etc.
I’ve been on the lookout for worker owned clothing brands but they’re few and far between.
- worker cooperatives, and
- quality and affordability
I don't know whether worker cooperatives are more or less likely than a median business to generate negative externalities, so I won't comment on that part.
I wouldn't call Rainbow Grocery 'affordable'. It's been a long time since I bought anything there, but I recall it being much more expensive than every single chain supermarket (not just the lower end ones).
King Arthur and Bob's Red Mill are not 'worker cooperatives' as far as I can tell. They both have ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Plans), but I don't see anything suggesting they're run in a democratic (one employee = one vote) fashion.
edit: "100% employee owned / That happy day came in April 30th of 2020: as of our 10th anniversary, Bob’s Red Mill is now 100% employee owned, one of only about 6,000 businesses in the country to achieve this incredible feat."
Equal Exchange is a worker-owned co-op: https://equalexchange.coop their management leadership positions are rotating (across workers) and have compensation multiplier caps. The coffee at least is quite affordable compared with other specialty brands.
Thanks to zoning laws in Japan, whereby practically anyone is able to start a retail business with minimal capital and permitting requirements, there are many shops and food-related businesses that are worker-owned. Many are also highly affordable can be cheaper than chains or convenience options (apart from the very cheapest of chains).
Re: small busineses... Many family businesses are 'worker-owned' but they are not 'worker cooperatives' because either:
- there's only a single worker, or
- the decisions are generally made by a single person (e.g. 'head of family')
Re: Bob's Red Mill... it has a board and a CEO etc. It doesn't seem to be a 'worker cooperative'.
Like all [citation needed] nerds I consumed a ridiculous amount of fantasy fiction growing up, and think programming is as close to magic as we’ll ever get in the real world. If somebody made a “Programmers Guild” in the style of a wizard’s guild, who among us wouldn’t join such a thing?
HN is the wizard's guild.
They effectively put out a statement saying "the earth is flat, water is dry and sunlight is wet".
One can easily argue that by having flat pricing they're doing their fiduciary responsibility because it's setting the company up to succeed in the long run through strong consumer trust.
One can argue that by having regional pricing they're doing their fiduciary responsibility because it's setting the company up to succeed by having success in more markets.
The takeaway from Dodge vs Ford [1] is that not fiduciary duty means dollars at any cost. It's that you need to have a reason that is good for the shareholders. If you don't bother to claim it's good for the shareholders then you're not doing your fiduciary duty.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
However, as long as management is running the company as a company (and not, say, the director's personal slush fund), the courts give them incredibly wide latitude. They're won't second-guess whether it was "correct" to prioritize long-term growth or short-term profit-taking, as long as either is vaguely in the company's interests.
A parallel case, Shlensky v. Wrigley, has absolutely bonkers facts. Wrigley wouldn't install electric lights at his ball field, clearly due to some...idiosyncratic...beliefs about how baseball "ought to be played." However, unlike Ford, Wrigley left open the possibility that this was also a business decision too: perhaps changing the neighborhood would drive people away, or the lights would cost too much to operate. Consequently, the court found in his favor even though one gets the sense they were not totally convinced it was a sensible business decision.
Longer thread with references and quotes here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393674
Favouring short term gains over anything else is obviously wrong – Amazon could sell AWS for 5 billion dollars tomorrow, but I don't think you'd argue that this would be in their interest at all, even though it's just giving priority to current shareholders over more distant ones.
The reason is that it's a situation that's bound to happen. If I plan to be invested in a company for a specific length of time (for whatever reason) any decisions that benefit the company beyond that term do not benefit me. If those decisions actually harm the company in the short term then they work against my interests.
>Amazon could sell AWS for 5 billion dollars tomorrow
AWS isn't a product, it's capital. It'd be like a factory selling its machines. You only liquidate capital if you need cash right away, precisely because capital is worth more than its flat monetary value.
Anyway, what’s the level of evidence required to sue somebody for working against the interest of their shareholder? I’d expect it to be something along the lines of: the CEO knowingly and maliciously worked against their interest… I mean, we can’t have made being bad at your job illegal, right?
The market is pretty clever, so there is at least room to believe that any move that plausibly would help long-term company health should also help short-term stock prices, right?
I don't know about that. Are the most valuable companies those planning for sustainable returns over many decades? It seems to me the stock market is just a hype machine where anything past 5 years just doesn't exist, and CEOs operate accordingly.
Trivially, the company can expect that it's current shareholders will hold the stock for a long time and so there's no reason to "juice" the current price at the cost of future price.
But also simply, making long term plans is easily arguable to be in fiduciary duty as a future shareholder would be willing to pay more to the current shareholder for a company in good health.
My question is about those cases when they're different.
>But also simply, making long term plans is easily arguable to be in fiduciary duty as a future shareholder would be willing to pay more to the current shareholder for a company in good health.
The future is uncertain. The future company may be in worse health even with this forward-thinking decision, for any number of reasons. One in the bag is worth two in the bush and all that. So as long as we consider fiduciary duty a valid priority, how can we argue against immediate extraction of value over all other concerns?
The current shareholders have chosen the management (e.g., by voting for the Board) and are consequently agreeing to follow their plan. If you don't like that plan, you have other remedies: sell your stock, run for a seat on the board, etc.
As you note, the future is uncertain, so courts don't want to be in the business of second-guessing facts and competencies.
That exact same argument could be used to dismiss the concept of fiduciary duty altogether. "If the company doesn't operate in a matter you like just divest your stock."
Beyond that though, the business judgement rule is supposed to protect against second-guessing plausible decisions.
It has a responsibility to not actively and intentionally destroy the company, and to not use the company's resources for purely personal gain in a way unrelated to the company.
That's it.
This is also why you never hear about any company getting sued for anything related to this (let alone succesfully). Because it doesn't happen, as it's not a thing and any lawyer would immediately tell you you don't have a case.
Only because if they're the sole owner, there's nobody with standing to sue. There's no special legal classification for "Privately held lifestyle business". If such businesses have minority shareholders, you still have fiduciary duty to them, and can't use it as a personal slush fund, or manage it incompetently.
Sure, Amazon made drivers piss in bottles. They also put killed (or atleast, put the final nail in the coffin) your local brick and mortar xyz store.
Companies are de jure entities, they exist not de facto, but by registration with the state. For many reasons, you or others cannot go to courts and claim different things about a company as a separate entity from its owners without previously having declared to the state and courts that such a company exists and what the rules of the company were.
The mission of a company are thus part of the rules defined for a company at creation, such that if an owner made its riches in oil prospecting, but also had a company whose mission was software development, then other partners of the second company, or creditors in case of bankruptcy, would have no claim to riches that came from oil prospecting. For example.
Is it? How so?
Just because you like an alternative better doesn't make it a scam.
Sure they are turning a profit. But when you pay, you get more features. You don't need to pay if you don't want those features or want them somewhere else.
And they use some money to sponsor events. Titled Tuesday is a staple in the worldwide chess community and most top players play there. Not really yo make money, but to stay relevant (it's great PR to play against Magnus Carlsen and last for more than 20 moves or even make a draw) or to have a constant supply of really good players which keeps you sharp. They provide streaming and top-class commentary for top events. They are also involved in tournament sponsorship.
So, please keep the hate to yourself and don't use "scam" lightly. You don't need to like them or ever use them. But once you come across an actual scam, it would be a pity if you burned that term.
"Old rope"? Is every non-EV a scam because it's "old rope"? Are people with cable TV subscriptions victims of scams because cable is "old rope"?
There is a difference between "in my opinion, there is no value" and "scam". Most items in the grocery store around the corner I don't buy, because they don't have value to me. But the store is not a scam. There is an element of directed deception and lying missing, in my grocery store and chess.com as well. Unless you have evidence to the contrary, then please present it.
With that in mind, it might be more effective to share your logical arguments with someone who is genuinely open to hearing them, rather than with someone who appears committed to their position.
Just my 2 cents.
Or farmers markets? Cause you can just grow all those crops for free yourself.
Or carpenters? Just get some tools, do your home renovations for free.
Or sex workers? Cause you can just go to a bar and get it for free.
Oh, they are differences between the free and the pay options? The occupy different niches in the marketplace? You don't say. Maybe they are not scams after all, just cater to different tastes.
(I also prefer lichess over chess.com but that doesn't mean I think this is a reasonable argument.)
> Cause you can just go to a bar and get it for free.
Not at the same convenience, can you ;) So they are selling convenience. Chess.com isn't selling convenience - both platforms are websites you access identically. They're not offering portability or solving a distribution problem. They're artificially limiting a digital service that costs them essentially nothing to provide unlimited access to.
If you know how to run such a platform for free, then I'm sure you could sell your knowledge for a lot of money. And the company running chess.com would be your highest paying customer.
In other words, I think you are underestimating the effort. Just ask the lichess guys.
This post was more about exploring regional pricing using a case study and lichess being free in every country wasn't a good fit :)
It's very frustrating when you lose a lot of games to cheaters. I cancelled my subscription and moved to Lichess — and although I still lose games, I don't feel like I'm being cheated nearly as often as on Chess.com.
It irks me when we use “SKU” for SaaS.
Does SaaS has a limited amount of stock of products?