Grand Rapids' worker-run, no-tipping restaurant closes

>Grand Rapids' worker-run, no-tipping restaurant closes

>Bartertown's initial menu was described in an MLive review as an "imaginative" array of veggie, vegan and raw dishes that came with names like Dirty Dirty Beans & Greens and Raw Trash salad.

>Bartertown was a collective, which meant there were no bosses, according to Cappelletti. The inspiration for the worker-owned restaurant was based on Cappelletti's own restaurant experience.

>"Because of our economy, people are working 12- to-15-hour shifts, servers take home $200 to $300 a night in tips, the cooks are making $10 an hour[ed.that’s unfair!] and the owner takes whatever he takes [ed. he takes whatever’s left, it’s called “profit.” Or, as the collective learned “loss” when you fail to cover your costs.] Cappelletti told MLive. "We're going to have equal pay and equal say across the board. Everyone working together."

>In keeping with the worker empowerment theme, he commissioned a mural depicting Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong and other provocative leaders tackling restaurant duties.

>“The bar’s operation as a collective no longer seemed feasible,” writes Harburg in “Consensus.” “In years past, a few dedicated employees had always emerged as informal leaders. But over the past decade, this had happened less and less frequently. Most of the employees of the ’90s lacked the idealism of earlier workers and weren’t committed to a collective.”


lol communist cant even work in a fucking restaurant

Lot of regular businesses go under too.

Does this mean an owner paying shit wages and taking profit is an inherently flawed business model as well?

Try to rub those two brain cells you have together sometimes.

>waaaa why did my meme ideology get ass raped in a purely capitalist field its not fair waaa!

stay mad LARPer

>Make red restaurant
>[COLLAPSE]
everytime

I mean I have always believed this. Capitalism is the best solution for short term economical growth. It would be even better if we didn't live on a planet that unfornately limits our resources. I think the need for constant growth in our modern economy is a fundamentally unsustainable system.

>a restaurant goes under after three decades
truly an unprecedented event worthy of a thread in a history board

>the need for constant growth

where does this meme come from

It comes from you not taking a business 101 class and being unfamiliar with the basic structure and purpose of a corporation that issues shares.

>Bartertown was a collective, which meant there were no bosses, according to Cappelletti.
You're putting a lot of hot air into what was really just an employee owned business. While technically that is the core of socialism, lots of people work in such things without thinking of themselves as ideological socialists or caring much about politics at all. I hear co-ops are popular with fishers, for example. They're not all communists.

60% of restaurants fail within their first year.
80% don't make it 5 years.

But yeah, a Marxist vegan restaurant closing signifies something meaningful.

You faggots are incapable of making A's in highschool. You're why there should be an iq test to log online.

These people were communist though. Did you miss the part about them having pictures of Mao and Che in their restaurant?

>iq test
Now THIS is a spook

>Marxist vegan restaurant

You can't make this shit up

>I think the need for constant growth in our modern economy is a fundamentally unsustainable system
Stagnant growth coupled with a growing population is a recipe for disaster.

This is why we need to cull the population.

Co-ops are fine. Co-ops ran by Marxists are a recipe for failure though considering Marxists are borderline retarded.

>when spook is your ad hominem against ontological entities you don't understand or like.

You wouldn't make it on. Sorry fella, nothing personal.

It wasn't real Marxism. It was merely lunch time capitalism.

>retard with his finger up his ass detected
I just don't know why people come to Veeky Forums and write clearly totally uninformed throw-away posts.

Well to be fair if your worker pool is ideological college kids going through their communist phase you're fucked either way.

Co-ops in of themselves however appeal to a large amount of people and many people would support "socialism" in that sense as long you didn't call it socialism. People spoke about owning and self managing the factories they worked in long before Marx came along and turned the concept into weaponized autism.

I agree there is good reason we are going for infinite growth, but I don't think it is sustainable and attempting to make it so will make getting off it harder

Well its one thing for workers to own the company. The thing that makes it work, or not work in this case is they still have to compete with traditional firms for market share.

Which means realistically they still have to appoint a manager with real power, at they cant really pay workers that much above the market value of their labor. In other words markets force them to be rational actors

"Growth" is really just debt repayment. If we got to a point where debt couldn't be repaid fast enough, then the wealthy (current debt-holders) would find all their fabricated wealth utterly useless. The horror.

We (as a planet) need to level off the population, including in the developing world. We also need to move away from a purely debt/loan-based reserve system.

How big is the market for 'raw' vegan shit made by edgelords in Grand Rapids, anyway? I imagine the 'collective owners' friends got tired of being cajoled into eating there.

I don't think that's very true. A lot of things inherently hold value, and wealthy people usually possess more of those things than regular people.

Sure a rich person's equity to debt ratio would be like 1:9 but that one tenth equity still amounts to way more than a regular person's collective assets

I assume every metropolitan area has a cliche of hipsters who would eat at such a place for the sake of virtue signalling, but its hard to tell whether it was lack of customers or mismanagement based on this.

>hipsters who would eat at such a place for the sake of virtue signalling,
Or maybe some people actually enjoy vegan food and there is always a demand for it, regardless of the communist gimmick.

What a concept, eh?

Is an American Marxist vegan restaurant seriously your first encounter of a so-called cooperative?

>Or maybe some people actually enjoy vegan food

And some people get off on self harm but its not the norm

Being unable to conceive of people liking things you don't like is a classic hallmark of autism, I'm sorry you're cursed with such an affliction user.

I'm sorry I triggered you with my jokes about vegan food.

infinite growth in a finite world doesn't add up though. Something will eventually give.

You screencapped your own post.

I don't even like vegan crap I'm just tired of "virtue signalling" becoming a stand in for "people doing things I wouldn't do therefore they're not sincerely doing them".

Wrong, asteroid mining and moon petroleum will solve any resource shortage, the internet is a virtual economy and can grow infinitely with no resources needed, by 2030 asteroid mining will be happening, by 2050 the internet will have a GDP of 300 trillion USD(2016 dollars)

Any number of people do "hip" or perceived positive things so they can be seen doing them, and get the positive attention that brings.

and if you cant stand people using it to make fun of this or that group perhaps you should go elsewhere

You really understand less about the economy than you think you do.

Do you understand what a gold reserve is? And what happened to it?

I have yet to meet a vegan who is well-adjusted.

>get a load of this guy