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Comment by vladharbuz | Hacker News Reader

Great question! Maybe they are, maybe they're not, and you're right that this should influence how the company is structured. But our current system goes quite a bit past simply "solving" this problem with investor shareholders, because that sole shareholder is entitled to any future profits the company makes, regardless of whether it makes a completely different game, and regardless of the massive contributions future employees may have made in the meantime. What do you think? I discuss this in more detail in this essay: https://vladh.net/alternatives-to-wage-labour

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It's the same argument if someone should take options in lieu of salary in a startup, and the answer is almost always no. Options tend to end up worthless as most startups fail.

IMO, a better question is to ask what allowed the single investor to become an investor to begin with. The nature of investing means the investor must be able to also lose all their capital. What can we do as a society to make easier for the 99 other employees to 'invest'. For me this means having social safety nets like healthcare and UBI so that people can take less salary or risk what little they have in a venture like you originally described.

The challenge is that the company you work for is almost never the best investment on its own. That's why retirement funds are diversified. I would worry about giving everyone the ability to bet 99% of their wealth on a single company. The reason there are investors is because they've previously invested their money in a risk appropriate way. Now there's a whole argument around intergenerational family wealth which skews everyone's starting point, but it's probably better than concentrating that wealth in a single point of failure (the state who gives you UBI). Probably the right approach to wealth inequality is more tax on non-beneficial uses of money(yachts), and more incentives for mutually beneficial pursuits (cheaper energy).

Bolt (the 1-click payment) company tried this, and immediately after (justified) layoffs you saw articles about people taking out (relatively) massive loans to buy now-worthless options: https://www.wired.com/story/bolt-stock-loans/amp

Had Bolt made it, those employees would have become investors...

It's all about luck IMO

Yes, I fully agree with your conclusion! I think changes in the structure of work have to be accompanied by things like UBI to fully work.

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