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Comment by Workaccount2 | Hacker News Reader

Shareholders own the company. They are literally the owners of the company. Like anything you own.

In the same way you own your house and pay a painter to paint it, the shareholders own the company and pay Nick to stamp boxes.

I don't know of anyone who has had work done on their home, and then upon selling the home, went back to the painter and said "Here is your cut of the profit we made selling our house, thanks for the great work!"

But I know and endless number of people who think that because they painted a house at an agreed price to make it look nice, they need to be cut in on the profit from selling the house.

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Now, this painter works for your house exclusively every day 40 to 60 hours each week total, 2-5 years, and because of their work you sell house for 1,000x of the original price. You now go to live luxury life without need to ever work again, while painter continue their meager life painting another house 8 hours every day.

I would say that is a pretty dumb painter. Definitely wildly talented at painting, but incredibly unintelligent. Just paint the house like you were paid to.

You might think I was making an analogy, and hence tried to break it, but it wasn't an analogy. Its the same thing. You own something, you pay people to work on it, it's still all yours afterwards.

Telling the majority of our population they are dumb for engaging in our current social contract isn't going to work out well for society long term.

Those with a 1000x return almost universally recognize that they have the talent to not work for someone else. Or they do work for someone else, but make far, far, more than a house painter to do it.

Those are probably less than 1% of the population. The majority don't even approach 2x, much less 1000x.

Then the 1000x return people should be smart enough to realize they are a small minority and not choose to alienate the much larger majority.

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