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by AnimalMuppet 1527 days ago
So, FedEx owns a bunch of airplanes. Billions and billions of dollars worth of airplanes. Who bought them? The owners bought them. So you have three options:

1. The owners get some property rights ("ownership") for the money they put up to buy the airplanes and related other tools. Or,

2. When an employee is hired by FedEx, they have to come up with... something of the order of $60 billion / 100,000 employees, to pay your share of the enterprise you are becoming part of. Or,

3. We as a society don't have any capital-intensive companies. Who's going to buy the tools, if the one putting up the money doesn't get ownership? (And don't say "government". Government running private enterprise almost always winds up with too much mismanagement and graft.)

1 comments

These are valid concerns to raise, but can be addressed. In actuality, the investors (which can also be the owners but not necessarily) provide the company with capital to purchase these planes. That, or the company uses its own profits to do so. Either way, the money is the property of the company, not the owners.

In the former (investor) case the payment can be structured as a loan, and/or investors can become stakeholders as part of a multi-stakeholder cooperative, with their own cut of the earnings. In the latter case it's no issue because the company is buying things with its own resources.