[green_man_lives]

> What might be some ways to put governers on that?

Probably some sort of cooperative ownership. If you could perfectly calculate the weighted contribution of every person, you would just divide ownership up by that number. A contributor who has done 1% of the total work within an organization has 1% ownership and has 1% of the profits. If that employee retires then their contribution diminishes, but this is (theoretically) countered by the growth in profitability of the company. As long as profit growth outpaces the increase in labor (this ratio is productivity) then people should be able to retire and have a growing pension, without also unfairly capitalizing on the labor of new employees.

So let's say they work 20 years and do 1% of the work. In the next 20 years, the number of employees stays the same, but productivity doubles. The original worker has now done 0.5% of all the work done by the company, but if the company has doubled in profitability, they are still making the same amount of profit they were before.

This also assumes no outside investment from people who aren't workers, which makes it really hard to start a business. Maybe there could be some sort of bootstrapping period where investors can make their returns, which are capped at a certain amount. Or have unlimited returns but the company must switch to a cooperative structure past a certain headcount/size. Dealing with investment is certainly tricky in this thought experiment.

That is a totally theoretical solution but it's fun to explore different ways of organizing systems.

[Brian_K_White]

and I was also thinking that "no longer producing" is probably too simple. I may no longer be producing the thing I wrote a few years ago, but the company I used to work for is absolutely still selling it all day every day.

Not trying to cry that that's unfair since that was the deal at the time was salary instead of ownership. Plus what about all the stuff I spent time on that never produced any value? I still got paid and got to keep it.

Just saying as part of the theoretical conversation about other possible deals.