[phoyd]

Giving employees stock options does not solve the "employes should own the company" problem, when there is a market to sell the stock. Shareholders and employees have different goals and interests regarding the company. For example, the employees they may have to decide on the elimination of their own jobs in order to secure the value of their stock holdings (which btw. would make the company not owned by their employees anymore)

A more interesting approach would be a model where being a employee automatically gives you a vote on company wide decisions including. the distribution of profits, just how being a cititzen of a democratic country gives you a vote on the fate of your country (similar to the Mondragon Corporation in Spain)

[android521]

so in the extreme case, the employees can decide to return 99% profits to themselves and return 1% to shareholders? It sounds cute but will be hard to make it work when incentives are not aligned well. Just like Communism sounds good in theory and everyone with a kind heart will like more equality but in practice, it destroys the entire cake.