[johnecheck]

Only tiny fraction of a billionaire's wealth tends to be the fruit of their personal labor. It's the labor of their employees and machines that create the wealth. To my understanding, this is broadly accepted.

Now, billionaires do supply a different key ingredient to the wealth creation - risk. Without investment and risk, wealth cannot be created. In terms of $ investment, billionaires take on the vast majority of the risk and deserve the bulk of the rewards, the argument goes. Workers take on far less risk with their guaranteed* paycheck .

But which is the bigger risk? A billionaire's $100,000,000? Or your home, your health, and your retirement savings were you to lose your job in a bad market?

I'm interested in company structures that incentivize distributing risk, profit, and power across a larger group than we tend to see in modern companies.

[eru]

> I'm interested in company structures that incentivize distributing risk, profit, and power across a larger group than we tend to see in modern companies.

Please feel free to start your own company or cooperative.

[johnecheck]

Working on it ;)

[danans]

> But which is the bigger risk? A billionaire's $100,000,000? Or your home, your health, and your retirement savings were you to lose your job in a bad market?

This parallels the diminishing marginal utility of wealth, which states that with extreme wealth, you can't buy any more to get more utility or happiness.

In a way, the risk phenomenon picks up where that phenomenon leaves off, where the need for normal "utility" gives way to the desire for amassing power over society at large.

The mistake they make is not realizing how much of their wealth and welfare relies on the welfare of the masses.

> I'm interested in company structures that incentivize distributing risk, profit, and power across a larger group than we tend to see in modern companies.

Ironically this is a tiny bit of what we saw with employee stock options in the early days of the internet industry, reflected in the historically outsized power and voice of workers. Arguably, that is a part of the rationale behind the big tech layoffs - to put labor back in its place.

[eru]

> This parallels the diminishing marginal utility of wealth, which states that with extreme wealth, you can't buy any more to get more utility or happiness.

You can buy more. The utility just diminishes, but doesn't go to zero.

> Ironically this is a tiny bit of what we saw with employee stock options in the early days of the internet industry, reflected in the historically outsized power and voice of workers. Arguably, that is a part of the rationale behind the big tech layoffs - to put labor back in its place.

Compare and contrast https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/14/does-class-warfare-hav...

[Nasrudith]

The bigger relative risk is precisely why the billionaire is so rich - their surplus wealth may be wagered against longer odds when it would be suicidally reckless to yolo your life's savings into a start-up. Those sorts of bets are the Venture Capital strategy.

The relative value of money being lower is what enables riskier investments and essentially what 'justifies' inequality in a bloodless utilitarian sort of way. You know how in economics trades may be net positives due to different valuations between individuals? The same applies in current certain money vs future risky unbound returns. That taking such bets is consistently a successful strategy breeds inequity even without any winner-takes-all effects or high barriers to entry.

Hypothetically if the VCs kept on 'gambling' on failed start-ups and always losing without any offsetting huge wins, not quitting because they think a win is just around the corner, it would be a trend that reduces inequity. As it puts money into the pockets of employees and smaller suppliers of neccessary capital production goods.

I am afraid you would find it harder to get larger groups of people to agree to the high growth potential, high risk enterprises because they tend to lack the spare capital to be able to afford to risk it. I think ironically the most probable tolerable risk profile for larger groups (who are presumably more precarious) is something big and secure being sold out of by larger players. (Small traders panic buying and selling and doing worse is its own separate problem.)

One form of company structure that technically does paying labor well better are partnetships typically used by law firms. It works for them because they have no real capital requirements and have high per hour productivity and labor expenses as the lion’s share of profits go to the lawyers whose names are in the company name.