[bmacho]

Why can't businesses be owned by people that:

  - enjoy owning and managing a business
  - do think that owning and managing a business should come with the same compensation as any other dayjob (hairdresser or whatever)

While managing a large amount of money naturally lead people to have enough to buy luxury items, IMO, this is just a sad fact of our world, and we should fight against it.

[hiAndrewQuinn]

Because it shouldn't come with the same compensation as any other day job.

Let's say you can make $80,000 as a hairdresser. You are seriously proposing that someone who takes all of the risk of

* Renting their own hair salon,

* Building up their own clientele,

* Taking out loans to purchase hair dressing equipment, and

* The thousand other things the business owner has to do in addition to actually dress hair themselves,

should walk away with the same amount we the person who just gets hired to dress hair.

No one would ever start a legal business under such a regime. It's all downside! Which is why you never see people actually owning and running businesses (successful ones at least, and most unsuccessful ones too) with the mindset you describe.

[seabass-labrax]

Do they actually walk out with more, though? Looking at the 'businesses for sale' listings here in the UK, I can see most of the hairdressing salons have an asking price of between 2x and 10x the statutory minimum wage. So even if the hairdresser built the business by themselves in only a few years, has never sold any stock, and has no outstanding loans, they'd probably get no more than twice what they'd have earnt as a non-entrepreneurial hairdresser over the same period. Then that will also be taxed at a higher rate.

I'm not saying that being an entrepreneur isn't a good way of making money in certain circumstances, but I think that starting any brick-and-mortar business is barely viable compared to persuing a white-collar career where one's final salary would dwarf the value of even the most successful hairdressing enterprise.

TLDR; the promise of money alone cannot motivate someone to become an entrepreneur.

[hiAndrewQuinn]

This is different to OP's question. OP is specifically asking why it can't be so that the entrepreneurial hairdresser is guaranteed, in some moral sense at least, to get no more than once what they'd have earned as a non-entrepreneurial hairdresser.

[roenxi]

They can and frequently such people are; but they aren't very obvious because they stop while the business is still small. If we don't harness greed into doing something productive then there isn't enough motivation in the world to power a modern industrial society. People like Bezos would just sit around running a local bakery or something instead.

The way the system works is people who create unfathomable amounts of wealth get to keep unreasonable amounts of it. If that link is broken, they'll stop at creating a reasonable amount of wealth and then everything grinds to a halt. If someone is in a situation where they are doing a good thing they should have every incentive to keep going and not stop.

[lycopodiopsida]

> People like Bezos would just sit around running a local bakery or something instead.

And we may be better off as a society? The problem with greed is that it can be very destructive and has high costs for the society and environment. Thus, how much greed is constrained is in the end kind of a social contract.

[kriops]

Risk. There is nothing to fight against, but "we" might consider educating ourselves so that we understand why the calculation that happens through the price mechanism benefits all, and moreso than any alternative.

[csomar]

This has been tried in mother Russia and several other countries and it didn’t work because of math. You need to compensate the risk with an upside otherwise nobody will play the game.

It’s like rolling a 50/50 coin where your payout is 0 or 100%. Why would you play if there is only downside?

[rs_rs_rs_rs_rs]

>While managing a large amount of money naturally lead people to have enough to buy luxury items, IMO, this is just a sad fact of our world, and we should fight against it.

Ironically some of the biggest european companies are related to luxury items.

[procaryote]

The thing you're describing is an underpaid CEO position without equity. If you're competent enough to get the job in competition with people who want to get paid, I'm sure you can.

[lazide]

Huh?

Why take all that risk, for no additional reward?

If the business fails, is the gov’t going to keep paying them like a hairdresser or whatever?

[Shorel]

That's not that bad an idea, with some caveats.

An incentive for entrepreneurs?

It can help kickstart a stagnant economy.

[agent327]

Yeah, that exists. It's called "not having oppressive tax rules".

[lazide]

The State relies on oppressive taxes to fund everything.

[lazide]

Why not just be a hairdresser? Way less stress.

The economy is stagnant for a reason. At some point, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

[agent327]

Who would employ you, if nobody was motivated to start the salon?

[lazide]

In this scenario, ‘the dole’ eh?

[throwmeaway222]

communism, and with this sentiment, no one will want to run a business. the country will wither and die

[mickelsen]

Yeah, I'm appalled a line of thinking this naive (because let's face it, it's not just idealistic) is making it to HN.