[quasse]

The US actually has a legal structure for employees to have beneficial (+ tax advantaged) ownership of their companies, the ESOP (employee stock ownership plan). It's a legal structure where a trust buys the company from the original owners on behalf of the employees and then allocates a percentage of those shares to the employees each year.

There's no requirement that this be a 100% ownership arrangement, but there are a surprising number of companies in the US where that's the case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_employee-owned_compani...

Since it's basically a leveraged buyout of the company by the employees, it provides a much more ethical succession option (IMHO) for privately held companies with founders who want to step down but do not want to sell to private equity. I wish more people were aware of it as an option.