All right, let me put it this way. Without the money, it doesn't get built. The project managers, engineers, architects, and construction crews (plus the steel workers' local) aren't going to have a bake sale and come up with the money. If there's going to be a steel mill, the owner has to do something - at least write the checks plus hire someone to be the general contractor, and someone else to be the plant manager once it's built.

And the owner has to have at least a reasonable chance of getting paid back for their investment. They're not building a steel mill as a charity. So if you don't let the owners make money off of their steel mills, then you don't get any steel mills. Whose life does that make better?

[Edit: And letting the owner make as much as the janitor isn't going to cut it. The owner is putting in hundreds of millions of dollars; letting them get back $15/hour is a completely inadequate return for the level of risk they are taking.]

> The project managers, engineers, architects, and construction crews (plus the steel workers' local) aren't going to have a bake sale and come up with the money.

But if they did, they'd still be investors (i.e., employee-owners) and everything I said would still apply :).

More seriously, employee-owned businesses aren't uncommon, but still, the investors/employees are profiting from the company's increased producitivity _as investors_--their wages don't increase, the value of their shares increases. Just like owners in sole-proprieter businesses like our hypothetical steel mill.