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Re:Every company should be owned by its employees by robertlagrant on Thursday July 25, 2024 @03:36PM (#41072503)
> Companies can issue new shares to dilute existing investors. I feel like on HN of all places, this should be common knowledge? Like, this is literally the scheme under which every tech company already operates, and yet on HN of all places some of ya'll can't conceive of a system where employees automatically get some stake in the business?

I know you said "literally", so all bets are off in how you'll parse a reply, but yes, I do know about share dilution. You're describing practically the same thing. You want people to risk all their capital, and if the business does well you auto-dilute them. That's fine if it's what they signed up for, but it will have a chilling effect on investment.

> Under this scheme, Bezos would still have become a billionaire, and we know this because Amazon and tech companies already do this exact thing by offering stock options!

Again, the "literally" made it clear that this wasn't going to be great, but you're committing the apex fallacy. If you only consider the highest of high performing companies in how your instincts guide you, you're going to commit some very obvious errors.

Re:Every company should be owned by its employees by kaibee on Wednesday July 31, 2024 @01:30AM (#41116602)
> I know you said "literally", so all bets are off in how you'll parse a reply, but yes, I do know about share dilution. You're describing practically the same thing. You want people to risk all their capital, and if the business does well you auto-dilute them. That's fine if it's what they signed up for, but it will have a chilling effect on investment.

We can lower interest rates for CapEx business loans to encourage investment. Do we really believe that if Bezos could have only become a single-digits billionaire that that wouldn't have been enough motivation?

> Again, the "literally" made it clear that this wasn't going to be great, but you're committing the apex fallacy. If you only consider the highest of high performing companies in how your instincts guide you, you're going to commit some very obvious errors.

Are we to believe that if Amazon hadn't formed, the hole in market would remain unfilled? I find this very unlikely. Someone was going to be Bezos. And we don't have to begin diluting their share in the first year of the company. And lets be real here, they're going to be paid the highest salaries at the top. They can buy shares that their employees sell on the market like everyone else. I mean, if you're a CEO of a company, you should want to buy shares right? Because you believe in your leadership? So they can pay themselves a large salary and reinvest as much of it as they want.