But I also believe the labor theory of value to be complete bunk. You are again apparently endorsing it, but only for your own labor.
All that pain and all that sacrifice are worth exactly zero. You have ownership of the company because your name is on the incorporation papers, and your investors haven't diluted you too much yet. There is no moral justification there. You deserve the money because you have some combination of luck, money, and business acumen that got you to the right place fastest. You don't deserve it because you have a sad-sack sob-story about how hard it was for you to get it. Just be happy it's yours and not your closest competitor's, and try not to pat yourself on the back too hard. You're not a better person, you just got there first.
I am not disputing that you are legally entitled to all the fruits of your business. I am disputing that there is any moral justification whatsoever for you to be an asshole to the other people that helped it grow. You can rationalize it to yourself all you like. The money is yours because your name is on the paperwork, period. That's the way it has to be, because otherwise all the 7 billion idiots, each with different ideas about how ownership and valuation should work, would add too much friction to business.
Your justifying arguments sound to me like Divine Right of Kings or Manifest Destiny. It's the crap you feed to the proles to keep them from getting mad at you. You're not the boss because you work harder or you are more skilled. You're the boss because your name is on all the documents. You don't actually need to work harder or better or longer to justify your ownership. Your name is still on the paper. You do all that to justify your market share.
It's nice that you can afford to go six months with no paycheck. But you're not, really. You're not wasting your time; you're investing it in something you own in the hope that you will earn a return on it. The typical employee won't work for free, because they have no actual equity in the business, and they still have living expenses to pay. You're not stupid, and neither are they.
There is no moral principle in play here. No matter how much or how little an employee feels justified in wanting a percentage instead of a constant, the owner decides who gets what, because their name is on the paper, and the compromises we have made as a society in building up trade law have determined that is the important factor.
So if you sold out, you too could take the cash and walk out without saying goodbye. It would be completely legal. Your employees (and much of the rest of the world) would still be free to think you are a morally bankrupt prick. Scratch that. A rich, morally bankrupt prick, who might yet start a new business and hire them again. So they won't burn any bridges with you. But you won't make any friends that way either.
Compare Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Jobs got stinking rich, and everybody thought he was an insufferable pantload. Wozniak got less in cash, and far more in respect. Jobs was better at the names-on-papers game. Woz is better at the human empathy game.
In the end, your moral calculus will always have your own personal perspectives as a factor. Just forget about that. You're not a better person, you just have your name on more papers. And above all, stop trying to bullshit us into believing that the people who own morally deserve to get all that they take. You get what you get because our system would break in unpredictable and probably horrible ways if you didn't.
It isn't because you're awesome. It's because you put your own name on your own papers, and the business world hasn't yet decided that they're worthless.
Those who forget the past ...
From a different market segment: http://www.salon.com/2015/05/30/americas_never_ending_war_on...
For entrepreneurs who think they are a special class, see "Entrepreneurs are the new Labor": http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/09/03/entrepre...
My in-laws had somewhat of a dispute over a matter of a few thousand dollars some years ago, when their mother died. One of the sisters wound up in control of a certain bank account, and after the burial she simply kept all the money left in the account. My spouse was angry, until I explained that we were never entitled to a dime of it, because my mother-in-law is the one who failed to manage her estate properly. We could either accept it or go to the graveyard, argue with a tombstone for a few hours, and then accept it anyway.
The fact remained that the sister-in-law did what was legal instead of what was right. She kept the money, and lost the trust and respect. We haven't forgotten. That's why if my spouse and I die unexpectedly, the guardianship of our minor children is now separated from the trusteeship for their inheritance. If they choose to live with any of my spouse's siblings, whoever that is may have to submit their expense receipts to my sister and parents in order to get a check. We were simply fortunate to have learned something about the moral fiber in the family before it impacted anything actually important.
The worst part of the whole affair for me was listening to the person whinge on and on about how much she deserved that money. She didn't. She just had her name on the paper. And that's why I was okay with her keeping it. It wasn't mine. It wasn't my spouse's. It never was. Not getting money that was never mine is a very, very, very small price to pay to learn whether someone is trustworthy. And it is now a perfect illustrative example, separating the two realities of legal contract terms and implied or traditional moral obligations.
If you want something to be fair, write the contracts to make it fair, because even a seemingly trustworthy person can bullshit himself into thinking he's doing the right thing, even while screwing everyone else over.
In a lot of cases, sacrificing anything for a company just isn't worth it. The rest of your life is more important than your job, IMO. To be fair though, I'd have felt the pangs of greed that the Mojang employees felt, seeing all that money. In the end I would calm down and remind myself that I signed on for a fixed salary though, and be happy there was a retainer bonus in it for me.
When you start something like Minecraft, you initially do the work without being paid. That may mean you don't draw a salary for months or years depending.
When you take a job, you get paid to do the work. If you're Markus, you kept working despite the lack of a paycheck. If you're an employee, and the business stops paying you, you're almost always going to quit.
Beyond the straight-forward legal basis, it is precisely that initial risk that gives morally credibility to the ownership held by the founder.
What I've personally been building for the last six months, I draw no income from. Are you going to attempt to claim that a typical employee would take that risk? That they'd forgo a paycheck for six months to keep building the product to get it to launch? No, exceptionally few employees would be willing to do that. They'd all quit when the paychecks stopped. I'm willing to suffer and absorb risk in ways a standard employee never will, to get what I'm building to completion, and I morally deserve the ownership accordingly.
What you seem to have a problem with are the concepts of ownership in general.
I can in fact reasonably argue that employee contributions after the founding do not and should not automatically entitle someone to shares based on proportional effort. That is all decided by the employee, and what terms they're willing to accept to part with their labor/time. Don't take a job where you don't get equity, if you want equity. That's a matter of taking personal responsibility for your own life and well-being.