No need for your charity, thanks. I'm simply making the argument that you must live in a bubble if you think that enough people have the excess liquidity and market knowledge for this to be an applicable solution to the general population.

> Unless you want to imply that people are too dumb and need to be protected from themselves

Not being wise in the markets != being dumb.

Protected from themselves? No, protected from speculators and exploiters.

That's a good argument to make.

Among the entire workforce of a successful employee-owned org, I would think there would be no disagreement, IOW nothing to argue about.

It surely depends how successful, but all you need is to do the math to know for sure.

Beyond a certain threshold, companies where most of the workers are living paycheck-to-paycheck can end up paying them more and that bugaboo can go away completely. Whether or not they are actually awarded or entitled to any shares in their employer yet. Even during a time when it's just the rest of the employees owning the company.

What good are shares if you're never going to sell? I mean never sell your shares nor (vote to) sell the company.

The only thing shares like that entitle you to is dividends. And you only get dividends when the company makes enough money to declare a dividend. Over and above any shortcomings that might need to be overcome.

The net difference is that distributions that go to outside investors under the more-familiar arrangement, are instead returned only to employees when they are the only shareholders.

And sometimes that could be a very life-changing difference for doing the exact same work. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

That's why you do the math.