Something missing is that there's a difference between how owners and employees are rewarded. An owner's income doesn't necessarily scale with effort. Instead,

Something missing is that there's a difference between how owners and employees are rewarded. An owner's income doesn't necessarily scale with effort. Instead, it scales with impact (not necessarily theirs, either). An owner can make a decision or do some work and get exponential rewards. Or someone they employ can make a decision or do some work, and the owner can get exponential rewards. An owner can also completely stop working, and by virtue of being an owner still reap the rewards. Employees on the other hand don't have this leverage. Your income basically scales with effort. Working hard or having a huge impact can get you a promotion and increase your income, but only a little. You won't get a million dollar bonus by earning the company a million dollars. Importantly, if you stop working, you stop earning (this is a big roadblock for many people who do want to try starting their own business, people who want to be an owner). Besides aptitude and opportunity, the economy wouldn't function if everyone started their own company. Many things truly do need teams working together to get things done. Perhaps we should be talking about how to reward workers in a way that scales with their collective impact rather than their effort.