You present a false choice here, regarding employees not "generally sharing in the bad times". The CEOs of these companies often don't share in the bad times ei

You present a false choice here, regarding employees not "generally sharing in the bad times". The CEOs of these companies often don't share in the bad times either, while they most certainly are rewarded for the good times. Why should it be any different for all levels of employees? Now, regarding the owner of a small business loaning their company money, while employees do not. Employees are not given the choice, likely because the loan is to high of risk for the average employee given their personal net worth and as important most owner's don't want their employees to be given the option (ie. as an owner of a garage I would not want my employees having that level of access to the company's finances). The primary issue however is the treatment of labor, let's not get lost in details of risk/loans/etc. Given that technology is leading to a surplus of labor, a general multi-decade trend against labor. The question that society needs to address is how do we treat labor? Business can exploit labor pushing what's acceptable, which will lead to larger wins for industry as we can already see today, but is that right? I think you and I differ in opinion on the answer to that question.