It is weird how corporate success demeans those at the bottom. I mean ... you've just exposed "the great exposure" fallacy.
"Work hard enough and we will start to include the carrot."
I see no difference between an investor putting in $1000 in cash, and a contributor investing $1000 of their time, because all we would do with the investors $1000 would be to pay the contributors. In the case where the investor adds cash, as the company grows the investor gets the long-term rewards, while the writer just gets paid $1000 and has no long-term position. However, when the contributor invests their time, we don't need the investor. Instead, the contributor gets the long-term reward for their work as the value of their content rises. So rather than consigning contributors to a fixed wage and giving the benefit of their work to investors, we allow writers to invest in their own future. Of course, that all depends on whether they think the business will grow so that a decent amount of revenue can be shared.
As I pointed out above, many of the work-at-home workers need to get instant cash so this system doesn't work for them, and the Wikipedia people will work for free (the fools!). Our challenge is to recruit people who are willing to treat their participation as an investment. But if it works, they will make a lot more money than they would in any other system.