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But startups are worker-owned, insofar as the founders are able to profit from it.

Some startups are worker-owned through stock grants, but those grants are rarely evenly distributed. The founders hold the majority as long as they can.

It is a good practice for companies to include stock as part of the pay package. It encourages alignment of the company with the employees. Very, very successful companies follow this model, such as Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, etc.

It seems to indicate that if Amazon was employee-owned today, the first thing they would vote to do is convert future hires into non-owners, because that's what the founders did when it was actually employee-owned.

Not entirely sure what you're saying here. Amazon still provides stock to employees as part of the comp package, AFAIK.

I mean, it probably depends on the type of employee. I assume folks doing deliveries or working in warehouses aren't getting stock packages. I wonder if the admin or accounting folks do.

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