(Preface: I'm still curious about this vision, and I'm asking about it to better understand it, even if I don't necessarily buy into it yet. But if this is tiring or boring, please don't feel like you have to continue replying! I appreciate the discussion so far, regardless.)

> It's useful to hear your (not positive!) reaction to this idea and I appreciate the exchange.

Sorry, it's not necessarily meant to be negative (although I can see that)... just... "skeptical", I think, in this post-Uber era, where the disposable, commoditized nature of labor is especially highlighted. Maybe "pessimistic" more than "negative"?

The org structure you're describe seems less like "all-owner" and more like "all gig work" -- the closest equivalent I could think of is if everyone simply worked under Ethereum smart contracts and got paid in various financial abstractions on top of that. Or like a web of peer-to-peer B2B sole proprietorships.

> If the founders of this business offer only exploitative terms, then presumably no one would sign up. Or perhaps only people who they might not want would sign up. If, on the other hand, they offered similar comp levels but with a greater chance of success, then perhaps it could be a lot more attractive than current options.

Actual co-ownership would mean the founders share the high-risk, high-reward situation. But in your setup, it sounds like it would distribute the risk across those who have less agency and financial/legal literacy, while simultaneously concentrating profit in the hands of those best able to manipulate the arrangement through a superior understanding of contract law, access to better lawyers or accountants, higher charisma, etc. It seems almost purpose-designed to disadvantage engineers who just want to contribute on the technical side instead of playing games with the shell companies. They're no longer "owners" in any meaningful sense of that word, just free agents who take on a lot of the risk with almost no guarantee of anything.

It's not clear to me who WOULD actually have ownership beyond that "holding company [at the center of] a web of entities"... all presumably with ties to some founder(s) but not others? That's not co-ownership, that's hiding the ownership and falsely representing employment status to the later joiners...

OK, but to be fair, let's say all of this is fully transparent upfront and people know exactly what they're signing up for. And let's also presuppose a healthy enough labor market where different kinds of companies and employment relationships all coexist (instead of them all converging towards the highest-profit model):

Let's say an individual worker could choose between:

-BureauCorp (unionized and a $100k salary, group negotiations, very low chance of unicorn-izing)

-Silicon, Inc. (non-unionized, $125k salary, 1% equity, fend for yourself, low chance of unicorn-izing)

-Code Co-op (worker-owned coop, $50k salary, 5-10% equity, shared governance, though not necessarily 1-person-1-vote, near-zero chance of unicorn-izing)

-Programmer Partnership (co-ownership of business and profits, $40k salary, 10-50% equity, defined governance, low chance of unicorn-izing)

-FreedomFirm (your hypothetical model, indentured servitude instead of a salary, X% equity, fend for yourself, low-medium chance of unicorn-izing)

What would FreedomFirm offer, especially over other high-risk models like Code Co-Op or the partnership? How would it entice workers, beyond "We're less regulated, so we will succeed" -- or is that the main offer? Do new worker-owners have to "buy in" to have a share of profits, or are they granted some equity upon joining the contract?

Is the idea that it would only draw in other people of similar financial/legal standing -- i.e., people who don't need a salary and have a high risk appetite, like former techies with significant savings -- who want a way to participate in a new org that offers basically nothing except a slightly higher chance of becoming a unicorn?

Like "invest $200k to buy shares in the shell company, fully vested upon 500k lines of code/delivery of feature X on the roadmap, no salary otherwise. If we succeed we all get rich, and if we don't, you get nothing"? How does ownership/equity relate to governance in this scenario, like what happens to their equity if they are "do-not-renewed"?

-------

I think mostly, my main skepticism is still "who would this appeal to". Is it only designed for people who think businesses primarily fail due to labor regulations? Or maybe there's some value proposition that I'm just not quite grasping yet?