I find ownership of property to be a critical foundation stone of modern civilization.

But I also believe the labor theory of value to be complete bunk. You are again apparently endorsing it, but only for your own labor.

All that pain and all that sacrifice are worth exactly zero. You have ownership of the company because your name is on the incorporation papers, and your investors haven't diluted you too much yet. There is no moral justification there. You deserve the money because you have some combination of luck, money, and business acumen that got you to the right place fastest. You don't deserve it because you have a sad-sack sob-story about how hard it was for you to get it. Just be happy it's yours and not your closest competitor's, and try not to pat yourself on the back too hard. You're not a better person, you just got there first.

I am not disputing that you are legally entitled to all the fruits of your business. I am disputing that there is any moral justification whatsoever for you to be an asshole to the other people that helped it grow. You can rationalize it to yourself all you like. The money is yours because your name is on the paperwork, period. That's the way it has to be, because otherwise all the 7 billion idiots, each with different ideas about how ownership and valuation should work, would add too much friction to business.

Your justifying arguments sound to me like Divine Right of Kings or Manifest Destiny. It's the crap you feed to the proles to keep them from getting mad at you. You're not the boss because you work harder or you are more skilled. You're the boss because your name is on all the documents. You don't actually need to work harder or better or longer to justify your ownership. Your name is still on the paper. You do all that to justify your market share.

It's nice that you can afford to go six months with no paycheck. But you're not, really. You're not wasting your time; you're investing it in something you own in the hope that you will earn a return on it. The typical employee won't work for free, because they have no actual equity in the business, and they still have living expenses to pay. You're not stupid, and neither are they.

There is no moral principle in play here. No matter how much or how little an employee feels justified in wanting a percentage instead of a constant, the owner decides who gets what, because their name is on the paper, and the compromises we have made as a society in building up trade law have determined that is the important factor.

So if you sold out, you too could take the cash and walk out without saying goodbye. It would be completely legal. Your employees (and much of the rest of the world) would still be free to think you are a morally bankrupt prick. Scratch that. A rich, morally bankrupt prick, who might yet start a new business and hire them again. So they won't burn any bridges with you. But you won't make any friends that way either.

Compare Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Jobs got stinking rich, and everybody thought he was an insufferable pantload. Wozniak got less in cash, and far more in respect. Jobs was better at the names-on-papers game. Woz is better at the human empathy game.

In the end, your moral calculus will always have your own personal perspectives as a factor. Just forget about that. You're not a better person, you just have your name on more papers. And above all, stop trying to bullshit us into believing that the people who own morally deserve to get all that they take. You get what you get because our system would break in unpredictable and probably horrible ways if you didn't.

It isn't because you're awesome. It's because you put your own name on your own papers, and the business world hasn't yet decided that they're worthless.