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You can live from your work without profit. Wages are a cost, not the result of profit.

This only works when you have enough capital to back it up. Can't switch to a salary-based remuneration model without having enough assets to make sure you don't default every other month. But yes indeed, you can do that, once you have made enough profits to have an appropriate capital for this use case.

I would argue it's very easy to see when greed begins - it's when people (shareholders) are paid without having done any work.

Yes, that is correct. However the appreciation of "work" is actually the hard part. If it wasn't, micromanagement wouldn't be a thing. So I guess we're saying the same thing, from different angles.

Obviously there is an argument that senior managers get paid disproportionately, but a part of that will always be stock for which they will continue to earn money without doing anything at all. At least their wage is paid for doing something.

Yeah, so, already, this is going into "hard to gauge" territory. Is the senior manager one of the founding members, that grew a business from nothing, eating pasta and sweating blood for years; is the senior manager one of the founding members, that just was a dick from day one, backed by inherited money or VC money; or is the senior manager someone who just joined along the way, and is now profiting off of the work of others?

See, in these 3 eventualities alone, only the first one actually has any kind of legitimacy for being paid and not doing much. Because then, it is a return on investment, and a pretty damn hard investment at that. However, even in that case, it is extremely easy to overdo it and end up paying yourself more than you would actually deserve, even with the all hard work, the initial risk and stress, and the dedication combined.

The other commenter misses a key point that under the current system to truly compete with megacorps you need investors to build scale.

I believe you don't necessarily need investors, but then, you need skill, wits, balls, and a whole lot of sheer luck. Oh, and a "sure thing" product/service too. Can't take any chances.

Independent companies can certainly reinvest their earnings rather than claiming them as profits, which is far better than having them siphoned off, but won't get you anywhere near the kind of cash that you need.

I mean, if you are truly starting a honest business, without much starting capital, and without much preexisting means (e.g. no privileged professional network, access to means of production at extremely low, or no cost, free raw materials/energy, etc), you can't really do it any other way. You gotta reinvest as much as possible, pay yourself the minimum viable amount (pasta/rice only, and necessities. No travel, no leisure, no comfort), to grow the business into something that can ultimately support your life in a more "normal" way.

And as soon as you have investors, they expect their cut.

The main problem with investors isn't even that. Them wanting their cuts is definitely a challenge. But the pressure they can exert on the management, the changes they can enact, the decisions they can force, that is the actual problem with investors. They aren't doing it just for the money. It is a domination kink.