Fair enough, I wasn't precise. There isn't one single objective way to do this math because, as you point out, different assumptions will lead to different results, and it makes it impossible to do neutrally. My reaction to the parent comment was mostly due to the rigid view that the way things work now is inherently right and proper rather than there being any number of plausibly defensible allocations of credit (and therefore the value generated), and I think many of them are probably a lot more defensible than what we have now.

> The owner takes the risk that there is no (or negative) money left over after paying employees and all other costs.

This is not true, and somewhat confusing, because "takes the risk" means two distinct things - making decisions and living with the consequences of them. Economic production is a collective effort. The management of the company is who usually makes the decisions; these might coincide with owner (especially in small business) but often they're just another employee.

On the other hand, bad decisions made by management affect everyone in the company, not just the owner. The rich enough owner rarely lose their livelihood (we have limited liabilities btw), but the employees might lose the only source of income.

And the system where you have only one person (owner as main manager) making decisions ("take risks") that can negatively impact many people (his employees, customers and what not) is structurally risky, it actually increases the risk of something going wrong (aside from it being a moral hazard). (POTUS is an extreme example of this.) The risk is shared (collectively owned, if you will) and so should be the decision-making.

What if over time, the system degrades in such a way that there's a group of people that extract more and more value from the system while adding less and less value themselves?

Is this a possible failure mode of the system?

What sort of symptoms might one look for in a society if we believed this might be happening?

Or do we simply dismiss that this has been proven impossible (as per the theory of Money 101) and move on?

> The owner takes the risk that there is no (or negative) money left over after paying employees and all other costs. As a result, if there is money left over, they get to keep it. I suppose I should remind you that the vast majority of businesses fail. The entire dataset visible to you is imbued with survivorship bias.

Right, and CEOs famously are the first ones laid off when the company is flailing and losing money, because after all, they're the ones at the helm of the ship! And of course when a CEO does leave, they never get a golden parachute.

> Welcome to money 101. This is how all business works everywhere. Nobody thinks that value is created "solely" by the owners. That's a fake strawman.

Sure, but plenty of people think that the way value is distributed today is completely out of proportion to their contributions, and you're presenting it like the current way is the only possible rational way rather than an emergent property of the entirety of human history being an uneven playing field.