this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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Memes of Production
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Yes, a bunch goes to owners who fronted the startup costs and are on the hook if things go sideways, but also there's a lot of other expenses like the sales channels, marketing, legal, insurance, maintenance, rent, bribes, etc. Speaking as someone who co-owned and ran a company that size, there is a shit ton of work and stress, and a very possiblility of it all falling apart and losing one's investment. The employees working 9-5 for steady wage do the hand-on labor, but there's a lot more to running a company. Otherwise why doesn't this guy and his coworkers just do it on their own and pocket all that extra money?
Workers take a risk too when they work for a small company, and are often worse off than the owner when the business fails.
The question that should be asked is, why doesn't the owner transform the business into a worker cooperative?
Sadly, this whole conversation has been derailed by the deflection of the focus to small businesses probably with <10 people. Lots of these arguments made by the person you responded to become more and more threadbare as a company grows.
That’s not derailed, if realized employee compensation is only 500k then it’s a small company exactly like the ones being used as an example. You can take a good chunk of that 1.2M he references away in associated companies payroll taxes and benefits that deep brain in the meme doesn’t include in his breakdown. A company paying out $500k in payroll is a small business.