A nice post. I think you will find Adam Smith in the fashion you described because Adam Smith ultimately sympathized with labor rather than capital, from my repeated readings of his works.
Perhaps it was his familiarity with the privileged sort combined with his Scottish naissance which rendered him thus, but likely that's only my own wishful thinking.
Why would anyone sympathize with capital over labor? At the end of the day why anyone does is efficiency. Other than that capital is simply a means to coerce labor to do work. Why would anyone side with coercion rather than the people? People worship those with capital as if there is something really special about them. At the end of the day I have observed 1/2 and 1/2, some people are really special others just lucked into capital because of the situation. There is no virtue to gaining capital and it does not say all that much about its holder.
A worker employed at a startup is entirely dependent upon the startup for the majority of his income. An employee is in general all in with their company in most locations, which is why changing jobs is difficult.
An employee takes on more risk, simply because everything matters more to them, than it does to the owner, you can easily drop X amount and not feel a thing.
How is depending on a company for income a risk? You don't lose anything if company closes, you just find another job.
And I don't think that "feeling a thing" is relevant here; regardless of whether your net worth a million or a billion, when a company you invested in closes, you lose the same amount of money — unlike employees who got compensated for their time and work regardless.
Going from $1bn to $50m (a loss of 95%) in wealth might be psychologically damaging but you're still independently wealthy. You'd lose the jet (if you chose to buy one), but you'd keep the house, the car, the neighbourhood, etc.
Going from $1m to $50k (a loss of 95%) is absolutely enormous. You've lost the house and the retirement fund and you're starting from scratch with a deposit.
The realistic case for most labourers is worse than that. How much risk is involved in moving to a new town for a job? Training in a certain discipline? Deciding to have children or not? All of those are far more impactful on the middle class than on the wealthy.
> How is depending on a company for income a risk? You don't lose anything if company closes, you just find another job.
Of course, you lose absolutely nothing. Well apart from your income. I mean that's about all you are risking. Oh but of course, you will immediately find a job after you are fired, without any kind of lead time. And sure, there is no chance you might ever go unemployed for longer than a week. I mean unless there is some kind of industry wide down turn which dries up all positions you could have taken. But that never happens.
> And I don't think that "feeling a thing" is relevant here; regardless of whether your net worth a million or a billion, when a company you invested in closes, you lose the same amount of money — unlike employees who got compensated for their time and work regardless.
Ah but of course. The billionaires take on so much risk, what with putting 1% of their assets on each bet. Truly enormous the amount of risk they take. Meanwhile all an employee is risking if a company goes belly up is funding for their entire family. No biggie.
Perhaps it was his familiarity with the privileged sort combined with his Scottish naissance which rendered him thus, but likely that's only my own wishful thinking.