Why should you get a vote? You don’t get a vote on what groceries I buy. What entitles you to a vote on this purchase decision? (In this case “all the votes” means when making decisions on actions a particular corporation is considering, not any vote on anything)
The creation and transacting of corporate shares is also highly regulated. But it doesn’t address the question of why a third party should get a vote that helps decide a particular corporate action. Votes that limit the possible actions of all corporations equally are a different thing.
Ultimately, the corporation is operating (and gets legal support like corporate personhood and limited liability) because the public permits it through the state approving its corporate charter. The public allows the company to exist, and in exchange, the company is supposed to serve at least some vague public good. Technically, the public has the power to revoke the company's charter if that's in people's best interest.
The general public are all stakeholders that are affected by the actions of the corporations they allow to exist. They ought to have a say. In practice, we as a people have pretty much given up that say, and the world as it exists today is the result: Corporations running amok doing whatever they want, answering only to shareholders.
OP was talking about the overall social arrangement. One possibility would be to give employees (of all corporations!) some collective power over the company, as a fundamental requirement of incorporation.
At that point we're begging the question by going too deep into the analogy and finding the original situation again. The point has still been made that working on something without ownership can be enough to justify a say.
And the framers might have a say, it depends on the company.
The owner has a bunch of space and equipment they can grant power over, but that's only half a company. They don't naturally start with power over the employees.
It’s not an analogy. It’s another example of ownership in another context.
Employee’s authority over something owned by another party is delegated by that party and varies according to the trust from that management.
Employees do not own goods or services they have produced and sold. And do not continue to have authority or rights to them.
> They don't naturally start with power over the employees.
Indeed. What they have power over is what their employees do while the employee chooses to rent their time to them.
The details of this are defined in the employment contract. Which tends not to include voting rights in regards to the owner’s property.
If you seek voting rights, you should negotiate that as part of your employment - or don’t agree to it. Many white collar employees receive this in the form of stock.
> It’s not an analogy. It’s another example of ownership in another context.
Right, and it shows that ownership isn't the one factor that matters.
> Employee’s authority over something owned by another party is delegated by that party and varies according to the trust from that management. Employees do not own goods or services they have produced and sold. And do not continue to have authority or rights to them.
It's not like delegation is optional.
But more importantly, the suggestion had nothing to do with ownership. The suggestion was voting power.
I am glad you seem to have stepped back from the "someone else built" language you originally used.
> The details of this are defined in the employment contract. Which tends not to include voting rights in regards to the owner’s property.
And sometimes it's good to negotiate parts of employment contracts as a whole society, by putting it into law. It's not "entitlement" in any derogatory sense. It's a very mild limit on which things can be negotiated.
