Nobody admits it, but a lot of the secret of creating a sustainable business boils down to luck, not being a "great business guy". Our industry is set up to reward risk-takers disproportionately...when they succeed. It's a lottery, but we like to justify the disparity in compensation post hoc by assuming that there's corresponding disparity in skill that somehow created most of the value.

But then we're back to square one: why don't you become a risk-taker yourself? It's easy to paint oneself as an underpaid creator of millions of dollars in value, but for this to be possible someone had first to take a risk and then succeed.

And in case of failure - would you, an employee who gets such a dispropotionately small share of generated value, be so eager to increase your share in the generated loss?

I wouldn't and that's why I don't see much value in the "created value" argument.

Who says I'm not? Most of the time that people take risks, they fail. That's why it's called "risk", and not "guarantee".

" would you, an employee who gets such a dispropotionately small share of generated value, be so eager to increase your share in the generated loss?"

That's a straw man. Created value isn't allocated in strict proportion to risk of loss, and you don't have to take more risks to get paid more. If that were true, the people who funded a startup would get 99% of the upside, because they had the most to lose. (Also, doctors and lawyers wouldn't get paid squat. Anybody who knows a doctor or lawyer will tell you that that they're just about the most risk-averse people on earth.)

The real answer is that compensation is about market forces. The people with the money are only willing to pay as much as the people who create value demand to be paid.