As a life-long entrepreneur (I founded 5 companies and never worked for anyone else for my entire 25 year career) I have often asked myself exactly this question. This is also motivated by the fact that I also don't particularly enjoy having employees - I had over a hundred at my first company and it became a huge responsibility and headache, from meeting salaries every month to keeping everyone motivated and incentivised toward the same goal. Sure, I like to work with talented people, but could this be done in a different way?
Having your own company is incredibly liberating. I always tell people that you get to be your own dictator, boss or head honcho - pick your titles and all that. Of course, your real boss is the customer, but it sure feels good to be the top dog even if there are nobody underneath you! A limited company is also a good protection, since you can only loose what you have put into that company.
Based on this, I was thinking about a societal system where everyone gets their own limited company automatically at birth. Nobody is an employee, but you can still work together in larger groups using vendor/customer relationships (or even joint ventures) instead of being an employee/employer. This would offer great flexibility for a number of reasons: You can have more than one customer at a time. You could use a host of different business models - time based, revenue share and so on which would spread both risk and reward more evenly. You also get to write off a lot of costs that is impossible as an employee, including development costs for new products and services, so this system would likely encourage innovation. Such a system would be much more customer oriented than today.
I have not spent a huge amount of thought on it beyond this, but I doubt it would be any more risky than being an employee. People get laid off in droves all the time (unless you work for the government, which is the ultimate safe haven for the risk averse).
Having your own company is incredibly liberating. I always tell people that you get to be your own dictator, boss or head honcho - pick your titles and all that. Of course, your real boss is the customer, but it sure feels good to be the top dog even if there are nobody underneath you! A limited company is also a good protection, since you can only loose what you have put into that company.
Based on this, I was thinking about a societal system where everyone gets their own limited company automatically at birth. Nobody is an employee, but you can still work together in larger groups using vendor/customer relationships (or even joint ventures) instead of being an employee/employer. This would offer great flexibility for a number of reasons:
You can have more than one customer at a time.
You could use a host of different business models - time based, revenue share and so on which would spread both risk and reward more evenly.
You also get to write off a lot of costs that is impossible as an employee, including development costs for new products and services, so this system would likely encourage innovation.
Such a system would be much more customer oriented than today.
I have not spent a huge amount of thought on it beyond this, but I doubt it would be any more risky than being an employee. People get laid off in droves all the time (unless you work for the government, which is the ultimate safe haven for the risk averse).