If you are "for-profit, founder-owned" do you likewise plan to have a cap on how much you, the Founder, can make both in salary and equity/dividends/exit event like your employees?
I think the sentiment you are seeing here (not necessarily taking a side, just playing devils advocate) is that it might seem a little hypocritical to portray a culture where compensation caps (and ones that seem a little below market rate judging by other comments) are expected when there is no limit to the upside you as the founder might see down the line or from a potential exit down the road. Startups are inherently risky for employees, and while Founders certainly shouldered more of the risk, employees are typically rewarded with equity worth the risk, market rate salaries, or some combination. To not compensate employees in such a way seems like it might be taking advantage of a mindset when you the Founder might not be held to the same standards.
Again, if addressing this very issue is part of the opening up of the shares to employees you reference, awesome. This is a very hard problem to tackle and one where it must be damn near impossible to get everyone on board, so I commend you for making the attempt. I'm making lots of assumptions that I hope are simply not the case. Just wanted to clarify and push a bit more on why there seems to be a consistent theme to these comments.