What Friedman also got wrong was failing to account for the social costs of taking money from the employee from the various groups, and failing to account for the relative weight of the value taken from each group.

Usually if you spend shareholder money on your employees, this reduces objectively quantifiable societal harms, like economic inequality, which is associated with everything from reduced productivity to lower life expectancy (both social costs), and poverty.

Additionally, if you spend customer money to pay your employees, depending on the good you're offering, you're spreading that cost across society (including the rich), with all the benefits listed above. If every corporation did this, you'd see prices rise for those same employees getting paid more, but their pay increases would be greater than the cost increases (because e.g., shareholders are also customers).

Anyway.