How do we know what is enough? Enough food. A long enough holiday. Enough meat on the BBQ. Enough space. Enough money.

If we're contributing money to a social business that isn't paying us a profit/dividend, we're going to be highly critical of the company's operational details. Perhaps more critical that if we simply received a regular dividend.

We're likely to be especially critical of staff salaries. A CEO taking home a multi-million dollar paycheck is likely to raise questions. Are they pocketing the profits instead of solving the problem?

But equally, a minimum wage salary for executives would prompt questions. Are they any good, are they going to stay... People need to be paid enough.

So again: How we determine what is enough?

There are all sorts of models around that deviate from the traditional methods of setting dollar values for services provided by someone. One radical (and usually commercially challenging model) system is a pay-what-you-want approach.

Imagine a property development project where the payment received by the developer was determined by the other parties to the project: The Architect, owner, builder, design team and anyone else involved decide for themselves what value the developer has added to them.

The interesting shift with a social business property development business is that if all the parties decide that there has been significant value from the developer's input and choose to reflect this in high payments to the company, the "extra" stays in the business. There's no increased dividend payout to the shareholders. The extra money goes towards solving the social problem, and the money comes from those involved in the solution. Over time, the additional extra amounts could snowball as they add the contribution of those who have gone before.

Perhaps if we take out any potential for personal gain, we might just become more generous.