Worker-owned co-ops are also free to offer cash vs equity options. The difference is that they don't have a hierarchy of ownership hoarding whatever the market will bear.
There's no choice to be had, it doesn't substantially exist in tech. It takes organizing and coordinating various resources to make a new reality, not passively evaluating current options at hand. So it's not productive to evaluate their viability based on what currently exists as if it's already a choice unorganized workers have evaluated and made. But it is an idea that is appealing even to some founders (there are upsides to working alongside people with a stake in outcomes) and some are working toward making this possible for workers to choose.
When I make someone an offer, I give them a spreadsheet where they can plug in different salaries and equity stakes to see outcomes based on future funding events, valuations, and exit scenarios. Without exception the people who've leaned into equity have turned out to be the best performers and ended up with higher salaries anyway, but a majority favor cash up front.
As you find reasons to object to that, many of those reasons are likely the same shared by others and make this a vastly less common arrangement, because someone has to take on the massive initial risk to start and fund the business through the unavoidable period of initial losses and probably wants to see a way to having a compensating upside in the event of success.
I'm talking about the financial realities of starting a company from scratch, which impacts how many companies get started in what form and might be a significant part of the explanation why you aren't seeing as many worker-owned companies as you express a preference for.
Brainstorming and figuring a way to address that might be a way to help you mold/nudge the world towards your preference.
