It's more like, do you want $20 now, or a chance at $30 later, as long as you don't leave the company? That's a critical difference. If you pay me what I'm worth in cash, right now, I can do with that cash what I like - which includes investing it into the business. If you pay me with future promises that impose additional constraints, then my money is held hostage to those constraints.
Alas this would be a big issue. It is the deferred payment test writ large. Do you want $20 now or $30 next week.
For a lot of humanity when times get difficult we will tend towards the immediate payoff rather than the long term. To eat the seed corn.