Professor Robert Ashford (1996) has undertaken to bring attention to the economic ideas of the late Louis Kelso, best known as the inventor of leveraged Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs). ESOPs are but a small part of a much more ambitious policy program for spreading capital ownership, a program predicated on Kelso’s unique economic theory, dubbed “binary economics,” and intended to create a “binary economy.” This article critically examines two normative arguments for creating a binary economy as a question of social ethics. It finds that the argument that a binary economy would be more just has a serious flaw related to Kelso’s concept of “productiveness,” but that the argument that a binary economy would be more democratic offers a more promising normative basis for instituting a binary economy. It concludes that the rest of Kelso’s theory and his policy program are worth further examination.