7 ms·

If you have regulations by revenue/employee count then the companies will restructure themselves to be below those thresholds.

plutonicks 7y ago
While true it is harder for companies to manipulate those 2 measures. E.g. could Facebook run with 20 staff? Would Facebook and its shareholders be satisfied with 20m in annual revenue. This scenario requires trade offs. My opinion is that monopoly, political and market dominance is a sub-optimal outcome
- quietbritishjim 7y ago
  It could certainly run with 20 staff – it would just spend a lot of money on license fees to a separate Facebook Services Inc that provides software and server administration services. This is similar to how companies avoid tax e.g. IKEA and Starbucks. It could similarly avoid large profits but avoiding large revenues works be trickier. But I'm not an expert in these things, so maybe it's possible if you really know what you're doing.
  - fastball 7y ago
    Then you just base it off of the number of employees overall in the parent company, not the number of employees in the subsidiary.
    - pyrale 7y ago
      Base it off user count too, problem solved.
    - quietbritishjim 7y ago
      The problem is, there's no legal distinction between a company that own shares but is "really" part of the same company, vs a completely separately company owning shares e.g. a pension fund.
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
That's easy to fix, just apply the rules only to companies having more than a hundred shareholders, and count shareholders of the parent for any subsidiary. Then you can't restructure Facebook to have less than a hundred shareholders because the number of shareholders is independent of the internal corporate structure.
- ascar 7y ago
  So any non-public company would be exempt? There are multiple private multi billion dollar companies and I wouldn't be surprised, if they all have less than 100 shareholders.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    > So any non-public company would be exempt? All of the major tech companies are publicly traded. Being publicly traded is also a major risk factor for hostile corporate behavior, because the top executives of private companies tend to be the owners and care more about the long-term than short-term profits, so it even makes sense as an explicit policy choice to regulate publicly traded companies more than private ones.
  - anticensor 7y ago
    Non-public non-cooperative ones actually. Having thousands of members is very common in cooperatives.

plutonicks 7y ago

While true it is harder for companies to manipulate those 2 measures. E.g. could Facebook run with 20 staff? Would Facebook and its shareholders be satisfied with 20m in annual revenue. This scenario requires trade offs. My opinion is that monopoly, political and market dominance is a sub-optimal outcome

quietbritishjim 7y ago
It could certainly run with 20 staff – it would just spend a lot of money on license fees to a separate Facebook Services Inc that provides software and server administration services. This is similar to how companies avoid tax e.g. IKEA and Starbucks. It could similarly avoid large profits but avoiding large revenues works be trickier. But I'm not an expert in these things, so maybe it's possible if you really know what you're doing.
- fastball 7y ago
  Then you just base it off of the number of employees overall in the parent company, not the number of employees in the subsidiary.
  - pyrale 7y ago
    Base it off user count too, problem solved.
  - quietbritishjim 7y ago
    The problem is, there's no legal distinction between a company that own shares but is "really" part of the same company, vs a completely separately company owning shares e.g. a pension fund.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

That's easy to fix, just apply the rules only to companies having more than a hundred shareholders, and count shareholders of the parent for any subsidiary. Then you can't restructure Facebook to have less than a hundred shareholders because the number of shareholders is independent of the internal corporate structure.

ascar 7y ago
So any non-public company would be exempt? There are multiple private multi billion dollar companies and I wouldn't be surprised, if they all have less than 100 shareholders.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > So any non-public company would be exempt? All of the major tech companies are publicly traded. Being publicly traded is also a major risk factor for hostile corporate behavior, because the top executives of private companies tend to be the owners and care more about the long-term than short-term profits, so it even makes sense as an explicit policy choice to regulate publicly traded companies more than private ones.
- anticensor 7y ago
  Non-public non-cooperative ones actually. Having thousands of members is very common in cooperatives.