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that's quite a stretch. There's a massive difference in an equity investment and a debt investment regardless of giving up voting rights. Let's be real, even vo

that's quite a stretch. There's a massive difference in an equity investment and a debt investment regardless of giving up voting rights. Let's be real, even voting rights in 99% of SPX companies don't mean anything. It's a representative democracy, shareholders only vote on the very, very biggest decisions in public companies, like "should we accept this merger". In every single SPX company you invest in, you are effectively giving up control of 99% of decisions to the executives and those under them at the company, regardless of whether your shares are class A or C

the_other 5y ago
You’re effectively saying that representative democracy is a sham. Zuck has set up the share structure so that even if all the other shareholders collectivised to move against him on *any* issue he’d still have his way. That’s a dictatorship.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  I've been told more than once by my employer that "this is not a democracy". They meant that staff can have opinions, but don't get to vote; they weren't talking about shareholders. But AFAIA, stockholder corporations are not supposed to be democracies - FSVO "democracy". Investors in Faceache get no dividends; the only reason they're there is to speculate on the value of their stock. With no dividends, there's no reason for stockholders to worry about profits. They just want to see the share-price increase. I dunno, I'm not an investor. The last two decades are littered with the corpses of social networking firms that failed. I imagine Faceache must own assets, in the form of IP and so on; I doubt their value comes anywhere close to the company's market valuation. That valuation is suspended from the fickle thread of shareholder sentiment; so on my reading, Faceache shares amount to a bubble.
- pyrrhotech 5y ago
  I should have said it's a representative aristocracy for the shareholders, as when you do get a vote, your vote is obviously weighted by how many shares you have and not equally. However, whether you have 1 share or 100,000 shares of public company X, your day to day involvement is still essentially equal at 0 unless you are an executive or on the board.

the_other 5y ago

You’re effectively saying that representative democracy is a sham. Zuck has set up the share structure so that even if all the other shareholders collectivised to move against him on *any* issue he’d still have his way. That’s a dictatorship.

denton-scratch 5y ago
I've been told more than once by my employer that "this is not a democracy". They meant that staff can have opinions, but don't get to vote; they weren't talking about shareholders. But AFAIA, stockholder corporations are not supposed to be democracies - FSVO "democracy". Investors in Faceache get no dividends; the only reason they're there is to speculate on the value of their stock. With no dividends, there's no reason for stockholders to worry about profits. They just want to see the share-price increase. I dunno, I'm not an investor. The last two decades are littered with the corpses of social networking firms that failed. I imagine Faceache must own assets, in the form of IP and so on; I doubt their value comes anywhere close to the company's market valuation. That valuation is suspended from the fickle thread of shareholder sentiment; so on my reading, Faceache shares amount to a bubble.
pyrrhotech 5y ago
I should have said it's a representative aristocracy for the shareholders, as when you do get a vote, your vote is obviously weighted by how many shares you have and not equally. However, whether you have 1 share or 100,000 shares of public company X, your day to day involvement is still essentially equal at 0 unless you are an executive or on the board.