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I am also an advocate for transparency of ownership of companies, but that Disney example seems like more of a case against transparency than for it? Why shoul

• victorbstan 3y ago
  Free market?
• jonathankoren 3y ago
  Price gouged? Don't you mean, fair market value? Price is always contingent based on the information shared between the buyer and seller. No one would call selling a rare misprint 1978 US Quarter to a collector for $45,000 instead of 25 cents price gouging. (Maybe you would, I don't know what the going rate is. But this is literally an eBay auction price from a google search just now, so let's just say that it's not an exorbitant price.)
  • koolba 3y ago
    > Price gouged? Don't you mean, fair market value? Price is always contingent based on the information shared between the buyer and seller. Since when? Buying and selling anything is always a game of imperfect information. There’s nothing special about the buyer being a large corporation or the item being land.
    • fnimick 3y ago
      And shouldn't you support having as much information be available as possible, or do you want people to play games and try to hide info to raise prices on people?
      • s1artibartfast 3y ago
        It's not something that needs a uniform solution. Every buyer and seller can decide how much information they want and the price they want.
      • koolba 3y ago
        > And shouldn't you support having as much information be available as possible, Nope. And arbitrary or subjective standards like that are impossible to enforce anyway. > or do you want people to play games and try to hide info to raise prices on people? The example cited is the reverse with the price being lower than would be demanded if the seller knew the buyer had fat pockets. In either case, caveat emptor[1] (or in this case, caveat venditor). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caveat_emptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caveat_emptor
        • ryandrake 3y ago
          Caveat emptor is a pretty terrible way to run a society. I'd argue if you deliberately misrepresent something as basic as who you are in a transaction in order to deceive your counterparty, that should be fraud.
          • gowld 3y ago
            Discrimination is also a a pretty terrible way to run a society.
      • JackFr 3y ago
        You've got a parcel of land. You are farming on it or renting it or doing something which generates income. Because of that, you discount your future cashflows and determine it is worth X. Disney comes along and estimates that with what they are going to do the land is worth Y, which is significantly higher than X. If the land trades for any value between X and Y, you are both made better off by the trade. There is nothing wrong with you trying to capture as much of Y-X as you can, similarly there is nothing wrong with Disney trying to capture as much as they can. Neither of you are "owed" the money and there is no such thing as an objectively "fair" price.
    • jonathankoren 3y ago
      Why are you encouraging imperfect information? Aren't you a fan of efficient market based solutions?
• numbsafari 3y ago
  Why should the sellers be shortchanged?
  • s1artibartfast 3y ago
    Nobody was short changed. The fair price is what a buyer and seller agreed to unless someone provided false information. The word "no" is a complete answer to a request for more information.
    • ethanbond 3y ago
      That’s true only if both parties have perfect information, which is of course why Disney went to great lengths to prevent that. There would be no such thing as fraud if “accepted transaction == definitionally fair.”
      • s1artibartfast 3y ago
        Perfect information has nothing to do with fair There's a difference between false information and no information.
        • nerdponx 3y ago
          It's not about fairness, it's about letting markets work properly, reaching a market-clearing price that maximizes total welfare.
        • pohl 3y ago
          It has everything to do with price, however — and, therefore, "fair price".
          • s1artibartfast 3y ago
            Define fair price? Fair prices when a buyer and seller agreed to as long as no one's lying. The fair price has nothing to do with how much money the buyer or seller make more lose.
• Loquebantur 3y ago
  By your logic, insider trading would be just fine. For a market to function properly, information pertinent to traded value has to flow freely. The more you stifle that, the more rigged the market. Essentially, you sustain a monopoly that way. Of course, people in possession of such "insider information" believe themselves in the right to profit from it. But that perspective is obviously biased and reveals a fundamental conflict between public good and private ownership. From the public perspective, the market works best when monopolies are dissolved quickly.
  • johngladtj 3y ago
    Insider Trading is just fine.
    • Loquebantur 3y ago
      No, it's really not. If it were, shell games would be great as well? One like the other is simply fraud. You exploit others' lack of insight. Doing so is unethical due to the implications it would have on a societal level if it were condoned. In particular, you likely imagine yourself regularly ending up on the better end of the bargain. You are wildly mistaken.
      • johngladtj 3y ago
        Insider Trading is just fine because it allows the market to function. If you don't want to participate in it you don't have to, but why should other suffer because of your moral hangups about other people making money?
  • kasey_junk 3y ago
    In the US (but not necessarily other jurisdictions), insider trading laws are not there to protect the broader market, but to protect other shareholders. There is no assumption that you can’t trade on knowledge unavailable to the rest of the market just not information that should be available to other shareholders but isn’t. It’s not about a working market it’s about preventing you from stealing from other people. Lots of economists think insider trading should be legal, precisely because it would make the market more transparent, not less.
• anigbrowl 3y ago
  Why should Disney be price gouged in that circumstance? Because they have money and they're trying to buy out the whole market. This reads like a billionaire sobbing about not having access to a senior discount at the thrift store.
  • vinceguidry 3y ago
    That place was absolutely nothing before Disney developed it. The land was worth exactly what Disney paid for it. And there was no guarantee that it would turn into what it is now. We reward business for taking risks with their money. Disney took an immense amount of it, an absolutely outlandish amount of it. They poured money into that swamp. All on the bet that people would pay through the nose to see Mickey.
    • anigbrowl 3y ago
      I'm not complaining about Disney making money off their investment. I'm saying that if a large company wants to make such an investment, it shouldn't dissemble by hiding behind front companies.
      • vinceguidry 3y ago
        They wouldn't have gotten a fair price otherwise.
        • anigbrowl 3y ago
          Sure they would. Fair isn't some objective measure, it's what the market decides. If multiple market participants see that one player is trying to corner the market, raising their price is fair. It can equally be argued that those swampland owners bought the land in the first place because they had a vision that it could one day host a unique commercial enterprise. If your business strategy depends on deceiving people, what does that make you?
          • vinceguidry 3y ago
• croutonwagon 3y ago
  If a company, not just Disney, is buying large swaths of land specifically to develop it, that makes the land more valuable. If a company is going to great lengths to trick sellers into thinking it’s not being bought up for development, that’s deceit and a de facto admission you know the land is more valuable because of the comps you are engaging in