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I find it a touch strange, in the abstract, that a corporation being public is a bad thing. On paper it should be a good thing; being publicly owned should mean

I find it a touch strange, in the abstract, that a corporation being public is a bad thing. On paper it should be a good thing; being publicly owned should mean that your corporation has turned from a private business venture into effectively public infrastructure that's impossible to boycott and depended on to some extent by everybody. As a result, financial statements should be (and are) public and transparent, and the company should be able to be externally steered via regular elections in a manner that benefits the public and not just its founders. The issue really lies in the fact that the (long-term, majority) shareholders aren't much, if at all, related to the customers or employees of the business, but first the founders, and then parties who are merely interested in rising stock prices and dividends. It feels like the solution here ought to somehow desegregate voting rights from how many shares are owned, instead of dismantling the concept of public ownership entirely. (Or, perhaps, allow the general public to proxy vote via their 401(k) index funds?) (There's also strange situations like Google/Alphabet, which is publicly owned, but effectively does not allow shareholders to vote on anything.)

mcny 10mo ago
> (There's also strange situations like Google/Alphabet, which is publicly owned, but effectively does not allow shareholders to vote on anything.) You mean the special class B shares that gives 10 votes per share, right? It isn't just Google though. Facebook and Snapchat also do the same thing, iirc?
- tomrod 10mo ago
  And, famously, Berkshire Hathaway
- avadodin 10mo ago
  Share classes can be very varied(such as preferred shares that get what's left after bond debt is paid off on bankruptcy) but generally what he's proposing(a coop-style one-head-one-vote class) is not common. Not sure if it's legal for US corporations or not(I could swear it is but in any case it's exceedingly rare). The usual principle is one-share-one-vote.
taftster 10mo ago
Yes, exactly. It's kind of a wink-wink nudge-nudge at this point. A company citing "public good" under the guise of "shareholder value" is not actually supporting the public good at all. Not that I condone capitalism, or socialism, or communism, or fascism, or any ism for that matter. Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an ism, he should believe in himself. But a private company, at this point, can arguably affect the greater good just as much as a public company. The rich are getting richer, and the corporate model is just there to support that transfer of wealth.
lvass 10mo ago
>On paper it should be a good thing Not really. Most people have terribly low time preference. Democracy for example is a very bad idea when you account for that (read Hoppe for a detailed explanation). Public company ownership is much better because it doesn't suffer from one vote per person, but still susceptible to much of the same management problems, specially in a society that already favors lower time preference by other means.
- avadodin 10mo ago
  I do not deeply disagree with your statement but I do not see the two as exclusive. I think distributed public ownership placed in a corporation ruled as proposed here provides a chance to harvest residual good decisions from a citizen/shareholder who cares as opposed to having a single decision derived from some other issue a majority of citizens favor. Unless you're talking about doing away with any kind of voting but Communism doesn't exactly have a stellar track record.
- guelo 10mo ago
  fwiw, Hoppe has become a darling of the extremist authoritarian "alt-right" (curtis yarvin, etc) but has been rejected by more mainstrean thinkers including most libertarian factions.
faidit 10mo ago
The wealthiest 10% of Americans own like 90% of stocks, and the top 1% own 50%. While the poorest 50% of the population own about 1% of the stock market. So "publicly" traded (the term public ownership can be confusing because it can also mean state control) just means it's open for the elite to invest in.
- nish__ 10mo ago
  It's amazing to me how many people don't get this.
  - Gormo 10mo ago
    Well, considering that it doesn't seem to be an accurate statement, it shouldn't be so amazing that people don't "get" it. By far, the largest shareholders in most publicly-traded firms are "institutional investors", but those are themselves in turn usually acting as middlemen managing mutual funds, most of which consist of ordinary folks' 401(k) plans and pensions.
    - nish__ 10mo ago
      What? "Doesn't seem to be an accurate statement"? What part? Those numbers are actually conservative. According to Yahoo Finance[0], it's actually 93% of the stock market is owned by the wealthiest 10% of American households. And the bottom 50% of Americans own ~1%. You "seem" to be mistaken and you're talking out of your ass. [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wealthiest-10-americans-own-93-033623827.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wealthiest-10-americans-own-9...
      - Gormo 10mo ago
        The article you're citing doesn't link to its sources, but seems to be talking about direct stock ownership by households, and not explicitly stating how it's accounting for investment funds.
        10mo ago
safety1st 10mo ago
"The major reason is they are a private company with good business..." This is unquestionably, undoubtedly incorrect. It is a really low information meme that's racing around the Internet right now. If you want a contemporary counterexample take a look at NASCAR. They're also not publicly traded, they're family owned, yet they are abusive toward drivers, teams and fans, and they're gradually ruining the sport that made them rich. We know all of this because it got so bad Michael Jordan decided to sue them and there's a ton of information coming out in discovery at the moment. The real reason Valve are being the "good guys" at the moment (not really, but yes they're doing some amazing stuff for Linux) is because they feel threatened by Windows and Microsoft, they perceive a long term competitive threat to Steam. Competition makes businesses both private and public work for your dollar. The US economy has been characterized by a decrease in competition and an increase in monopolies for decades now which is the root of many price hikes and anti-consumer practices.
- jszymborski 10mo ago
  > ...they're family owned Well that's your problem there. I do overall agree that Valve is only situationally the good guy here, but they do also have a sustainable approach to business and growth which I think helps this.
- whatshisface 10mo ago
  Companies doing things for the common good because they feel threatened by competiton is the whole idea behind Capitalism.
  - palata 10mo ago
    Except when Capitalism has favoured monopolies for decades and is actually closer to Feodalism.
    - z3t4 10mo ago
      Monopolies need to be restricted by regulations. In micro economics there is a term marginal cost, and economy of scale. In the software as a service era, the cost of serving one extra customer is minimal, so it make economic sense for such companies to grow infinitely. This is why our current system do not work. As the best strategy is to become as big as possible and capture the entire market.
emilecantin 10mo ago
I think there should perhaps be a law that any corporation automatically has a new class of un-tradeable VOTING shares, worth 50% of the overall vote, held by the employees. Everybody with an employment contract with this company is entitled to 1 vote, no more, no less; whether they're the janitor or the CEO. Employees of a company are the ones who are the most affected by the company's decisions, it's only fair that they have a say.
- bravoetch 10mo ago
  How much is a vote worth in dollars? Because there would be a market for those votes, not just a spot market for dollars or internal market using vacation days, it would be reflected in salary and benefits and company policy etc.
  - echoangle 10mo ago
    Couldn’t you just make the voting anonymous to make sure that buying votes isn’t possible? Why wouldn’t I just take your money and still vote however I like?
- chongli 10mo ago
  A law like this just means getting full time employment becomes that much more difficult and the vast majority of people working for a company will be non-voting contractors without benefits. The existing employees would even vote for changes that make full time hiring more difficult in order to avoid diluting their own votes.
  - emilecantin 10mo ago
    It would obviously need to be accompanied with rigorous enforcement of employee classification. I know there would be a bunch of possible ways to game this, so there are a lot of other rules we'd need to add but I didn't want to make my comment too long. Also, I wouldn't necessarily make a distinction between the full-time employees vs the part-time ones.
kineticdaffodil 10mo ago
[dead]
dboreham 10mo ago
It's a common pattern. If you're in their service area compare both the food served by, and the employment practices of In-n-out Burger (private) vs McDonald's (public).
talideon 10mo ago
You can at least in part blame Milton Friedman for this mess. His reframing of ficudiary duty as profit maximisation in his "shareholder theory" has done a tremendous amount of damage. The wariness of people when it comes to public companies is a direct consequence of this.
flaminHotSpeedo 10mo ago
My understanding of the contemporary argument against publicly traded companies, though I'm not completely convinced of them personally, are that the fiduciary obligations inevitably drive those bad behaviors, and/or that shareholders often demand short term returns at the expense of long term value. As far as "fixing" the problem, I think it would be important to expand voters' influence over the company in addition to voting changes like you described. I don't know how to make it feasible, but IMO voters should be able to influence or directly decide much lower level business decisions than they currently do
Barrin92 10mo ago
>and the company should be able to be externally steered via regular elections in a manner that benefits the public and not just its founders. Why would anyone believe that this means an organization is well run, or to everyone's benefit? Here in Germany we're notoriously unfriendly to public companies, most of the (well functioning) Mittelstand is private and family owned. And I pray to god it stays that way because I'd rather trust a company whose leaders have their family name and reputation staked on it for the next three generations than I do the amorphous blob called "the public". As Kierkegaard said, in the crowd nobody is responsible. If you want to see what happens under public ownership visit a public bathroom. I don't want anything externally steered by nobody in particular, I want something steered by a handful of people with names and addresses.

mcny 10mo ago

> (There's also strange situations like Google/Alphabet, which is publicly owned, but effectively does not allow shareholders to vote on anything.) You mean the special class B shares that gives 10 votes per share, right? It isn't just Google though. Facebook and Snapchat also do the same thing, iirc?

tomrod 10mo ago
And, famously, Berkshire Hathaway
avadodin 10mo ago
Share classes can be very varied(such as preferred shares that get what's left after bond debt is paid off on bankruptcy) but generally what he's proposing(a coop-style one-head-one-vote class) is not common. Not sure if it's legal for US corporations or not(I could swear it is but in any case it's exceedingly rare). The usual principle is one-share-one-vote.

taftster 10mo ago

Yes, exactly. It's kind of a wink-wink nudge-nudge at this point. A company citing "public good" under the guise of "shareholder value" is not actually supporting the public good at all. Not that I condone capitalism, or socialism, or communism, or fascism, or any ism for that matter. Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an ism, he should believe in himself. But a private company, at this point, can arguably affect the greater good just as much as a public company. The rich are getting richer, and the corporate model is just there to support that transfer of wealth.

lvass 10mo ago

>On paper it should be a good thing Not really. Most people have terribly low time preference. Democracy for example is a very bad idea when you account for that (read Hoppe for a detailed explanation). Public company ownership is much better because it doesn't suffer from one vote per person, but still susceptible to much of the same management problems, specially in a society that already favors lower time preference by other means.

avadodin 10mo ago
I do not deeply disagree with your statement but I do not see the two as exclusive. I think distributed public ownership placed in a corporation ruled as proposed here provides a chance to harvest residual good decisions from a citizen/shareholder who cares as opposed to having a single decision derived from some other issue a majority of citizens favor. Unless you're talking about doing away with any kind of voting but Communism doesn't exactly have a stellar track record.
guelo 10mo ago
fwiw, Hoppe has become a darling of the extremist authoritarian "alt-right" (curtis yarvin, etc) but has been rejected by more mainstrean thinkers including most libertarian factions.

faidit 10mo ago

The wealthiest 10% of Americans own like 90% of stocks, and the top 1% own 50%. While the poorest 50% of the population own about 1% of the stock market. So "publicly" traded (the term public ownership can be confusing because it can also mean state control) just means it's open for the elite to invest in.

nish__ 10mo ago
It's amazing to me how many people don't get this.
- Gormo 10mo ago
  Well, considering that it doesn't seem to be an accurate statement, it shouldn't be so amazing that people don't "get" it. By far, the largest shareholders in most publicly-traded firms are "institutional investors", but those are themselves in turn usually acting as middlemen managing mutual funds, most of which consist of ordinary folks' 401(k) plans and pensions.
  - nish__ 10mo ago
    What? "Doesn't seem to be an accurate statement"? What part? Those numbers are actually conservative. According to Yahoo Finance[0], it's actually 93% of the stock market is owned by the wealthiest 10% of American households. And the bottom 50% of Americans own ~1%. You "seem" to be mistaken and you're talking out of your ass. [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wealthiest-10-americans-own-93-033623827.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wealthiest-10-americans-own-9...
    - Gormo 10mo ago
      The article you're citing doesn't link to its sources, but seems to be talking about direct stock ownership by households, and not explicitly stating how it's accounting for investment funds.
      - 10mo ago

safety1st 10mo ago

"The major reason is they are a private company with good business..." This is unquestionably, undoubtedly incorrect. It is a really low information meme that's racing around the Internet right now. If you want a contemporary counterexample take a look at NASCAR. They're also not publicly traded, they're family owned, yet they are abusive toward drivers, teams and fans, and they're gradually ruining the sport that made them rich. We know all of this because it got so bad Michael Jordan decided to sue them and there's a ton of information coming out in discovery at the moment. The real reason Valve are being the "good guys" at the moment (not really, but yes they're doing some amazing stuff for Linux) is because they feel threatened by Windows and Microsoft, they perceive a long term competitive threat to Steam. Competition makes businesses both private and public work for your dollar. The US economy has been characterized by a decrease in competition and an increase in monopolies for decades now which is the root of many price hikes and anti-consumer practices.

jszymborski 10mo ago
> ...they're family owned Well that's your problem there. I do overall agree that Valve is only situationally the good guy here, but they do also have a sustainable approach to business and growth which I think helps this.
whatshisface 10mo ago
Companies doing things for the common good because they feel threatened by competiton is the whole idea behind Capitalism.
- palata 10mo ago
  Except when Capitalism has favoured monopolies for decades and is actually closer to Feodalism.
  - z3t4 10mo ago
    Monopolies need to be restricted by regulations. In micro economics there is a term marginal cost, and economy of scale. In the software as a service era, the cost of serving one extra customer is minimal, so it make economic sense for such companies to grow infinitely. This is why our current system do not work. As the best strategy is to become as big as possible and capture the entire market.

emilecantin 10mo ago

I think there should perhaps be a law that any corporation automatically has a new class of un-tradeable VOTING shares, worth 50% of the overall vote, held by the employees. Everybody with an employment contract with this company is entitled to 1 vote, no more, no less; whether they're the janitor or the CEO. Employees of a company are the ones who are the most affected by the company's decisions, it's only fair that they have a say.

bravoetch 10mo ago
How much is a vote worth in dollars? Because there would be a market for those votes, not just a spot market for dollars or internal market using vacation days, it would be reflected in salary and benefits and company policy etc.
- echoangle 10mo ago
  Couldn’t you just make the voting anonymous to make sure that buying votes isn’t possible? Why wouldn’t I just take your money and still vote however I like?
chongli 10mo ago
A law like this just means getting full time employment becomes that much more difficult and the vast majority of people working for a company will be non-voting contractors without benefits. The existing employees would even vote for changes that make full time hiring more difficult in order to avoid diluting their own votes.
- emilecantin 10mo ago
  It would obviously need to be accompanied with rigorous enforcement of employee classification. I know there would be a bunch of possible ways to game this, so there are a lot of other rules we'd need to add but I didn't want to make my comment too long. Also, I wouldn't necessarily make a distinction between the full-time employees vs the part-time ones.

kineticdaffodil 10mo ago

[dead]

dboreham 10mo ago

It's a common pattern. If you're in their service area compare both the food served by, and the employment practices of In-n-out Burger (private) vs McDonald's (public).

talideon 10mo ago

You can at least in part blame Milton Friedman for this mess. His reframing of ficudiary duty as profit maximisation in his "shareholder theory" has done a tremendous amount of damage. The wariness of people when it comes to public companies is a direct consequence of this.

flaminHotSpeedo 10mo ago

My understanding of the contemporary argument against publicly traded companies, though I'm not completely convinced of them personally, are that the fiduciary obligations inevitably drive those bad behaviors, and/or that shareholders often demand short term returns at the expense of long term value. As far as "fixing" the problem, I think it would be important to expand voters' influence over the company in addition to voting changes like you described. I don't know how to make it feasible, but IMO voters should be able to influence or directly decide much lower level business decisions than they currently do

Barrin92 10mo ago

>and the company should be able to be externally steered via regular elections in a manner that benefits the public and not just its founders. Why would anyone believe that this means an organization is well run, or to everyone's benefit? Here in Germany we're notoriously unfriendly to public companies, most of the (well functioning) Mittelstand is private and family owned. And I pray to god it stays that way because I'd rather trust a company whose leaders have their family name and reputation staked on it for the next three generations than I do the amorphous blob called "the public". As Kierkegaard said, in the crowd nobody is responsible. If you want to see what happens under public ownership visit a public bathroom. I don't want anything externally steered by nobody in particular, I want something steered by a handful of people with names and addresses.