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The author appears to intend that latter meaning, where SV companies have more egalitarian ownership structures on their own, but that now that we've seen the r

The author appears to intend that latter meaning, where SV companies have more egalitarian ownership structures on their own, but that now that we've seen the results, the government should encourage those structures more broadly in the economy. Actually, the government plays a small part already in how high-tech companies share equity with employees, through preferential tax treatment for Incentive Stock Options. You could imagine many such nudges that could be employed to expand capital ownership short of distributing equity to employees "by force". Remember in general that the limited-liability corporation as an institutional type is itself a creation of government - the notion of a business as a separate entity with distributed owners such that the business can go bankrupt without allowing creditors to go after the non-business assets of the stockholders is an artificial and relatively modern invention with a large and complicated legal structure buttressing it. C Corporations, LLCs, LLPs, PCs and the like are all creations of government and the way they operate in practice is non-trivially shaped by the ways those laws are structured. Is it so outlandish to imagine an alternative form with a deliberately egalitarian bias (an "E Corp"?). It only takes one state experimenting to make it a reality!

dmix 13y ago
Corporations can still distribute revenue and equity as they please. It's a legal structure for taxation and liability. The state forcing corporations to distribute their earnings or equity a certain way is a massively more intrusive structure. If that was done, it would likely be single handily the greatest manipulation of markets and private assets ever done by a government in modern history. If an egalitarian equity structure legitimately benefits the companies, they will adopt that structure. If they don't then their competitors would do it as a competitive advantage. Unless it really doesn't benefit the companies and therefore requires the state to involuntary make them do it?
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  If an egalitarian equity structure legitimately benefits the companies, they will adopt that structure. Interestingly wrong. The problem here is the definition of "benefits the company". The interest of the company is defined as the interest of its shareholders, with the interest of different shareholders counting in proportion to their ownership stake. The equity structure is itself the terminal teleological value of the company, and consumer markets make zero evaluation of that structure except in very specialized sub-cases (like when I deliberately purchase King Arthur Flour for being a worker cooperative, for instance). This is one of those "companies do not evolve" things; state action is the only thing that will ever change company structures away from what the incumbent shareholders want, and even a fresh-founded start-up has incumbent owners in the form of its founders and seed investors.
eli_gottlieb 13y ago
Given how little the votes of the average shareholder actually mean today versus the singular, large bloc-votes of the large shareholders, I see no reason not to move the economy towards a form of worker cooperatives that issue non-voting stock, or in which stockholders vote for some portion of the Board of Directors and employees for the other one. The main actual issue will be splitting up dividends between proper Mondragon-style Employee Capital Accounts and stock-investors.

dmix 13y ago

Corporations can still distribute revenue and equity as they please. It's a legal structure for taxation and liability. The state forcing corporations to distribute their earnings or equity a certain way is a massively more intrusive structure. If that was done, it would likely be single handily the greatest manipulation of markets and private assets ever done by a government in modern history. If an egalitarian equity structure legitimately benefits the companies, they will adopt that structure. If they don't then their competitors would do it as a competitive advantage. Unless it really doesn't benefit the companies and therefore requires the state to involuntary make them do it?

eli_gottlieb 13y ago
If an egalitarian equity structure legitimately benefits the companies, they will adopt that structure. Interestingly wrong. The problem here is the definition of "benefits the company". The interest of the company is defined as the interest of its shareholders, with the interest of different shareholders counting in proportion to their ownership stake. The equity structure is itself the terminal teleological value of the company, and consumer markets make zero evaluation of that structure except in very specialized sub-cases (like when I deliberately purchase King Arthur Flour for being a worker cooperative, for instance). This is one of those "companies do not evolve" things; state action is the only thing that will ever change company structures away from what the incumbent shareholders want, and even a fresh-founded start-up has incumbent owners in the form of its founders and seed investors.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago

Given how little the votes of the average shareholder actually mean today versus the singular, large bloc-votes of the large shareholders, I see no reason not to move the economy towards a form of worker cooperatives that issue non-voting stock, or in which stockholders vote for some portion of the Board of Directors and employees for the other one. The main actual issue will be splitting up dividends between proper Mondragon-style Employee Capital Accounts and stock-investors.