Post

I mean, that was true 15 years ago.

Yup! Lived that for 10 years working for two globally public software companies. Also interesting is what they have to do internally to show improved numbers when reporting on a quarterly basis!

Or the consumer. Who is the entire point you are doing what you do. We need to start making products for people again.

I'm so tired of our entire lives being ruined to feed the mythical "investor" class quarter after quarter.

Public companies are required to maximize short term profits, right?

What about compensation transparency, social efforts, environmental oversight, and other “good” aspects of being public? Shareholder responsibility needs to be addressed - what are the non-$$ impacts of profits? Putting a real value on environmental impacts is a good place to start

The putrefaction of economics.

a coincidence that about the same time, some nitwit business school professor promoted the idea that corporate executives should be paid with stock, thereby converting them from executives to stockholders. Pure genius. [2/2]

Well…capitalism

We need more of this. I want some capital bros to want this like I want this.

This is the stuff I've been saying for years Tbh. If I ever start a company.. Ra.

I believe they were referring to all the regulatory and reporting requirements of a public company.

That was the reason for a long time! It was essentially an alternative to a private raise. Now it's mostly to cash out and then move on.

They call themselves Devolver but they seem to have Evolved in their thinking.

When I worked in life insurance, you always wanted to be with a "mutual" company rather than a "stock" (publicly traded) company. The mutual companies had a less frantic, more long-term approach, whereas the stock companies emphasized cutting costs (even at the expense of long-term health).

We need *much* higher capital gains taxes on securities owned for less than a year, and close to 100% on securities owned for less than a day. Public investment is supposed to be about confidence in long term growth. Everything else is just a pump-and-dump.

Or if the company still exists in 10 years.

Paul Verhoven got this in Robocop when the evil executive backs a dangerously defective combat mech.

Yes. It used to be that businesses were founded to solve problems and create services with the interests of their customers at the core of their mission! How quaint. American companies buy, sell and strip companies of value and finance huge amounts of debt. Product and customers are an afterthought

I wonder if companies ever ask their investors why they invested? I bet there are a number of them who did it because they love the company and want to own a piece of it. It's not always about 💰, especially for small shareholders.

Think about why the company went public in the first place. There are benefits to both and what worked once may change with time and circumstances.

It never meant anything else, the difference is the investors got smart to whatever narratives game companies could give them that allowed the company to thrive instead of getting dissolved for artificial growth. Valve saw this coming all the way back in the 90s, and never went public.

A little presentation about how “shareholder value” obsession destroyed Boeing www.instagram.com/reel/DbrMRcU...

Yeah, returning to private via a leveraged buyout isn't really returning to private. It's just the beginning of the disassembly process.

Certainly. But it's not built into the structure the way it is with public companies.

Exactly! 🤣 I was like "No way they're writing this so plainly, what is happening?!"

Wow I don’t think I ever heard of a company doing this.

greed is good, gordon gecko himself said it. this is the logical outcome of reagan destroying unions, cutting taxes on the wealthy & incentivizing sending production overseas. the rich, ever richer every year, contribute nothing while sucking all the profits out of companies that should go into r&d.

CEO salaries have risen by thousands of percentages while the incomes of average America hasn’t increased 1¢ since 1979 vs inflation. It’s Shareholder Capitalism, where shareholders reward CEOs for finding ways to divert money traditionally intended for employees into shareholder’s pockets

Everything is a trade off.

100%

You know the system is broken when in 2025 Google made $130 Billion in net profit and still had layoffs under the guise of efficiency (because making 1/10 of a trillion dollars isn't efficient) but mainly to show growth

The HVAC company I’ve used since 1992 sold out and the only explanation for the way it’s treating its customers since is that the new owners are extracting every penny out of it they can and when it’s a shriveled hulk, will claim bankruptcy.

I learned this working for Gannett. They'd announce layoffs and/or furloughs -- and the stock price went up. Every goddamn time.

I can remember being at my old company, developing and selling technical stuff, being run by engineers… until one day, after some corporate games, we were being told that we are not a technical company anymore… our sole purpose is to increase the wealth of the shareholders. Company didnt’t last long

I talked to someone at Devolver recently who was really happy - I hope they stick this landing. More of this please

Working for a private company is what allowed me to actually retire in a timely manner.

CEO in my book, Glass House: “It’s not about making a product. It’s about making money appear and the 99% doesn’t understand that.”

for on the ground people so much depends on who ownership is/what they want. i enjoyed my work at a regional private bank until i realized we weren't going public, but instead selling, twice!

I'm not sure who first made the observation, but the actions of a lot of companies often make a lot more sense if you assume the actual product they're selling is not whatever goods or services they're offering, but their stock price.

Devolver makes/publishes some excellent games.

While I agree, i’ve worked for private companies owned by private equity firms, and it is the exact same thing. Happy now that I work for an employee owned company #esop 

Sure, but that's assuming the private company has either been sold to those entities or borrowed from them to the point that it's over leveraged. PE is absolutely a strip mining operation but private business is not required to let PE in, while public co's have almost no control over who buys in.

this is genuinely why i believe we should abolish the publicly traded company. make it illegal.

End-stage capitalism. We’ve been there for a long time.

Wasn't an IPO, but I knew a chap who sold his startup for several mil in the early 2000s to a big player. Well, he got a lovely house for his family, etc, and still had plenty left. But, he ended up angry and bitter about what the buyer did (or didn't) do to the software he painstakingly crafted...

When future students are learning about the 21st Century Crisis of the American Empire, I think the ideology behind financialization is going to be one of the hardest things to understand. "What do you MEAN that all of their institutions had no other responsibilities than short-term profit!?"

I’ve been saying for years that Ford v Dodge is the worst non-civil rights related Supreme Court case in history. Basically every evil since then has been directly related to that.

Lynn Stout’s important work has never received the attention it merits

Lmao

When a part of our body grows uncontrollably in a way that damages its function and other related functions, we call that a cancer. When a part of the economy does it, they call it shareholder value.

The right to incorporate was originally conceived as requiring some sort of public benefit in exchange for the legal and financial benefits of incorporating. Now "corporations are people" in all the ways that benefit them and in none of the ways that could hold them accountable for public harm.

Christopher, this is the case of public companies in neoliberal democracies, which have very little of democracy to offer. Join a #CommunistParty and let us do the opposite, like China does, and let us make private enterprises do what residents want them to do.👇🏻 FYI: @communistsusa.bsky.social

They are destroying every industry they can. They are in the business of making money for investors by any legal means or any means they can get away with without harming themselves or the investors. 

Stage four Capitalism in remission?

If it were even remotely possible to gather like minded people’s savings into a private equity group, with the adage “let industries make their product, and keep people employed long term”, I’d love to make that happen. Going private is the main way right now.

It's a decision of the Michigan state court, so not applicable to corporations in other states. It's just a convent crutch used to justify executives doing shitty things.

Trying and failing to wedge a Christian Bale joke I'm here

Also true for companies owned by private equity, unfortunately. Ownership structure doesn't matter as long as profit is the primary motivation for the owners. The only reliable way to have owners care about the health of a company is worker ownership.