[sgt101]

Public companies are somewhat a democracy of ownership; they publish accounts and the board is accountable to the owners - the shareholders. Privately held companies are quite different, and there is a strong argument that they simply should not be allowed above a certain capitalisation - say $40m because they create an uncontrolled risk to the economy. For example; if five of the top 10 unicorns fail in the next three years due to Enron style lying this will implode the venture market choking investment for a long, long, long time.

But public company democracy is hugely problematic; modern shareholders think as a herd and work on 60 day time scales. Fortune 500 companies need diverse signals (and sophisticated risk management) and visionary management - creating processes, people and markets over decades. This is the model of the private market, but sans the potential for fraud and collapse.

[lifeisstillgood]

I worked in a company selling equity research to large pension funds - and one thing that I tried to push was it was possible to give everyone of their pension-holders a vote at every AGM (sonfor exampleninstead of one investment manager block voting 10% of coca-cola shares, the 10 million fire fighters of America could decide for themselves which way to have their 1.4 shares voted).

It still is a feasible idea imo. And would lead to an lot of new agm items !

[sgt101]

Yes - it's now a lot more feasible. I'm not sure it'll work though as my guess is that this will lead to end-game democracy quite quickly a-la activist investors vs bunches of equity managers now. I would prefer measures that increase the diversity and long term stake of the decision making groups and diffuses the complexity of the individual decisions that they make. Most of all I would like the short term benefits of financial engineering (and financial engineers) to be better balanced against the long term impact of reduced investment and loss of capability. People capital and data assets should be on the balance sheet.

[lifeisstillgood]

Ha-Joon Chang is a economist and writer with similar views - just reading the last few chapters of his 2010 book and he says very similar things

[sgt101]

Fantastic tip - thank you I will read his work. Amusingly I am watching a documentary called "The Mayfair Set: part 3" by Adam Curtis which is describing the idea of technostructure as developed by JK Galbraith as a response to the robber barons of the depression and how it was dismantled in the 1980's...