[dmurray]

> Voting rights are powerful. That's the point of the long-term exchange.

> In existing exchanges, going long and short in equal amounts on the same stock simply cancel each other out.

Not really, for voting purposes. You can buy the stock, borrow the stock, sell the borrowed shares and end up with "free" voting rights and no economic exposure to the stock. I say "free" because you may have to pay someone a few percent to lend you the stock.

You might say centralised clearing prevents this from happening - that my account will always just show a position of zero shares so I have no votes. But even in that case, I can open two accounts, one long and one short, with the same effect.

[eries]

Actually our mechanism prevents this. It’s pretty clever if I do say so myself, but until we go public with the details you’ll have to take my word for it

[valuearb]

it’s a dumb idea solving an imaginary problem. Better to spend your energies on something more productive.

The governance problem is that public companies are allowed to restrict shareholder rights to the point they have no say over board composition. Boards are incestous collaborations between insiders and friendly outsiders, whose purpose is to maximize their compensation at the expense of shareholders.

That’s the problem to solve and your idea only makes it worse.