[baybal2]

There were times in India and Pakistan when every major city had a stock exchange. Pakistan held to tradition longer than India, and owners of 3 largest stock exchanges merged them into Karachi stock exchange, and later PSX only in 2016.

In Pakistan, most listed businesses are much more "boring" than ones in US. Concrete factories, brick makers, seedling producers, farms. Regulations on disclosure are near nil, but locals care not for that as few buy shares for anything but dividends and a good track record paying them.

I myself vehemently oppose the idea of collective ownership of means of production, which public companies embody, but I do think that there is a visible "skew" in US with regards to business liquidity: all kinds of pets.com have a go, while clearly not bad businesses reliably making money have to be sold at discounts that will be considered big even by developing countries standards.

[mises]

> I myself vehemently oppose the idea of collective ownership of means of production, which public companies embody

I wouldn't call this "public" ownership, as the "public" does not own a company. Investors own a company, the pool of investors is simply enlarged such that the public may invest.

[baybal2]

In my understanding, collective ownership !== public ownership and is just anything where the amount of owners is > 1

[k_sh]

I've always taken "public ownership" to imply "publicly-traded company", which means John Q. Public can call up his broker and buy some shares in the company.

This in contrast to privately-held companies, which can and do have many owners, but whose owners are acquired through partnership, investment, key employees within the company, and M&A - but not through the sale of securities.

[adamsea]

Does that mean you oppose all companies or business which are owned by more than a single person?

[baybal2]

Yes

[memmcgee]

No that's still private ownership. Amazon, for example, is not collectively owned, even though it's owned by more than just Jeff Bezos.