[sircastor]

The older I get the more I hate publicly traded stock. Early on it seems like it had a positive advantage for companies, but here in the fully matured market we find that it just screws up all the incentives. Every company imaginable stops being what they are: A computer company, a cookie company, a toy company, an internet provider, a movie studio, etc. They all just turn into a single, stupid thing: A stockholder appeasement company.

Their singular goal becomes making stockholders (more accurately market analysts) look favorably at them. I hate it so much.

[brianwawok]

So what is the alternative? You can have a fully private company.. but most of those focus on squeezing cash out. A few are more "benefit the world" style which is great, but I don't think its the popular thing.

The biggest drawback is stock investors are too short sighted, and value things that are good for 1 quarter and bad for 10 years.

[nine_zeros]

> So what is the alternative?

That shareholders and execs accept a few quarters of low/no growth? Infinite growth quarter-over-quarter is madness.

[kridsdale3]

Somehow get companies to be like Valve.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

I'm not the only one who thinks that.

Whatever happened with Valve, it should be repeated