[ryandrake]

I mean, everything you said is true, but only because we have deliberately set up the system as such. Shareholder Primacy is a choice we have made as a society. It's not some natural law or something carved by god into stone tablets. It's not hard to imagine alternatives, but obviously the shareholding class is going to work hard to ensure that only their preferred rules have traction. Whether or not alternatives are workable given human nature is another thread altogether.

[astrange]

Shareholders don't have "primacy", eg they're last in bankruptcy. If you're asking for them to never get anything, then they're not going to participate, and this is supposedly a forum about startups.

In tech the employees also tend to be shareholders which I think is healthier.

[wilg]

Nobody is stopping anyone from running a non-profit tech company, or a PBC or co-op or various other structures. It's not even true that a US company has to prioritize "shareholder value" or whatever over anything else. You can kinda just do whatever you want. So the interesting question to me is, why don't more people try to operate companies/workplaces in the way they think would be more ethical and better for business?

[Out_of_Characte]

>only because we have deliberately set up the system as such. No one can sell at a loss all the time. That's just stupidity. Either I get a return on money invested later or I get a return on my balance sheet now in the form of profit. Shareholders primacy is because they can only be cut trough a buyout.

[deviantbit]

No, it's not a choice we made as a society. It was a choice the shareholders made. You didn't make that choice, you were not part of it.

[ryandrake]

That's a good point! I never got the chance to vote on whether or not shareholders should get all the votes.

[throwaway3572]

Why should you get a vote? You don’t get a vote on what groceries I buy. What entitles you to a vote on this purchase decision? (In this case “all the votes” means when making decisions on actions a particular corporation is considering, not any vote on anything)

[heeen2]

Lots of places take vote on what you can buy, eg weed, alcohol, which additives are allowed and so on

[throwaway3572]

The creation and transacting of corporate shares is also highly regulated. But it doesn’t address the question of why a third party should get a vote that helps decide a particular corporate action. Votes that limit the possible actions of all corporations equally are a different thing.

[ryandrake]

Ultimately, the corporation is operating (and gets legal support like corporate personhood and limited liability) because the public permits it through the state approving its corporate charter. The public allows the company to exist, and in exchange, the company is supposed to serve at least some vague public good. Technically, the public has the power to revoke the company's charter if that's in people's best interest.

The general public are all stakeholders that are affected by the actions of the corporations they allow to exist. They ought to have a say. In practice, we as a people have pretty much given up that say, and the world as it exists today is the result: Corporations running amok doing whatever they want, answering only to shareholders.

[int_19h]

OP was talking about the overall social arrangement. One possibility would be to give employees (of all corporations!) some collective power over the company, as a fundamental requirement of incorporation.

[elliotto]

Because societies in which not everyone gets a vote end up collapsing as those with the vote are eaten by those without

[grandempire]

Why do you feel entitled to something someone else built?

[int_19h]

Shareholders don't build anything. Employees do.

[grandempire]

I didn’t build my car or house, but I own them.

Working on things owned by others is the basic idea of employment - and is a relationship that has existed forever.

[Dylan16807]

And the people that built your car and house had a say in how that process went. A rather big say.