Comments on: Are Public Companies Owned by the Public? http://ophir.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/are-public-companies-owned-by-the-public/ Thoughts on Software, Management & Business Sun, 28 Apr 2013 11:04:55 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: ophirk http://ophir.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/are-public-companies-owned-by-the-public/#comment-1410 Sat, 13 Oct 2012 05:46:03 +0000 http://ophir.wordpress.com/?p=2535#comment-1410 Yes, I was offering a more direct democratic model for public companies :)
I’m not so worried about “corruption” per-se ,but more on missed economic opportunities and conflict of interest between the executives & the public that holds the majority of shares.
Capitalism s great, but it assumes a market in which information is completely available for everyone and feedback is immediate. My idea is to move forward in this respect.

The employee stock options are not helping much.
* In non hi-tech (e.g. Teva, Walmart) employees do not get any stock
* In public companies the stock for 95% of employee is not that main source of income as it is too small ( or moved to RSU’s anyway )
* The stock is not even a good way to motivate executives, because if the stock is not doing well, they just get more of them :)

]]> By: Uri Gilad http://ophir.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/are-public-companies-owned-by-the-public/#comment-1401 Sat, 06 Oct 2012 17:43:59 +0000 http://ophir.wordpress.com/?p=2535#comment-1401 Great article, really thought (and comment!) provoking.

Did you just offer democratic style elections for public companies?

May I share a couple of organizations controlled by democratic elections? : 1. The state of Israel. 2. The United States.

The two points of light in this capitalist system, for me, are:
1. Failing companies will die or improve/evolve, example range from Kodak (dying), HP, etc to apple (remember when they booted out Steve jobs, and how he came back) and IBM (another miraculous recovery in the late 90′s)

2. These companies are ruled by the SEC(and its equivalents) corruption happens, but it is relatively rare (compare the # of scandals to the # of traded companies).

At the end of the day, one of the key things you forgot to mention is that these companies depend on employees, who get stock as an incentive, and the good ones will leave if the stock is crappy. I have an example we are both familiar with.

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