Gets you something to add to your 401k portfolio. Which I don’t think is a great argument; there are plenty of other ways to handle retirement even in a fundamentally capitalist system.
There’s a theory out there that as SP500 indices for 401k’s become the dominant investment, that will convince publicly traded companies to think long term. Those indices don’t jump in and out of stocks. They want to add a stock and then keep it for decades. Companies would change their thinking to match.
I’m not convinced of that, though. Starting with the fact that 401k’s started as a tax loophole that got mistaken for a good retirement plan, while traditional pensions and Social Security have been eroded away (to say the least). But it’s a possible outcome.
I think the initial idea of like “I have a great idea but don’t have the capital to get it off of the ground” is a decent argument for public companies, or in the case where employees are shareholders and thus reap reward when companies are successful, but I think these are both mostly antiquated notions and the ills of how public companies are today are a net-loss, and there are generally better ways to accomplish both of these things.
Especially in tech, it’s entirely common to charge nothing, make no money and burn investment money until they end up either so dominant they essentially have monopoly power (think: Amazon) or that the business plan is reach critical mass and hopefully sell. And then the very notion that every business has to grow forever leads to rather perverse incentives. Again, especially if you look at tech, basically all of the FAANG companies used to be a lot better/nicer until some critical mass is hit and then they have to enshittify everything.
Gets you something to add to your 401k portfolio. Which I don’t think is a great argument; there are plenty of other ways to handle retirement even in a fundamentally capitalist system.
There’s a theory out there that as SP500 indices for 401k’s become the dominant investment, that will convince publicly traded companies to think long term. Those indices don’t jump in and out of stocks. They want to add a stock and then keep it for decades. Companies would change their thinking to match.
I’m not convinced of that, though. Starting with the fact that 401k’s started as a tax loophole that got mistaken for a good retirement plan, while traditional pensions and Social Security have been eroded away (to say the least). But it’s a possible outcome.
I think the initial idea of like “I have a great idea but don’t have the capital to get it off of the ground” is a decent argument for public companies, or in the case where employees are shareholders and thus reap reward when companies are successful, but I think these are both mostly antiquated notions and the ills of how public companies are today are a net-loss, and there are generally better ways to accomplish both of these things.
Especially in tech, it’s entirely common to charge nothing, make no money and burn investment money until they end up either so dominant they essentially have monopoly power (think: Amazon) or that the business plan is reach critical mass and hopefully sell. And then the very notion that every business has to grow forever leads to rather perverse incentives. Again, especially if you look at tech, basically all of the FAANG companies used to be a lot better/nicer until some critical mass is hit and then they have to enshittify everything.