> The stock market mechanism then guarantees that companies unconcerned with that sort of profit will see someone gobble up the shares once they dip low enough (and they will), install a new board of directors, and dismantle the company for parts or some other endeavor-ending inevitability.
There are all sorts of ways to defend against a hostile takeover like this. I already mentioned Zuckerberg having majority control of the voting shares despite the company being public. There was also the attempted takeover of Netflix a decade ago that was prevented with a poison pill to issue more shares.
> Would it be technically possible for a company to buy all of its shares back so that there are no owners? The company would be self-owned.
No, because there's a statutory minimum number of shareholders (which varies by country but is always greater than zero).
But even if this weren't the case, it wouldn't be as weird as it sounds. In most states, nonprofits cannot issue stock, but they still exist as corporate entities.
The directors ultimately control the company. Shareholders are secondary: irrelevant, except insofar as they can vote out the board of directors.
> If you still believe this is impossible, think what would happen if a company on the day of the IPO decided to immediately and unilaterally reverse every transaction.
Yeah, this isn't a thing the company can do. The board cannot "unilaterally" take shareholders' shares and give them money in return. They can initiate a buyback, but that means buying shares on the open market, and they'd still be a public company even if everyone sold back their shares. Or they can propose a buyout, but that requires a shareholder vote and typically external money.
The first scenario still results in a public company, just with fewer shares. Neither scenario results in the company owning itself.
> You can just buy shares if you want a piece of the monopoly.
Holding on to a few shares (as a regular joe), you do not have any influence on the company (re: enshittification). A monopoly that is publicly owned, does not make the situation more palatable.
> You can sell your stocks to someone else. The company doesn't have to be the one to buy it.
But that defeats the purpose. The company buys back stock not to hold it, but to dissolve it and drive up the value of remaining shares mathematically.
> During a hostile takeover, someone buys 51% of the shares. They then elect a board of people who will approve whatever they want.
This is confusing. During the TWTR discussions, one that regularly came out is the importance of a board's fiduciary duty. Buying 51% doesn't let you take the company private, and merging at 50% of the price seems like a monumentally indefensible decision, especially when it is with the 51% holders company. I find it hard to believe you can get away with that.
> The company cannot cannot just buy the last stock because the stock itself is worth all the cash the company holds and the future profits it will make.
The last share is worth whatever the person that holds it is willing to sell it for, right? A share of IBM is worth $136 right now because there are two parties willing to buy/sell a share of IBM at that price.
I realize this would never happen in a million years, but could a company exist that is owned by nobody?
> This kind of ownership is much closer to lending money to someone.
No it isn't. It's 'fractional ownership', a mechanism designed to defray the risks of a single venture across multiple people because the risks were larger than any single individual could bear. The case that created it was the India runs with ships that could carry more valuable cargo than any individual could afford to buy or insure.
Spreading that risk through fractional ownership eventually led to the stockmarket. So it absolutely not at all like lending someone money.
>Founders need to have that as an option for an exit though. What are the alternatives? Limiting ownership to 49%?
No they don't. To rephrase, you're suggesting that companies are entitled to getting bought out. That's ridiculous. Owning a company is a privilege, people who abuse that privilege, billionaires, should be stripped of that power. Corporate America is cancerous, consuming and destroying everything indiscriminately for vanity, numbers on a screen, and authoritarian control over the less privileged.
> Also when you buy a share of Apple you are not a part owner of the company.
This is totally wrong.
> as a shareholder you're entitled to very little and do not have legal rights to demand profitability.
Only if you are an isolated minority shareholder. If shareholders group together form a quorum (+ 50% of total ownership), they can demand anything from their company - including replacing the entire board and taking operational control of the company.
These are technicalities: The point was to prevent things like hostile takeovers:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/economics-econometrics-...
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