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Comment by someguydave | Hacker News Reader

I disagree with the premise of the article. I don't think that the proxy voting system and share ownership is opaque because it is boring - it is opaque because that is precisely in the mutual interest of all the middlemen you deal with to buy and sell and hold stock.

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I see, and make, this argument often in relation to a lot of things.. with one caveat, which I think is important.

The 'because' in "it is opaque 'because' it is in the interest of.." does not have to be a causal because, or even an intentional 'because'. Most conspiracies I have known and loathed are, for better or worse, simply emergent. Each party can be relied on to play their part in conspiracy because playing their part is how the conspiracy came to be.

As I said, I think this is an important distinction. Not least as the hangup most people have about believing in such complex and wrong behaviour, is that so many people can be so smart and organised and so intentionally evil. But it is a real eye opener when you realise these things can function without organisation or intent..

Software engineers work in a field where accreted complexity exists at every turn. Windows has 20-years of bug-for-bug compatibility because of the pressures of hundreds of millions of people relying on it every day. And it's also a field where the dangers of rerwrites are well known and appreciated.

So why is it that many engineers are so ready to see complexity as the product of conspiracy, rather than organic evolution, in every other field?

>So why is it that many engineers are so ready to see complexity as the product of conspiracy, rather than organic evolution, in every other field?

So you are saying that separating voting rights of millions of shareholders and granting them to the hands of a few elites at banks is just a total evolutionary accident? I don't recall getting the option to restore the voting rights of the shares in my index funds - and nobody appears to offer it?

> simply emergent

There are people who model emergent systems and game theory, with the goal of influencing outcomes across a range of scenarios.

References please?

The Predictors by Thomas A Bass

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Predictors-Thomas-Bass/dp/080505757...

But that's the amazing part of the story. What happened wasn't in the interest of any of the middlemen involved! They just want to skim off their slice. The last thing they want is any whiff that the ultimate owner might not get their voting rights or might not get the money coming to them. That's the kind of thing that makes people take their business to the other middleman across the street.

The only people who really benefited from this mess were Michael Dell and the others on the other side of the buyout. And they had nothing to do with this clusterfuck.

>That's the kind of thing that makes people take their business to the other middleman across the street.

Yeah except name me a "middleman" passive index fund that allows you to exercise voting rights at your discretion? I would take my business there, but it doesn't exist.

Well in the past ownership in shares were linked to pieces of paper. So moving everything around in a 1:1 relation with the real trades is annoying. Much easier to just move things in bulk at the end of the day.

The ownership layer mechanisms are not ways to make more money, but ways to spend less money. It's like how if we're both using the same broker to buy/sell the same stock, the broker could just... Change his records and not actually do any trading.

Though now some layers could be simplified, at one point they stop being middlemen and start being offerers of liquidity. Or something. Is your bank a middleman for mixing your dollars with other people's dollars?

>Is your bank a middleman for mixing your dollars with other people's dollars?

Yes? That seems pretty obvious to me. Mingling segregated accounts is certainly a bad idea if the customer thinks that you have a bailment contract: https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Fractional_reserve_banking

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