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Comment by MichaelZuo | Hacker News Reader

This is usually resolved by requiring a minimum ownership stake for each prospective board member, and to make sure it represents a significant fraction of their total net worth.

To guarantee that the board would lose their shirts if they make decisions completely opposite to reality, thus motivating a more thorough investigation of what they see and hear.

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I think that's the exception, not the rule. Many large public companies have many board members with only trivial ownership stakes.

What you’re saying is implied. They’re proposing requiring a minimum ownership percentage (I assume legally) would make board members care more about decisions because, as it is now—-according to the comment parent—-board members largely don’t care as long as their wallets get fatter.

Sounds a bit like buying a commission, by having enough money you proved worthy of it.

It is quite similar, the most widespread usage historically would likely be the 18th century trading companies such as the British East India Company which used this method along with others to operate with a relatively tiny managerial workforce by modern standards.

There was another post on HN a few weeks back with an article that looked into it and the numbers were really staggering.

if you could find it I'd love to read that.

Could you find that article, perhaps via algolia HN search? I didn't see it.

A couple of people asked where this was. I think the article is

https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/some-things-to-learn-from...

and the HN discussion is

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32710002

(but I am not MichaelZuo and it's possible that I've got the wrong thing).

What? In what case has this ever happened?

Berkshire, Costco to a certain extent, many of the big Japanese and Korean conglomerates, Bosch, Dassault, traditional old money banks, etc...

Excluding external board members, by definition.

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