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Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

The ability for a CEO to be a founder of another company and then buy that company with the company he is a CEO of seems incredibly sketchy. See also: bullshit idea that someone can actually run multiple companies, it’s ceo welfare and vanity titles.

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No one is forcing you to invest in said companies. As an investor it's up to you to do due diligence on the board, conflict of interest disclosures, whether sizeable acquisitions require shareholder approval, etc.

This is on top of blanket legal protections that already exist in case you didn't want to do your own DD, like duty of loyalty, care and fiduciary; SEC disclosures, AD @ the DoJ, FTC, etc.

Not sure what you are replying to. I'm not investing in OpenAI nor do I want to. I can call out BS behavior without being an investor.

Although “you” is often used to refer to a specific person or persons (e.g., “How did you get to work today?”), in many languages, it can also be used to refer to people in general (e.g., “You avoid rush hour if you can.”).

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2010939117#:~:text=Alt...

I think the concept is more like, you may participate (invest) but if you don't, you have no standing to have an opinion. (other than the fact that you didn't invest, which represents your opinion.)

> if you don't, you have no standing to have an opinion.

Are you saying that they're saying something stupid? The vast majority of companies are regulated by non-investors; and when companies are regulated by people who are also investors, we think it is a problem rather than a requirement for the regulators to have an opinion.

A regulator's job is the protect the public interest, nothing more. Certainly not shareholder interest, except to the extent that it overlaps with the public interest. They don't run the company and they don't make decisions for the company or stop decisions because something might be a bad deal for the shareholders. Conflicts of interest and self-dealing are not illegal if properly disclosed.

Or being CEO of a company and then using as vendors for your employee benefits companies that you've invested in. Blatant unethical self-dealing.

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