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Comment by BashiBazouk | Hacker News Reader

Is the opposition to the wealth tax about the money or the control of the company? If Zuck sells shares to pay the tax, what percentage does his controlling shares drop. I wonder if these special shares are specifically non voting rather than to save him money?

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He wouldn't have to sell shares to pay the tax. He can easily borrow the money if he needs to.

The article is about this. 7th sentence.

Heh, skimmed a little too fast, but it's interesting that the progressive/Bernie Sanders crowd skip over the control issue when pushing the wealth tax. I think it was Sergey Brin that mentioned control as well when he moved to the Nevada side of Tahoe.

The solution to this is to not take your company 'Public'. Actions/choices have consequences/tradeoffs for most people.

That these people thought they found a loophole around the consequences of public markets with their special voting shares is worthy of zero consideration.

Feel free to give it "zero consideration", whatever that means. They will continue to sell shares without voting rights to people willing to buy them.

Why is it an issue? Is it really so socially mandatory that founders get to maintain absolute control over public companies? The super-shares approach that Sergey took was clearly abusive anyway.

If you can’t fire the CEO, then it shouldn’t be considered a public company. If they want to keep one-billion percent control, then they should never be allowed to take the company public.

In a public company, no single ultimate beneficial owner should be allowed to have a controlling interest. Not even a large minority. IMO, less than 10% of the votes, tops.

Why?

Being public isnt some .magic designation.

It just means people are trading stock of some sort on the open market.

If people want non voting shares, why not let them?

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