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Notes -
We probably do have excess trading versus what would be efficient for the economy. People like the game.
But a person doing direct investing in something producing cash flows for 50-100 years probably doesn’t actually want to be invested in that thing for 50-100 years.
I’ve always like the idea that public companies are like a report card for companies. Having to constantly convince people to own your stock makes companies perform better. How many people learn calculus because they opened a book versus they had a deadline to take a test? And then public markets do provide a means of changing management if the assets get cheap but the company isn’t making appropriate profits.
Sure, but having the owners and managers be the same people also greatly increases the incentives for the managers to do a good job. Private owners have much more information about the company and a much more direct way of effecting change. The private owners can always just sell the company if they think they can't do a good job of managing it or picking managers.
The main advantage publicly owned companies have isn't better management, it's just the ability to raise capital. Something that can matter a lot in capital intensive industries with only a few large companies.
Agree it’s primary about raising larger amounts of capital. The system does have means to incentivize management in public companies so trading in stocks does still have a purpose.
For larger companies you could actually have a debate on whether the management incentives are better being private or public. I would probably start with something like for more complex orgs the wisdom of crowds is smarter than one owner etc. Price signals from markets interpret information faster than a small group of owners.
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