zlacker

>>evolve+(OP)
Everything valve doing for linux is making such a huge impact.

The HL3 memes don't even seem fair to use anymore. I don't even want to un-seriously make joke fun of them at this point. They are just genuinely doing so much for the community.

>>adverb+H53
Valve is one of the few companies regularly seen on HN where the headline is something like "[company] is secretly doing something really great" as opposed to "[company] is secretly doing something evil"

>>levoca+Yb3
People complain about the gambling/loot box stuff, and yeah there's legit ethical concerns there.

But overall Valve just seems straightforwardly less shitty towards the consumer than other major companies in their space, by a long shot.

>>Tulliu+2d3
The major reason is they are a private company with good business. The don't have a need to keep adding to shareholder value ie stock price instead just need to generate a yearly income. We have reached a point where the shareholders are a companies real customers and that is who they all try to attract.Everytthing else a company does is just to attract shareholders

>>xbmcus+EA3
I find it a touch strange, in the abstract, that a corporation being public is a bad thing. On paper it should be a good thing; being publicly owned should mean that your corporation has turned from a private business venture into effectively public infrastructure that's impossible to boycott and depended on to some extent by everybody. As a result, financial statements should be (and are) public and transparent, and the company should be able to be externally steered via regular elections in a manner that benefits the public and not just its founders.

The issue really lies in the fact that the (long-term, majority) shareholders aren't much, if at all, related to the customers or employees of the business, but first the founders, and then parties who are merely interested in rising stock prices and dividends. It feels like the solution here ought to somehow desegregate voting rights from how many shares are owned, instead of dismantling the concept of public ownership entirely. (Or, perhaps, allow the general public to proxy vote via their 401(k) index funds?)

(There's also strange situations like Google/Alphabet, which is publicly owned, but effectively does not allow shareholders to vote on anything.)

>>Invisi+xd4
The wealthiest 10% of Americans own like 90% of stocks, and the top 1% own 50%. While the poorest 50% of the population own about 1% of the stock market.

So "publicly" traded (the term public ownership can be confusing because it can also mean state control) just means it's open for the elite to invest in.

>>faidit+hj4
“Just”? As if there aren’t pension funds and 401(k)s and IRAs serving >100 million Americans via investment in public companies?

“Open for the elite” how?