I think we’re just at a point where a company not constantly trying to find ways to squirm out of every single thing is a breath of fresh air.
“Hi! We’re valve. We’re mostly following the law without fuss, mostly make money by getting people to buy things they want, and our excessively wealthy owner acts like a preposterously rich person, not a comic book villain: Fantasizing about living his life isn’t deeply concerning. The hardware we sell isn’t deliberately worse for consumers to no benefit to ourselves” – Hands down one of the best “big” companies out there.
They are a case study of how a privately held company, a company that does not have a boardroom of investors, demanding maximum possible short term profit, all the time…
Can actually allocate capital more efficiently, and generally more fairly, and innovate better than a ravenous hoard of interest/rent seekers.
You can look at them as essentially a counter argument to the modern American concept of a publically (stock market) traded company.
While what they do, the tech, the platform, the games… while that’s rather cutting edge… the way they do it, that’s actually old school, at the level of how a business fundamentally works, is legally defined.
They are not ‘beholden to capital’ so much as they are … ‘beholden to Gabe.’
You would think business majors and economists could look at this and go… oh, turns out capital markets aren’t efficient, at all, in the long run!
We are at the point now where a privately held, effective monopoly / oligopoly is… actually less evil than basically every other major tech firm that is entirely investor-returns / capital-rent driven… where probably roughly 20%-40% of the people/orgs on all those other boards … are just the same people, forming basically a de facto conspiracy.
Basically, being beholden to a single, publically visible capitalist, who doesn’t have to show you his internal books… appears to be objectively better than being beholden to many, obfuscated, invisible capitalists, despite them actually having to show you their books.
This argument would seem to make sense, but from what I gather Bezos and Zuckerberg have lots of control of their respective companies, and can push around the board - yet they do what they do.
I think we’re just at a point where a company not constantly trying to find ways to squirm out of every single thing is a breath of fresh air.
“Hi! We’re valve. We’re mostly following the law without fuss, mostly make money by getting people to buy things they want, and our excessively wealthy owner acts like a preposterously rich person, not a comic book villain: Fantasizing about living his life isn’t deeply concerning. The hardware we sell isn’t deliberately worse for consumers to no benefit to ourselves” – Hands down one of the best “big” companies out there.
Here’s another way you can look at Valve.
They are a case study of how a privately held company, a company that does not have a boardroom of investors, demanding maximum possible short term profit, all the time…
Can actually allocate capital more efficiently, and generally more fairly, and innovate better than a ravenous hoard of interest/rent seekers.
You can look at them as essentially a counter argument to the modern American concept of a publically (stock market) traded company.
While what they do, the tech, the platform, the games… while that’s rather cutting edge… the way they do it, that’s actually old school, at the level of how a business fundamentally works, is legally defined.
They are not ‘beholden to capital’ so much as they are … ‘beholden to Gabe.’
You would think business majors and economists could look at this and go… oh, turns out capital markets aren’t efficient, at all, in the long run!
We are at the point now where a privately held, effective monopoly / oligopoly is… actually less evil than basically every other major tech firm that is entirely investor-returns / capital-rent driven… where probably roughly 20%-40% of the people/orgs on all those other boards … are just the same people, forming basically a de facto conspiracy.
Basically, being beholden to a single, publically visible capitalist, who doesn’t have to show you his internal books… appears to be objectively better than being beholden to many, obfuscated, invisible capitalists, despite them actually having to show you their books.
This argument would seem to make sense, but from what I gather Bezos and Zuckerberg have lots of control of their respective companies, and can push around the board - yet they do what they do.