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.
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.