> This is not a serious argument. You're telling me that if shareholders see a founder divest entirely from their companies, they aren't going to take that as a bad signal, and also choose to divest? Bullshit.Other investors would choose to divest because ownership of those shares signals control and power over those institutions. Someone with a massive set of shares selling their stakes signals some lack of confidence, perhaps. But more importantly, it injects serious uncertainty and risk into the future of the organization. Who will buy those shares? How will they vote? Will there be power stuggles on the board? How will that filter into the effectiveness of executives, and down from there? Uncertainty and risk come at a premium. Redistributing ownership of a huge institution introduces at least uncertainty and probably risk. Therefore, stock price goes down.
But there's an important corollary to that. This isn't just a graph of how wealth is distributed. It's also -- perhaps primarily, to your point -- a graph of how power over other people is distributed.
I don't particularly care about how money is distributed; call me selfish or lazy or stupid, but I have plenty of money to live my relatively simple life in the countryside as I wish, and that's enough for me.
But I do care deeply about how power over me and others is distributed.
When I look at this graph, I see the consolidation of power in the hands of the few, and in that I see a threat to my freedoms and way of life, regardless of whether I have enough cash to sustain myself indefinitely.
