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Comment by fred_is_fred | Hacker News Reader

Which is a great reason to not blow $15B on a shitty version of 2nd life.

Well they blew more than 30B on share buy backs with an average price above $300/share. It makes the metaverse investment look trivial.

I have had arguments with a lot of buy side and MBA types who try to convince me that buybacks are good for the country and patriotic but I would prefer a dividend by god. buybacks to me are un-American especially those funded by debt.

For $15B Meta could have had their own Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier. and still had enough left over in change to buy Lucasfilm.

How much would it cost to buy second life itself? Though I imagine they might not want to sell to FB.

I mean it's his money, right? He can do whatever he wants with it. Corporations are not democracies and it doesn't matter what market analysts think about how he should spend his own money and on what projects.

And the market is free to consider this an unwise investment and tank the stock. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also, since FB is a publicly traded company, it's not actually "his money". It's the shareholders' money (of which he is but one), and thus he has a fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of those shareholders.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fiduciary_duty

He has controlling shares so he is acting in the best interest of the shareholders which is mainly himself.

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