We're already turning a profit! And there are no third-party investors (or debt) – it's all controlled by wiki people[1]
Regardless, I wish you luck for the future! May you not go down the almost inevitable enshittification hole.
Because the entire system encourages it. The market rewards growth FAR more than it rewards a consistent dividend payout. (See: companies growing 40% YoY command a significfantly higher earnings multiple than those growing 10% YOY). So imo this is a like saying "people could decide to just invest money and then not seek the best returns possible." Also remember these shareholder are seldom John Smith principled human retail investor. It's firms whose entire purpose themselves is to seek maximum return.
"The owners of a privately traded company could decide to"
Meanwhile this DOES actually happen sometimes. See: Valve. We all know there's ways Valve could put up really great growth numbers for about 2-3 years while completely destroying all of the things that make Steam so god damn compelling to users that they can command the same cut as Apple, on an OPEN platform (vs Apple fighting utterly tooth and nail to keep iOS 100% airtight locked down). But they don't.
"For example, zuckerberg controls 53% of the voting stock of facebook, so whatever zuck says goes"
TBC most founders/CEOs are NOT majority voters in their companies. They answer to the board. Most company founders lose voting control. The fact that Zuck is still in control is incredibly unusual and is a testament to how fast Facebook has grown that he's been able to keep hold of the reins.
And when he took over Twitter in 2022, he immediately dissolved the board and fired the executives who were on it.
(Steam does try to do part of the job of the OS though, taking control over updates and even deciding what is acceptable on their platform and what is not.)
In fact, the relatively new concept of a "public benefit corporation" is (at least in part) an effort to allow for-profit entities to pursue goals other than shareholder enrichment. However, some have criticized public benefit corporations as being entities that simply strengthen executive control at the expense of shareholders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation
About Dodge v. Ford Motor Co.:
Dodge v. Ford Motor Co., 204 Mich 459; 170 NW 668 (1919),[1] is a case in which the Michigan Supreme Court held that Henry Ford had to operate the Ford Motor Company in the interests of its shareholders, rather than in a manner for the benefit of his employees or customers. It is often taught as affirming the principle of "shareholder primacy" in corporate America, although that teaching has received some criticism.[2][3] At the same time, the case affirmed the business judgment rule, leaving Ford an extremely wide latitude about how to run the company.[citation needed]
The general legal position today (except in Delaware, the jurisdiction where over half of all U.S. public companies are domiciled and where shareholder primacy is still upheld[4][5]) is that the business judgment that directors may exercise is expansive.[citation needed] Management decisions will not be challenged where one can point to any rational link to benefiting the corporation as a whole.
> zuckerberg controls 53% of the voting stock of facebook, so whatever zuck says goes and if other shareholders don't like it they can kick rocks
This is only true in cases where zuckerberg's actions are not intended to benefit his interests at the expense of other shareholders'. I think in the Ford case, there was not a majority of shareholders who wanted to expand the business and increase wages at the expense of profit, So it was essentially two minority shareholders fighting.
* ETA: I meant "growth" here, not profit
Employees should buy out investors if they want to keep operating for their own personal profit.
This wasn't exactly the question. The question was about growth. A company could be very profitable without growth (say, they own a mine which produces $40 million worth of ore each year with expenses of $10 million with no end in sight) or can have growth without profit (Open AI is a great example, or for history, the first 5 years of Facebook.)
I know most of stock investing is about capital gains and not dividends, but I think GP was saying it's inherently impossible to have growth forever.
On a financial level I get why people prefer to invest their money in a stock that goes up rather than one that pays them 8% a year consistently in dividends, but it seems unfortunate that somehow it seems like we aren't allowed to just have sustainable companies that don't depend on infinite growth to stay in business.
> The company primarily relies on three streams of revenue: user donations, serving ads on select Weird Gloop wikis, and a contract with Jagex that includes a fee to cover hosting and administration costs.
The only difference is that Weird Gloop is the little guy. Competition is good! That might be a good enough reason to choose them if you're in the market for wiki hosting!
But the moral posturing won't last if they become dominant, unless they set up incentives fundamentally differently than Fandom did, which doesn't seem to be the case.
As long as advertising is one of their revenue sources, the user experience will get crappy as soon as the network effects make it hard to leave. The cycle continues.