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Comment by verandaguy | Hacker News Reader

This should frankly be disqualifying for any company trying to go public. Super voting shares have their place but there's no scenario in which overall control of the company can be retained by super voting shareholders who make up a small minority of the overall shareholders.

The point of a company going public is not to just distribute possible profits among speculators, but to give the public a meaningful voice in company direction, in particular by offering escape hatches like being able to eject a CEO who's lost their mind and is no longer acting in the fiduciary best interest of the shareholders, which will so obviously happen here.

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> The point of a company going public is not to just distribute possible profits among speculators, but to give the public a meaningful voice in company direction

The point is to raise money from investors. The investors get a voice in exchange.

It should be described so buyers can beware, but it's a personal choice to decide whether someone trust Musk and his estate planning

Technically, it is described. It's described in the S-1. Trouble is that most (active) investors don't read the S-1.

Fund managers and the like do, which covers a lot of passive investors, which is good until a company joins one of the major indices at which points funds may be obligated to buy in.

It's a deeply distressing moment, and I see it as a time to renew calls for consumer-protecting regulations and antitrust laws with more teeth in the markets where this kind of behaviour's currently flourishing.

This is not a new thing. Off the top of my head, I can think of similar arrangements at Meta, Alphabet, and the New York Times Company.

Whataboutism isn't an argument.

I'm pretty sick of everyone labeling points they don't like "whataboutism". The reason I brought it up is if you're going use that as a reason to get the SEC or Congress or whomever more involved you're going to have to come up with a reason beyond "I don't like Elon Musk".

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