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Comment by coldcode | Hacker News Reader

I don't care much for Herbalife, but people like this disgust me, covering up a naked profit grab with an air of concern for others. Pathetic. Do it without making a profit and I might listen or even agree with you. Do it for the money and it's clear you don't care a whit what happens as long as your profit is assured. But historically wealthy business people have always convinced, conned or even bribed people (you can bribe people without money) to get what they want. Think late 19th century "robber barons". It's nothing new today, except lobbying is even easier since it's also a big business today. Not a big fan of Icahn either, he bets on companies and then uses any means necessary to force the company to do what he wants in order to profit. The spirit of Rockefeller lives on.

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To play devil's advocate... maybe shorting stocks is actually a sensible way to fund activism against unethical companies. It's not unprecedented. The "No win no fee" structure common in class action lawsuits is roughly equivalent.

If someone wanted to actually put this into practice, the thing to do would be to create a fund and identify several companies doing illegal things, short the stocks, and then launch campaigns against them.

I'm not sure if the math works out though. With traditional VC your wins are orders of magnitude larger than your losses, which is what allows the portfolio to succeed. I don't know enough about shorts to know whether a similar structure could be created.

Acman's behavior is not bad because he's shorting Herbalife.

It's bad because after he bought short position, he's using his money and influence to crash Herbalife, by any means necessary, buying fake concern from various "community" groups, trying to influence government officials to start investigation etc.

Metaphorically speaking, he's a corporate terrorist, trying to cause distress in a company in order to profit from it.

And let's be clear: he doesn't care what happens after (potentially temporary) drop in Heralife's stock price.

He's end-game is not fixing Herbalife via some government action, all he needs to make his billions is temporary drop in stock price caused by FUD that an investigation would create.

> Do it without making a profit and I might listen or even agree with you.

Isn't it basic market economics, though? If you don't make crusading against the bad guys profitable, people won't do it.

Lots of idealistic people and non-profit organizations crusade against the bad guys without the need to make a massive profit.

The ineffectiveness of such organizations, as a class, is legendary.

I like how the top comment is a rant about Ackman that offers no insight about the linked article.

>Do it without making a profit and I might listen or even agree with you.

lol? Instead of being concerned about the possibility that Herbalife is a scam that preys on those on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, your primary point of contention is that someone stands to make money off exposing it.

I also like the completely off-the-mark "robber barons" reference, despite the fact that neither of the two parties (Ackman, Herbalife) fit the description. The week has just started and you're already venting online!

Except you completely missed the point where Ackman isn't making any money off this.

> Mr. Ackman has said he will donate any profits he personally earns to charity, calling it “blood money.”

And that's ignoring the fact that we live in a capitalist society. You need money to get things done. If no one stood to make a profit from this the effort wouldn't be nearly as well run. This is the market working at its best (at least in principle), rewarding people who put in lots of effort to reveal information that benefits the public.

He runs a hedge fund. He gets 2 and 20. That 2 means that his company gets 2% of invested money every year as a fee. He may not make money immediately from his actions but if his investors are happy then he will make money the following year.

"""Do it for the money and it's clear you don't care a whit what happens as long as your profit is assured."""

Maybe I'm misunderstanding capitalism but if you "do it for the money" it's actually quite likely that you care a lot more about what is happening.

And as others have stated he will give away the profits (he'll still care quite a lot because the losses will hurt). He'll still come out a winner because this is excellent PR for his investment firm if he wins the bet somewhat similar to the lost Rockefeller bid.

I actually think the idea of shorting a company as motivation to get things done is quite fascinating. It hadn't really occurred to me as an instrument for public change before reading up on this.

[the methods employed seem somewhat questionable but I'm sure the other side employs similar methods...but then again I'd be interested to see some cold war scenarios play out publicly where two investment companies battle over sink/raise of some other companies stock price by employing the dirtiest tactics possible...mostly to make sure those tactics get removed as options. For example I think it would be hilarious if some other investment firm went long on HL and lobbying with more lobbying thus returning to the status quo of HL lobbying. Yeah sometimes I'm sick and twisted like that]

> Do it without making a profit and I might listen or even agree with you. Do it for the money and it's clear you don't care a whit what happens as long as your profit is assured.

Do you hold the plaintiff's bar to the same standard?

Ackman has said he will donate any money he personally makes from this.

The information you're missing is the timeline:

1. Ackman shorted Herbalmagic.

2. Ackman lobbied against herbalmagic.

3. Lobbying failed, and Ackman has now accumulated 500 millions in paper loss.

4. Ackman announces that he will give any profit to charity.

Pretty easy to give away non-existing profit. (Also, his donation would obviously not include any profit his firm and clients would make off the bet.)

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