Public companies have full disclosures on this. It's called an S-8. The amounts of stock options vested/granted have to be in the annual report.
When things were going well, everyone ignores them, now when things are bad, (which is when stock options are 'worthless') (precisely when companies have to preserve capital) the best method for companies to retain talent is being attacked.
Blaming the workers who for whatever reason (luck or not) were able to share in the wealth for what is wrong with a few bad apple companies and somehow extrapolating them to mean the entire world doesn't solve the problem. Punishing the true culprits will.
I disagree with your factoid about risk-taking. Anyone who tries to start a company can do it with his/her/their own money or with VC. A VC by fronting the money, is taking the bulk of the financial risk for the potential rewards of taking an educated gamble, the entrepreneur(s) in this case, has little risk of getting wiped out, but he has given up a big chunk of his(their) company forever. That's a fair trade. There's a matter of pre-money valuation, but a free society is built upon the ability to negotiate a transaction.
The market in the long run is always 'fair' and efficient, just because we saw a few years of free-money-VCs is precisely why this is being corrected now.
Class warfare and politics of envy do not improve the lives of the general public. As for your nephew, again, I note that anecdotes are nice stories, but not useful. The invisible hand cares very little of greed or ethics or anecdotes. I happen to believe that technical innovation has improved the lives of everyone and will continue to do so a thousand years from now.
I am also painfully aware what Greenspan's position on this is. I happen to disagree. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.
SbH
ps. Methinks we are straying too close to the "- No Politics" thing, so I'll cut it short. |
