Ban All Big Mergers. Period

[leksak]

Block megacorps from acquisitions of smaller companies as well.

When a corporation is large enough to wield significant political influence, allowing them to buy up and coming disruptors makes it even easier for them to, as the article writes, make a mockery of democratic norms. And thus, by the same token argument, the acquisition of smaller entities should similarly be blocked.

[mqus]

This is a very controversial opinion in a startup forum :)

But that aside, how would you handle public trading companies, where you can simply buy an influential part of a company?

It is not the same as owning or merging but having board influence can also be detrimental.

[himinlomax]

This would have a lot of unintended consequences.

[mensetmanusman]

A simpler solution is to implement progressive taxes to counteract the natural Pareto distribution of wealth accumulation.

Society should come to some consensus on an ‘I win at life in this society’ amount of income, after which it should just level off like a ceiling function in a feedback loop.

[ledauphin]

this sounds like a far more mathematically reasonable proposal.

[dublin]

Perhaps employee count is be a more useful cap than money? It should at least be a factor. Not sure we really need many (any?)companies with more than 5,000-10,000 employees. Perhaps allowing more if the company manufactures physical products in the US, and more again if the product is otherwise only available from foreign manufacturers. There is strong precedent for breaking up too-large companies (Standard Oil comes to mind, everyone won on that deal), but it hasn't been done much in the last century, barring AT&T, which asked for it.

[trestenhortz]

And short selling.

Plus, companies should pay taxes fair and square.

[Pet_Ant]

Short selling is necessary to counteract hype. Only naked short selling is a problem.

[scotty79]

Why do we think it's ok for one company to own another?

[pixelbath]

Because a company is an asset, not a person.