None of this points to free market being at fault.

>Adam controls the majority of voting right to the company

This alone should be a massive turn-off for investors, nevermind this kind of personal eccentricity that makes this absolutely insane.

I don’t think majority ownership is necessarily a turn on or a turn off. There are cases when a bunch of minority shareholders would be chaotic and prevent the company from making long term bets. There are also cases where minority ownership would allow for stability while cycling through executive turnover and experimentation.

Which situation you are in, and whether shareholders would be turned off by majority ownership, is context specific.

For example, I think SpaceX would be a less attractive stock if there were only minority stockholders, and having Elon as the majority holder makes it more likely to succeed at going interplanetary, rather than just milking a traditional orbital business model.

If your investment thesis depends on a bold bet like that, a single majority shareholder you trust would be a comfort.

For the SpaceX example, I actually think they'd be better off focusing on the orbital launch market. The dream of affordable and reliable access to space dates back to the 50's and still hasn't been fully realized. In my opinion, that's a bigger deal than trying to get SpaceX to put a payload beyond orbit.

I agree with your larger point though.

SpaceX isn’t a public stock though?

It still has investors, and shares.

As with all things, it's a matter of demand and offer. If a potential CEO has a choice between a company that pays well no matter what, and a gamble which could leave him out of a job and without money, he'll choose the sure outcome. On the other hand, a good CEO is such an important thing that companies will bend over backwards to meet their demands. So they do that. A few million bucks is cheap change for potentially higher earnings.

You might argue that incentivizing CEOs should be more important than getting a good one, but you'll have to ask shareholders at major companies why they don't insist on that instead.

Whether this is "deserved" or not is irrelevant. What matters is profitability, not fairness.

Why compare it to Equifax? I'd just assume it's an unrelated malicious opportunist. I'd rather compare it to JND to have evidence towards proving that it's legit. Anyway it is legit since it's mentioned on the FTC site.

I made a faulty assumption. As others have pointed out, the settlement site is run by a third party.

At this point I'd consider the government more competent than Equifax.

"at the time"

Also, I see no benefit to "trying out Chrome". I use it often for a few broken webpages (blame the devs but there are really few) or on co-workers' computers and find no benefit whatsoever. Firefox has all of its features and much more. As far as I'm concerned: tree style tabs, containers, privacy and flawless ad-blocking.

I can tell you that I gave my best during my 5 years at the IDF solely because I knew how well I would be paid afterwards if I did well, and I got directly hired at a FAANG. I can say the same about almost anyone I've known during my service across all programming units and beyond. Even the ones who knew they would stay did it for the chance to become Lt. Colonel and then director afterwards as a civilian. As for the ones claiming to be motivated by patriotism, they too usually ended up pursuing more lucrative venues.

As for IDF jobs with less potential, they are usually accomplished by people with fewer ambitions doing much less than their best and placed there because of that (think of military HR, secretaries, nurses, cleaners).

In short, there are no surprises. The Israeli military service is just a minor inconvenience in the path of ambition that is fueled by the capitalist spirit of the general economy, rather than being a replacement for it.

Of course, today's context is capitalism, so it motivates many.

But there are other ways to motivate people.

If we're talking about a different , more utopian world, shouldn't we consider those ?

What alternative do you suggest?

The alternatives that I can think of:

Enjoying the work and similar motivations: This tends to only apply to certain jobs. In addition, just because I'm intrinsically motivated to work on programming, for example, that doesn't mean that I'm motivated to program the things that society wants me to.

A sense of duty: I think this motivation tends to have limitations and is likely hard to achieve consistently without propaganda, nationalism, or a state religion.

Social status: Call me cynical, but I think this only works if someone can use their social status to get the things they want; in which case it doesn't seem that different from capitalism.

In the old Jewish tradition, religious studies gave people high status, but also, because of the culture, were considered very valuable.

This meant that those who we're good religious students(a life long pursuit, and not financially rewarding) married the most desired women.

And that's just on culture.

So maybe there are ways to cretae a motivating culture .

The all-seeing eye works for supermarkets all the way to the producer, it works for housing all the way to the builder, it works for cars, it works for services like garage, additional classes, etc. There is no reason people will all of a sudden be stupid when it will come to healthcare, transportation or education. Point is, competition is transitive, and the last tier is always competitive. Therefore by iteration every tier is competitive.

> Lots of [...] desirable universities

You are aware that it is their small number that makes them desirable right? If you make them all the same level, they will be equally undesirable.

Except it is. Education in the US is relatively cheap and easy to get if you don't aim for private or top schools.

There's still a massive difference between schools that don't fall into the private/top-tier bin. Sorry.

I am from a family of 10 kids and we all went to and were accepted to different schools (all non-private/non-top tier)...there is a massive difference in education levels between schools (maybe it won't affect your career trajectory, but I didn't go to college for a career, I went to learn and be surrounded by others of my caliber).

Or perhaps we should just even out the funding. Crudely redistributing wealth is a historically very poor way to solve inequality (assuming it is a problem), since it doesn't address the root cause. Investing in education, in particular trades, is an arguably better way. They are practical, have the most bang-for-buck value, and are not time-consuming or demanding.