This is why the Stock Market is root of all evil

[SineSwiper]

Stock Analysts pissed off that Costco is making money, putting out quality goods for low prices, paying their employees very well, and that the CEO only makes about $350k.

[Nev]

Man...I have to say I agree with at least the implicit assessment that the Deutsche Bank analyst mentioned in the article is a douchebag. Actually, worse, since a douchebag theoretically serves some sort of hygienic purpose.

"At Costco, it's better to be a worker than a shareholder," he complains. What the incredible greedy fuck is this guy's problem?

At least with my personal money, I'd probably invest there before I'd invest in, say, Wal-Mart, because even if my own profits were lower, I'd at least know that their employees were being treated with generosity and decency.

[SineSwiper]

Most shareholders don't think this way. The stock market is a purely impersonal game to them. There is no people behind the company, no morals, simply numbers that go up and down. Anything that affects those numbers to go down is bad, and anything that affect them to go up is good, no matter what the long-term goals or moral implications.

You can compare most stockholders to a purely instinctual creature, like a fly or a snake. An instinctual creature exists purely to breed and survive before it dies. That's it. It does not think on its own, and its behavior is completely predictable. Real humans, on the other hand, were designed to think, to exist beyond shitting, eating, breeding, and dying. A real human can think outside its own system of subconscious processes. It has memory and can think long-term.

While a single stockholder is a human-being, the collective of all stockholders is a predictable instinctual creature. This is also why a corporation is a predictable instinctual creature; stockholders have the CEOs by the balls, so they control all of the actions.

The only way you can ensure that a corporation will not turn into a unthinking collective is to: A) not get into the publically-traded market, B) enter the publically-traded market with unusual conditions (ie: Google), or C) do not give shareholders any sort of power to vote for new members of the corporation.

[Nev]

Just as a question, did teachers write "Tends to oversimplify complicated problems" on your high school/college progress reports?

[Kupek]

Sine, this article is actually a counter-example to your argument. Yes, the <i>analysts</i> are not valuing Costco as much as Wal-Mart, but the <i>shareholders</i> are valuing Costo more than Wal-Mart. Costco's stock is higher than Wal-Marts, and has been for about a year. To see for yourself, check out the graphic in the original NY Times article:

<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/busin ... EDhYQ">How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart</a>

[SineSwiper]

That example is, BY FAR, the exception more than it is the rule. The fact that the analysts are not valuing it too much shows that the rest of the market doesn't behave this way.