I’ve been listening to Aquired recently (podcast about company origin stories) and when talking about privately owned companies (for instance, the recently Mars Inc. episode) they always do back of napkin estimated earnings because the company is private, which apparantly means they don’t have to disclose earnings.
But in my country, Denmark, every company earning above 50.000 DKK (=7853 USD) has to disclose earnings. I believe this is for price discovery purposes, so that other entrepreneurs can see how much margin companies have and try to compete if they earn too much money, which is an important part of capitalism, right?
How come this is not required in USA, the “home” of capitalism? If I’m not mistaken of course, my apologies if so.
But why can’t you have the best of both situations from the publics perspective? You could require companies to disclose financial numbers if above a certain size, even if privately owned. That wouldn’t force the owner(s) to be beholden to anyone, they just have to report the numbers. It’s what we do here.
When you say “the reality is”, do you mean that the existing players are just too powerful to allow it? Or is there something inherint to the system that wouldn’t allow it?
Campaigns, campaign financing, and lobbying. US polotics is pay to play. Plus Americans are very individualistic. We would rather get screwed over by companies and the rich then have government tell us what to do. Does not always make sense.
The players are just too powerful to allow it. There’s no limitations if a private corporation wanted to disclose information, but unless they are compelled, it will not happen. To our congressional representatives and current supreme court, applying any “burdensome restrictions” on corporations any more than the existing status quo is political poison for their careers.
I agree with you that it would be better if that were the case, but the reality is the regulators are complicit in the system being as broken as it is.