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Amazon Shareholders Rejected Employees' Call to Respond to Climate Change

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Re: Amazon Shareholders Rejected Employees' Call to Respond to Climate Change

#11

Post by AnthonyMouse »

madaxe_again wrote: post #10
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that supposed to be a problem? Large data centers are strong candidates for renewable energy conversions because they need backup power regardless. If the "backup power" is supplied by renewables then that becomes the primary generation source and the power grid becomes the backup. Doing it that way is sustainable and profitable.

Yes, but it doesn’t take long for people to start arguing that coal is clean and that diesel is green.

Corporations don't really care about clean and green outside of PR and legal requirements. If solar that generates real power all day without fuel is more profitable than an expensive diesel generator that sits there depreciating unused just waiting for the grid connection to crap out, they pick solar.

And if it isn't but you want them to use it anyway, that's easy too -- put a carbon tax on that coal fired grid power so that the solar is cheaper and they're back to doing what you want them to.

But don't expect them to choose to lose money while their competitors burn coal, undercut them and put them out of business because you decided that them doing that should be perfectly legal.

Re: Amazon Shareholders Rejected Employees' Call to Respond to Climate Change

#12

Post by rjf72 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #7
profalseidol wrote: post #5

Majority Shareholders are practically our Modern Feudal Lords. The only difference is that there is a government which was paid in blood as result from past revolutions and uprisings. A government that is also being taken over by Modern Aristocrats.

Amazon doesn't have a majority shareholder. Most of these huge companies don't. Gates doesn't own a majority of Microsoft, Page and Brin even together don't own a majority of Google, etc. These companies are owned by everybody's retirement fund. It's actually becoming rather a problem because you have these gigantic containers of wealth but there is no one captaining the ship who can do anything bold with it, because…

Your comment is incorrect. There are numerous types of stock. The biggest division being preferred and common. Common entails voting rights, preferred does not. There are also share classes. For instance Google has class A, B, C shares. Class A are what people buy and do entail minimal voting rights. Class B are voting shares owned primarily by the founders and carry 10x the voting rights per share of class A. And class C are voteless shares generally distributed to employees for compensation. Sergey Brin and Larry Page own a minority of all outstanding Google shares (about 13%) but have majority control of the voting power in the company. The same is true of companies such as Facebook and Zuckerberg.

This leads to the rather interesting insight that the current direction and actions of of Alpha/Google/YouTube etc have been ultimately under the exclusive control of Brin and Page; similarly for Zuckerberg/Facebook. These companies' actions give the most honest insight possible into their owners' worldviews. Not the most comforting thought.

Re: Amazon Shareholders Rejected Employees' Call to Respond to Climate Change

#13

Post by mirimir »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #11
madaxe_again wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it doesn’t take long for people to start arguing that coal is clean and that diesel is green.

Corporations don't really care about clean and green outside of PR and legal requirements. If solar that generates real power all day without fuel is more profitable than an expensive diesel generator that sits there depreciating unused just waiting for the grid connection to crap out, they pick solar. And if it isn't but you want them to use it anyway, that's easy too -- put a carbon tax on that coal fired grid powe…

OK, I get it.

> But don't expect them to choose to lose money while their competitors burn coal, undercut them and put them out of business because you decided that them doing that should be perfectly legal.

The problem is that entrenched corporations more or less own governments, so they get the laws that work for them.

Re: Amazon Shareholders Rejected Employees' Call to Respond to Climate Change

#14

Post by burfog »

rjf72 wrote: post #12
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon doesn't have a majority shareholder. Most of these huge companies don't. Gates doesn't own a majority of Microsoft, Page and Brin even together don't own a majority of Google, etc. These companies are owned by everybody's retirement fund. It's actually becoming rather a problem because you have these gigantic containers of wealth but there is no one captaining the ship who can do anything bold with it, because…

Your comment is incorrect. There are numerous types of stock. The biggest division being preferred and common. Common entails voting rights, preferred does not. There are also share classes. For instance Google has class A, B, C shares. Class A are what people buy and do entail minimal voting rights. Class B are voting shares owned primarily by the founders and carry 10x the voting rights per share of class A. And cl…

Is there a price difference? Can shares be converted between classes or between preferred and common?

Re: Amazon Shareholders Rejected Employees' Call to Respond to Climate Change

#15

Post by mushufasa »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #7
profalseidol wrote: post #5

Majority Shareholders are practically our Modern Feudal Lords. The only difference is that there is a government which was paid in blood as result from past revolutions and uprisings. A government that is also being taken over by Modern Aristocrats.

Amazon doesn't have a majority shareholder. Most of these huge companies don't. Gates doesn't own a majority of Microsoft, Page and Brin even together don't own a majority of Google, etc. These companies are owned by everybody's retirement fund. It's actually becoming rather a problem because you have these gigantic containers of wealth but there is no one captaining the ship who can do anything bold with it, because…

Yes! We built this site to try and educate retail shareowners and encourage them to take action with their shareowner rights.

Fundamentally, we believe it's unrealistic to expect them to pay attention, so we're trying to build an experience where they sync their accounts, demonstrate what they care about, and then we pay attention for them via push notifications. Would love to hear your feedback! www.yourstake.org.

Re: Amazon Shareholders Rejected Employees' Call to Respond to Climate Change

#16

Post by mushufasa »

rjf72 wrote: post #12
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon doesn't have a majority shareholder. Most of these huge companies don't. Gates doesn't own a majority of Microsoft, Page and Brin even together don't own a majority of Google, etc. These companies are owned by everybody's retirement fund. It's actually becoming rather a problem because you have these gigantic containers of wealth but there is no one captaining the ship who can do anything bold with it, because…

Your comment is incorrect. There are numerous types of stock. The biggest division being preferred and common. Common entails voting rights, preferred does not. There are also share classes. For instance Google has class A, B, C shares. Class A are what people buy and do entail minimal voting rights. Class B are voting shares owned primarily by the founders and carry 10x the voting rights per share of class A. And cl…

Recent tech companies notoriously have voting rights concentrated among founder-executives; that is very much against the norm for the majority of public companies, where CEOs can actually be fired / replaced by the board.

Zuck/Brin/Page's argument was that their tech visionary abilities deserved special protection to take risks others don't see. You're seeing a lot of investors dispute that increasingly. And that argument has no traction at all in more mature industries where senior management is more of an actual management role, serving as employees of the board.

Re: Amazon Shareholders Rejected Employees' Call to Respond to Climate Change

#17

Post by frenchy »

burfog wrote: post #14
rjf72 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is incorrect. There are numerous types of stock. The biggest division being preferred and common. Common entails voting rights, preferred does not. There are also share classes. For instance Google has class A, B, C shares. Class A are what people buy and do entail minimal voting rights. Class B are voting shares owned primarily by the founders and carry 10x the voting rights per share of class A. And cl…

Is there a price difference? Can shares be converted between classes or between preferred and common?

I'm not much of a stock person, but I think in such cases, the voting shares tend to be tightly controlled. Especially for companies like Alphabet & Facebook, they are essentially trying to get the funding of a public company, while still maintaining the function of a private one.

Re: Amazon Shareholders Rejected Employees' Call to Respond to Climate Change

#19

Post by netcan »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #7
profalseidol wrote: post #5

Majority Shareholders are practically our Modern Feudal Lords. The only difference is that there is a government which was paid in blood as result from past revolutions and uprisings. A government that is also being taken over by Modern Aristocrats.

Amazon doesn't have a majority shareholder. Most of these huge companies don't. Gates doesn't own a majority of Microsoft, Page and Brin even together don't own a majority of Google, etc. These companies are owned by everybody's retirement fund. It's actually becoming rather a problem because you have these gigantic containers of wealth but there is no one captaining the ship who can do anything bold with it, because…

Cascading corporatization (companies owned by companies owned by funds, owned by shareholders owned by other entities) breaks all sorts of things. Governance is a big one. The idea of "shareholder ownership" is fairly theoretical, in most cases.. both the concept of "shareholder" and "ownership" need a lot of qualification.

"6 people own a share of a bookshop" isn't really an analogy.

Re: Amazon Shareholders Rejected Employees' Call to Respond to Climate Change

#20

Post by plutonorm »

ksbakan wrote: post #2

A call which was made by bcc spamming all the internal amazon mailing lists asking people to sign the petition. Source: I know a guy who got spammed.

Oh. So, some people were annoyed by an effort to help prevent armageddon? And you think this reflects badly on those sending out the annoying emails? Huh. I dont know what to say to you... I'm sorry that global catastrophe and the unsolicited emails that it generates are such an inconvenience to you and your friends?
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