Ars Technica* did a predictably deceptive article on taking Tesla private claiming there was a conflict of interest type problem for shareholders when clearer thinking shows the opposite is the case. If you're a share holder who really believes in the vision and the product and the inherant advantages of Tesla then you're in it for the long term and your issue is dilution not liquidity. And you gladly trade some liquidity to bar dillution of vision, shares and goodwill. And clearly the bar to taking public companies back private with a raft of proven investors nulifies any SEC principle that makes sense as a bar on the front end being appliedv to the back end as is the case here. As a investor you want the long term vested advocates as co-investors in larger numbers because they fight for your shared interest. This all makes perfect sense. Speculators will take the sweetener that will show them the door. Tesla exists to destroy the enslaving enclosures of petrol parasites such that they won't own the means of production when Tesla is done, and the existential threat to man will be ended as a result. Is there a greater public service? All the better if the trade results in the destruction of some Hitlerian petrol shill-short cranks in the process- that's a sweetener for Tesla's true investors. And it also must (a non negotiable- must) be possible for workers to seize the corporations they breathed life into by ejecting useless management and parasitic owners both through strike and collective acquisition. As a group we need to need to be able to veto bad corporate even if we take them down in the process. Tesla is doing this. There is for instance no right for fossil fuel profit to continue to exist. Tesla's approach is aligned not only with a level of efficiency and effectiveness that no amount of subsidies, tarifs and lies can protect petrol from but its also aligned with justice and truth. *Magazine has never been on the right side of anything.
I worked for SAIC when they were employee owned (i.e. private) and after they went public. As a private company, twice a year a board decided what was the fair market value and you could buy and sell shares. So during the 1988 Reagan crash, the stock held its value. You weren't seeing huge swings but a slow, steady increase in value, faster than inflation. That ended when they went public. Suddenly the stock prices made wild swings disconnected from our business. Worse, employee changed from being owners to 'day labor.' Bob Wilson