The Googlers’ second counterargument stressed long-term profits. Echoing a familiar critique of shareholder capitalism, they asserted that stock market investors were too shortsighted to back managers who compromised today’s profits to invest in tomorrow’s expansion. By implication, stock market investors should be disenfranchised for their own sakes: their interests would be best served if their influence was minimized. Of course, the analogous argument about political democracy—that the masses should be denied votes for their own good—would be met with derision. Nor is it obvious that stock
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