I hope you decide to read the book, and then come back and share whether it meets your expectations or defies them. The fact that you know about the "hack" of the two-entities solution indicates to me that you might well be surprised. There is a whole chapter on that "hack" and how (and why) to implement it.

I'd also ask you to re-examine whether the "objective incentives of the capitalistic market" are a law of nature (and thus, immutable) or something that is subject to human agency. If the latter, maybe we should exert ourselves towards changing it, rather than simply denigrating those who attempt to change it as naive or hopeless. In fact, I address this question directly in the later chapters of the book, including why (I think) people make comments like this to me.

So, in a way, you're in the book! I hope you'll check it out. But either way, thanks for stopping by and dropping a comment.

In the book, I make the case for what I call constitutional governance, which I see as a third way in between standard governance and founder-controlled governance. I think it is both more effective and more long-term. After all, a company that is tied to the human lifespan has a built-in expiration date.

I appreciate you engaging with the argument in good faith and I look forward to hearing what you think of the book if you do decide to read it.

stay tuned

In the book, I give dozens of examples of companies that were well-lead and then suddenly destroyed, often by outside actors who found a way to profit from their destruction. This often happened at the governance layer, while leadership watched helplessly from the sidelines.

So why hasn't this happened to Costco? I don't think it's a coincidence that Costco has a variety of "bad governance" provisions, such as a super-majority (of all shares, not just votes) provision threshold for shareholder votes, as just one example. When activists, analysts and other Wall Street actors have tried over the years to force Costco to change, its leadership has been insulated from this pressure. I think that is a structural factor that is important.

Again, structure does not _cause_ ethos. It protects it. My argument in the book is you need both.