Why not have non-voting shares that pay dividends? Then the shareholders would be buying a variable annuity that they price based on their belief in management and the company can ignore them. If you're planning to make money on share price increase, you're looking for a greater fool - someone who is willing to buy when you think it's time to sell.
Sure, but on what timeframe? That's why small family businesses are some of the longest enduring - because their owners want them to generate earnings indefinitely. Investors who buy shares are often looking for much shorter term gains (1-5 years) and will put pressure on the board to sacrifice long term viability for a short term boost in share price.
Consider a world where your company always dies after 1-5 years. But for each dying company there's a new one. Investors still make profit, people still get products, employees still get jobs. In that kind of scenario do you really need a long living company? I'd argue you don't. Long life is an arbitrary factor that in itself has not much value.
And the longest living companies may actually be the biggest ones. At a certain size companies don't die anymore. They get merged with other big companies, restructured, or renamed.
Some (all?) products need more than 1-5 years of active development to really become awesome. Every time a company dies, a huge amount of knowledge is lost.
It's not that simple, though. The value of a company's stock is based on future earnings. If the company starts eating the proverbial seed corn you may get more profits disbursed, temporarily, but the value of the stock will go down to reflect the loss of future earnings. There's no free lunch, even for investors.
"The idea that all of the world should be measured in dollars to stockholders is actually a relatively new idea. It used to be that we thought that businesses had their purpose. Your purpose was to be making newspapers or fountain pens or whatever. And now we act as though the only purpose of a business was to enrich the people who trade it on Wall Street… Of course you’ve got to have profit, of course you’ve got to support your ownership. But that’s not why we’re doing it. We’re doing it because publishing a newspaper is a crucial thing to be doing." ~Andy Barnes
Companies use to be temporary, created for the public good (like building bridges) and did not exist to make a profit.
Sounds like a great quote, but when exactly were businesses just about "making stuff"? Look at the Hudson Bay company back in the 1600's. That was about profit, not making stuff.
And what is this "we act as though the only purpose of a business was to enrich the people who trade it on Wall Street"? No, the purpose is to make profit for shareholders, including the average everyday Joe with a 401k or pension.
You can be incorporated without going public. The ability to raise needed capital is a great thing, but it also comes with a lot of negative aspects as a result.
