<story><title>Etsy Vendors to get option to buy $2,500 of shares before public float</title><url>http://www.wsj.com/articles/etsy-vendors-to-get-a-piece-of-ipo-1428971989</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>netcan</author><text>Interesting tactic.&lt;p&gt;I suppose if you boiled it down, they are selling &amp;quot;5% of planned public offering.&amp;quot; So.. costs of selling those shares would be slightly higher. But, they have some presence from people who see the company the roughly same way they do, not as a piece of a portfolio or investment strategy. They get some buzz around the IPO (this article demonstrates that), if vendors are discussing it. It&amp;#x27;s not like they&amp;#x27;re giving away the shares.&lt;p&gt;A part of what&amp;#x27;s interesting is what&amp;#x27;s underlying it: an environment where so much capital is in the hands of rich people that there&amp;#x27;s not much point thinking of &amp;#x27;the public&amp;#x27; as a source of capital.&lt;p&gt;I think income distribution is a lot easier to measure, comprehend and comment on. But wealth disparities are much larger, and I think the societal effect is different. If someone owns $2m in capital but $1.2m is a house and $1.8 is actively invested to yield an income of $75k per annum, is that person rich or are a middle class investor?&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s definitely markets for the middle classes. Apple, Walmart, etc are the biggest companies in the world and their business is selling stuff to us. But if your business is selling financial services or you want to raise capital, the middle class is irrelevant. It&amp;#x27;s not about risk or sophistication of the investor, it&amp;#x27;s about them not really having capital. I reckon that&amp;#x27;s significant. WHo has the capital matters.&lt;p&gt;Money gets even more theoretical when talking about capital. When you earn an income and use it to buy goods as service, the metaphor-made-real of money is relatively straightforward. I work for a company that makes medicines. They may me a salary which I can exchange for stuff other companies make. With capital, the link to physical things is broken. It becomes more of an abstract right^ to things. The right to establish a company. The right to future revenues from some venture. Rent…&lt;p&gt;^&amp;quot;right&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t exactly it. It&amp;#x27;s somewhere in the ability&amp;#x2F;resource&amp;#x2F;right realm.</text></comment>
<story><title>Etsy Vendors to get option to buy $2,500 of shares before public float</title><url>http://www.wsj.com/articles/etsy-vendors-to-get-a-piece-of-ipo-1428971989</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>fabulist</author><text>Non-paywall link:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;archive.today&amp;#x2F;kLrVp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;archive.today&amp;#x2F;kLrVp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;For reference, I find archive.today to be the most reliable way to bypass WSJ&amp;#x27;s paywall. I&amp;#x27;ve never had occasion to bypass any other paywalls.</text></comment>