>Aside from their potential financial value, as a matter of principle,
>would you >not buy shares in your company?
You gotta live in the world you're put, mate! The distinctions we're asked to make in Bill & Boddhi's interesting conversation can't be made, I reckon. As a public servant, do I not live on the backs of productive workers? What should I do? Go and work for a private uni? Bollocks to that!
Nope, rather you should embrace your piece of (doubtlessly well-earned) luck as a(n infinitesimal) step towards 'the democratic control of the toiling people' (if I may quote the Gotha Programme). One big step for a man, one minute shuffle for mankind, eh?
That said, I do take the point that to own stock is not necessarily to own the means of production. Ownership means too little if control is not heir thereto - something Galbraith the elder often reflected upon in his stuff about technostructures. We should think more about that stuff, I reckon ...
Anyway, you got someone in mind more deserving of the status and the stock than you?
Mind you, I'd sell the stuff soonishly - I know they say that in a mad world only the mad are sane, but I just can't sustain sufficient madness to believe the madness on Wall St can persist forever.
Go get it, WD! Rob.