Footnote re in all practical certainty

Had he donated the Bona-Fide Gift shares to the PayPal 14, Omidyar *might* have risked unpleasant consequences such as civil damages, but unpleasant consequences would not have interfered with his authority to do it.

Why only “in all practical certainty” could he have gifted those shares? Well, Omidyar, like any shareholder, had the authority to give his personal property (for that is what the Bona-Fide shares are) to whomever–unless the corporation restricted HIS authority in some way AND so secretly than no one in the world–from the SEC to all the NSFW journalists going after him–has ever heard about it. In other words, if a bunch of eBay millionaries went up to one of the world’s most powerful people/multi-billionaires and somehow persuaded him to agree, secretly, not to use his personal property as he saw fit, then yeah, my argument isn’t solid in all epistemological certainty. This is getting to the point of saying the far side of the Moon just might be made of green cheese. Ask anybody on a corporate board or a lawyer who’s fought over shares ownership (and I have asked both plus others) about this, they’ll laugh. It’s wildly implausible that eBay underlings secretly persuaded their superior, Omidyar, not to use his personal property as he saw fit. It would be like one going up to him and saying, “Excuse me, bodyguards, I have to tell my superior something. Hey, Pierre, shh, it’s a secret, but you must buy only blue Corvettes, not red ones. Agree?” Good luck with that.

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