Comment by Analemma_

The other Matt Levine article about the Dell buyout is also a really good explanation of "how stocks really work": https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-13/t-rowe-pr.... It really shows the parallels between finance and software, where we've taken simple primitives and built so many layers of abstraction on top that no one really knows what's going on top to bottom anymore. It makes our lives easier when it's all working but it can also have crazy failure modes.