I'm not sure that's a good corollary. Paying taxes is something people try to avoid because it has a cash value to do so. If the cost of avoidance (both in money and the value of time, added together) is greater than the tax cost, it won't be avoided.
A company, on the other hand, can try to avoid the requirements of going public because it does not want to expose itself to the media and public scrutiny. However, the operators of that company want to avail themselves of the liquidity of public offerings--usually to cash out and, amusingly, pay taxes on the resulting earnings--but don't want to expose their financials or the details of the business. If this is the true motivation, and it seems to be the case with many Internet-related companies wanting to be quite secret about their goings-on, then Facebook and Goldman Sachs' proceeding in this manner is underhanded. It doesn't (necessarily) serve as an indictment of the system for going public, which is designed to provide protection for the investor.
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I'm not sure that's a good corollary. Paying taxes is something people try to avoid because it has a cash value to do so. If the cost of avoidance (both in money and the value of time, added together) is greater than the tax cost, it won't be avoided.
A company, on the other hand, can try to avoid the requirements of going public because it does not want to expose itself to the media and public scrutiny. However, the operators of that company want to avail themselves of the liquidity of public offerings--usually to cash out and, amusingly, pay taxes on the resulting earnings--but don't want to expose their financials or the details of the business. If this is the true motivation, and it seems to be the case with many Internet-related companies wanting to be quite secret about their goings-on, then Facebook and Goldman Sachs' proceeding in this manner is underhanded. It doesn't (necessarily) serve as an indictment of the system for going public, which is designed to provide protection for the investor.