[s1artibartfast]

You have a good point on my individual control of a public company is quite small. Luckily, basically every single other stockholder has the same reason for owning the stock as me- making money.

There is basically no risk that a different group of stockholders with more voting power want to run it as a public works jobs program

[bbzealot]

Yet the fact that shareholders want to get richer doesn’t mean that laying off people when a company is drowning in money is ethically right.

[s1artibartfast]

If you want to look at it simply in terms of ethics, I'm not sure layoffs are always unethical, even if the company is profitable.

I do think it is unethical to jerk people around (e.g. new hires), but I think generous severance goes a long way towards addressing this.