[fallingknife]

So you think that companies would be better if the shareholders were not a check on CEO power? Basically that would make all companies like tech companies with dual class shares that give the CEO perpetual absolute power.

[mistercheph]

The problem with shareholders as the ruling class of an organization is that they are prima facie incapable of having a vision, projecting it, and marshalling the resources to make it a reality. Because they act as a crowd, they can only converge on their common interest, which is profit. When the shareholders have their way, a profitable venture and it's customers are min-maxed for share values until the enterprise is left a pile of rubble

[Terr_]

I sometimes wonder if future civilizations will look back on this as a kind of socio-technological inadequacy: "See, this is what people had to deal with before we invented Zlormian Goal Contracts!"

This kinda-relates to other legal theories, such the rule against perpetuities [0], since it's hard to assemble a framework that can survive 50.0001% of the shareholders deciding to loot it.

The closest I can think of actually involves legal-statute and tax law, where a company incorporates for an explicitly-charitable or non-profit purpose and then the government enforces that status indefinitely.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities

[fallingknife]

I feel like having a CEO with a grand vision beyond profitability would be good 5% of the time and an ego driven mess / financial disaster 95% of the time.

[ClumsyPilot]

I would agree if shareholders were stuck owning the stock for a while, but currently average stock ownership duration is measures in weeks or days. How much interest do these people have in the future of the company?