[specialist]

> It was called the principle of shareholder value maximization.

But that's not what happened. It was just rhetoric for covering executive team compensation maximization. Shareholders have been screwed along with the rest of us (he says while checking his 401k).

Wild-eyed socialist that I am, the single biggest, quickest improvement to corporate responsibility and governance would be to increase shareholder rights.

[magicalist]

It's not that simple either. Shareholders are often also stupid and prone to mob mentality.

Moreover, if your primary shareholders are, say, hedge funds, the motivations for all parties have become so removed that in that case increased shareholder rights would almost always be a bad thing, especially if your metric is over worker happiness.

[specialist]

I'm ignorant of hedge funds, so can't comment. I have read many laments from institutional investors about being screwed; they're the shareholders I'm thinking of (eg my county's investment manager, the team managing my 401k).

I'm aware of the "low information voter" problem. And yet I'm a pollyanna. I believe (as a matter of faith) that high quality information leads to high quality decisions.

Given the choice between corporate rule (oligarchy) and mob rule, I guess I'd side with the mob.

[yuhong]

And note that anyone can buy and sell stocks. And yea, the wrong incentives can be worse than no incentives at all. The increase in CEO compensation AFAIK were actually helped by making it public. I wonder what would happen if it was made private again and CEOs could control it themselves like in the 1970s.