[rhelz]

An example with smaller numbers: Suppose a company is worth $10 and has 10 shares. The board issues 10 more shares to one person.

Sure, the company would still be worth $10. But there are now 20 shares outstanding. Everybody except the guy who got 10 shares would see their shares fall in value from $1 to 50 cents.

Basically, issuing stock to one person has the effect, mutatis mutants, of transferring wealth from all the other shareholders to the person who got the new stock.

[seydor]

Still the total value the shareholders hold is the same so they have have not been damaged as a group, which is alleged here. The damage is psychological, i.e. most of them are jealous of one of them

[hollerith]

That makes no sense.

Any money or shares Tesla pays to Elon is money or shares that could instead be used to pay dividends to the shareholders or to buy back shares, which increases the value of all the shares that have not been bought back.

[seydor]

That's again assuming that elon is not a shareholder

The dividends/buybacks are irrelevant. Anyone could sue to cut down dividends to increase buybacks or vice versa but thats besides the issue

The whole conversation about dilution is irrelevant: elon was granted stock options, there would be no issuance of new stock

[rhelz]

chuckle so if you had $100,000 of stock, you would in no way feel like you had been ripped off if you logged in tomorrow and it was only worth $50,000? Because...that $50,000 was transferred to the CEO's stock account? After all, the $50,000 didn't just disappear, it transferred to the CEO's stock account, so it all evened out...

...man if you really feel that way, can I interest you in some stock? I'm thinking about making a start-up...