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by kerkeslager 725 days ago
This is pretty naive about the reality of stock ownership. If you're an investor in the US, you probably own the S&P 500. You want me to hold 500 different companies accountable? And, failing that, you're going to dilute my shares?

The reality is that shares are absolutely useless as a distribution of responsibility. Shareholder decisions are dominated by a few majority shareholders who likely hold shares as part of a portfolio, and in the context of a portfolio, it's the whole thing that matters, so it may even be good to tank the share price of one company if it benefits the value of other holdings. Minority shareholders are held responsible for majority decisions they may have directly opposed. And shareholders are limited in what they can do to hold people responsible anyway: if approve a bonus check to the CEO for a successful quarter and then find out that the success was built on murdering toddlers, the CEO still has the bonus check and there's nothing the shareholders can do to retract it.

I think a better solution is to admit the basic fact that people, not corporations, make decisions, and when people make unethical decisions, hold those people personally responsible. Stop trying to fiddle the knobs of your economic Rube Goldberg machine to get the invisible hand to hold people responsible, and hold people responsible.