[mindslight]

Legally, sure. (there's a citation, a case between craigslist and a minority shareholder (ebay I think?), that backs up your argument about the common trope).

But when stock valuations are completely disconnected from fundamentals like earnings, then regardless of the legality we're kind of circling back to the market pushing that dynamic, aren't we? It's like the market is no longer even optimizing for short term gains per se (eg quarterly earnings), but rather for whatever memes might boost their meme stock. Sometimes this is [still] quarterly earnings, and sometimes it's about the perceived size of the market or how they're cozying up to the fascists in power. So for public companies, it's not like major shareholders, the board, or management really have the ability to work towards longer term plans that go against this dynamic.