Originally Posted by
Thekri
Nothing will stop it, because that is baked into the fundamental nature of how corporations work. If you buy stock in a company, you want to see returns from the company, either in the form of stock value gains, or dividends. The largest shareholders determine who sits on the board of that company, and that board hires Officers that will promote shareholder value.
If a CEO prioritizes something else over shareholder value, he or she will get removed, because the hedge funds and investment companies aren't getting the return on their stocks that they want.
Breaking up the profits over tens of thousands of different people means any moral considerations are diluted, because all of those tens of thousands can't agree on any moral factor. The only thing they can all agree on is that the company should give them more money. Let's say you, as a small value investor, bought stock in Boeing in 2014. You paid around $120 a share for that stock, for which you presumably expected to make money somehow. You own like 1 billionth of Boeing at that point, so it isn't like you really benefit from them using their cash for a a rainy day fund. But you do benefit from them pouring cash into dividends (Which you get) and stock buybacks, which increase your share value. So from 2014 to 2019, you are very happy with your shares of Boeing stock. Over that period, they pay back almost their full value in dividends, and they are now worth $400 a share. So you are extremely happy with their management, and proud of yourself for picking such a good stock.
Of course now in 2020 it is easy to point fingers at them being shortsighted, but I have never seen anyone complain about a stock they owned going up. Ever. As long as that is the system, and as long as humans like making money, you aren't going to get companies that prioritize worker security over shareholders. Because workers are a tool, profits are the objective.