No. The point of owning a share is that you own part of a business. But, functionally, this isn't what index funds are doing. They employ next to no-one with an

No. The point of owning a share is that you own part of a business. But, functionally, this isn't what index funds are doing. They employ next to no-one with any actual investment ability (from what I have seen, they employ an unusually high number of people with political connections/bank "product" types). The problem is that this isn't really what the stock market is for. It has been turned into this infinite liquidity machine where ownership churns rapidly when the "point" is owning a business, stewardship of your asset, slow turnover (there isn't an easy solution because this is largely a supply situation, if you create a savings system that is based on the value of the stock market...it is hard not to end up here). Btw, the issue with corporate governance is far broader than this too. Even before index funds, the system was totally fucked. You had boards stocked full of know-nothings with no stake in the company. Managers were already totally unaccountable, now even more so (this is why activism is taking off, the level of corporate waste/overpaying for executives is staggering).