> Shareholders are ultimately the ones who choose the managers. They absolutely are not. Do you think I (as an investor in Dow) have any say over who managed

> Shareholders are ultimately the ones who choose the managers. They absolutely are not. Do you think I (as an investor in Dow) have any say over who managed the plant in Bhopal? > Average Joe has very little of that say, and proportionately little of the benefit. But the institution that manages Joe's 401(k) has, in aggregate, quite a bit of that say. And it's a little disingenuous of them to say, "It's not our fault that the manager we hired was dumping toxic waste. We just benefited from the savings in the waste management department." That I agree with, and that's why you fine the company for the cost of the cleanup plus some punitive fine as a response. If that forces the company into bankruptcy, so be it, but BP absorbed a $65 billion cost for the Horizon disaster, so it seems like large companies could survive the potentially high expenses. > Shares represent both a piece of the profit and a piece of control... This is true in theory but not in practice, so I feel the rest of your comment doesn't hold up.