What do you even mean when you say something is worth 0? How can a share of stock that you can sell at any time for an amount much larger than 0 be 'worth 0'?

What do you even mean when you say something is worth 0? How can a share of stock that you can sell at any time for an amount much larger than 0 be 'worth 0'? Things are worth what you can sell them for, and that is the only definition of value that isn't nonsense. You want currency you hold to be deflationary. Deflation is a systemic problem for economies, not individuals with cash in hand. Its not expensive to transact, it is extremely cheap. You go find a provider to let you accept payments from anyone in the world for a smaller % of the transaction and that will cover chargebacks. It doesn't exist, and you are not doing an honest analysis when you compare the transaction cost of walmart instead of yourself, or the cost of exchanging cash without the costs of moving people to the same location to exchange it. You have no practical legal right to anything as a shareholder. If a company is liquidated the shareholders get nothing in practice. Management controls the finances and expenditures of a company, and a majority of shareholders control management. This control is usually only given to special classes of stock that is for the most part impossible to buy. Why do you think people fight over control of companies? Management routinely steal huge sums by allocating it for the direct benefit of some shareholders over others.