The value of a piece of a corporation stems from a claim to said corporation's future profits. If you have no influence then you may not be able to stake that claim. For example, if you don't have equal vote on whether the corporation should pay dividend out of its profit then you may never get paid.

When is the last time a CEO was on trial for share buybacks where clearly he has conflict of interest with the shareholders due to the $$$'s he makes in compensation?

Or I scratch your back you'll scratch my back kind of arrangements in boards?

And what got us here, the outrageous CEO compensation and other benefits. When a CEO is paid x100 the President of the USA you know something isn't right. Since any given company may claim they have to pay more to be competitive the only way to stop that looting is to force them by law to control those salaries.

I agree that in theory we're in a good place but in practice I think we can still make progress... Fiduciary duty apparently is insufficient.

>"The value of a piece of a corporation stems from a claim to said corporation's future profits. If you have no influence then you may not be able to stake that claim."

No, If buy the stock I have a contractual right to future profits. This is true whether I am a small individual investor or whether I personally know every member of the Board of Directors. The stock represents that claim. Influence is completely orthogonal to the legal contract that the stock represents.

Doesn't this entire discussion demonstrate it ain't so? If the company has a revenue of $1B and pays the CEO $1B then it has zero profit. So how does the contractual obligation work out here? If you don't get a say on whether the CEO gets $1B in salary then what exactly is going on here?

There are other situations like the company taking on debt, issuing more shares, bankruptcy, acquiring other companies, share buybacks, dividends. If you don't have control there are ways for the company to "steal" your share of the profits.