See, there are three layers of decision making: vision, strategy, and tactics. You set large aspirational goals first (eg Microsoft "empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more"), then smaller component strategies ("build the a cloud provider that integrates business intelligence into everything you do"), then the concrete actions to make those srrategies happen ("integrate Active Directory authentication into kubernetes RBAC"). One "vision" level statement spawns many, many "tactics".

When you're dealing on the level of "181 CEOs" from huge companies as diverse as JP Morgan Chase, Johnson & Johnson, and Ford, it is impossible to talk about tactics and strategy. What Ford can do to better serve long term interests of all stakeholders is too different from what Vanguard should do. You are only able to agree on the big vision, and let the units (or whatever smaller more homogeneous group makes sense) work out the strategy level and below.

This is leadership 101 stuff. There are several models of decision-making, but they are all hierarchical in this way. You won't find many media outlets pushing a collective of 181 companies to issue a single press release about the exact on the ground tactics they will all implement, because in this field that's a nonsensical request on par with "but how many packets can apache serve?"

― Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

Note that most public companies have institutional investors as the largest component of their ownership; such investors tend to own all the major competitors.

GM: top 5 are Capital World Investors, Vanguard, BlackRock, Berkshire Hathaway, and Harris Associates.

Ford: top five are Vanguard, BlackRock, Newport, State Street, Franklin.

Fiat-Chrysler: top five are Tiger, Harris, Baillie Gifford, Vanguard, Deutsche Bank, FMR.

Looks like Vanguard is certainly in a position to encourage the big-three car manufacturers to work together.

Intel: Tiger, Harris, Baillie Gifford, Vanguard, Deutsche Bank.

AMD: Vanguard, BlackRock, Wellington, FMR, Invesco.

Your CPU choices will make money for Vanguard.

HPE: Dodge&Cox, Vanguard, BlackRock, Primecap, State Street.

Dell: Temasek Holdings, Dodge&Cox, Elliott, BlackRock, Vanguard.

Apple: Vanguard, BlackRock, Berkshire Hathaway, State Street, FMR.

When you buy computers, you make money for Vanguard.

In summary, Tim Buckley at Vanguard can set up a meeting with any group of CEOs at minimal notice. He doesn't actually own much of anything, but the right of ownership for a large percentage of the USA's economy is a thing that he directs.

Or maybe it's Robert Kapito at BlackRock; same deal.

Umm, no. Unless you have a very different idea of what "large percentage" means.

He does direct investment.

Free market !== unregulated market.

In order for an unregulated market to be a free market, perfect competition is required[0], otherwise you get market failure.

In the real world, we use laws to discourage behavior that leads to market failure.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market#Perfect_competitio...

It's not as if corporations don't do a lot of that already when it's in their interests.

See also: "Actions speak louder than words."

It is easy to be skeptical here (and I am), but I think it would be folly to disregard the attempt as mere public relations fodder and instead see this as a starting point and continue to follow-up to ensure they're meeting their stated goals. If it's clear they're not, then happily disregard :)

Health Insurance 401k (even non-match) PTO

How many billionaires are homeless after their ventures implode?

Has this happened in recent memory, at all? Because when I was growing up and getting the pro-capitalist America view of things on the regular, I vividly recall that capitalism is all about your success individually, that you risk it all and if you lose, you lose.

Even Elizabeth Holmes, an entrepreneur* who's business not only failed, massively, not only caused a man's suicide, not only lost fortunes both public and private, all without ever producing a SINGLE FUNCTIONING OR USABLE PRODUCT, she left a rich woman if I'm not mistaken.

*I was gonna quote that word here but no, I'm not going to because the mythical status of these people in American society is a joke. Anybody can be an entrepreneur. There are no qualifications and no requirements and you cannot break someone's faith in the "mythical rich 1%" than having them work for one, directly for a year, and see how maladjusted, how emotionally vulnerable, and how utterly dependent they are on subordinates for even trivial tasks.