It's slightly absurd to say that "sell" is the only lever shareholders should have over public companies. It may be true in practical terms, but it's still a sad state of affairs.
How many people upset about Meta layoffs were equally fierce in condemning Zuck for Meta's stock performance over the last decade? Seems like yet another case of people wanting their cake and eating it too -- the only novelty is the people affected are some of the most privileged people in human history.
Since when does HN care about the stock price of a random company? The share price reflected the ownership structure so the people that bought in were aware and not coerced to buy the security. We shit on corporate short sightedness and suddenly everyone and their dog has a highly opinionated high conviction bet on what a random company should do with its cash flow?
Personally, I don’t care. If dude wants to try to build the jetsons space car, heck yeah. I’d rather someone in society try hard stuff (positive determinism) than more stock buy backs (like apple) or cash just sitting on the balance sheet idly (like historical google). Even if it 100% fails, society is better if we do research that doesn’t look outright obvious at first…that’s how we get better.
IIRC, the owner/CEO has fired himself some times, Ford had something like it, and I think LEGO too, years ago.