If you're not a shareholder you don't get to vote. If you are, vote! If you can't, but you chose to be a shareholder, well I'm not sure what the complaint is.

That's the idealized version. In practice, there are millions of people who never "chose" to invest but because of index funds have a significant portion of their retirement savings in companies lacking any real governance or oversight from the board that ostensibly represents their interests.

How do they have index funds?

When you buy a fund, you’re choosing its management strategy (including about votes). If you don’t feel a fund represents your interests well, don’t buy it.

> How do they have index funds?

Sometimes your employer gives you a list of a couple dozen funds run by the same manager, and if you want your employer to contribute to your retirement savings, those are the options.

And if you invested in those index funds in the past 15 years, the return would be superb.

I'm all for banning these super-voting companies from the 401K/index funds. But you should know that many poor and average people would've missed those superb returns.

The parent comment isn't about dual-class companies, it's about the fact that many shareholders effectively don't get a choice in how the votes for their shares are cost.

Exactly.

I'm not against forbidding index/401K funds from investing in those companies since many people (including you) deem those companies as "bad".

Many average people don't actively manage their funds. They would've missed out on the benefits, but that's okay. Having shareholder voting power is more important for them, I suppose. While I disagree, I might have voted for it. Because this would've translated to less competition for house and stuff.

This is HN. We're not here to benefit humanity, we're here to dominate it.