Everything falls…
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Shareholder responsibilities require that you put the best interests of the shareholder first, but that's not supposed to mean you have to stick your head into every mousetrap you find along the way. If companies are being sued for not making shortsighted, self-destructive decisions that is a corruption of the intent behind the rule.
That is true, but the issues arises when you are forced because the shareholders themselves demanding you stick your head into a trap because they want that short term gain. Because they, or at least the board representing them, are doing more than just throwing money at it, its also their opinions and beliefs.
You may try to explain it to them, but its not always going to work. Because most of them will be the force behind things like "a new study from Harvard says more blacks equals more money, hire more blacks immediately" and anything otherwise is racism to get you ousted from the company.
Its the "out of state landlord" problem. When someone has a lot of money invested in something, but has no actual investment mentally about it otherwise. So all they care about is the money flowing, even if less money now means more later.
I saw an article around the 2000s ish about some shareholder suing microsoft. Because the 8 billion research budget could be "better" used on shareholder payouts...
The only public company I've seen that tries to combat stupid normies and gambling degenerates from fucking with its operations is Berkshire Hathaway. Warren Buffet made its Class A stock obscenely expensive (currently at $723,549.00 a share) so people who buy the stock would be long-term investors and have some skin in the game, and not just YOLO.
That said, Buffet did create Class B shares for normies to get in, but with drastically lower voting power (1/10,000th of Class A).
I don't even think its really normies causing these types of problems.
Its the same type of guy who runs pump and dump schemes and does venture capital investments. Someone who already has a lot of money (aka not normies) and is trying to make a lot of quick bucks injecting money into something and then pulling it out without a care about the product/company itself. Or some ultra rich guy whose only in it to feed his ego and need for control.
The normies buying a handful of tiny shares hoping to increase their wealth just a bit are very unlikely to even have their opinions heard, its just assumed what they want is "money" and the board talks for them.