> The smaller the company, the less distinction there is between "the company" and "the people who own it". So it's possible to have something like loyalty/trust with the company if you have loyalty/trust with the people in charge

I understand what you're getting at, and this is why I support small businesses both with my money and politically, and when I can, by working for them. If someone has to look you in the eye when they screw you over, they're less likely to screw you over. And on the flipside, this is why I generally despise large corporations. More often than not, "scale" is achieved by creating enough distance between those in charge and those not in charge, and then mercilessly exploiting those not in charge.

But ultimately, the distinction between business and business owner will always be there at any size company, and loyalty, if it exists, will always be a trait of the business owner, not the business.

Yep

I would even add a further layer for public companies (vs large private companies): we might think of "those in charge" as management, and large companies certainly put more distance between them and folks on the ground, but public companies also have a big distance between investors and management. Most investors on the open market won't even be involved with the company directly - it'll just be a line in a portfolio, their only signal being buy/sell - and yet ultimately they are the ones "in charge"

Which is why we often get behavior that's not just disloyal or callous, but wildly irrational too

Agreed, the vast majority of shareholders have little or no visibility into a company. And management and shareholder incentives aren't aligned in timescale: while shareholders be in it for the long term, management can be in it for the short term, collecting bonuses on their quarterly performance and leaving when their short-termism comes back to bite the company.

Another problem is that shareholders aren't a cohesive group. If the holders of the top 51% of shares vote as a block, they make 100% of the shareholder decisions but reap only 51% of the results. This greatly decreases the cost of doing things like buying a controlling interest in a competitor and running it into the ground, because you can get the holders of 49% of the shares to subsidize your cost. Shareholder behavior in this situation seems irrational if you look only at their behavior within the company, but it's rational in the larger context of their holdings.

Shareholders can also be in it for the short-term in a public market, sometimes more so than management. That's why you get execs trying to juice the stock instead of setting the company up for success