On the other hand, the average Joe has much more control investing in real estate than investing in public companies. As a minority shareholder of a public company you are completely at the mercy of management. You just have to hope there's something left over for the minority shareholders after management is done enriching themselves. As a landlord you don't get to decide market rents, but you do get to decide who you rent to, how you maintain and improve the property, etc.
As a minority shareholder, you still have voting rights. And it's much easier to build a diverse share portfolio to hedge against mismanagement from any particular company.
And shares tend to not require maintenance unlike real estate. But unlike real estate, shares can disappear if many companies tank. But land you own won't ever disappear unless war or catastrophic natural disasters happen.
if you indeed own such a small amount, then yes, you vote is as proportionally impactful as your share. I don't see what's wrong.
As for management giving themselves 10x voting rights - that doesn't just happen out of the blue. If a large portion of the shareholders decide that it's the right thing to do (by voting), then yes, it can happen. But i highly doubt that a majority shareholder would vote themselves out of control. It's quite likely that the founder is doing this to retain control despite offering to create more shares. The new buyers of said share knows this, and tacitly agree as indicated by their purchase of said share.
Voting rights in corporations for the most part are a sham. I would love it to be different, but I just toss out those silly proxy voting things, just like they want me to. I don't know any of the people and they're all assholes and the the issue they vote on are either esoteric or some kind of asinine corporate virtue signaling bs.
Real estate sucks. Well, being a landlord sucks. Land can drop in value, sometimes remarkably--look at Detroit, Northern Indiana, Baltimore. Lots of places.
