The private economy is literally owned by shareholders who want to get paid for holding shares. That's not a theory, not a conspiracy, it's a description of reality.
The mechanism that keeps them in check is competition. We should expect constant attempts to circumvent this mechanism requiring frequent intervention to keep it in place. That's not a conspiracy theory, that's a consequence of incentives working, which is the reason why we have this system in the first place. Not for these incentives, for other better ones, but these come along for the ride. You should expect to see them.
These are basic reasonable expectations you should have in a capitalist economy.
so that the firms that run that kind of fund are the largest shareholders of many firms. If I was a shareholder in, say, Delta airlines, but not American, I might want Delta to compete really hard against American today (at the expense of immediate profits) so that it gains market share and is worth more tomorrow.
If I am a shareholder in all the airlines, however, it makes no difference to me in how the market is partitioned, I just want the industry as a whole to be profitable. So one would imagine that large index fund shareholders would be having conversations to that end with the firms that they own.
The majority of US adults own stock in some form. And as people age, the percentage owning grows significantly. Pensions, retirement funds, savings outside perhaps cash, all provide stock ownership as an asset component.
So by shareholders you mean the majority of everyday people.
The mechanism that keeps them in check is competition. We should expect constant attempts to circumvent this mechanism requiring frequent intervention to keep it in place. That's not a conspiracy theory, that's a consequence of incentives working, which is the reason why we have this system in the first place. Not for these incentives, for other better ones, but these come along for the ride. You should expect to see them.
These are basic reasonable expectations you should have in a capitalist economy.