depending on what the richest people want

It's not really what "the richest" want. There are probably people richer than me with smaller stakes and who knows I might be richer than some of the people with bigger stakes.

Nobody cares how rich you are, what matters is how much stake you have, and this matters for smaller stakeholders too. If all of the bigger stakeholders agree on direction, that's usually how it is going to go, but often larger stakeholders don't agree or don't care, and the influence of smaller stakeholders is magnified. This is all very much like any business with shareholders, and not all that strange once you recognize it for what it is.