The scenario is little different from any other where someone lacks a controlling interest. Controlling interests can sell the company to another company they control at a price that suits their interests. They can issue shares to dilute equity and use the shares to acquire a company which they also control. Any legal action agaist such practices can be defended on the company's dime.
In other words, if scumbags control the company, scumbags control the company. Fortunately, most people aren't scumbags.
But money changes things. Let's there are two best friends, you offer the first person some money to back stab the other. The guy may not agree. However keep raising the offer and at some point of time when the figure hits a $X0/$X00 million I bet the guy's intentions will change.
Every one sells, its just the number that differs.
No, some people are "scumbags". I once worked for a company that suddenly ran out of it's startup money source and was forced to do a deal with a couple of "angel" investors ... who turned out to be devils.
They wrote into the agreement certain metrics that the company would have to meet after launch, and did everything they could to prevent it reaching those, e.g. firing the guy would would have made the sales, our multi-talented lawyer stepped up and made them. When Kleiner Perkins, who's connections could have been a make or break for the company, cold called us, these devils blew them off.
Their attitude was they'd rather have 100% of nothing (well, they probably thought it would have been something), and the company essentially died when 13 of us resigned en masse from the CEO down to all but one most junior engineer. (And then we had to go to the state to get our back pay for that partial pay period.)
I was in some of the last minute, try to save things face to face negotiations; these guys were malevolent. Not sure how they achieved net worths of 100 million and 500 million, but if they retained any control, they sure didn't use that money for good.
You don't know what the fuck you are talking about.
If you have actually lived in the society that actually exists, rather than the one entirely in your own head that you wish to believe in, you'll recognize that there is a positive correlation between social position and being unethical. (1) Power corrupts, (2) power attracts bad people, (3) bad people are more willing to make moral compromises to get power, (4) good people in power (it does happen) are usually not cynical enough to tell when they're being lied to by their lieutenants.
It's completely understandable that you'd rather live in your Pollyanna fantasy world, and that's fine. If you want to believe that the world is 6,000 years old, that is likewise OK with me (even if you're wrong). What I won't let you do is spread delusion to the young and gullible. If you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, then kindly quiet down and let the adults talk.
Hey. Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News, even when someone else flames you first.
(This originally read "regardless of how wrong you think someone is", but as someone pointed out to me, that was the wrong way to put it, and the original offender was upthread.)
In other words, if scumbags control the company, scumbags control the company. Fortunately, most people aren't scumbags.