Who controls the investments?

An article on Blackrock buying up houses, which segues into how institutional investors take people’s money to invest, and then use it as leverage for control. So you want to buy some Coke stock, or your pension fund decides to pick it up. Suddenly Coke goes woke, at risk of damaging the company. But shareholders can’t bitch, because everyone who bought in did so through Blackrock or Vanguard, and if Blackrock and Vanguard don’t complain, there is no pushback on the corporation’s self-destructive woke posturing. So those institutional investors are taking your money and using it to support leftism in culture. I found it interesting, as I never realized institutional investors may have been created as a means of transferring investor control over the actions of companies to whoever runs the institution, or rather whoever appointed them. Nobody whose money is being used has any say. What I don’t understand is how a competing company does not spontaneously arise, and whether that is just an aspect of their control of the media and other companies like NFL and NBA, of if there might be a deeper level of control.

link