alt Hacker NewsVanguard is mutually held, a rarity these days. Which means that if you own some shares of their SP500 index fund, you own a part of Vanguard, and they work for your benefit. They are as big as they are because they solved the original alignment problem.
So if I invest my meager peasant earnings in Vanguard funds, my holdings are considered equally as important as the Rockefellers?
And it was the solving of this alignment problem that attracted all the Rockefellers, Whitneys, Vanderbilts, etc to Vanguard? So they're not insiders, just big customers with no relationship to the firm itself.