That doesn't prevent you from trading the stock and making (or losing) money.
Sure, but there is a clear disparity between how much you make on the amount of stock you can reasonably have versus how much executives make on the amount of stock they have. The parent comment implies there is some kind of level playing field here, which there really isn't.
that is moving goalposts. The CEOs will have more stock beause they have larger wealth and earn more money.
Cool, could they start paying dividends so that I can keep my shares and get money each year instead of having to sell them?
You can sell X% of your stock every year and pretend it’s a X% dividend. It’s the same thing. It’s not like you get any voting rights.
But at the end of the day I'd be left with no stock.
Dividends could be paid out indefinitely as long as the company is profitable.
No, you wouldn’t because the stock price would keep going up so you would sell less and less each time and when the price got too high, the stock would do a split. Every time a dividend is paid out, the stock price drops by an identical amount. It’s the same thing as selling. This wouldn’t be a problem unless you have BRK.A, for the other 99.99999% of stocks it’s fine. Do the math yourself and see.