The thing is, almost everyone is a stockholder. Not directly, but by way of mutual fund or pension fund holdings.
You don't have to have a proxy to vote to have an interest in seeing that a company your pension fund owns stock in doesn't act against your interests by providing massive stock options and a golden parachute deal to a CEO who's taking the value of the company down (or for that to matter to worry about the incentive structure provided by such perverse arrangements even to a good CEO).
"The thing is, almost everyone is a stockholder"
A stock exchange is not a socialist institution. If you don't like how much a CEO is paid, don't buy the stock. If your pension fund owns it, complain to them.
Stockholders own the company. Don't try tell people what to do with their own property, because that is not your concern.
Would you rather own stock in a company with the lowest-paid CEO or stock in a company with the highest-paid CEO?