[noahatwi]

> There's no intrinsic reason for earnings to be directly related to stock price.

Yes there absolutely is. If you are the owner of a company you may divert the future earnings to your own bank account, which has a precisely defined value.

Your counterargument may be that minority shareholders never have the power to affect distributions of earnings, but that is also false. Minority shareholders at minimum hold the power of arbitrage between majority shareholders.