this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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We are in a war indeed.
I think it’s a new trend with CEOs and investors. They want infinite growth so the strategy is aquire / create, grow, squeeze, throw away, while creating new products to migrate fed up customers. Rinse and repeat.
Investors goal: maximize ROI this year.
CEO goal: infinite growth and/or increase share price to keep funds flowing.
I believe the current economic behavior isn’t sustainable. Some day things will go south.
I actually think they are currently all going south. This increase in ads is just one part of the fall I think.
Id say the last stage of squeeze might be more accurate.
Because it’s possible to recover now.
Once the majority of big corps reach the no return stage, we’re all screwed.
The idea that the only real duty of corporate leadership is to drive shareholder profit is apocalyptically naive and ultimately nihilistic, and it has been since the words dribbled from Milton Friedman into the NYT magazine back in 1970.
short term. The problem is driving short term profit. In the short term, you profit by abusing your customers. If you considered long term profit, you need to also consider customer satisfaction
No, I stand by what I said.
If you build something well, it will sell itself. You won’t need financial gymnastics to make your company or the product look good.
Stupid financial tactics like stock buybacks (which, as a result of how the stock market works, have a direct positive impact on stock price) should be illegal.
The problem is the focus on profit over and above the focus on literally anything else. That’s what modern corporate leadership has come to understand as the true meaning behind Friedman’s words. And it’s killing our society, our environment, and in many cases, the companies themselves (because the tactics are obviously unsustainable).
Infinite growth in a finite world is impossible.
Do we need to start requiring all C-suite managers to learn thermodynamics?
They know, they just wanna accumulate as much fat bonuses as possible before the crash.
This is it and there's another wrinkle driving it IMO which is the end of QE. When rates were at sub-inflation (so basically negative) and investor capital was everywhere, none of these companies really cared about milking the customers because they were already fat and happy milking the government indirectly. Now the government cheese machine has dried up and so now we've gotta get the stock price up a quarter of a point by any means necessary instead.