Peter Drucker on Casino Earth
Peter Drucker says this on corporate greed and corruption. Noting how "every boom puts crooks in at the top."
The exclusive emphasis on quarterly figures, the overemphasis on the stock price, the well-meant but idiotic belief that executives should have major financial stakes in the company, the stock options (which I have always considered an open invitation to mismanagement), and so on
Incentives matter.
I've long thought the quarterly reporting focus distorted the incentives of corporate decision makers. And tying someone's financial status directly to firm financial performance can further warp incentives.
What is really being incentivized is growth at any cost. Even if the growth is fictional, existing only in the financial record.
Unpopular opinion: I further believe that many of the complaints about capitalism and actually complaints about marketism—a made up term of my own.
The stock market captured capitalism, making stock price and performance the goal. A proxy metric becoming the primary business goal as it became easier to measure and monitor and the original goal was slowly forgotten.
Our world is going increasingly meta. The stock market ate the tangible market, and has since been eaten by its own derivatives market.
Politics has been subsumed by the process of campaigning. The results of an election are now the true goal, not the work and role that comes after.
We love sport so much we've turned everything into one. And sports have become simply a vehicle for gambling.
Casino Earth