More and more I'm coming to believe this one thing is the root cause of so many problems that are often blamed on other things.

Flawed metrics for and measurements of value

TBH given the lack of anti-trust enforcement since Reagan*, it makes perverted sense. *Save for Biden Admin

This is @zitron.bsky.social 's Rot Economy thesis in a nutshell

I learned finance in the early 90s. There was a concept of the cash cow that was well managed and produced dividends. Over the years the stock market has forced everything into the growth model and killed the cash cows. Part of this is executives compensated in equity chasing stock price rises.

Zero-sum thinking and the prosperity gospel don't help, that's for sure.

I'm 100% convinced that fixing this would solve such a huge boatload of problems that we should do everything we can to fix it as quickly as possible, up to and including dismantling most "too big to fail" corporations.

Agreed. And measuring GDP the way we do encourages only growth and inflation. Inflation benefits companies because their sales and profits are “growing”.

Absolutely! Watching private equity roll up vet practices, medical, and child care should scare the hell out of everyone.

is this not all literally Late Capitalism

Its like they never met the logistic function "S" curve in their MBA programs. Exponential growth leading to addressable market saturation and flattening of growth to the "farming" stage of reliable, ongoing profit was one of the very first things I ever learned in product development work.