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In the long term capitalism and free markets should weed out any jobs which don't create shareholder value. At least that's the promise of the system and there'

• TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
  That's a very naive view, for three reasons. Firstly "quarterly profits" are not necessarily synonymous with "shareholder value" over the long term - although the entire financial industry operates on the basis that they are. In reality it's perfectly possible to produce stellar quarterly returns while driving a solid, productive company into the ground and denying investors future returns. Secondly, shareholders are proxied by senior management. Senior management has its own goals, which include status management as well as profit. Profit is only a partial proxy for status, which is why senior management in some companies likes to play some standard management games like "reorg" and "rebrand" that do nothing at all for returns, except possibly waste them, but make managers feel like they're critically important wielders of corporate power. The third reason is that if you concentrate enough wealth among shareholders, the rest of your economy - the part that does most of the consuming, as well as most of the actual work - atrophies and eventually implodes under a pile of debt and consequent violent social dislocation. This is not a good thing. But it seems to be a lesson that generations of shareholders need to keep relearning.