the history of the world, my pet

[adularia]

Because it's burning a hole in my head, on reading solarbird's last post, augmented further by the rows of sale signs going down Fifth Avenue, every store trying to one-up its neighbors:

An economy built on projections built on fears built on nearsighted terrors at the spectre of less than constant positive revenue is not an economy.Can we make every MBA

Comments

[randomdreams]

I agree with you.
But humans are obsessed with the need to try and control their environments, and it's in the direct interest of economists and MBA's to assert that the economy is predictable and controllable. We, as a culture, are not ever going to accept chaos theory as a description for stuff that matters. So you get people doing and saying stuff that might make some sense if there was a causal relationship between their actions and the economy, because they *want* there to be a causal relationship. It's cargo cult economics.

[adularia]

Accepting the fact of chaos is part of it -- I can't help but think of The Black Swan, much as parts of that book annoyed me -- but the simpler and much easier thing to accept is the notion that, never mind future patterns, it is sufficient, healthy, and preservation-worthy for an industry to be merely stable at any given time. What I am saying is mostly in agreement with pauldf down there.

[cow]

This is the inverse of what I've always hated about modern capitalism. Corporations are required by their shareholders to optimize everything for this quarter's profits. Rather than investing in infrastructure and R&D and all that other lovely stuff, which might produce benefits 20 years from now, it's all about NOW NOW NOW PROFITS NOW. The 5-minute news cycle, the 90-day projection, the Dow of this exact minute.

So now that things are looking bad for the next little while, everyone is absolutely in a panic. And yet, when you borrow by the trillions and mortgage your future for immediate profits, it should be little surprise when that bill comes due.

augh augh augh. And yet, of course, we're all complicit in this flawed system.

[randomdreams]

I agree that it's not optimal, but I figure the long-term planning and R&D is, pretty much by the definition of modern capitalism, the job of government. Companies *can't* do it, if they're obeying their shareholders, and someone has to. Seems to be working pretty well for China. Not so well for us, unfortunately, but we seem to be spending much of our money guaranteeing the profits of poorly-performing companies rather than guaranteeing that our country has a future.

[cow]

Agreed on all parts--but isn't this exactly the opposite of what privatization wonks tell us, that the private sector is more efficient blah blah blah? So now the corporations are useless, and the government is dumping trillions of dollars it doesn't have into said corporations, and the infrastructure of the country is falling to pieces.

[pauldf]

Fifth Avenue has sales signs? Oh, right, not the Fifth Ave where I live. :)

As to your real point, to me it often seems like Wall Street expects not just positive revenue, but that every quarter's year-over-year numbers will be better than the last.