>> You would think that spending a small amount of money on something now
>> that will enable you to save a very large amount of money later would be
>> the kind of thing management would jump at.... Apparently not.
> 
> I think that the way the global economical system work nowadays (someone say
> "shareholder value") doesn't encourage long-term thinking.

Indeed, when our hard-hitting new interrim CEO joined the company, his 
goal was not "increase profits" or "reduce debts" - it was "increase our 
share price".

Uh, WTF?

As far as I'm aware, a company's share price is an arbitrary number 
decided by a bunch of people who know nothing about the company in 
question. In other words, it's not actually possible to control share 
prices; they just vary at random. In particular, a share price is in no 
way related to how well a company is or isn't doing.

Most specifically, raising your share price doesn't stop you from going 
into liquidation. :-P I would have thought keeping the company trading 
would be a far, *far* more important target than raising some arbitrary 
number that nobody actually cares about. But what do I know?

> Sometimes I think if it was outlawed for companies to be owned by other
> companies, and instead being mandatory for company owners to be natural
> persons, the world might be a better place. I still have hope that real people
> would be better at long-term thinking than companies (owned by companies owned
> by companies owned by companies) could ever be.

I very much doubt such a law would be enforcable. I mean, wasn't M$ 
ordered to "split up"? And how did that work? Yeah.

Post a reply to this message