Big companies are reliant on institutional investors on a punishing schedule which leads to ruthless behaviour. This form of capitalism with this structure and incentives will never deliver sustainability.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the dependence of large companies on institutional investors, suggesting it promotes unsustainable practices.
Tim Jackson's quote addresses the conflict within capitalism where big companies often prioritize short-term gains to satisfy institutional investors. This relentless pursuit of profit leads to behaviors that are detrimental to long-term sustainability, indicating a flawed system incentivized by immediate financial returns rather than ethical or sustainable practices.
In practice
In a corporate strategy meeting discussing sustainability initiatives.
You know, I think of the global economy as an inverted triangle, resting on the shoulders of the American consumer. And if the American consumer cannot have enough disposable income in order to maintain a standard of living that creates more opportunities generation after generation, that's bad for everybody.
Higher taxes never reduce the deficit. Governments spend whatever they take in and then whatever they can get away with.
Regulation has gone astray. . . . Either because they have become captives of regulated industries or captains of outmoded administrative agencies, regulators all too often encourage or approve unreasonably high prices, inadequate service, and anticompetitive behavior. The cost of this regulation is always passed on to the consumer. And that cost is astronomical.
If you don't talk about families, then it's easy to disembody subprime mortgages and asset securitization and unemployment rates without remembering that every one of those numbers is a million families.
All money is a matter of belief.
One of the evils of paper money is that it turns the whole country into stock jobbers. The precariousness of its value and the uncertainty of its fate continually operate, night and day, to produce this destructive effect. Having no real value in itself it depends for support upon accident, caprice, and party; and as it is the interest of some to depreciate and of others to raise its value, there is a continual invention going on that destroys the morals of the country.
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