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.
Tim JacksonRead
Most of economics can be summarized in four words: 'People respond to incentives.' The rest is commentary.
Interpretation
Economic behavior largely revolves around how people react to incentives.
This quote by Steven Landsburg emphasizes the foundational principle of economics that human behavior is significantly influenced by incentives. It suggests that understanding people's responses to different incentives allows us to understand most economic phenomena, with the remainder being less critical commentary on those principles.
In practice
In a discussion on consumer behavior during a marketing seminar.
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.
We cannot live without trade. A society can neither advance nor improve without excess of disposable income. This excess can only be amassed through the production of goods and services necessary or attractive to the mass. A financial system which allows this leads to inequality; one that does not leads to mass starvation.
A global economy is characterized not only by the free movement of goods and services but, more important, by the free movement of ideas and of capital.
A banker who is allowed to borrow money at X and loan it out at X plus Y will just go crazy and do too much of it if the civilization doesn't have rules that prevent it.
No bank should be too big or too complex to fail, but almost any bank is too big to liquidate quickly, particularly in the midst of a crisis.
The poor don't live in functional market economies as the rest of us do, but in political economies where corruption and broken systems extend from local government to moneylenders.
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