>>96263230
That's a kinda vibes-based view of modern corporate excess.

When a company maximizes short-term growth for the sake of investors that can divest at any moment, it sabotages its own future.
If there were many paperclip machines and the ones that wanted to melt the earth destroyed themselves we would be in business! Only the good paperclip machines would remain!
The fact that we don't see that, means the problem isn't caused by the particularities of the individual businesses, like the moral character of the leadership, it means there's a structural, institutional problem.
The regulatory environment.
A few decades ago rules were changed to allow for easier stock buybacks, so corporations can functionally give investors dividends without paying dividend taxes. This means investors are incentivized to gut their companies, selling all assets for more buybacks instead of having it grow.
Trust-busting is hampered, meaning monopolies can buy out upstart competitors instead of having to compete in a free market.
There's also a bunch of employment stuff that lets C-suite take huge bonuses and bail.

Personal opinion:
It's easy to cast this as government being weak and ineffectual in the face of corporate power, but you can also look at it a different way.
The reduction in trust-busting was done under the logic that it's easier to have one relationship with a single big corporation than many relationships with a whole market of smaller providers.
A government may prefer having a monopoly company that it can *threaten* with regulation to follow political aims over *actually* regulating companies.

It's like>>96200509 said.
Private enterprise isn't really separate from public institutions.
The legal framework that allow for incorporation, and really the whole concept of ownership, are protected by the state, the monopoly on violence.
Regulators aren't just looking the other way, they *are* the powers behind corporate excess.