Raw LLM Responses

>The current problem is that the C suite is not incentivized to look long term but short term gains. This doesn't actually seem to be true. Different executives tend to have different strengths. Career executives that move from company to company every 3-5 years are indeed very good at short term growth. In fact, that's why they get hired. Longer tenured executives tend to be bigger picture. Which type of executive the company needs depends on what direction the company wishes to go. What you've said is more common in the silicon valley "optimize for IPO" model. That said, shareholders *are* investors in a company, and they invest with the belief that the company will use those funds in order to grow the business and make their current holdings more valuable. It is completely reasonable to want a return on your investment. That's the reason to invest in the first place. It isn't a charity. Some businesses ought to remain a private company, because being beholden to shareholders is a net negative to the business model. For instance, Twitter (now X) should have never IPO'd. This is in contrast to Amazon, which became a much more efficient business after going public. >Even the gains are not productive because it's not looking at overall business health but share prices and P/E ratios. Most shareholders hold shares for long periods of time. The best way to increase shareholder confidence is indeed to bolster the fundamentals of the business. Sometimes the way to bolster the fundamentals of the business is unpopular (layoffs, etc). P/E ratios are essentially meaningless at the moment, and have been for a long time. At least to investors. Using P/E ratios, the entire stock market is *massively* over valued. Since investors don't care about P/E ratios anymore, companies try to optimize cash flow. Having a healthy cash flow *is* having a business that is sustainable. >You can't build and lead an industry that way. The US quite literal