Replying to Avatar Cory Doctorow

The bezzle is contained by two forces.

* First, #SteinsLaw: "Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop."

* Second, #Keynes's: "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."

On the one hand, extremely badly run businesses that strip all the value out of the firm, making things progressively worse for its suppliers, workers and customers will eventually fail (Stein's Law).

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Cory Doctorow 2y ago

On the other hand, as the #PrivateEquity sector has repeatedly demonstrated, there are all kinds of accounting tricks, subsidies and frauds that can animate a decaying, zombie firm long after its best-before date (Keynes's irrational markets):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

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Cory Doctorow 2y ago

One company that has done an admirable job of balancing on a knife edge between Stein and Keynes is #Verizon, a monopoly #telecoms firm that has proven that a business can remain large, its products relied upon by millions, its stock actively traded and its market cap buoyant, despite manifest, repeated incompetence and waste on an unimaginable scale.

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