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Comment by danilocampos | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for writing my catharsis for me. Fucking exactly.

I can't wait until we're past this moronic "maximize short-term pennies along with long-term loathing!" mindset.

One of the first things taught about negotiating is, unless you're about to leave the planet never to return, don't make one-sided deals. Eventually they catch up with you, if only because no one wants to work with you anymore. It's such a valuable lesson. When will corporate America realize there's more money in the long game?

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It's cynical, but one has to at least consider that the reason is because there isn't more money in the long game. Over time all markets become commoditized, which is sort of a "one sided contract" in the consumers favor. This kind of cheating can be seen as attempt by the service providers to fight that trend.

Oh, there's still money in it. Just not at the margins that Verizon has grown accustomed to. And I think this sort of commodification is still a long way out. The capital necessary to build the nation's largest wireless network is only available to a handful of companies.

Short-term: Maximize shareholder value.

Long-term: If you're an executive and you haven't taken your compensation and moved to greener pastures, bribe the government to crush your better serving competition before they get the customers and the money.

I think "Corporate America" has been in this game for at least a hundred years, possibly longer. I'm not saying I agree with it, but obviously the negatives aren't as bad as you think they are; Corporate America seems alive and well and ready to continue another hundred years. Let's hope we can regain control of our "representatives" in government soon.

I think it began in the 1980s in the era of "corporate raiders".

I think you're mostly right; that's when it got really big. But it began long before...

Standard Oil, United Fruit Company, JP Morgan, DuPont, CitiBank, Associated Press, Pfizer, Macy's, and I haven't even gotten to the Civil War era yet.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_raider
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies#1825_to_1851
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street#Nineteenth_century

The median tenure of an operationally involved CEO at a large public company is 5 years. For a lot of CEOs, the long term doesn't exist.

When bonuses get paid out in terms longer than quarterly, or yearly.

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