That’s definitely true, but the question is do the execs really care? I think that for a lot of these people, the only thing that matters is whether they can keep pulling those sweet sweet cash-outs. Just look at the absurd bonuses musk was promised from tesla recently. If he really cared about the success of the company, he wouldn’t take those, he would take a fair paycheque and allow the company to reinvest the rest of the money. Instead, he requires massive bonuses to keep working. We’re talking about the kind of money that could fund the entire educational sector in a small country for many years. He’s taking that out as a personal bonus, to the detriment of the company.

That kind of thing makes me believe that he doesn’t really care about the long-term success of the company. What he really cares about is squeezing out cash from the company for as long as possible. If the company fails, he has enough money to buy up something else that he can squeeze cash out of. The modus operandi is basically

1. Be rich
2. Buy some company
3. Wave your arms and wag your tung to get investor money into the company
4. Cash out bonuses
5. Go to step 3 until your cash-out has surpassed the investment cost
6. Either sell out of company (if it’s been run to the ground), or go to step 3 until it has been.

I honestly think a lot of the people pushing this stuff know very well that they don’t need it to succeed. They don’t really care if the general public hates it, and it flops. As long as they can convince investors, they’re pulling yearly paycheques and bonuses in the tens of millions of dollars. If it flops, some thousand employees (thralls) will be layed off. If it fails catastrophically, they might need to step down themselves, and move to a different company that “appreciates their ability to be a visionary”.

These people are only capable of failing upwards, and they know it. The name of the game for them is waving their arms and blabbering about something to draw in investor money.