[etherealG]

Because stock prices and the people's interests they reflect only care about immediate returns that allow investors to then dump those returns into the next immediate returning investment again, to maximize return with no consideration for the overall health of the system they operate in. Capitalism. Long term health of the stock systems. Long term health of the underlying value they reflect. Nothing long term matters in a stock buy at all.

Why do you even ask this question, did the answer really not seem obvious, or was it rhetorical?

[dgfitz]

What are you on about? I can ask an llm (which amusingly autocorrects to “lol”) or a search engine, stocks that retained and grew their value over decades. There’s lots.

Would you rather a centrally planned government where companies no longer care about their value? That, in a nutshell, is socialism.