> the true competition to take place in the corporate finance marketplace rather than the retail one.
This hits the nail on the head. There is no secret cabal of colluding business owners, but for any company that is public, they are necessarily “colluding” to keep share prices high. Since they are all optimizing for the same thing, it makes sense that they would take similar approaches.
Elegantly put! This is where the glorification of 'shareholder value' has got us; it's very unfortunate that commitment to other values like employment security or product quality are considered bad management in mainstream business thinking.
This hits the nail on the head. There is no secret cabal of colluding business owners, but for any company that is public, they are necessarily “colluding” to keep share prices high. Since they are all optimizing for the same thing, it makes sense that they would take similar approaches.