That's the wonder of the stocks insane liquidity. People just want the maximum possible return this quarter, so they can sell it and buy some other stock next quarter. Who cares how long the company survives?

And the best part is, if you force all the companies to act this way, and get some odd government protection for the large ones, the companies won't even go out of business. It's just society that gets poorer.

GP observes that Intel is behaving in a way that indicates it does not value future cash flows. I reply with one hypothesis for why Intel is discounting future earnings. (Very high discount rate on future cash flows, perhaps) You respond with reasons its discount rate could be lower.

Yes, I agree it would be nice for the United States if Intel's discount rate was lower, but where's the evidence? Does opening a chip packaging plant in China show "legacy, loyalty to family, country, environmentalism, pride, general ethics, etc"?

Although I think it's unfair to call out the CEO for his age, the notion of people behaving according to the laws of the system they live in, despite trying (and occasionally succeeding) in raising themselves above them, was noticed as far back as Ricardo and and only really put into perspective by Marx in the 1867 preface to the German edition of Capital:

>To prevent possible misunderstanding, a word. I paint the capitalist and the landlord in no sense couleur de rose [i.e., seen through rose-tinted glasses]. But here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the personifications of economic categories, embodiments of particular class-relations and class-interests. My standpoint, from which the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them.

The preface ends on a wonderful little note that hopefully everyone can agree on:

>Every opinion based on scientific criticism I welcome. As to prejudices of so-called public opinion, to which I have never made concessions, now as aforetime the maxim of the great Florentine is mine: “Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti.” [Follow your own course, and let people talk – paraphrased from Dante] Karl Marx, London. July 25, 1867.

I need to read Marx.

He is famously (or infamously) rhetorical in most of his work, but even his harshest critics (at least, those in academic circles) praise the fecundity and depth of his work. This possibility for interpretation was criticized by Pareto ("words are like bats - you are never sure if you are looking at a mouse or a bird" OWTTA) but has also provided the ability to use Marx's critical analysis on himself, and not only in the most narrow philological senses as one might imagine philosophers and political economists quibble over newly discovered German manuscripts.

One could spend their whole life studying Marx and not get through half of the work in Marxology (and two lifetimes if we include mathematical Marxism), value theory and classical economics - but to me that makes it all the better.

You seem well read in him, and philosophy/philology also. Can you recommend works in each you found worthwhile?

Most basically I'd recommend Marx, but maybe not without some guide to what it is exactly you're reading, why things are peculiar and the tradition which Marx inherited, which as his collaborator Engels admitted, was moribund even by the time Marx published Capital[0]. Although you can't avoid overlaying some interpretation, I'd recommend reading Capital alongside something like Johan Fornas' "Capitalism" (Routledge, 2014) who tries to mention various interpretative traditions, and for something more opinionated, Michael Heinrich's "An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital". Value is a big topic in Marx, and while neoclassical economics dismisses it (what I believe to be out of hand) I.I. Rubin, who was persecuted by the USSR under false accusations, wrote a fantastic set of essays on his theory of value, named just as a collection of I.I. Rubin's essays.

Were you asking about philosophy in general? In that case, I admit I'm not very well read at all, even on Marx's Hegelian background - but there is a rather famous 4chan /lit/ board guide to philosophy from the start, though in my experience, it need not be read sequentially.

By philology I was referring to the study of the interpretation of Marx specifically - in my opinion it has produced some fascinating results (see Heinrich above, and importantly The Mismeasure of Wealth, which is a a set of essays by contemporary Marxian philosopher Patrick Murray[0]).

Also of interest is the discussion on Marx's more qualitative points besides his theory of value, specifically his theory of history, alienation, technology etc. for which Gerry Cohen and Sean Sayers have plenty, and Peter Hudis[2] claims from a philological point of view, it is easy to see how the USSR's style of socialism would probably come under fire from Marx himself.

On the whole, I'd just like to conclude with the fact that Marxism is very much not a unified school of thought, and in my modest and relatively uninformed opinion, it has only increased fracturing and has been marred by unfortunate internal hostilities after the 70s in which various philosophers tried to salvage what remained, reinvent, reinterpret or deny the grounds on which famous economists like Paul Samuelson and Piero Sraffa dismissed him. Marxism is so fractured that specifically regional schools have emerged, for instance the Uno School in Japan, AM in the Anglo-Saxon world, the Frankfurt School in 20th c. America, Neue Marx-Lektur in the German world etc.

Despite what it may seem, you asked for what I found worthwhile, but I've replied by citing almost all the authors who I've read at least one work of - I've read so little that I literally can't select what's worthwhile and what's not. This means I'm providing a limited picture, so take what I've said with a Capital-sized grain of salt!

[0] The "dialectical presentation" has come under fire from some Marxists as being insufficiently rigorous, outdated etc. - this is the Analytical Marxist school, which Roberto Veneziani (who you might also refer to on the matter of mathematical Marxism, along with Kliman's easy (but thick) "Reclaiming Marx's Capital") has written about: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2125671

[1] "Probing Marx's dialectical accounts of the commodity, value, money, surplus value, wage labour and capital, The Mismeasure of Wealth establishes Marx's singular relevance for critical social theory today."

[2] Peter Hudis - Marx's concept of the Alternative to Capitalism