What if the problem isn’t that a few companies got greedy? What if the problem is that we built a system that teaches companies to sell us out? In this episode, Eric Ries joins us to explain the economic lie sitting underneath so much of modern business: that companies exist to extract as much value as possible for shareholders, even if that means making the product worse, treating employees poorly, breaking customer trust, and slowly destroying the very thing that made the company great. We talk about why so many once-loved brands seem to get worse over time, why Costco has managed to resist the pressure, what Amazon reveals about the tradeoff between customer obsession and company decay, and why “good governance” may actually be helping create weaker companies. This conversation will change how you think about capitalism, Wall Street, private equity, and the companies we interact with every single day. https://www.incorruptible.co/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices