Focus

An illustration of [the] single-minded corporate focus on financial returns can be seen in a conversation between biologist Paul Ehrlich and a Japanese journalist. Ehrlich observed that the Japanese whaling industry was at risk of exterminating the whales that were the source of its wealth. The journalist responded: “You are thinking of the whaling industry as an organization that is interested in maintaining whales; actually it is better viewed as a huge quantity of [financial] capital attempting to earn the highest possible return. If it can exterminate whales in ten years and make a 15% profit, but it could only make 10% with a sustainable harvest, then it will exterminate them in ten years. After that, the money will be moved to exterminating some other resource.” -- Jeremy Lent, The Patterning Instinct