Hyperactive, yet passive

IT IS easy to make the case that modern business is too frenetic. This week 10 billion shares of America’s 500 largest listed firms will have changed hands in frenzied trading. Their bosses will have been swamped by 750,000 incoming e-mails and a torrent of instant data about customers. In five days these firms will have bought $11 billion of their own shares, not far off what they invested in their businesses. With one eye on their smartphones and the other on their share prices, bosses seem to be the bug-eyed captains of a hyperactive capitalism.Many bemoan the accelerating pace of business life. Long-term thinking is a luxury, say these critics of capitalism. When managers are not striving to satisfy investors whose allegiance to firms is measured in weeks, they are pumping up share prices in order to maximise their own pay. Executives feel harried, too. Competition is becoming ever more ferocious: if Google or Apple are not plotting your downfall, a startup surely is. Yet such perceptions do not bear close scrutiny. Short-termism is not the menace it seems (see ). And the problem with competition is that it is not fierce enough.