Beginning with the 'dot.com' bubble of the late 1990's/early 2000's, increasing asset prices have increasingly replaced operating profit as the primary goal of tech-based enterprises. In a world awash with currency created to ensure that those prices will suffer no serious recession, as Elon Musk might say, 'the idea of making a profit is for suckers'. Any time a serious setback looms, central banks and central governments conspire to create money in the form of currency in whatever amount is necessary to prevent any such occurrence. Unlike money created when banks make loans to people and businesses, which gets 'destroyed' as the loan is repaid, currency is immortal money. That process has allowed shares of stock to become essentially a means of printing money for the obscene remuneration of senior executives.