Firms that reach that point, and that know themselves, then return more of their cash hoard to their investors, who invest it elsewhere. In the 1980 s and 1990 s, large swaths of American industry especially the domestic oil industry faced this problem, described by the economist Michael Jensen as the managerial challenge of handling free cash flow well.

Everyone I meet claims to love trees I mean really love trees yet collectively the human race behaves as if it abhors green things. If you take a step back from whatever biome you are in at the moment and look at the entire Earth and its forests through recorded history, you will see that the relationship between humans and trees looks Strangely Like War (the title of a recent book on forests by Derrick Jensen and George Draffan).