Free market has become a command market

The workplace has been overwhelmed by monitoring, measuring, surveillance and audits, centrally directed and rigidly planned. Targets are set, usually starting with finance departments. The larger the company the less these relate to the business and market for the products and services produced. The targets are based on a desired growth to meet the share holders' needs to have even more money.

The targets get passed down from the top. Each layer of management has less confidence and ability to challenge the targets. There is peer pressure to succeed and not be seen as negative, so the company bosses have no idea or the real challenges or where to focuse attention. This is further complicated by the fact the departments and managers will 1) manipulate the stats to show they are succeeding, 2) set up individuals or other departments as the cause of their failure. Either way the growth is usually less than expected, if at all. Those that succeed in delivering their targets (fairly or otherwise) are rewarded and those that didn't are punished or become disinfranchised.

Broad objective based managment has gradually been replaced by tight "measurable" targets. This destroys autonomy, enterprise, innovation and loyalty, and breeds frustration, envy and fear. 

A magnificent paradox results.  The revival of a grand old Soviet tradition known in Russian as tufta. It means falsification of statistics to meet the diktats of unaccountable power.

People are selfish by nature. Everyone wants to survive and will do so at the expense of others, with our closest relatives (usually our own children) being an exception for some. Once you pass the surviving state you need to build a buffer. The bigger the buffer the more chance of surviving during unforeseen bad times. So selfish becomes greed. Greed is what free enterprise, hailed by Thatcher, Reagan is all about. Now called neoliberalism it celebrats greed as a driver for innovation and success. So companies need to grow rather that be simply sustainable and hence the targets. 

Neoliberalism and the curbing of government intervention, laws and regulation was supposed to allow the most hard working, most innovative and talented to rise to the top. Worked for the banks! Innovative subprime lending (growth targets), manipulating interest rates (profit targets), payment protection selling etc etc.

In reality most innovation comes from constraints and common purpose. The two world wars, the moon mission, driven not by the need to make money, but a shared desire to succeed with limited resources (time, money, people).

Privatising core infrastructure has not reduced taxation it has put more money into the already rich, allowed them to create monopolies or oligopolies. Core infrastructure should be state run for the benefit of the people. At lower cost or with the profits reducing tax. This includes water, energy, telecoms, health and banks.

Neoliberalism and the way business are run is not for the benefit of humanity, but for the benefit of the greedy few.  It has not delivered innovation, but consumerism and waste. In reality those that had the advantages of money, education, health have just got more of it, at the expense of the poor getting poorer.