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What MBAs and Financists destroyed so far: - Western Industry. - The blue-collar middle class - The Middle Class - Our health care system - Our education

What MBAs and Financists destroyed so far: - Western Industry. - The blue-collar middle class - The Middle Class - Our health care system - Our education - Western Economic Leadership. - Social Mobility Now they are busy destroying western technology, science and innovation on their never-ending selfish wealth-extraction quest. They convinced us that our homes are investments, so they can fleece us with their usurary schemes. So, what next? our organs? They convinced us to exchange our pensions for the privilege of being the mark on a market where the sharks like them do whatever the fuck they want, from blatant insider trading, to pump and dump schemes, to outright fraud, having for all practical purposes bought the SEC a long time ago. What they will kill next? How long are we going to transfer wealth to those slimmy sweet talking ignorant greedy bean counters? Our daily work is like being in a mad house because almost everything is subordinated to the the most sacred goal of cooking the next quarter numbers to ensure we maximize executive bonuses, and fuck the long run! crazy projects started, spin offs, merges, projects cancelled, company killing layoffs, fuck long term value generation! they want more and more, and more, and they fucking want it right now! the fucking bonus gollums. Everything is fucked in our society but executive compensation. Xerox, HP, IBM, Boeing... How many other proud symbols of our economy and civilization are we going to let them destroy?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
yunohn 2y ago
> So, what next? our organs? I’m almost certain I’ve seen a study that tried to prove opening up the organ trade would help the economy and hinder the black market.
- klyrs 2y ago
  I see your organ trade study and raise you a billion dollar VC to turn kidneys into penis enlargement powder, buying at a rate that prices out the majority of dialysis patients.
  - boppo1 2y ago
    You have a study for this or are you just getting off on imagined scenarios? I agree VC is largely terrible, but being hyperbolic won't help us arrive at a better solution.
tazu 2y ago
[flagged]
- Aldipower 2y ago
  Is this ironic?
  - pc86 2y ago
    The problem is that the Venn diagram of a) people who say things like "Financists" unironically and speak of a cabal of people with "usurary (sic) schemes" designed to bankrupt entire civilizations and b) actual, legitimate anti-Semites looks like a blurry circle unless you're right up against it. It doesn't mean there aren't people in (a) who aren't anti-Semites and who have legitimate grievances. But they're virtually indistinguishable from the people shitposting (or worse let, legitimately posting) on /pol/.
    - ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
      What makes you think that? The rise of private equity is what immediately came to my mind here, religion never crossed it. I am not in favor of what private equity is doing to the country. The reply seems to assert that I am thus a self-hating jew, which was hurtful of them to say about me. If anything, connecting the private equity efforts described in GP, to semitism, is what is anti-semetic. Our private equity overlords hail from many religions and backgrounds, and their creed is greed.
    - sgu999 2y ago
      > The problem is that the Venn diagram of a) people who say things like "Financists" unironically and speak of a cabal of people with "usurary (sic) schemes" designed to bankrupt entire civilizations and b) actual, legitimate anti-Semites looks like a blurry circle unless you're right up against it. > It doesn't mean there aren't people in (a) who aren't anti-Semites and who have legitimate grievances. But they're virtually indistinguishable from the people shitposting (or worse let, legitimately posting) on /pol/. The problem is that the Venn diagram of a) people who collect vintage teaspoons and b) competitive yodelers looks like a blurry circle unless you're right up against it. It doesn't mean there aren't spoon enthusiasts who can't carry a tune, but they're virtually indistinguishable from the alpine warblers at international yodeling championships. I didn't see any reference to judaism in the original post, how you both end up there is just... weird.
micromacrofoot 2y ago
> what next? our organs? already happening, look at the american food industry
BirAdam 2y ago
No one really “let them” destroy things. This is one of the key dangers of majoritarian government. The moment that people can vote for representatives the representatives will be purchased, and later, the votes will purchased. Once this happens, money will be destroyed to allow the purchasing class to rob the wealth of the civilization, and this leads to financialization of economics. This pattern has been repeated over and over again. In the USA, this process started almost immediately after the formation of the country, but it didn’t become truly corrupt until the McKinley campaign. The financialization process started in 1913, saw its first bust boom/bust less than a decade later, and then purposeful inflation began in 1971. The entire economy was financialized by the late 1990s which culminated in 2008. The banks are now so bankrupt that the Fed has begun providing overnight repossessions to member banks…
- snapcaster 2y ago
  If you think 1913 was the first boom/bust in United States financial history you're either trying to push an agenda or just totally ignorant
  - BirAdam 2y ago
    No, that’s just when the economy began financialization.
    - snapcaster 2y ago
      I assume you're saying because of the fed, but wouldn't it be more appropriate to mark JP Morgan's efforts to create monopolies throughout the economy a better start point?
      - BirAdam 2y ago
        Well, this is why I pointed out McKinley and also stated the process did start shortly after the founding. True financialization only after Morgan and his friends met and formed the Fed tho, which was 1913. Once the Fed was in place, they could vastly expand the amount of available credit, bribe and purchase without restraint, and start the type of economy to which we are all now accustomed. Importantly, this pattern is a direct inversion of “capitalism.” In capitalism, the present is leveraged for the future. In “financialism,” the future is leveraged for the present.
rdtsc 2y ago
> So, what next? our organs? Not even kidding. There are villages around where I grew up, a good number of adults have one kidney only. Now if they manage to kidnap and kill a person, now they got two kidneys, a heart, a liver and other stuff.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  >There are villages around where I grew up, a good number of adults have one kidney only. Moldova?
- grugagag 2y ago
  What country are you in?
- gcr 2y ago
  Whoa cool how come?
  - rdtsc 2y ago
    It’s puzzle for us all to figure out.
mhuffman 2y ago
You should know that in business school and after everything you just described would be called "optimized". There is some short discussion about ethics, usually involving not stealing from investors, but otherwise the world is seen as one giant place where people are the same as nuts and bolts or ingredients in a chocolate bar to be optimized. This goes for customers and employees.
- jprete 2y ago
  Optimization is one of the more useful terms for it, but I think a big part of the problem is foundational. It's easier to trade in measurable values than unmeasurable ones, so the trades with something measurable on both sides get prioritized, which subtly increases the demand and market value of measurable values over unmeasurable. So we end up gradually converting our productivity to the measurable outputs because we can more safely trade them. But then unmeasurable values get shafted. The non-fungible values get shafted even harder. For example, it's inherently impossible to trade for true human relationships because the bidirectional flow is where the value comes from and that flow must be built. But that means two people must simultaneously choose to take a mostly unknown level of risk on building a relationship that could fail or even be a net negative. Our relationship drive is pretty strong. The people making AI chatbot friends and SOs, not even to mention dating apps and relationship-commodifiers like Meetup or old Facebook, are doing their best to commodify relationships, though. The sheer level of social toxicity caused by online mass social media has been correspondingly enormous.
mmcconnell1618 2y ago
It wasn't always this way. Milton Friedman introduced the idea in the 1970s that businesses could ignore their workers and communities because if they focused on profit, that would benefit everyone. Shareholder Theory elevates the stockholders above all others and leads to stock buybacks and optimizing for wealth extraction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
- chii 2y ago
  > that would benefit everyone. no, it would benefit the shareholders. The regulations imposed by the gov't (which is meant to be representitive) would reign in the excess externalization. Everyone would benefit from competition, when it does happen.
  - practicemaths 2y ago
    I do not understand the statement "Everyone would benefit from competition". How is that not an oxymoron? Surely those that do not win in a competition are losers. How is that a benefit to them?
    - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
      "Everyone" meaning "everyone as a whole", not absolutely every individual. If there's more than one grocery store, I probably get better prices. (Or, negatively, if there's only one then I probably get worse prices.) And so with every other aspect of the economy.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - practicemaths 2y ago
        So, if competition is supposed to fix other aspects of the economy, why is healthcare disproportionately high compared to other things? There are several hospitals around me. Endless amount of doctor offices. There are several health insurance companies I can choose from. There is competition. Yet, prices are not affordable for most.
WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
> What MBAs and Financists destroyed so far: You can add governance for as long as lobbyists have been writing law. You can add accountability for whenever MBAs and investors come in contact with news orgs.
rmbyrro 2y ago
> So, what next? our organs? Yep, they started with our eye balls. In exchange, we are getting "relevant ads". Also our frontal lobe. In exchange, we get depressive dopamine releases.
electriclove 2y ago
You mention health care and education. Have you considered government’s role in this? https://kottke.org/19/02/cheap-tvs-and-exorbitant-education-modern-america-in-one-chart https://kottke.org/19/02/cheap-tvs-and-exorbitant-education-...
boppo1 2y ago
My undergrad is in finance. IMO the problem is that we don't really teach what wealth is as Adam Smith defined it. A wealthy nation is not the one with the greatest stockpile of gold, but the one with the most quality goods and services easily available to its average citizens (I'm paraphrasing a bit, but you understand). Smith really stresses that profit is a measurement of the good provided to society by an activity. But in my studies, there was no concern for this quality of profit. The attitude was that any way net income (profit) could be increased was strictly to be understood as a net positive for society. I had professors explain that war is profitable because people are employed building tanks etc. and they use their wages to stimulate the economy. When I asked 'what if instead of sending a few million dollars of steel and circuitry to the desert to get exploded, those workers used the same resources on a hospital?' I recieved the answer that if the NPV of the tank is higher than the hospital, it must be the better use of the resources.
- didgeoridoo 2y ago
  You had finance professors who were unfamiliar with Bastiat’s parable of the broken window? Or unable to apply it to the military-industrial complex? Our universities may be in worse shape than I thought.
  - boppo1 2y ago
    >Bastiat’s parable of the broken window Never heard of it. Admittedly it wasn't a highly ranked university. Edit: Having familiarized myself, thank you for the introduction. This is not the first time my education has disappointed me.
- imtringued 2y ago
  War is profitable in capitalism, because the dogma is that capital is productive and must net a positive return. In the underutilized capital scenario, idle capital incurs costs, but no benefits. It must be destroyed. The easiest way to maintain the facade is to send the capital to war. If you acquire new land, congratulations, the "investment" paid off. If it doesn't, then the destruction of capital at least maintains the profitability of domestic capital. War is really that simple. If you had a war for any other reason, everyone involved would see the stupidity after the first few skirmishes.
seoulmetro 2y ago
- Social cohesion and homogeneity and all the draw backs of destroying it. The idea that you should mass import as many people as possible to increase GDP is absolutely one of the worst things that has happened in modern time. If you want to import this many people then it takes a lot of hard work. Singapore is a good example.
financetechbro 2y ago
But think about all the shareholder value they created
- throw0101b 2y ago
  From the Tom Toro The New Yorker comic: * https://www.npr.org/2015/01/25/379787274/howd-a-cartoonist-sell-his-first-drawing-it-only-took-610-tries https://www.npr.org/2015/01/25/379787274/howd-a-cartoonist-s...
jklinger410 2y ago
> They convinced us that our homes are investments, so they can fleece us with their usurary schemes. So, what next? our organs? It's an extortionist scheme. Every additional industry or vertical is not only proof that capitalism continues to provide "value" and move society forward, but it makes more millionaires and inflates our GDP. Currency wants everything to be traded with currency. Healthcare, water, land, sex, breathable air. Also, this ultimately benefits the Fed and other massive financial institutions. If they get together and decide policy, they can do almost whatever they want. Then that small cabal of people can scheme with the government or military to exert control. This is mostly extra-democratic. We'd have to switch out our entire government with un-bribable ethically driven heroes in order to even put a dent in this system. In truth we are playing pretend with democracy. Like a little game for the peasants to play pretend. While economic and military policy is decided outside of that system. Every inch financiers can gain, is another system under the control of economic fascists. And to claim that it is dictated in some way by profit or merit is laughable. It is only dictated by those things when they want it to be. Another game.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

yunohn 2y ago

> So, what next? our organs? I’m almost certain I’ve seen a study that tried to prove opening up the organ trade would help the economy and hinder the black market.

klyrs 2y ago
I see your organ trade study and raise you a billion dollar VC to turn kidneys into penis enlargement powder, buying at a rate that prices out the majority of dialysis patients.
- boppo1 2y ago
  You have a study for this or are you just getting off on imagined scenarios? I agree VC is largely terrible, but being hyperbolic won't help us arrive at a better solution.

tazu 2y ago

[flagged]

Aldipower 2y ago
Is this ironic?
- pc86 2y ago
  The problem is that the Venn diagram of a) people who say things like "Financists" unironically and speak of a cabal of people with "usurary (sic) schemes" designed to bankrupt entire civilizations and b) actual, legitimate anti-Semites looks like a blurry circle unless you're right up against it. It doesn't mean there aren't people in (a) who aren't anti-Semites and who have legitimate grievances. But they're virtually indistinguishable from the people shitposting (or worse let, legitimately posting) on /pol/.
  - ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
    What makes you think that? The rise of private equity is what immediately came to my mind here, religion never crossed it. I am not in favor of what private equity is doing to the country. The reply seems to assert that I am thus a self-hating jew, which was hurtful of them to say about me. If anything, connecting the private equity efforts described in GP, to semitism, is what is anti-semetic. Our private equity overlords hail from many religions and backgrounds, and their creed is greed.
  - sgu999 2y ago
    > The problem is that the Venn diagram of a) people who say things like "Financists" unironically and speak of a cabal of people with "usurary (sic) schemes" designed to bankrupt entire civilizations and b) actual, legitimate anti-Semites looks like a blurry circle unless you're right up against it. > It doesn't mean there aren't people in (a) who aren't anti-Semites and who have legitimate grievances. But they're virtually indistinguishable from the people shitposting (or worse let, legitimately posting) on /pol/. The problem is that the Venn diagram of a) people who collect vintage teaspoons and b) competitive yodelers looks like a blurry circle unless you're right up against it. It doesn't mean there aren't spoon enthusiasts who can't carry a tune, but they're virtually indistinguishable from the alpine warblers at international yodeling championships. I didn't see any reference to judaism in the original post, how you both end up there is just... weird.

micromacrofoot 2y ago

> what next? our organs? already happening, look at the american food industry

BirAdam 2y ago

No one really “let them” destroy things. This is one of the key dangers of majoritarian government. The moment that people can vote for representatives the representatives will be purchased, and later, the votes will purchased. Once this happens, money will be destroyed to allow the purchasing class to rob the wealth of the civilization, and this leads to financialization of economics. This pattern has been repeated over and over again. In the USA, this process started almost immediately after the formation of the country, but it didn’t become truly corrupt until the McKinley campaign. The financialization process started in 1913, saw its first bust boom/bust less than a decade later, and then purposeful inflation began in 1971. The entire economy was financialized by the late 1990s which culminated in 2008. The banks are now so bankrupt that the Fed has begun providing overnight repossessions to member banks…

snapcaster 2y ago
If you think 1913 was the first boom/bust in United States financial history you're either trying to push an agenda or just totally ignorant
- BirAdam 2y ago
  No, that’s just when the economy began financialization.
  - snapcaster 2y ago
    I assume you're saying because of the fed, but wouldn't it be more appropriate to mark JP Morgan's efforts to create monopolies throughout the economy a better start point?
    - BirAdam 2y ago
      Well, this is why I pointed out McKinley and also stated the process did start shortly after the founding. True financialization only after Morgan and his friends met and formed the Fed tho, which was 1913. Once the Fed was in place, they could vastly expand the amount of available credit, bribe and purchase without restraint, and start the type of economy to which we are all now accustomed. Importantly, this pattern is a direct inversion of “capitalism.” In capitalism, the present is leveraged for the future. In “financialism,” the future is leveraged for the present.

rdtsc 2y ago

> So, what next? our organs? Not even kidding. There are villages around where I grew up, a good number of adults have one kidney only. Now if they manage to kidnap and kill a person, now they got two kidneys, a heart, a liver and other stuff.

Rinzler89 2y ago
>There are villages around where I grew up, a good number of adults have one kidney only. Moldova?
grugagag 2y ago
What country are you in?
gcr 2y ago
Whoa cool how come?
- rdtsc 2y ago
  It’s puzzle for us all to figure out.

mhuffman 2y ago

You should know that in business school and after everything you just described would be called "optimized". There is some short discussion about ethics, usually involving not stealing from investors, but otherwise the world is seen as one giant place where people are the same as nuts and bolts or ingredients in a chocolate bar to be optimized. This goes for customers and employees.

jprete 2y ago
Optimization is one of the more useful terms for it, but I think a big part of the problem is foundational. It's easier to trade in measurable values than unmeasurable ones, so the trades with something measurable on both sides get prioritized, which subtly increases the demand and market value of measurable values over unmeasurable. So we end up gradually converting our productivity to the measurable outputs because we can more safely trade them. But then unmeasurable values get shafted. The non-fungible values get shafted even harder. For example, it's inherently impossible to trade for true human relationships because the bidirectional flow is where the value comes from and that flow must be built. But that means two people must simultaneously choose to take a mostly unknown level of risk on building a relationship that could fail or even be a net negative. Our relationship drive is pretty strong. The people making AI chatbot friends and SOs, not even to mention dating apps and relationship-commodifiers like Meetup or old Facebook, are doing their best to commodify relationships, though. The sheer level of social toxicity caused by online mass social media has been correspondingly enormous.

mmcconnell1618 2y ago

It wasn't always this way. Milton Friedman introduced the idea in the 1970s that businesses could ignore their workers and communities because if they focused on profit, that would benefit everyone. Shareholder Theory elevates the stockholders above all others and leads to stock buybacks and optimizing for wealth extraction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine

chii 2y ago
> that would benefit everyone. no, it would benefit the shareholders. The regulations imposed by the gov't (which is meant to be representitive) would reign in the excess externalization. Everyone would benefit from competition, when it does happen.
- practicemaths 2y ago
  I do not understand the statement "Everyone would benefit from competition". How is that not an oxymoron? Surely those that do not win in a competition are losers. How is that a benefit to them?
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    "Everyone" meaning "everyone as a whole", not absolutely every individual. If there's more than one grocery store, I probably get better prices. (Or, negatively, if there's only one then I probably get worse prices.) And so with every other aspect of the economy.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - practicemaths 2y ago
      So, if competition is supposed to fix other aspects of the economy, why is healthcare disproportionately high compared to other things? There are several hospitals around me. Endless amount of doctor offices. There are several health insurance companies I can choose from. There is competition. Yet, prices are not affordable for most.

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago

> What MBAs and Financists destroyed so far: You can add governance for as long as lobbyists have been writing law. You can add accountability for whenever MBAs and investors come in contact with news orgs.

rmbyrro 2y ago

> So, what next? our organs? Yep, they started with our eye balls. In exchange, we are getting "relevant ads". Also our frontal lobe. In exchange, we get depressive dopamine releases.

electriclove 2y ago

You mention health care and education. Have you considered government’s role in this? https://kottke.org/19/02/cheap-tvs-and-exorbitant-education-modern-america-in-one-chart https://kottke.org/19/02/cheap-tvs-and-exorbitant-education-...

boppo1 2y ago

My undergrad is in finance. IMO the problem is that we don't really teach what wealth is as Adam Smith defined it. A wealthy nation is not the one with the greatest stockpile of gold, but the one with the most quality goods and services easily available to its average citizens (I'm paraphrasing a bit, but you understand). Smith really stresses that profit is a measurement of the good provided to society by an activity. But in my studies, there was no concern for this quality of profit. The attitude was that any way net income (profit) could be increased was strictly to be understood as a net positive for society. I had professors explain that war is profitable because people are employed building tanks etc. and they use their wages to stimulate the economy. When I asked 'what if instead of sending a few million dollars of steel and circuitry to the desert to get exploded, those workers used the same resources on a hospital?' I recieved the answer that if the NPV of the tank is higher than the hospital, it must be the better use of the resources.

didgeoridoo 2y ago
You had finance professors who were unfamiliar with Bastiat’s parable of the broken window? Or unable to apply it to the military-industrial complex? Our universities may be in worse shape than I thought.
- boppo1 2y ago
  >Bastiat’s parable of the broken window Never heard of it. Admittedly it wasn't a highly ranked university. Edit: Having familiarized myself, thank you for the introduction. This is not the first time my education has disappointed me.
imtringued 2y ago
War is profitable in capitalism, because the dogma is that capital is productive and must net a positive return. In the underutilized capital scenario, idle capital incurs costs, but no benefits. It must be destroyed. The easiest way to maintain the facade is to send the capital to war. If you acquire new land, congratulations, the "investment" paid off. If it doesn't, then the destruction of capital at least maintains the profitability of domestic capital. War is really that simple. If you had a war for any other reason, everyone involved would see the stupidity after the first few skirmishes.

seoulmetro 2y ago

- Social cohesion and homogeneity and all the draw backs of destroying it. The idea that you should mass import as many people as possible to increase GDP is absolutely one of the worst things that has happened in modern time. If you want to import this many people then it takes a lot of hard work. Singapore is a good example.

financetechbro 2y ago

But think about all the shareholder value they created

throw0101b 2y ago
From the Tom Toro The New Yorker comic: * https://www.npr.org/2015/01/25/379787274/howd-a-cartoonist-sell-his-first-drawing-it-only-took-610-tries https://www.npr.org/2015/01/25/379787274/howd-a-cartoonist-s...

jklinger410 2y ago

> They convinced us that our homes are investments, so they can fleece us with their usurary schemes. So, what next? our organs? It's an extortionist scheme. Every additional industry or vertical is not only proof that capitalism continues to provide "value" and move society forward, but it makes more millionaires and inflates our GDP. Currency wants everything to be traded with currency. Healthcare, water, land, sex, breathable air. Also, this ultimately benefits the Fed and other massive financial institutions. If they get together and decide policy, they can do almost whatever they want. Then that small cabal of people can scheme with the government or military to exert control. This is mostly extra-democratic. We'd have to switch out our entire government with un-bribable ethically driven heroes in order to even put a dent in this system. In truth we are playing pretend with democracy. Like a little game for the peasants to play pretend. While economic and military policy is decided outside of that system. Every inch financiers can gain, is another system under the control of economic fascists. And to claim that it is dictated in some way by profit or merit is laughable. It is only dictated by those things when they want it to be. Another game.