12/13/2021
Welcome to another episode of FINANCIAL SCIENCE FICTION. Surreal Investment satire in the twilight zone of the business world.
Today’s show is called, “Is Your Cognitive Gas Tank Filled”?
I’m reading my spammy email and Amazon has books for $1.99 and you click on them, and it goes to Amazon where the book is really $10 dollars. I’m thinking THIS is what our Capitalism has become. One giant bait n switch sandwich. It’s not a new technique. It used to be the “result” of business but the digital age has made it the “goal” of business. Remember back in the 70’s when only the Car dealer and the Real Estate agent swindled you? Now it’s all reversed I can trust Online Car dealers and Real Estate Agents.
Over at Amazon, looking at one ironically called, “The 10 Pillars of Wealth: Mind-Sets of the World's Richest People by Alex Becker.” It seems like a smart book with at least one clever quote, “Separate your time from money so that you are constantly getting paid (even in your sleep).” I would say Time is the real keyword there. I have so many books I never read. Give me this book for free and I prolly won’t get around to reading it.
I did what I always do, instead of getting that book I use DuckDuckGo to google the subject and find articles about it. My query was, “taking advantage of customers is the new capitalism.” A great article from Forbes comes up. It talks about famous Ad agency guy Peter Drucker and wisdom from his 1954 book. That lead me to a Harvard Business Review discussion about -Shareholders vs Customers.
The story goes, that Modern capitalism began in 1932 with the radical notion that firms ought to have professional management. That was the first era. The second era was in 1976 it morphed into shareholder value capitalism where the premise of every corporation should be to maximize shareholders’ wealth. But how? At all costs? Anything goes? Machiavellian rules any means to an end?
Warren Buffet said his Rule is always keep your pesky "personal" politics (opinions) out of the portfolio even if they are for the good. The Harvard story says that Shareholders RULE and keep the pesky politics out of the profit equation. Let’s be honest Shareholders rarely even know about where the money is coming from they just want their Stock Retirement Fund to go up. Do they care about ruining the planet, massive pollution, all out CONsumerism? Nobody cares about stock “ethics” or destroying everyone’s health and well being, just get some growth every quarter? On Wall Street it’s always been Grow or Die.
The Harvard article says today is a tragically flawed and time to shift to a third era: “customer-driven capitalism.” Instead of everything revolves around Shareholders this third era is about human beings creating more value for other human beings. Do the trolls call that socialism? Does everything have an imaginative label? If your cognitive cup is all filled up you’ll believe it. Everyone has a different size cognitive cup. Bruce Lee told me “Empty your cup so that it may be filled; become devoid to gain totality.” Bruce got that from Jiddu Krisnamurti and he got it from some Buddha guy and it goes all the way back to Noam Chomsky.
Way back in ancient history, 1959, Noam Chomsky cleverly said all the languages (speech) is just a bunch of inconsistent socio political religious cultural labels stuck onto objects with duct tape by each country or tribe. He said what’s really going on is a “universal grammar” every country and every tribe has that comes from innate standard default human biology. At first glance, this sounds great. We all have this universal grammar so we are all similar inside. But as soon as we speak, those dang “words” come out as Spanish or French, Chinese, Russian and a zillion other languages. Does the ole universal grammar go right back out the window? It sure can because everyone has a different size cognitive cup. A different size cognitive fuel tank you could say. Does size matter? No not really. That’s Bruce Lee’s point, all you have to do is just empty the cup. Alan Watts told me, “Once you get the message hang up the phone.”
The story goes this new third era entails a different model of how the world works. A model as disruptive as the Copernicus Algorithm in astronomy.
2nd track from the live BBC concert broadcast in 1974
