That we live in age of stupidity is probably common knowledge among the people who read my scribblings. How else could you describe a world in which plastic straws are banned but the paper ones are supplied in small disposable plastic sachets? It seems some plastics are bad and others are good. It’s the same many things like EV’s - driver’s believe themselves green but in fact, it took more energy to make the EV than a normal car and the power they consume is often fossil fuel generated so they simply ignore the facts and live in their imaginary world of equally imaginary virtue. In fact, the harder and deeper that you look at the world in the west, the more fake it becomes.
Many people seem to see no issue with these things though. They believe dutifully what the media and politicians tell them even if the evidence to the contrary is right there in plain sight. Strangely enough, for the most part, I was once the same. When young, I too read and consumed the news, voted and so on. But at some point, I started to see the under belly of the beast and in a mixed metaphor - see that Royalty had no clothes on. I often try to figure out when that was? What event was it that got me thinking….
This weekend, as I hiked and dowsed, and spent alone time, it hit me that this happened in my late thirties and early forties when I saw how business really worked. The firm I worked for and was a VP for took in venture capital. I was excited about it and couldn’t wait to experience the brilliance of these VC people. I think it took me several months to realise it was all none sense. These bright young things had a formula and in fact, neither it nor they were that bright. As time went by, I realised it was all a big con and it was simply the money that drove it.
The bright VC people demanded impossible business plans and acted upset when predictably, we failed to meet the targets. They ignored the experts in the business and brought in empty suits who spoke some sort of strange language but seemed to have no brain whatsoever. They talked of EBITDA, PnL and other such terms but their entire role appeared to be to pretend to be wonderfully bright suited individuals while in reality they hid behind closed doors huddled in secretive conversation and never asked any of the existing management team anything much. After a year, the company predictably failed and all that hard work, blood, sweat and tears went down the toilet. The suits? They simply moved on to the next candidate for their ‘genius’ blaming us I’m sure.
This was all reinforced by the work that I did in 2004-2006 in to hedge funds. These secretive geniuses of money making appealed to me too and I was excited to be exposed to them. It wasn’t very long before I realised it too was a massive con. Most of the hedgies I met were doing nothing very special and in fact, seemed to lack any ability to think out of the box - they too followed a formula. There were one or two exceptions - but they were very rare.
At this time, I was hobnobbing with some pretty high-level people. One had worked for Cheney - the then VP of the USA. The relationship though was and remained shallow, devoid of much content save references to EBITDA and PnL. One of them, moved from job to job as CEO or COO mainly wrecking each company in turn with sheer incompetence and yet, the VC men he worked for simply placed him in the next role.
It was these experiences that made me realise the world is largely a sham - fake. The truth is buried under acres of worthless talk, PR and BS. Incompetence largely runs the world and anyone who is competent is deemed a threat and pushed out……
So, I’m unsurprised really that many think its great to ban plastic straws but keep them in plastic packages…. and that is just the tip of the iceberg of stupidity.
This reminds me of Biba‘s story. Biba was a fashion brand from the UK that emerged from one genius woman‘s imagination, a fashion illustrator and designer named Barbara Hulanicki. Some of her concepts were revolutionary both in terms of fashion and store design. Biba went from tiny in-crowd haunt in the late 60s to humongous department store in London in the early 70s. As soon as there was really serious money involved, in came the NPCs in grey suits spouting formulaic nonsense that not only uglified the store, but damaged sales and ultimately wrecked the company. Biba was kaputt thanks to the grey suits who then moved on to their next project. The brand was revived later, without the original designer, and never regained its popularity because it didn’t have any spirit in it, just the name. It’s only fashion, worthless fluff to many, but dig deeper and you see the principle you’ve described: anyone who thinks out of the box (and Hulanicki was immensely creative and innovative, a total misfit) gets crushed by the grey suit brigade that bamboozles with empty words and eventually leaves you with nothing if you‘re unfortunate enough to be subject to their ”expertise“. In her autobiography, Hulanicki stated that if you want to survive in this world, you have to wear a grey suit, too, but make sure the inside is lined with purple silk – they’ll think you’re one of them and only notice you’re not when it’s too late. 😉
Amen to that!