A while back, a gentleman named Jonathan Swift made a modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country and for making them beneficial to the public. His proposal was simply to eat these indigents and thus recycle the mass that has been unwisely entrusted into their care for the good of society. Granted, this was back in the early 1700's and perhaps society could be forgiven for wielding such a crude bludgeon on the eternal problem of those who simply can't seem to get with it and make something of themselves like the rest of us are able to do. After all, we have come a long, long way in the 300 years that have passed since then.
In the 21st century, we have figured out far more humane and efficient mechanisms for extracting value from those who would otherwise be considered valueless drains on society as a whole: We leverage their worthless mortgages to create wealth for the deserving of our society on a scale that would make Croesus green with envy.
For the last 20 or so years, I've been watching my friends and acquaintances in the financial service industry accumulate bonuses and income that defied imagination. Pretty much all the best of the best were eventually sucked up into the industry and quickly earned sums that made my eyes bleed when they indicated the order of magnitude that they were making in salary and bonuses. And mind you, these were just software jockeys. Sure, they were brilliant. Sure, they were really damn good at what they were doing. But the blokes they were working for were the ones making the real money.
Money, pointing out the obvious, which was all just a figment of everyone's imagination.
It boggles my mind to think about it, but what these jokers were doing was simply leveraging people who couldn't really afford to buy a house through some obscure mathematical function which transformed them from huge liabilities waiting to explode into gold lined yachts and extremely fast cars filled with babes that defied evolutionary norms. All the while, these jokers were laughing at the very people they were squeezing like the proverbial turnip, manufacturing the blood in lieu of the reality of no there "there".
And even after the curtain has been pulled back and the wizards of Wall Street have been revealed to be nothing more than common pond scum, they still have the gall to blame all their troubles on those they convinced to sign their lives away to line their pockets. Granted, those poor should never have gotten themselves into the Faustian bargain these jokers were peddling, but I really have a lot more sympathy for the mark than I do for the swindler who knows damn well the mark can't afford what they're peddling. I mean, after all, anyone who has perfect knowledge and is somehow immune from scams raise their hands - we're all looking for an easy way to our dreams and we all make the perfect mark for these sharks.
But it really didn't stop at the sharks. The beauty of the whole scheme is the sheer amount of wealth it generated for anyone who was able to parasitically attach themselves to the poor schmucks. Because, when you think about it, a large part of what we in the valley tend to call "VC" money had its root in the same tainted flow. Which, in retrospect, shouldn't have been surprising because - lets face it - pretty much the entire "Web 2.0" experience has been nothing but a con game of equally gigantic proportions. When your money is ultimately being minted from the dreams and soul stuff of the unsuspecting, what's the problem with pissing almost all of it away in social media start ups which don't have a clue as to how the fuck they're going to make money other than "sell ads".
And I guess "selling ads" is pretty much what we should be putting on the tombstone of this whole decade of crap that we're desperately trying to flush down the toilet. I mean, the whole thing was largely a charade - a Tiffin phantasm woven into a fleeting semblance of reality by those who reckoned themselves half again as smart as they actually were.
Jonathan Swift would have been struck silent in stunned awe at the sheer audacity of the whole scheme. After all, he just suggested we eat the poor. Thanks to MIT graduates, we leveraged their very souls into wealth that boggled the mind.
In the 21st century, we have figured out far more humane and efficient mechanisms for extracting value from those who would otherwise be considered valueless drains on society as a whole: We leverage their worthless mortgages to create wealth for the deserving of our society on a scale that would make Croesus green with envy.
For the last 20 or so years, I've been watching my friends and acquaintances in the financial service industry accumulate bonuses and income that defied imagination. Pretty much all the best of the best were eventually sucked up into the industry and quickly earned sums that made my eyes bleed when they indicated the order of magnitude that they were making in salary and bonuses. And mind you, these were just software jockeys. Sure, they were brilliant. Sure, they were really damn good at what they were doing. But the blokes they were working for were the ones making the real money.
Money, pointing out the obvious, which was all just a figment of everyone's imagination.
It boggles my mind to think about it, but what these jokers were doing was simply leveraging people who couldn't really afford to buy a house through some obscure mathematical function which transformed them from huge liabilities waiting to explode into gold lined yachts and extremely fast cars filled with babes that defied evolutionary norms. All the while, these jokers were laughing at the very people they were squeezing like the proverbial turnip, manufacturing the blood in lieu of the reality of no there "there".
And even after the curtain has been pulled back and the wizards of Wall Street have been revealed to be nothing more than common pond scum, they still have the gall to blame all their troubles on those they convinced to sign their lives away to line their pockets. Granted, those poor should never have gotten themselves into the Faustian bargain these jokers were peddling, but I really have a lot more sympathy for the mark than I do for the swindler who knows damn well the mark can't afford what they're peddling. I mean, after all, anyone who has perfect knowledge and is somehow immune from scams raise their hands - we're all looking for an easy way to our dreams and we all make the perfect mark for these sharks.
But it really didn't stop at the sharks. The beauty of the whole scheme is the sheer amount of wealth it generated for anyone who was able to parasitically attach themselves to the poor schmucks. Because, when you think about it, a large part of what we in the valley tend to call "VC" money had its root in the same tainted flow. Which, in retrospect, shouldn't have been surprising because - lets face it - pretty much the entire "Web 2.0" experience has been nothing but a con game of equally gigantic proportions. When your money is ultimately being minted from the dreams and soul stuff of the unsuspecting, what's the problem with pissing almost all of it away in social media start ups which don't have a clue as to how the fuck they're going to make money other than "sell ads".
And I guess "selling ads" is pretty much what we should be putting on the tombstone of this whole decade of crap that we're desperately trying to flush down the toilet. I mean, the whole thing was largely a charade - a Tiffin phantasm woven into a fleeting semblance of reality by those who reckoned themselves half again as smart as they actually were.
Jonathan Swift would have been struck silent in stunned awe at the sheer audacity of the whole scheme. After all, he just suggested we eat the poor. Thanks to MIT graduates, we leveraged their very souls into wealth that boggled the mind.
A while ago, Robert Reich had a blog post up regarding the upcoming (now hopefully in progress) swing from liaise faire capitalism - where things have been for the last 30 years or so - 
I must be well into my fourth day of sensory deprivation because I've seemingly passed the hallucination stage, blew right past the psychotic stage of the second day and have been transported a place where newspaper taxis appear on the shore, waiting to take me away.
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