Avsnitt
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Housekeeping: We take a minute at the start to talk about a new segment we are introducing, tentatively called “The Mindset Segment.” We are taking suggestions for a better name.
In the News: Only one topic this time: The Pandora Papers. A massive leak of private financial records revealed that the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people siphon wealth into black holes of secret offshore accounts, and most of it is perfectly legal. We already knew this, but I guess we know it even more now? We also talk a little bit about how both tax evasion and financial records leaks have changed as a result of The Computer Age.
Billionaire #1: Jay-Z 1/10 on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index
As Joe points out, it would be extremely unusual if you, the person reading this, did not already know who Jay-Z is so I’ll skip the bio. Joe soft launches the mindset segment with an exploration of the key concept of Jay-Z’s career and outlook: Hustling. We talk a bit about the history of the concept of hustling, from the con artist to Black hustling to “hustle and grind” people. In the end, though he was at one time a crack dealer, it doesn’t seem like Jay-Z has done a tremendous amount of harm compared to most of the people we talk about, so he only got a measly 1.
Billionaire #2: John Catsimitidis: 6/10 on the DKMALI
John “Cats” Catsimitidis made his fortune with a chain of Manhattan supermarkets called Gristedes. He is a mean, paranoid man who uses his great wealth to spread hatred and fear of the powerless and vulnerable. Lucky for us, he’s incredibly ineffective. He’s very involved in New York Republican politics, as are his children. If you want to get a sense of who he is, just imagine a guy who believes all the same things as Rudy Giuliani but is less articulate in expressing those ideas.
Links:
https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/global-investigation-tax-havens-offshore/?utm_source=pocket_mylist
Jay-Z:
Subway lady:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lydYYyD9c_A
Dyson bio:
https://www.amazon.com/JAY-Z-America-Michael-Eric-Dyson/dp/1250230969
Catsimitidis:
Unanue Humanitarian Award: https://www.amny.com/news/goya-foods-president-robert-unanue-receives-humanitarian-awards/?utm_source=pocket_mylist
Cats family takes over NYC GOP: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/17/nyregion/giuliani-republican-party-nyc.html?utm_source=pocket_mylist
Story on Cats’ Daughter: https://guestofaguest.com/new-york/nyc-society/the-tackiest-heiress-in-new-york-is-also-the-face-of-the-manhattan-republican-party?utm_source=pocket_mylist
Editorial by Cats and Bernie Marcus: https://www.wsj.com/articles/making-money-is-a-patriotic-act-11565737046?utm_source=pocket_mylist -
We’re adopting a new episode naming strategy. We’re doing descriptive titles. Complaints will be stored in the cylindrical file!
In the News: We discuss the recent outer space adventures of three people so impossibly wealthy that they each had vanity fleets of rocket ships built for them, seemingly to reaffirm their unshakeable sense that they were each earth’s main protagonist.
Billionaire #1: Steven A. Cohen 8/10 on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index
Welcome to Flavortown! Steven A. Cohen is probably best known for owning the Mets, but a few years ago his firm SAC Capital Advisors was caught up in the biggest insider trading investigation in history. Hedge funds are machines designed to widen the wealth gap between the richest micron of elites and everybody else. They are also often criminal enterprises—organized ways to cheat the markets without getting caught. Steven A. Cohen was the all-time biggest cheat, but he never really suffered any consequences and now he just buys the world’s most expensive artworks and sports teams. He also reportedly paid Guy Fieri $100,000 to recreate an episode of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives with him.
Billionaire #2: David Hindawi 2/10 on the DKMALI
David Hindawi is a ghost man who started a cybersecurity firm. His son seems like a very uncool boss. Joe takes us on a journey through cybersecurity, John McAfee, information infrastructure, risk society, Batman, and anxiety. I think the takeaway was that there are specific anxieties and fantasies associated with the information infrastructure we’ve erected around ourselves. We are all over the place here, but I think it was a fun conversation.
Links:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25814289-dark-territory
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-13/tanium-s-family-empire-is-in-crisis
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g580328-d573907-Reviews-Daurada_Park-Cambrils_Baix_Camp_Costa_Dorada_Province_of_Tarragona_Catalonia.html
https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2012/03/05/Insider-Trading-How-Hedge-Funds-Look-for-an-Edge
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/empire-edge
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/16/when-the-feds-went-after-the-hedge-fund-legend-steven-a-cohen
https://www.nickiswift.com/15287/shady-side-guy-fieri/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physical_Impossibility_of_Death_in_the_Mind_of_Someone_Living -
Saknas det avsnitt?
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Billionaire #1: Bruce Karsh: 3/10 on the DKMALI
Joe introduces us to Bruce Karsh, a vulture investor. Vulture investors buy distressed securities from failing companies or people, and then use legal and financial advantages to increase the value of that debt. We have a long discussion about an academic article that argues vulture investing is ethical. Seems weird that someone would have to do that. In our opinion, it’s generally not a good sign when you have to develop byzantine philosophical arguments to convince people that the thing you’re doing to make money isn’t as extremely unethical as it seems. While Karsh made his money in a pretty awful way, he otherwise hasn’t done much that we could find, so he only gets a 3 on our rating scale.
Billionaire #2: Bernie Marcus: 8/10 on the DKMALI
Bernie Marcus was one of the founders of Home Depot. Chad doesn’t say too much about Home Depot itself. Instead, he focuses on other dimensions of Marcus’ life, including his self-mythologization, his political and philosophical views, and his propaganda outfit the Job Creators Network. Although Marcus has made a big name for himself in the philanthropy game, he has done even more work to lobby against social programs that might actually help with the causes to which he donates money. Marcus is a true ideologue, a free-market fundamentalist to the core.
Links:
Vulture Investors article:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1005718715162
Job Creators Network sampler:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03bmtmDvoA0
https://youtu.be/13CJO7BVEYk
David and Rick Berman
https://www.brooklynvegan.com/silver-jews-end/
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/us/politics/pr-executives-western-energy-alliance-speech-taped.html?_r=1
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/03/rick-berman-job-creators-network/ -
Zero Sum Empire's hosts have had a busy year that included two new babies and entirely relearning our day jobs because of the pandemic, and that's made us a little slow putting episodes out. Sorry everybody! Thank you for sticking around. We are mentally, physically, and emotionally recommitting to our once-per-month release schedule.
This week in the news we mostly discuss the Amazon unionization drive in Bessemer, AL. We also talk about a rash of billionaires dying in helicopter crashes. If you're a billionaire, your chances of dying in a helicopter crash are around 1/500.
Billionaire #1: The Bass Brothers, 6/10 on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index
All of the billionaires in today's episode happen to be Texans. Lots of big, beefy boys in the bunch. The Bass brothers inherited their fortune from their uncle Sid Richardson, one of the big mid-20th century Texas oilmen. We spend most of our time talking about Richardson and his partner Clint Murchison. Although most people have probably never heard of these guys, they had every president from FDR to Nixon doing personal favors for them. They were two of the five richest people in the US for a time. They funded LBJ's political career and had bunga bunga parties with J. Edgar Hoover and Joseph McCarthy. Also, they made their fortunes by running criminal enterprises that used political influence to avoid having to obey laws.
Billionaire #2: Janice McNair (and son), 7/10 on the DKMALI
Janice McNair owns the Houston Texans NFL team. She also has a large adult son, Cal, who has been compared to Billy Madison. For some reason, he runs the team. He also hired an evangelical life coach named Jack Easterby as Executive Vice President of Football Operations. Easterby is a wild character who seems to have fallen fully formed from Danny McBride's brain. Janice and Cal McNair are trying to "be better" after husband/dad Bob McNair got in trouble for making racist comments.
Links:
Bass Bros:
https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2011/jan/05/cover-oil-politics-la-jolla/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Rich
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1995/06/24/the-bass-dispute-at-yale/03c68321-5857-4fdf-a4f5-223973a645fb/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161030/Hyatt-Bass-adds-security-Manhattan-home-mother-Anne-held-hostage-Connecticut.html
McNairs:
https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/12/10/ex-chaplain-jack-easterby-houston-texans-chaos-after-power-struggle-daily-cover
https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/04/05/texans-bob-mcnair-inmates-comment -
Billionaires in the News: Zero Sum Empire goes international. There were two strange international billionaire stories we wanted to talk about: the death of the world’s richest banker, Joseph Safra, and the deadly poisoning of Chinese billionaire Lin Qi. Our last story is about the Corporate Transparency Act that was just passed as part of the defense spending bill. Surprise! It will do very little to mandate corporate transparency for the corporations and LLCs run by the rich and powerful.
Billionaire #1: The Ziff Brothers, 3.5/10 on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index (DKMALI)
Joe introduces us to the Ziff brothers. The brothers inherited their wealth from their magazine publishing magnate father. Instead of continuing in the publishing business, they decided to create an investment firm. The brothers gave Joe the opportunity to investigate family offices a little more, as he promised last episode. The rise in popularity of family offices should be linked to the increasingly oligarchic control of the planet. It’s a consolidation strategy that provides greater cover from scrutiny for the super-rich. Do you remember that the Ziff family was embroiled in the infamous Manafort/Kushner Trump Tower meeting with Russian lobbyist Natalya Veselnitskaya? I didn’t! Joe also goes over some of Dirk Ziff’s (that’s his real name) other assets, which you’ll want to stick around to hear about.
Billionaire #2: Scott Cook, 5/10 on the DKMALI
Scott Cook is a boring man. He started the software firm Intuit, and if you’ve ever used TurboTax, then you’re familiar with at least one of the company’s products. Chad discusses a story some of you may have heard about from last year involving Turbotax, which involves a controversy that’s a little too complicated to explain in the show notes. However, please heed this Public Service Message: you can almost certainly use TurboTax for free and you should. Chad then discusses how the practice of double-entry bookkeeping (which is what Intuit’s bread-and-butter product Quickbooks does) is the notation system that makes modern capitalism as we know it possible. Double-entry bookkeeping is a necessary precondition for any capitalist system that extends beyond limited, local boundaries. P.S., in case you didn’t recognize it, the final clip is from The Grapes of Wrath.
As always, thanks for listening! Tell you friends. Leave a review.
Links:
Ziff Bros:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/memo-undermines-russian-lawyers-account-of-trump-tower-meeting
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/20/how-bill-browder-became-russias-most-wanted-man
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.economist.com/leaders/2018/12/15/how-the-0001-invest
https://beachgrit.com/2020/06/breaking-dirk-ziff-owner-of-world-surf-league-also-co-owner-of-plantation-that-once-housed-500-slaves-but-is-now-americas-most-expensive-and-snootiest-private-clubs/
Scott Cook:
https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-just-tricked-you-into-paying-to-file-your-taxes
https://darkpatterns.org/
Accounting for Rationality: Double-Entry Bookkeeping and the Rhetoric of Economic Rationality: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2781637?seq=1 (if you don’t have JSOTR and want this, I’ll send you a copy) -
Billionaires in the News: American Billionaires as a group surpass $1 Trillion in increased wealth during the pandemic. Elon Musk gets COVID, launches manned spacecraft, and makes a fool of himself on Twitter again. Sheldon Solow, New York real estate billionaire and “art collector,” has died.
Billionaire #1: Safra Catz, 9/10 on the DKMALI (19:55)
Safra Catz is the current co-CEO or Oracle. Oracle makes enterprise software and database projects, and was instrumental in building the communication infrastructure necessary for the rise of the US government surveillance apparatuses (I think I said CIA when I meant to say NSA a couple times). She has been helping steer the Oracle project for decades. She loves Trump and thinks he’s smart. She’s good pals with Sheldon Adelson. Much like Adelson, it appears she is an Israeli nationalist. You go, #girlboss!
Billionaire #2: Familia Santo Domingo, 4/10 on the DKMALI (47:20)
The Santo Domingo family’s fortune is rooted in the beer business, although it has become a sprawling cosmopolitan network of investments. This is a different kind of billionaire family than we’re used to. This is the sort of family that seems like it would feel more at home in the 1920s than the 2020s, because everyone is described as a “socialite” and half of them are European royalty. Downright Hapsburgian. Joe tells us a lot about how the beer industry is controlled by a duopoly, and why that’s the reason you can’t get that great microbrew you tried on vacation.
Links:
Solow Foundation: http://www.solowfoundation.org/hours-of-operation/
CIA Project Oracle: https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/larry-ellisons-oracle-started-as-a-cia-project-1636592238
Larry Ellison, NSA supplier: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/guy-who-provides-nsa-databases-loves-nsa-surveillance/312223/
Ellison NYT editorial: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/31/opinion/IHT-a-single-national-security-database.html
Catz at Israeli ambassador’s house: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yiMYts63kU
Leigh Stein on #girlbossing: https://gen.medium.com/the-end-of-the-girlboss-is-nigh-4591dec34ed8
Oracle's Social Enabled Policing brochure: http://www.oracle.com/us/industries/public-sector/social-enabled-policing-wp-2541916.pdf
Beer duopoly: https://slate.com/business/2020/07/break-up-big-beer.html -
Billionaires in the News: Trump has COVID. We have been imprisoned for 6 months by a reactionary minority political faction in the United States. I’m losing my grip on reality. The pharma billionaire Sackler family may get off and get to keep their money. More Americans died of opiate overdoses since 1999 than died in all of WWII.
Billionaire #1: Robert Rowling, 7/10 on the DKMALI (10:00)
Joe introduces us to Robert Rowling, owner of TRT Holding Co., who owns (among other things), Gold’s Gym. Heir to an oil and gas fortune. Rowling is a big-time donor to Karl Rove’s ghoulish super PAC American Crossroads (coincidentally, so is this week’s Billionaire #2). American Crossroads was very well funded, but ultimately not that good at promoting winning candidates.
Billionaire #2: B. Wayne Hughes, 8/10 on the DKMALI (31:45)
B. Wayne Hughes got rich in self-storage. He also owns American Homes 4 Rent. We talk a little about self-storage, late capitalism, and desire. We get an intimate glimpse of Joe’s childhood in the middle of a bit on Herbert Marcuse. I think we come up with a solid theory about how self storage fits into the moral universe of American hyperconsumerism. Hughes also has a decades-long friendship with O.J. Simpson and was closely involved in the trial and its aftermath.
Links!
Rowling:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/rove-rides-again-193291/
Hughes:
Great bio of Hughes: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-09-05/usc-secret-donor-billionaire-wayne-hughes
American Homes 4 Rent exposé: https://www.cbs46.com/investigations/complaints-soar-against-american-homes-4-rent/article_23cf78a8-eefd-11e9-abea-5ff0decbb1c5.html
Jon Ronson interview: https://www.gq.com/story/amber-waves-of-green-jon-ronson-gq-july-2012 -
Billionaires in the News: We start with Elon Musk’s dumb online behavior and decide we’re never going to talk about his tweets again. A little about Trump and Gislaine Maxwell. The Lincoln Project and the end of history.
Billionaire #1: (22:15) Mark Zuckerberg 10/10!!! on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index (DKMALI)
We only discuss what Zuck has been doing during Coronavirus, which is mainly pretending to surf, making the pandemic worse, and trying to colonize Hawaii.
Billionaire #2: (59:25) Randa Duncan Williams 5/10 on the DKMALI
Randa is one of four siblings who are pretty anonymous. They all inherited their money from their father, who was an extractive industries billionaire. The thing that they are collectively known for is that they were the first people in modern history to not pay any estate tax when their father died. Joe explains why. We then get into the estate tax, why it exists, and why so many people hate it.
Some info on the estate tax if you want to know more:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/545633/
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-many-people-pay-estate-tax
https://www.businessinsider.com/death-tax-or-estate-tax-2017-10
https://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2016/03/31/face-it-americans-just-dont-like-the-estate-tax/#21e2ba8522bd
Zuckerberg and Hawaiian colonization:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/23/mark-zuckerberg-hawaii-land-lawsuits-kauai-estate
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/23/mark-zuckerberg-hawaii-land-lawsuits-kauai-estate
https://himonarchy.weebly.com/the-great-mahele.html
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/stop-mark-zuckerberg-colonizing-kauai
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/17/mark-zuckerberg-hawaii-estate-kauai-land-rights-dispute -
I checked Twitter while I was writing these show notes and noticed that today—the very day we are releasing an episode about two billionaire NFL owners—the Washington Reds***s have announced that they are “conducting a study” that will likely end up with them changing the team name. Almost simultaneously, the NFL announced that it would play Life Every Voice and Sing (also known as the Black national anthem) prior to week #1 games, resulting in a bunch of reactionary psychos getting #BoycottNFL trending on Twitter. Unfortunately, we recorded this episode a couple days ago, so none of that made it into the episode.
In the News (5:40)
We only discuss one news item this time, which is a summary of how billionaires have fared during the pandemic. Turns out, they’ve done quite well. In fact, in 2020, the average billionaire added 20% to their wealth so far. Meanwhile, the other 99% of us have collectively lost $5.6 trillion in wealth. Consequently, we should understand the pandemic crisis for what it is: a massive wealth transfer to those who need it the least.
Billionaire #1 (16:00): Denise Debartolo York (5/10 on the DKMALI)
Chad researched Denise Debartolo York, heiress to the Debartolo real estate fortune that was built by Edward Debartolo, Sr. She is most well known for being owner of the San Francisco 49ers, although she took it over only after the former owner, her brother Eddie, was found guilty of bribing a Louisiana governor $400,000 to get a riverboat casino license. The Debartolo family has long-standing involvement with the Youngstown mafia. If you are unfamiliar with Youngstown, OH (aka Crimetown, USA) and its history, we think you’ll find this entertaining. We also recommend checking out the readings below, because we barely scratch the surface of the extremely bizarre mafia history of Youngstown.
Billionaire #2 (46:50): Jeffrey Lurie (4/10 on the DKMALI)
Joe’s billionaire is owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, and he is, as Joe describes him, “a mostly uninteresting person.” Given his uninterestingness, which is a problem we often run into on Zero Sum Empire, Joe decided to look into the history of football as a sport. He introduces us to Walter Camp, the “Father of American Football,” who not only invented football in the 19th c., but also wrote a bunch of books like “Keeping Fit All the Way” that extol the virtues of things like “purity,” and “cleanliness,” and other normal stuff that doesn’t raise any red flags whatsoever. I think we arrive at the conclusion that the NFL is an organized crime syndicate whose product is violence and whose cost of doing business is the regular production of dead bodies.
Links:
I had a whole segment about Jim Traficant planned that didn’t make it into the show. This story from The New Republic does a nice job of summarizing his career and the general vibe of Youngstown.
https://newrepublic.com/article/68973/crimetown-usa
How Eddie DeBartolo got caught in a scandal that cost him the 49ers:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/02/18/how-eddie-debartolo-got-caught-in-a-scandal-that-cost-him-the-49ers/
Short film on Youngstown mafia:
https://youtu.be/lnjx9oCa5KI
https://gangsterreport.com/the-san-francisco-49ers-the-mob-super-bowl-teams-ownership-group-has-alleged-dark-history/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/19/sports/football/nfl-100-violence-american-culture.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/05/29/teddy-roosevelt-helped-save-football-with-a-white-house-meeting-in-1905/
https://books.google.com/books?id=KFDCUPCIU7kC&pg=PA98-IA10&lpg=PA98-IA10&dq=cincinnati+commercial+tribune+grim+reaper+football&source=bl&ots=mT6p5fGXfk&sig=_TaCFvOpOVB9ZQw4eTyAaDxBLfw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=RpuGU-zbLZSksQTi2IHAAg#v=onepage&q=cincinnati%20commercial%20tribune%20grim%20reaper%20football&f=false -
We are back with a new episode after an extended break. We talk about why we were gone in the episode. I think we forgot to mention that we are also returning to our regular schedule of releasing episodes. I missed doing this! It was a lot of fun to record again.
In the News (6:00): We wanted to keep things light and talk about a non-virus story. So, we introduce you to a series of videos in which Diddy interviews billionaire CEO of Bridgewater Investments Ray Dalio. Ray is one of our more frequently-mentioned billionaires. He’s trying to turn himself into the premier entrepreneurial guru, like the Maharishi of extracting surplus value. Diddy “hired” Dalio as his personal business mentor and then agreed to shoot an infomercial for Dalio’s book Principles. Here’s the video:
Part 1: https://youtu.be/SCCfk2a2O5o
Part 2: https://youtu.be/s8jwBezj6zg
Billionaire #1 (15:50): Mort Zuckerman, 4/10 on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index
Zuckerman is a real estate billionaire who got into publishing (which is the exact same life path as billionaire #2 today). He’s most well-known for owning U.S. News and World Report. You may have seen it in a dentist’s office, but I’m not sure the magazine exists anywhere else out in the wild these days. We spend most of the time talking about ranking systems and the ways they tend to reinforce preexisting power dynamics.
Billionaire #2 (46:50): Leonard Stern, 5/10 on the DKMALI
Stern is also a real estate billionaire who went into publishing, although he got his start-up capital from Hartz Pet Supplies, the company his father started. Leonard Stern has been part of the Les Wexner party set since the 80s, but please do not construe the facts we state about his life as an accusation of wrongdoing. Make sure to stick around for the story about his son Eddie at the end for another moment in the history of system-wide American financial crimes. -
Welcome back everyone. This episode ended up orbiting around the idea of being suspended in a universe beyond time and causality. It’ll make sense in context. The podcast is on a monthly schedule now, in case you’ve been wondering where this episode is. Life events have conspired to prevent us from doing more than that, at least for now.
In the news this week: Michael Bloomberg, Michael Milken, and the return of the return of the son of the Business Roundtable.
(20:45) Our first billionaire is Steve Wynn, a Vegas mogul, alleged sex pest, and former finance chair of the RNC. Somehow we end up talking about the ideological function of gambling, seduction, and the end of the world.
8/10 on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index
(45:45) Second billionaire: Travis Kalanick. The Uber guy. Chad tries to feel his way into the Kalanick mindset by reading through his Principles of Work. We come to the conclusion that all of the magazine profiles that called Kalanick a douchebag were pretty on the money in their assessment of his character.
7/10 on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index
What a weird episode—two already-famous billionaires is a first. Thanks again for listening. Please like and subscribe. Leave a review. Follow us on twitter.com at @empire_sum. Hell, shoot us a DM.
P.S., The global economic meltdown happened after we recorded this episode, so we'll get to it next time.
Links:
David Harvey clip: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/david-harveys-anti-capitalist-chronicles/id1442025854?i=1000466819896
Mean Streets fight scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psMz_i9XfU4
Casino capitalism article: https://www.salon.com/2012/03/09/casino_capitalism_as_gambling_spreads_metaphor_becomes_reality/
The Age of Chance excerpt: https://books.google.com/books?id=T7aEAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA137&lpg=PA137&dq=%22The+vertigo+of+seduction%22&source=bl&ots=75EG0zviSI&sig=ACfU3U0BDFpIo42UHR-Faz7nrJjqZWtedw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi_4Y7F6IToAhUUVs0KHVVyC4oQ6AEwAXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22The%20vertigo%20of%20seduction%22&f=false -
WE’RE BACK!!! Welcome (back) to Zero Sum Empire, the podcast that’s taking a critical census of the mostly-anonymous American billionaire class. Sorry we’ve been gone for so long. Joe was on paternity leave. Please like, subscribe and share.
In the News: Vinod Khosla is back with some new lawsuits to keep those pesky surfers off of the public beach he thinks he owns. That leads us into a discussion of his meeting with Saudi Crown Prince MBS and Peter Thiel. Then that leads us into the absolutely crazy story about Jeff Bezos’ dick pics, the National Enquirer, Saudi state propaganda in Wal-Mart, Thiel’s Palantir data analytics company.
Billionaire #1: Fisk Johnson
1/10 on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index
Fisk Johnson is CEO of S.C. Johnson, the cleaning products company that makes Glade, Windex, Drano, Ziploc, Saran, Pledge, Method, and a bunch of other products you’ve probably used. Fisk Johnson is our first “1” on the D.K.M.A.L.I. That does not mean his assets should not be liquidated. It just means it’s somewhat less urgent to take his money than most others we’ve covered. For a cleaning products company that deals with a lot of chemicals, S.C. Johnson’s environmental record is sparkling. They also seem to have relatively sane labor practices. In truth, because it’s a privately held company, there’s a lot about them that we simply don’t know. Chad talks about the company’s “welfare capitalist” model and why any apparent positive outcomes of this model are not sustainable or replicable for most companies.
Billionaire #2: Joseph Liemandt
5/10 on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index
Joseph Liemandt started Trilogy Software and ESW Capital, an investment company that buys software companies. While that might be incredibly boring, Liemandt makes up for it by being a party boy when he’s off the clock. Details are scant, but he was a subject of Emily Chang’s Brotopia, and according to her he “wrote the bro code” that created a hostile environment for women in Silicon Valley tech (link to article below). After creating a software company that mostly produced toxic masculinity, he went on to start a “Global Software Sweatshop” that employs a truly dystopian employee surveillance technology called WorkSmart, “a FitBit for how you work.”
Liemandt: “How A Mysterious Tech Billionaire Created Two Fortunes—And A Global Software Sweatshop: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2018/11/19/how-a-mysterious-tech-billionaire-created-two-fortunesand-a-global-software-sweatshop/#655dbd846cff
National Enquirer and Saudi Royal Family: https://apnews.com/d293d282a9ec4d0c83fe0a25ff5f285c
References on S.C. Johnson and welfare capitalism:
Sanford Jacoby’s Modern Manors: Welfare Capitalism Since the New Deal
Stuart Brandes’ American Welfare Capitalism, 1880-1940 -
It was a lot of work to get to 20 episodes. Thanks to everyone who’s listening. We are excited to start the next season of shows in the new year and have a lot of great ideas for improvements.
Reflecting back on this episode, I realize that we talked a lot about a particular kind of barrier. Joe introduced us to the technical choice that the hardware store chain Menard’s made to include one-way turnstiles at all of their entryways. The effect of the turnstiles is to trap people in the store: you have to traverse the entire length of the store if you want to exit. Google and Facebook (referred to in the ad industry as “walled gardens”) collect data about you, and then use that data to advertise to you on their own platforms. They maintain a practical duopoly on online advertising because they don’t share data with other advertising companies. They “wall off” your data because it’s the one thing of value that they produce. To capitalize on the data they’ve collected, they need to “keep you in the store” as long as possible, which means they need to keep you using services they own. Because there is minimal censorship of the internet in the US, it’s harder for Google and Facebook to erect digital turnstiles to contain users than it is for, say, the Chinese government. China has developed the “Great Firewall of China” to block and censor information that the government believes runs contrary to its interests. What China has discovered, however, is that it’s far easier to proactively erect a Menard’s-style “digital turnstile” than it is to play whack-a-mole by reactively censoring content. So, that’s what they’re doing. Baidu, the “Google of China,” now overwhelmingly serves up search results linking to sites that Baidu owns. Once you go through the Baidu turnstile by using their search engine, you have to scroll very far down the list of search results to find the exit. All of the top results just redirect to Baidu content. It should go without saying that Baidu is compliant with (and at least partially run by) the Chinese government censors.
In the News: We return to billionaires of episodes past to talk about where they’ve been showing up in the news.
John Menard, Jr.: 8/10 on the D.K.M.A.L.I. (15:00)
Owner and Founder of Menard’s, a chain of home improvement stores.
Jeff Green: 5/10 on the D.K.M.A.L.I. (37:00)
Owner and Founder of The Trade Desk, an internet advertising company.
Links:
John Menard Jr.
https://www.milwaukeemag.com/bigmoney-john-menard/
https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2013/06/20/murphys-law-the-strange-life-of-john-menard/
Jeff Green and The Trade Desk:
https://youtu.be/SaVJkQVhntA (Part of an infuriating series of videos called “In Human Terms” that Green posted to Youtube. All of them are infuriating.)
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/31/the-trade-desk-is-growing-in-china-and-wall-street-loves-it.html
https://qz.com/1530831/an-obituary-for-baidu-argues-chinas-vast-internet-has-no-search-engine/ -
This week’s News segment begins with hedge fund billionaire Lee Cooperman crying on TV and (what else?) Michael Bloomberg announcing he’ll run for president.
Jerry Moyes: 7/10 on the David Koch Asset Liquidation Index
Chad introduces us to Jerry Moyes, the retired founder of Swift Transportation. Moyes owned the possibly-fictional NHL hockey team the Arizona Coyotes before he ran it into bankruptcy. He owns the biggest boat on Lake Powell, which he named The Big Dog. He gives tons of money to Trump. He’s been involved in a number of shady financial dealings to serve his own greed. All basic billionaire shit. The main part of the Moyes segment involves the labor history of the trucking industry in the US. It’s a sad story, and you can probably guess how it goes.
Gary Rollins: 7/10
Joe talks about Gary Rollins, CEO of Rollins, Inc., which owns Orkin Pest Control. The Rollins family has some drama. The kind of drama where you hire private investigators to steal your grandchildren’s medical records. Kids suing parents. Parents suing grandparents. Ratmen suing Ratbabies. This story is nuts. Orkin also regularly cheats people, poisons people, and sometimes cheats the people it poisons. Joe offers us some thoughts on insects (and our relations to them. Innenwelt and Umwelt.
Lee Cooperman crying:
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/07/24/lee-cooperman-parting-advice-luxury-you-cannot-afford-is-arrogance.html
Lee Cooperman crying again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEte-K-H8NY&feature=emb_title
Steve Viscelli’s sociology of trucking:
https://penntoday.upenn.edu/research/penn-sociologist-deconstructs-america-s-trucking-industry
Hubba Hubba: A Tribute to Jerry Moyes:
https://youtu.be/exZCgJzcrfg
The Big Dog:
https://youtu.be/GuKbzj_hfaA
Michael H. Belzer’s Sweatshops on Wheels
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/sweatshops-on-wheels-9780195128864?cc=us&lang=en&
Jakob von Uexkull’s tick essay:
http://www.codebiology.org/pdf/von%20Uexk%C3%83%C2%BCll%20J%20(1934)%20A%20stroll%20through%20the%20worlds%20of%20animals%20and%20men.pdf
Baltimore Sun story on the Rollins family fued:
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2000-05-28-0005270151-story.html
Forbes story on the fued:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/09/29/inside-the-3-billion-feud-tearing-georgias-rollins-family-apart/#1efc7a7e5cec -
It’s almost Halloween and you know what that means—only 7 months until Mother’s Day!
In the news this week: It looks like Steve Mnuchin bent the U.S. treasury rules for designating opportunity zones to help out Michael Milken (long time enemy of the show) with a huge tax break. That’s bad, but “opportunity zones” are still a grift even when they’re not abused so egregiously.
(11:30) Joe introduces us to Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast. Roberts had the extremely typical billionaire life trajectory of growing up rich, going to Wharton, then running the company his father founded for the rest of his life. We talk about Comcast’s rise to market dominance as a vertically-integrated media company. Joe tells us a little bit about cable provider infrastructure in the US and why it means that Americans have some of the worst and most expensive internet service on the planet. It’s not just an inconvenience, it’s a form of social injustice that works against social mobility. Roberts gets a 5 on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index.
(30:35) Chad talks about Haim Saban, founder of Saban Entertainment. Saban Entertainment is most famous for Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, but Saban is responsible for a massive amount of children’s programming. We get into Saban’s business partner Shuki Levy’s amazing work in the field of television theme song composition. There’s a link below to Levy’s website, where he hosts all these songs. Saban’s shows are mainly the result of deregulation of children’s programming in the 80s that resulted in ruining the brains of a generation. It also helps us illustrate the continuous character of capitalism’s primary accumulation. Rated a 7 on the DKMALI.
We had to cut a whole section at the end about how Saban is also an extreme right-wing Zionist and was the biggest contributor to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. There are some links below if you want to explore that dark dimension of his life.
Comcast Links
• The Future of American Broadband is a Comcast Monopoly
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yw7e7g/the-future-of-american-broadband-is-a-comcast-monopoly
• Comcast Political Donations
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?cycle=2020&id=d000000461
Haim Saban Links:
• Hollywood Reporter article where Saban talks about hating Bernie Sanders: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/haim-cheryl-saban-talk-power-philanthropy-israel-2020-presidential-race-1222856
• Hillary Clinton’s letter to Saban denouncing BDS (leaked to journalists by her campaign to entice pro-Israel donors): https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2158218-hillary-clintons-letter-to-haim-saban-against-bds.html
• Haim Saban is Bad for Democracy by Alex Pareene: https://splinternews.com/haim-saban-is-bad-for-democracy-1827319779
• Haim Saban New Yorker profile: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/05/10/the-influencer
• Shuki Levy’s website with high quality streams of his cartoon theme songs. Hours of fun: http://shukilevy.com/themes-and-scores/ -
First: sorry for the delay in getting this episode out. Joe was traveling for a wedding and we also decided to switch our release days to Tuesdays. We are back to releasing an episode every two weeks for the foreseeable future.
Second: Chad accidentally recorded some of the episode with the internal mic on his computer, so there's a dip in our normally pristine sound quality.
We begin the episode with an excursion into the world of immersive POV Youtube lawn mowing subculture. Real sick stuff.
In the news this week: For the first time in US History, the wealthiest 400 families paid less in taxes than working class Americans. Ken Fisher of Fisher Investments has a normal one. Ray Dalio’s recipe for success. Wealth-X Billionaire Census empirically proves that rich people like golf.
John Doerr: 6/10 points on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index
Doerr is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who got rich in the early-2000s tech boom. His firm went in big on the 2007-2011 “Cleantech Boom,” lost a ton of money when none of the investments panned out, and then more or less gave up on innovation in renewable and sustainable energy. People talk about him being a genius investor, but he also invested in Segway and Juicero. Doerr gives us an opportunity to talk about the moral deadlock between capitalist ideology and the climate crisis.
Thomas Tull: 2/10 points on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index
Tull started in laundromats and specializes in marginally improving efficiencies in existing businesses. Tull also formerly produced movies with Legendary Entertainment, which was responsible for the Christopher Nolan Batman movies. So, you have Tull to thank, at least in part, for the Joker that made us all so damaged and twisted.
Lawn Fetish: https://youtu.be/e72txdwCMCY
Regressive Taxation: http://shorturl.at/cBFKM
Ken Fisher: http://shorturl.at/csyzT
Doerr: http://shorturl.at/dnqvU
Venture Capital and Clean Tech: https://energy.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MITEI-WP-2016-06.pdf
Wired article about Green Tech Bust: https://www.wired.com/2012/01/ff_solyndra/
Capitalism to the Rescue: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/magazine/05Green-t.html
Tull interview: https://youtu.be/Orp274LdGf0 -
Intro/Billionaires in the News:
Back to the Future II is neoliberal propaganda (shout out to Micah Bateman). T. Boone Pickens dead; Robert Smith tells young people to respect capitalism; Sackler Family doing more horrible stuff; Peter Thiel thinks libertarianism will eliminate politics.
Billionaire #1: Austen S. Cargill II: 10/10* (16:30)
The opening clip is a recording of the Church Universal and Triumphant praying for rock musicians to be cast into the fiery pit of hell in case you’re curious (link below). Austen Cargill is retired and lives on a ranch in Montana. Before that, he was on the board of directors of Cargill, the largest private company in the US. We talk about Cargill and anonymity and briefly touch on some of their many, many crimes. Luckily, there are 14 members of the Cargill family on our list, so just look at this segment as a table of contents for things to come in future episodes.
Billionaire #2: Paul Fireman: 5/10* (44:15)
This segment was a lot of fun, so we hope you stick around for it. Fireman made his fortune by building the Reebok company and then selling it to Adidas. Fireman embodies every boring billionaire stereotype, so we get to talk a little about what those are. Also, make sure you watch the real estate company ad for his mansion that we mention because it is hilarious.
*Rating Score on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index
Links:
Fireman mansion ad: https://youtu.be/d4AwDHoYpQs
Austen Cargill buys CUT Ranch: https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/article_dddc76fe-b5ac-531d-95e0-d22565dd8cea.html
Back to the Future Product Placement: https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Product_placement
Mighty Earth Report: http://www.mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/Mighty-Earth-Report-Cargill-The-Worst-Company-in-the-World-July-2019.pdf
Brewster Kneen’s Invisible Giant: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745319582/invisible-giant/
Church Universal and Triumphant from the Sounds of American Doomsday Cults: https://youtu.be/i3ZsUYKDJF4
Boston Citgo Sign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Citgo_sign -
Remember fidget spinners? Joe doesn’t.
(2:18) This week in the news: We talk about the Amazon fires and their relationship to soybean farming and tariffs. Then, in celebration of David Koch’s death, we introduce the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index, a rating scale we made up for the billionaires we cover. We decide, on a scale of 1 – 10, how urgent it is that the billionaire’s assets are immediately liquidated and the proceeds distributed among their victims. It goes without saying that all billionaire fortunes should be liquidated and redistributed, but we want to liquidate some more quickly than others. David Koch is the namesake of the rating scale because he was unquestionably a perfect 10.
(12:40) Bharat Desai and Neerja Sethi: 2.5/10
Desai and Sethi are a married couple who started a technology services company that basically outsources various business needs to overseas workers. They sold the company a few years ago and have retired to Fisher Island, FL. Fisher Island is a tiny island right next to Miami Beach, and it is currently the wealthiest zip code in the US. It is only .3 sq. mi., and has a population under 500. A lot of rich people buy condos there and establish the place as their primary residence because Florida doesn’t have state income tax. This trend has seen a huge boost since the 2017 Republican tax bill capped property tax deductions at $10,000. We end up talking about Pizzagate and “hypothetical” food-based criminal code languages.
We highly suggest checking out Opulence Magazine’s (a magazine about South Florida luxury condos) Fisher Island party videos:
https://vimeo.com/162627583
https://vimeo.com/16225305
(35:55) Conrad Prebys: 4/10
Conrad Prebys was, apparently, a messy bitch who loved drama. He was estranged from his son, then reunited with him, and then wrote him out of his will. He made his money in the construction business in San Diego, and later in life made a bunch of big philanthropic donations to build buildings with his name on them. Many were for performing arts centers, and others were for buildings on university campuses. Joe pops off about how stupid it is that debt-laden universities keep building new, expensive buildings that accrue more debt because they think nicer buildings will recruit more students. Unsurprisingly, there’s not much data to support that claim. We come back around to the Koch brothers, their donations to universities and the inherent problems with those kinds of donations, and we finish up with a dramatic reading of an article defending David Koch’s legacy that drives Chad over the edge.
America Loves To Hate Billionaires
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/america-loves-to-hate-billionaires
A full list of the Koch Foundation’s 2016 donations to higher ed: https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/WwbbU/1/ -
Billionaires in the News: Trump wants to buy Greenland. As I write this show description, I realize I missed a huge pun opportunity when I failed to say “Trumpelstiltskin.” It’ll make sense when you hear the segment. Really kicking myself over this one. The main news item for this week is the Business Roundtable announcement that “fiduciary responsibility to shareholders” is no longer the First and Only Rule of Business. This segment is part of our ongoing project to track instances of rich people calling for reforms to capitalism. A new wrinkle has emerged in the rhetoric: they’re pushing a “return” to a pre-80s form of “ethical” capitalism that considers the interests of all stakeholders (i.e., everyone else in society). Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote a NYT editorial and went on The Daily podcast to parrot the false history being peddled by the rich: that there was a time prior to the deregulatory Reagan era during which capitalism operated in a more ethical mode for the benefit of society at large. This is false. Capitalists will never choose to operate for the benefit of society at large. They will only respond to pressure from other forces that seek to rein in capitalist excess.
The first billionaire segment this week (17:00) covers Blair Parry-Okeden, an heiress to the Cox Enterprises fortune. Parry-Okeden lives in Australia and doesn’t have much of a public profile. She might be the most anonymous billionaire we’ve covered so far, yet she is Australia’s richest person. Given the dearth of information on Parry-Okeden, Joe decides to cover the Cox fortune more generally, including heirs James Kennedy, Anne Cox-Chambers (lmao), and the current CEO Alex Taylor. Cox owns a lot of different things, including Auto Trader magazine. We end up talking a little about coupons.
The second billionaire segment covers Richard Peery and his business partner John Arrillaga (38:15). Peery and Arrillaga got rich by building office space in Silicon Valley. We begin with a bit of a tangent about inventor of the transistor William Shockley (a vile man who would absolutely write for Quillette if he were alive today). Most of the buildings Peery-Arrillaga constructed were “tilt-ups,” a type of concrete slab building that’s especially vulnerable to earthquakes (which was known at the time they were building them). Last, we discuss Arrillaga’s daughter, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen (married to Marc Andreessen of Netscape fame). She runs a consulting firm that advises rich people on how to give their money to worthy causes. Like all consulting, it gives off huge scam vibes.
Show links:
Shareholder Value is No Longer Everything, Top CEOs Say:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/business/business-roundtable-ceos-corporations.html
Alex Taylor Interview 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SCMUFZyjtc
Alex Taylor Interview 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2FrtjYNKuI
Coupon: The Movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQUXoH6g97c&t=323s
A portrait of Blair Parry-Okeden:
http://thisisnofantasy.com/home/vn-blair-parry-okeden-1000pw-2/
“The Secretive Billionaire Who Built Silicon Valley”:
https://fortune.com/2014/07/07/arrillaga-silicon-valley/
Tilting at Danger: Loose soils and cheap construction clash in Silicon Valley's "Golden Triangle":
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/10.14.99/tiltup-9941.html
New Yorker Summary of Zuckerberg’s Newark Schools Gift:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/19/schooled
Techcrunch article on Arrillaga-Andreessen:
https://techcrunch.com/2014/09/09/laura-arrillaga-andreessen-argues-for-bringing-a-data-driven-mindset-to-philanthropy/
Cory Booker’s Charter Schools Retreat:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cory-booker-charter-school-support_n_5d45c744e4b0acb57fcd4ebb
Thanks again for listening, everyone. Please make sure to help spread the word. Repost, retweet, share, like, etc. -
In place of our normal intro this week, Joe made me offer a disclaimer about my behavior during the podcast. I tried to loosen up to promote a more relaxed vibe, so I drank a bunch of White Claws while we were recording. It worked pretty well at first, but by the end of the episode I was more or less incoherent. (No laws when you’re drinkin’ claws, baby! Woo!). In case you were wondering, now it’s clear: Joe is the daddy of the podcast, and I’m baby. Some really important links down below today, so make sure to check them out.
This really did turn out to be my favorite episode so far. First, we talked about which Democratic presidential candidates are getting the most billionaire donations (3:15). Mayor Pete was the big winner (i.e., loser): 23 billionaires! Bernie was the big loser (i.e., winner) with zero billionaire donations.
Chad introduces us to Philip Anschutz (11:30), a conservative evangelical media mogul and real estate bigwig. He’s one of the richest we’ve covered so far and his empire is so large that we had to skip over some interesting aspects of what he does. We chose to focus on his media ownership, which includes Walden Media (see links below for some truly horrifying trailers). Walden, along with Anschutz’s Foundation for a Better Life, are ideology mills for what Chad is calling “market morality,” the notion that the being a moral person begins and ends with individuals exchanging good deeds with other individuals. It’s morality for people who think “there’s no such thing as society.”
Joe talks about David Sun (38:00) co-founder of Kingston Technologies. He ends up not saying a whole lot about David Sun other than that Sun is involved with flash memory. That factoid serves as a prompt for a wide-ranging discussion about memory, media, history, Victorian fantasies, epiphylogenetic memory, and even some sci-fi style speculative theorizing about the future of data storage. All of these wild ideas prompted a fairly drunk Chad to embarrassingly say the conversation was “like a mushroom trip.” Sorry everyone.
CORRECTION: It is not actually clear at this point if White Claw has bad politics—we’ll keep you updated.
CORRECTION: There are still laws when you are “drinking claws.” All the normal laws still apply.
Everyday Heroes, an Orrin Hatch joint: https://youtu.be/ArXw-ls5pXA
Walden Media movies: https://www.walden.com/movies/
A Dog’s Purpose: https://youtu.be/1jLOOCADTGs
Won’t Back Down (The charter school propaganda movie): https://youtu.be/1e5CAG4MU2w
Foundation for a Better Life (radio spots): https://www.passiton.com/radio
Bernard Stiegler from the film The Ister (memory stuff begins around 8min): https://youtu.be/Znvdk5cq9f4
John Durham Peters "Space, Time, and Media": https://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/1389/1467
Seagate "Data Age 2025": https://www.seagate.com/files/www-content/our-story/trends/files/idc-seagate-dataage-whitepaper.pdf - Visa fler
