“When [singer] Jewel and her employees walked into [Hsieh’s Park City] mansion, the house was dirty, with hundreds of candles dripping wax onto furniture, carpet and countertops. His dog left droppings on the floor.

Signs instructed visitors not to clean up the trash, particularly outside of Mr. Hsieh’s bedroom. At one point, Mr. Hsieh had told a visitor to teach the world not to produce so much trash, it was better not to trow trash away at all. Showers and sinks ran constantly, unattended; Mr. Hsieh and his entourage were trying to mimic the sounds of waterfalls.

The house couldn’t be cleaned because it was “nature”.

WSJ

I’ll leave you to read the rest. While Hsieh’s passing is regrettable, it is a stark warning of the world of disjointed, dysfunctional people at the top of economic elites.

Happiness…from George Carlin

“The study used AI to analyze videotaped interviews with 507 male inmates in New Mexico. During each interview, which lasted between one and four hours, the inmate sat directly across from an interviewer and a camera that was outfitted with tracking algorithms to record head movements.”

BigThink, citing The Journal of Research in Personality

The biggest psychopath, however, is the Snake in a Suit C-Suite

Yes, we have a post on that since 2017. We’ve seen them all, Silicon Valley-types, Wall Street-types and CEO-types.

They put the New Mexico prison inmates to shame.

The study, “Quantifying the psychopathic stare: Automated assessment of head motion is related to antisocial traits in forensic interviews“, was authored by Aparna R. Gullapalli, Nathaniel E. Anderson, Rohit Yerramsetty, Carla L. Harenski, and Kent A. Kiehl

Other men’s blogs have fallen by the wayside: RIP Bold and Determined (2010-2020), WallStreetPlayboys (2012-2021) we are still here. The bosses have castigated us, Facebook has severely restricted us (2021), Twitter has suspended us (in Nov. 2020) but we’re still here 8 years and counting.

Fighting for the rebel. The outcast. The underdog.

Until next time,

Your man,

Max Cantor

What are we doing today ?

Listening to this big CEO and his “United States of ME.”

He puts everyone on emotional quicksand.

Perfunctory management of human capital. Guy is great in the waste management department.

“He is so transparent in his self interest that I kind of respect him.” [quote borrowed from The Big Short movie]

Sounds like anyone you know ? (Any resemblance to actual characters is coincidental)

What are we doing today ?


1. Squeeze him into a tight corner. How ? Throw him a challenge. If he doesn’t perform at [this] parameters, if the company is not [as this point] in 180 days, he’s fired. If his contract allows it. A lawyer needs to be hired to take a close look at the agency authority granted to the Board of Directors

2. Trip him over. A charming asshole is bound to make a mistake. Lend him a hand !

Max, I get the point, but how do I bait an a-hole ?

3. I think you’d need to be well acquainted with him, at least C-level suite. Member of the inner circle or close confidant. If you are a shareholder, you’d have to have gathered enough votes to push the Board to act.

4. Most things in life are a question of timing and precision. The role of chance is much higher than commonly admitted. Chaos is in fact, the natural state of the universe. It is natural for CEOs to say they are anointed even as they did nothing but ride the good times.

5. Overconfidence is commonplace among CEOs. However good overconfidence is in the short term, it does more harm than good in the longest term. Golf is sport beloved by many. Drawing a parallel to golfing, overconfidence in sport “will likely make innacurate attributions for errors and fail to learn from their mistakes (Horgan. 1992).(Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology: Bridging Theory and Application By Dr. Jamie E. Robbins, PhD, Dr. Leilani Madrigal, PhD)

6. “The gambler’s fallacy” (aka the Monte Carlo fallacy) is “the mistaken belief that, if something happens more frequently than normal during some period, it will happen less frequently in the future, or that, if something happens less frequently than normal during some period, it will happen more frequently in the future (presumably as a means of balancing nature) -(Wikipedia)The gambler who, after losing several hands, keeps on playing thinking a win is around the corner to even things out is an example of it. In reality events are independent of one another. If the CEO has this “gambler’s fallacy”, ruin is not far behind.