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walkitoutRecently, I read this column by Matt Levine: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-12-04/citi-traders-didn-t-know-the-rules, which includes this paragraph:
“That trader argued that “there was scarce compliance training while he was in his role from 2014 and had raised concerns numerous times about the processes.” Nobody told him that he wasn’t allowed to do this, he said, and a court agreed. Citi wasn’t allowed to do it, so it had to fire him, but he didn’t know that he wasn’t allowed to do it, so Citi wasn’t allowed to fire him.”
Shortly before that, I listened to the multi-part Odd Lots about the tournament system in raising chickens, Beak Capitalism.
Here is how that system is presented by the perpetrators: https://www.chickencheck.in/faq/tournament-system/
Obviously, random factors result in a ton of the flock-to-flock variance (did the flock get bird flu, say); it’s not all under the control of the person feeding and housing the flock.
Finally, I think we’ve all absorbed, from direct participation or consuming news or talking to friends who gave it a try, how the Uber/Lyft/Instacart/etc. all offload a lot of investment cost and a disproportionate amount of the risk-that-cannot-be-controlled onto “independent” operators who are locked into a system in which they will be lucky not to lose all their investment and have virtually zero chance of making their money back.
Obviously, franchising systems and MLMs have existed since forever, and are more of the same. Why do people do this? Well, people would like to “be their own boss”, “have more control over their schedule”, struggle to find regular jobs, etc., are all reasons, and often the fairly slick presentation of the people marketing these “opportunities” can pry capital out of the hands of family members that the person wanting to give this a try otherwise are struggling to access. Starting one’s own business is inherently risky, and these presentations provide answers to a lot of the questions people might have and create a sense that Oh, I Know How to Do This Now and If I Work Hard I’ll Be Successful because of course that’s what the company selling this tells them.
I think the thing that I can’t quite figure out is why we keep having journalism around this stuff, including really high quality financial journalism, and it just isn’t made clear how all of these things offload investment costs AND risk onto the people least aware of them and least able to bear them. The companies know they are offloading cost and risk. That’s the whole fucking point of these weird structures.
Are people just not noticing?
“That trader argued that “there was scarce compliance training while he was in his role from 2014 and had raised concerns numerous times about the processes.” Nobody told him that he wasn’t allowed to do this, he said, and a court agreed. Citi wasn’t allowed to do it, so it had to fire him, but he didn’t know that he wasn’t allowed to do it, so Citi wasn’t allowed to fire him.”
Shortly before that, I listened to the multi-part Odd Lots about the tournament system in raising chickens, Beak Capitalism.
Here is how that system is presented by the perpetrators: https://www.chickencheck.in/faq/tournament-system/
Obviously, random factors result in a ton of the flock-to-flock variance (did the flock get bird flu, say); it’s not all under the control of the person feeding and housing the flock.
Finally, I think we’ve all absorbed, from direct participation or consuming news or talking to friends who gave it a try, how the Uber/Lyft/Instacart/etc. all offload a lot of investment cost and a disproportionate amount of the risk-that-cannot-be-controlled onto “independent” operators who are locked into a system in which they will be lucky not to lose all their investment and have virtually zero chance of making their money back.
Obviously, franchising systems and MLMs have existed since forever, and are more of the same. Why do people do this? Well, people would like to “be their own boss”, “have more control over their schedule”, struggle to find regular jobs, etc., are all reasons, and often the fairly slick presentation of the people marketing these “opportunities” can pry capital out of the hands of family members that the person wanting to give this a try otherwise are struggling to access. Starting one’s own business is inherently risky, and these presentations provide answers to a lot of the questions people might have and create a sense that Oh, I Know How to Do This Now and If I Work Hard I’ll Be Successful because of course that’s what the company selling this tells them.
I think the thing that I can’t quite figure out is why we keep having journalism around this stuff, including really high quality financial journalism, and it just isn’t made clear how all of these things offload investment costs AND risk onto the people least aware of them and least able to bear them. The companies know they are offloading cost and risk. That’s the whole fucking point of these weird structures.
Are people just not noticing?