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As is my usual, I’ve got an obsession, and if you follow me you know my latest is about Ed Zitron’s Business Idiots – his explanation for why things are messed up, “leaders” living in abstract bubbles away from reality. Zitron hit on something that summed up things I’d seen elsewhere, that some so-called business leaders end up isolated from reality and some people find that to be a goal Since then, I’ve been chewing this over – like Dan Davies or Ted Giola, Zitron got me thinking.
As I’ve been analyzing the Business Idiot phenomena, it struck me that some Business Idiots actually don’t seem to like people. I won’t be naming names, but you can guess.
I first began thinking about this when I noticed some Business Idiots having a rising anti-diversity mindset. As if acknowledging people’s differences is some kind of assault on their senses and so on. Of course really it’s a mix of political opportunism and a belief in their own superiority (which is easy when you hit the jackpot and spend ten years with yes-men). The thing is humanity is diverse, and the idea that you don’t have to deal with that tells me you just don’t want to deal with people – unless they’re little clones of you.
And clones of you aren’t really people, but the Business Idiot can’t bear to have their world intruded on by anything but the same thing.
This of course also goes into the weird natalism of some Business Idiots. The people who suddenly want a harem and a ton of kids. The people who get real worried about birthrates (at least of some colors of people) yet don’t acknowledge how hard it is to raise a kid in many countries. The people who talk having more kids while forgetting our world is really becoming inhospitable.
Again, wanting a world of people like them (as well as being such Business Idiots that they don’t want to face Climate Change). And they don’t want people, they want copies – something my friend Serdar even speculated on in his book Flight of the Vajra.
But really if you want to get the Business Idiots not liking people, just look at the endless emphasis on AI replacing people. They’re giddy over the idea of getting rid of so many people to replace them with slop, half-baked ideas, and things that “so-called AI can’t do. And yes, insert my usual disclaimer on AI here, but still.
They’re selling us a world with less people – and less people different from them. The Business Idiots don’t like people.
Yet, there’s more. Some Business Idiots get obsessed with life extension and self-perfection, going to ridiculous lengths. Biomonitoring, slamming supplements, dropping ritual hallcuinogens with no instructions, etc. There’s a point where this isn’t so much refining the self (a term I like as it implies a calm approach) but outright attempts to beat the self into a new form.
They don’t even like themselves, these Business Idiots.
Of course it’s no surprise, the Business Idiots, from nepo babies to people who won the VC lottery at the right time then lost their minds, live in a world insulated from humanity. They live in a world of yes-men and confirmation bias, grifters and hangers-on. Past a certain point you have to loose your mind a little bit because you’re outside of reality.
People remind you of reality. Even your aging face reminds you of reality.
So we may laugh at the Business Idiots. But I’m really coming to the conclusion that some of them don’t like us that much and we need to deal with that.
Steven Savage