The Narratives of Work

The future of remote work after the pandemic ends has been a part of the zeitgeist for more than a year.

Now it IS the zeitgeist. It is also a narrative battlefield being actively conflated with a half dozen other major social and policy topics.

What do you get when you give a raccoon billions of dollars AND invisibility from regulators? Collusion and insider trading.

When we talk about bias, we usually think about a political bias. But the world of 2021 now supports persistent idiosyncratic biases and frames through which information is passed. How do we ensure that our information consumption habits account for this?

Some things are only palatable when they have been transformed into a cartoonish version of themselves. For financial professionals that raises a moral question: how much emphasis on the cartoon of expertise about us is too much?

The Half-Happy Horror is the realization that pursuit of multiple objectives can end up with a baby split in two.

At best we give lip service to secondary or tertiary goals, all as part of some cartoon we've constructed about our "process".

Yes, optimization is a scourge, and it hits every aspect of modern life. It hits the professional investor hardest of all.

So if you COULD prepare most Americans for their jobs and lives in less than a year, how WOULD you? Well, we took a shot at answering just that, and I'm sure you'll all agree completely and wholeheartedly with our conclusions.

The student loan crisis is a Big Deal. And it is only a part of a Bigger Deal: the Myth of College.

This issue will be front-and-center in the upcoming elections. We will all be handed our very own 'Yay, College' signs to raise high. More often than not, we will be asked to raise them in service of market-distorting policies which will make our problems worse.

It's the most valuable lesson I've got for any smart, young coyote embarking on a career in the Mob or in Wall Street: never ask for a cut on an existential trade idea.

Our Thing isn't about the money. IT'S. ABOUT. THE. MONEY.

Except when it's not.

Ben has already talked about the biggest and most important thing we can do in the face of the admissions bribery scandal.

But many remain convinced that this scandal is an inflection point, a change in the Zeitgeist. It isn't. But that doesn't mean we can't be watching for our opportunity to weaken the influence of the Church of Credential.

"Oh, little Jimmy is going to 20-Years-Ago-This-Was-A-Second-Rate-University? I hear really good things about that school. Congratulations!"

"Thanks! We're all very pleased. Everyone except my bank account, that is. Hahaha!"

It's true, everyone is VERY pleased by the current system. Prestige university credentialing is a steam valve ... \whispers\ just like elections.