When you have a dim view of the situation, and Noam Chomsky comes along to summarize how he sees things, and it pretty much matches you right down the line – well, that’s depressing. Chomsky has a long history of being right: right about Vietnam, right about Linguistics, right about Iraq, right about Bush, right about Obama, and right about Trump.
I used to joke that I could wallpaper my bathroom with stock options. Back in the 90s, it seemed like every company was giving them away and everyone was either getting rich on options or wallpapering their bathroom, or both.
Back in the late 90s, when I was still hanging around with venture capitalists and investment bankers, I remember one telling me, “most of the time, if you can find asymmetric knowledge, you can monetize it.
Trump’s big “trade war” is going to result in unexpected windfalls for some people, as prices go up and new trade hot-points emerge. To say that the trade war is stupid is an understatement.
In 1999, I became a millionaire on paper by selling shares in a company that I had created for the express purpose of selling the shares. That ought to sound bizzare to you, and it is – it’s one of the weirdest parts of corporate capitalism. The entire thing feels like a scam, except that the money is very real, or it’s not, depending on what happens.
The best kind of ‘risk’ to take is the risk of no-risk. I.e.: a sure thing. when you’re talking about capitalism, that means “win/win” scenarios should look indistinguishable from when the game is rigged in someone’s favor. Otherwise, you haven’t rigged it hard enough.