The American Oligarchs, alpha male cosplaying tech bros, TikTok and the US company China Threat, and retiring DEI

Introduction

LIVE from your ESG EV Dipstick, it’s a Business Pants Friday Show here at January 17th Studios, featuring AnalystHole Matt Moscardi. On today’s weekly wrap up: The CEO takeover has accelerated; bravery for sale at Costco; and men finally have power 

Our show today is being sponsored by Free Float Analytics, the only platform measuring board power, connections, and performance for FREE.

Story of the Week (DR):

1. DealBook: C.E.O.s hail the chief MM

1. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg to attend Trump's inauguration: The three will be seated together on the inauguration platform with other prominent guests.

2. About $200M so far (BIden about $60M)

1. Amazon: $2 million

2. Meta: $1 million

1. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg: $1 million (personal donation)

3. Robinhood: $2 million

4. Bank of America: $1 million

5. Goldman Sachs: Undisclosed

6. Google: $1 million

7. Microsoft: $1 million

8. Uber: $1 million

1. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi: $1 million (personal donation) 

9. Boeing: $1 million

10. Ford/GM//Hyundai/Toyota: $1 million

11. Ripple [Cryptocurrency]: $5 million

12. Apple CEO Tim Cook: $1 million (personal donation)

13. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: $1 million (personal donation)

14. etc.

2. In Farewell Address, Biden Warns of an ‘Oligarchy’ Taking Shape in America

1. President Joe Biden's farewell address Wednesday came with a series of warnings for the future of the country, among them that a rising “oligarchy taking shape” threatens American democracy: "Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead."

2. “... concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex," Biden said. "It could pose real dangers for our country as well."

3. "Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit." he said, appearing to refer to Meta’s ending its fact-checking program.

4. without safeguards, AI could "spawn new threats to our rights, our way of life, to our privacy, how we work and how we protect our nation."

5. ​​161 years ago, a New Zealand sheep farmer predicted AI doom

1. On June 13, 1863, a letter titled "Darwin among the Machines" written by Samuel Butler (under the pseudonym Cellarius) published in The Press newspaper of Christchurch warned about the potential dangers of mechanical evolution and called for the destruction of machines, foreshadowing the development of what we now call artificial intelligence—and the backlash against it from people who fear it may threaten humanity with extinction. It presented what may be the first published argument for stopping technological progress to prevent machines from dominating humanity.

2. The letter drew direct parallels between Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and the rapid development of machinery, suggesting that machines could evolve consciousness and eventually supplant humans as Earth's dominant species.

3. "We are ourselves creating our own successors." he wrote. "We are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self-acting power which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race. In the course of ages we shall find ourselves the inferior race."

4. In the letter, he also portrayed humans becoming subservient to machines, but first serving as caretakers who would maintain and help reproduce mechanical life—a relationship Butler compared to that between humans and their domestic animals, before it later inverts and machines take over.

3. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon says AI can write 95% of an IPO prospectus

1. The initial registration prospectus for an IPO, called S1, usually took a six-person team two weeks to complete. However, now 95 per cent of the work can be completed by AI in minutes, he said. 

2. Goldman Sachs chief David Solomon questions start-ups’ need to list

1. He also asked private companies to take ‘great caution’ before deciding to go public, adding that the depth of capital in private markets has made the need to go public redundant for many. 

Goodliest of the Week (MM/DR):

1. DR: Costco is holding the line on DEI; Delta Doubles Down on DEI, ESG Policies; Apple backs diversity programs rejected by US firms

2. MM: European Union orders X to hand over algorithm documents

Assholiest of the Week (MM):

1. Alpha masculine cosplay

1. Middle school beta nerds realizing they have “fuck you” money and now trying to act like big boys… which means dunking on women, gays, blacks, trans, and mom

1. We need to be more manly

2. Mommy made me do it, but now I’m a big boy

3. Elon paid for someone to spend 24 hours a day leveling up a video game character, then pretended it was him and he was good at it

4. Trump Taps Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone and Jon Voight as Hollywood ‘Ambassadors’

5. Bezos has a HUGE NEW ROCKET guys

2. The Nerd Alpha Cosplay is using MAGA Trump as a vehicle…

2. Inauguration hypocrisy ($170m)

1. Game: of the top donors to the Trump inauguration, which is the biggest hypocrite?

1. I give you the name of 10 largest donors, you say whether they’re a hypocrite who gave more to Dems or not because they gave more to GOP anyway

3. Autocrat hypocrisy DR

1. Instagram and YouTube Prepare to Benefit if TikTok is Banned

1. Zuckerberg, Brin, and Page Prepare to Benefit if China is Banned

2. There are 743 authoritarian (dual class, founder lead, fake democratic) US companies that trade out of about 2,200 - that’s a whopping ⅓ of the US market that’s fake democratic public companies

3. Let’s apply the “China Threat Theory” to them:

1. Economic consolidation

1. Totalitarian companies are 34% of US market cap

2. Military spending

1. Palantir (0.3% of market cap) and 9 other totalitarian companies have weapons manufacturing (total 2% of US cap)

3. Privacy and espionage

1. 16% - 16% - of US market cap is totalitarian companies involved in privacy violations or data breaches

2. The top 4 are obviously nerd alpha cosplayers - Brin/Page, Bezos, Zuck, Musk

4. Propaganda

1. Tesla and Walmart are the two largest firms flagged for misleading customers through advertising

2. Musk straight up lies to customers

3. Total cap of 3.33%

5. Human rights

1. Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta are flagged for human rights problems, both in and out of labor force

2. Palantir and Salesforce as well

3. 11% of US market cap

4. Here are the most Chinese Threat US Totalitarian companies:

1. National Presto Industries

2. Palantir

3. Berkshire Hathaway

4. Tesla

5. Meta

6. Amazon

7. Alphabet is tops!

4. Yeah, but DEI!

1. John Deere Sued by FTC Over Equipment-Repair Practices

2. SEC sues Elon Musk, says he cheated Twitter investors out of $150 million

3. Toyota truck unit fined $1.6 billion for emissions violations

4. Yeah, but it was a DEI firm, so we feel bad for the fan

Headliniest of the Week

1. DR: Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly blaming former Meta exec Sheryl Sandberg for a company inclusivity initiative

1. Mark Zuckerberg praises benefits of 'masculine energy', calls corporate America 'culturally neutered'

2. 78% of Fortune 500 HR leaders say they have trouble getting the C-suite to believe in the long-term benefits of childcare

2. MM: McDonald’s Retires DEI Goal Setting

3. MM: Carrier Global Corporation Appoints Amy Miles to its Board of Directors

1. You might not think this is funny if you don’t know who Amy Miles or Carrier are… 

2. Carrier makes HVAC systems

1. CEO is David Gitlin, on Boeing board

3. Amy Miles is the CEO of Regal Entertainment (the movie theaters) and is on the board of Gap

1. She joins ex Walmart, ex GSK, ex American Water Works, ex TIAA CREF execs on a board overseeing… air conditioners

Who Won the Week?

1. DR: Oligarchy Truthers

2. MM: Co-co-co CEOs - Paramount Will Allow Its 3 Co-CEOs to Resign and Receive Severance If They Are Demoted

Predictions

1. DR: The DEI decision train gets rolling as a bulk of S&P 500 takes a side

2. MM: After Vivek said we have to stop venerating jocks, and the middle school nerdboys with money have shown how unfit they are to run anything, Free Float adds a data point that shows the percentage Jock Influence on every board to get a sense of there being team players that might actually be adults in the room and it’s the beginning of the end of the Nerd Fake Alpha era