Ostrich Outreach
I am reading about Quantum Technology and China’s push to dominate the space while Jamie Dimon and the Business Roundtable redefine the basis of corporate purpose to go beyond pure shareholder value. Something he has chosen to support since Rep. Katie Porter schooled him on the cost of living in Irvine, California. When you combine those thoughts with the goings on in China and Hong Kong and the shifting sands of capitalism and socialism in the world, it all gives me pause.
I sort of hate jumping on Jamie. His $31 million annual compensation actually strikes this ex-banker as pretty fair for a talented guy running a very big, tough-to-manage banking empire. Just ask the board of Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation, the 150-year-old grande dame of Asian banking if they would pay him that much to take over their challenges. They wish they had someone like Jamie to tap as the forces of the Middle Kingdom bear down on the freedoms they have enjoyed in the colony for all those years. I really respect Rep. Katie Porter, who is sharp as a whip, but boy did she come down on Jamie. It was painful to watch because there was simply nothing he could say other than he would look into the problem she described.
The world moves in waves as we all know. The 1980’s were post-stagflation years of Reaganomics and the demise of communism with the Soviet Union collapsing under the symbolic weight of the Berlin Wall. The 1990’s were prosperous technology-driven years that felt like the new new thing of the internet was leveling the playing field and democratizing the business world with the Amazons and eBays putting an end to brick and mortar capital-intensive business models. Anyone with a business plan and an elevator pitch could find the American Dream. The Dot-Bomb of the “naughty-oughties” sent everyone scurrying back to the safety of Walmart and the big-box stores, while capitalists plowed more and more of their capital into the bubble of real estate as the “safe haven” of anti-technological investing. And since the Great Recession of 2008, that decade has been one of recovery and pragmatic capitalism in the extreme. Call it extreme capitalism or call it nationalism, it has been a time of hardening of hearts and of gathering one’s resources for one’s own use. It will forever be known in the modern history books as the Trump Phenomenon. It has spread around the world the way water seeps into every crack in a storm and then deteriorates and breaks down the structures and fabric of civilization.
We have now lived this for three years (though it was on the rise from the pain of 2008 onward) and the waves of backlash, as always, are in evidence increasingly. That backlash is taking the form of socialism, if not by textbook definition, at least via dog-whistles from the toppish, currently King-of-the-Hill Republican Party in its pre-electoral rhetoric. The rallying cry of Fight the Socialists can be heard daily. Elizabeth Warren, to many the epitome of socialist thinking, makes a point of saying that she is an extreme capitalist and not a socialist. There’s the Squad of Four, who might well like the socialist moniker, taunting their Green New Deal. Both are considered by Republicans as so antithetical to Americans as to be an excellent rallying cry. But wait a minute, the Business Roundtable is an uber-capitalist organization of the country’s biggest CEO’s. They say they are “engines of creativity, innovation and economic opportunity”, but that’s through fair trade, infrastructure, skills training, and pro-investment tax assertiveness. That all sounds pretty capitalistic to me. That’s why the Roundtable’s statement this week that “the purpose of a corporation…should no longer advance only the interests of shareholders…but must also invest in their employees, protect the environment and deal fairly and ethically with their suppliers.” Whoa! That’s as hard to understand as a group of traders trying to decide what a fair profit on a trade should be. Ripping the face off counterparties is not just something not to get caught on tape saying, it is also the unsaid credo of the trade.
This sea-change is a harbinger of the coming next wave of ideological thinking. Invest in productive, democratizing, eco-friendly, playing field-leveling technologies rather than say-anything-you-can-get-away-with marketing and strategic self-interest thinking. You can call it whatever you want, but it all starts to feel like a more positive direction than we’ve lived for the past three years. But let’s discuss the actual technology for a moment. I know everyone thinks the digital age is the guiding light for everything, but there is something after the digital era. Some of us are working on the next advance in chemical transformation via proton-conducting ceramics. I can elevator pitch that to anyone very convincingly. If only it was easy as the digital revolution feels to us today (we all know how easy and obvious everything is once you understand it and are standing on the shoulders of pioneers). Some tech historians would say that the last chemical tech revolution of over a century ago did more to change the Twentieth Century than any other technology (oil and the internal combustion engine notwithstanding).
But if you prefer to stay in the information technology arena, you must focus on quantum technology. Least you doubt that, just look at the sheer amount of investment being put into the field by China. They plan to lead the world in that space and eclipse the tech lead the U.S. has now. While the Chinese compete on that front, the EU is all over the chemical transformation game. Everything we do in that space is aimed at the EU and their clear leadership initiatives driven by the climate change monster they truly believe is their natural and primal enemy.
Meanwhile on both the eastern and western fronts, the Trump Administration is focused on being the best ostrich, laying the biggest eggs it can, while hiding its head in the sand from either threat. The ostrich is a social beast that cares for its own flock, but is woefully inadequate in defending its own. A kick here or there, but run and hide is its favorite play. While Putin’s eagle grows a second fierce head, our American Eagle is at risk of being displaced by his cousin the ostrich, pretending coal can solve all our problems and who needs new technology anyway when you can just go put your brand on a new hotel or golf course somewhere?