Pseudo

Pseudo

          Back in 1999 lots of funny things happened.  It was very much an end of an era for me.  I was the end of a twenty-three-year career, with all the incumbent ups and downs, with my primary employer, Bankers Trust Company.  We sold ourselves to Deutsche Bank for $93 per share and all got lots of money from our pent-up options and restricted stock.  Some of us got our walking papers, some got new contracts and a few, like me, got both at once.  That year was a prophetic time to close my early chapter with Wall Street since the end of the Millennium was also the end of a twenty-year stint on Wall Street that left us all with more money than sense, as the saying goes.  A small side-story of that time was that a group of us bankers formed an investment club to put money in private equity.  Private equity appeals to bankers with excess cash since we can’t really play the markets without compliance problems, and private equity always seems so consistent with our finance skills.  We could look at budgets and ponder projections.  On the other hand, conservative bankers should run as far from private equity as their risk/reward feet can carry them.  So, we formed our club and called it, ever so appropriately, Market Top, an acknowledgement of our folly.

          One of our members had made a small fortune on a company headed by a guy called Josh.  Josh was a firebrand and thought he was God’s gift to the venture world of new media (a euphemism for the new internet economy centered around putting content online).  One of the attributes of private equity that every false prophet declares is that ideas are great, but that its really all about the passion of the people involved. Well, Josh was nothing if not passionate about his next venture.  It was called Pseudo and it was a brand-new concept in 1999.  It was the concept that entertainment and news would no longer come through our TV’s, it would come at us through our internet devices.  Crazy, right?  Pseudo was a streaming network that produced its own show content that pandered to the new “Wired” crowd.

          The hindsight of twenty years tells us that the concept of video streaming and the internet as the new entertainment and news vehicle of choice was spot on.  Just ask your kids how many of them opt to not pay for cable in favor of their Netflix and Hulu subscriptions, which they project onto larger screens via Apple Play or just watch increasingly on their much smaller devices, many times when they are on the go.  Several of the great ideas I invested in in the late 90’s were great and spot-on ideas, but the nuances of executing greatness from those concepts is where the great fortunes lie. Putting this great concept into the hands of a proven entrepreneur seemed a bit smarter right until Josh decided that streaming his entire and complete life (including sex life and bathroom life) was something the internet streaming world wanted desperately to share.  Pseudo, the company, failed in an arena that prospered.  Easy come, easy go.

          The word pseudo means a sham, mock, ersatz, fake.  But is also means and is derived from the notion of a false apostle or teacher.  The operative Greek origin is the word false.  What makes me get into the etymology of this Greek word is the term pseudointellectual.  I got into an online snit with somebody over the weekend that invoked that term.  This person wrote a New York Times editorial about success and luck and how the implication that success is rooted in more luck than anything was very offensive to the hard work and doggedness that they felt had been responsible for their success.  It so happens that this is a topic I have read up on.  One of my great economic gurus is a guy I know from my days teaching at Cornell.  Professor Robert Frank wrote the forward to my Global Pension Crisis book, which I published in 2013. He is the wealth editor for the New York Times, and he has written such great books as The Darwin Economy, The Winner Take All Economy and Success and Luck. I greatly admire the life he has led, the economic rigor of his work and his ability to write for regular folks.  While Bob tends to avoid labels like Liberal, I would characterize him as an enlightened liberal who served in the Peace Corps in Nepal and believes in the importance of leveling the wealth playing field (for all the right reasons in my opinion).  I made the mistake of referencing him in my reply to the person who sent me their editorial against luck as a contributor to their success.

          When I went to the trouble to respond to the criticisms of the summary of his work by rereading the chapter on his proposed solutions and summarizing it and suggesting the person might want to read that if they were going to so loudly declare their views on the subject.  I got smacked for suggesting a book club approach to what should just be a lively conversation.  That hit and some piling on by others in the email string gave me pause.

          I wondered if I was being a pseudointellectual. I am no academic even though I was a Clinical Professor for ten years at Cornell.  I am a practitioner who tries my best to keep up and keep learning.  I admire Bob Frank and his work because it is so much more rigorous and intellectual than anything I am ever likely to produce.  This man does primary research while the best I do is do secondary research of other (like his) primary research.  To be labeled in an email exchange as taking too learned an approach (suggesting a citation and a book on the topic), made me stop and wonder where the bounds of pseudointellectualism lay.  I cared about the topic being suggested, but it was not me that wrote a NYT editorial.  I merely pointed out the intellectual response to the issue by citing the best work I knew on the topic.  I still can’t decide if that step was a pseudointellectual step or a fair response on my part.  You will note that I am not attacking the email combatant, because I believe we all need to focus on our own failings not decry our opponent’s failures. 

          I have decided to drop the issue altogether.  I do not agree that luck is irrelevant to success.  Quite the contrary.  I feel whatever success I have had is a function of a great deal of good luck.  Perhaps we position ourselves to capture more luck than not, but it still plays a big part.  In any case, that’s all I have to say on the topic and at risk being a pseudointellectual and perhaps making the mistake that Josh made in thinking the world wants to inspect all my shit, I will simply keep my mouth and emailing fingers quiet.