Steve Faktor Profile picture
Jan 11, 2021 10 tweets 3 min read Read on X
DISCRIMINATION vs POWER

I've worked with countless CEOs, senior execs & professionals across industries like finance, tech, consumer goods. I've hired, employed & promoted dozens from every background.

This is the relationship between discrimination & power I've observed.

1/8 Image
Undoubtedly racism, sexism & other biases still exist. I've heard some crazy stories from female & black colleagues. However, their incidence is fading. I'm profoundly optimistic about our trajectory for one simple reason: SURVIVAL.

2/8
We talk about tolerance. In business, one thing that's rarely tolerated (for long) is failure.

EVERYONE wants to do a good job, get promoted, get a raise, look good in front of peers & bosses.

THAT impulse is the single most powerful anti-racist tool we have.

3/8
No professional I know would consciously choose a lesser performer/candidate because their bigotry trumps their will to succeed. It's career suicide.

That doesn't mean people don't have unconscious biases. We all do.

But who's qualified to litigate another's subconscience?
4/8
I'm not sure who runs the US Narratives Department, but our system punishes failure & choices that precipitate it.

Discrimination is failure.

And the dwindling few who still practice it, are BLEEDING POWER. They can never complete in a world calibrated for achievement.

5/8
This is why the idea of recalibrating the world around anything but achievement, isn't just faulty, it guarantees discrimination & loss of the one power everyone can seize: excellence.

If you wield excellence, even a greedy bigot must take your call.

6/8
IdeaFaktory.com/success
Business & corporate aren't the only realms where discrimination lingers & they are not perfect meritocracies. (I've experienced that firsthand.) But just this once, the amorality of profit keeps us on a trajectory towards a more equitable society.

7/8
I'm afraid we're fueling sectarianism & not fixing cronyism, education, a growing underclass & moral decay.

We proved how quickly we can act w/the Covid vaccine. These demand similar urgency.

I'll explore further in The McFuture newsletter. Join me: TheMcFuture.com/newsletter

8/8
Do kids of politicians & celebs automatically get media jobs & blue checkmarks? Or, do they need a photo?

The US remains one of very few nations where excellence trumps privilege & lineage. There'll still be nepotism/favoritism, but the force needed to abolish them is far worse. Image

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More from @ideafaktory

Apr 2, 2023
Interesting thread breaking down Twitter's algorithm.
The Twitter Homogenization

Knowing what Twitter's algorithm likes & doesn't will make users please/game it, the way students do teachers for grades, TV execs select programming, & how SEO & clickbait work.

Algorithmic speech is not free speech, even when transparent.
Liv ur life, peepz. If hiphoptimizing the Twitterz be that impotent to you, you did it wrongsies.

Read 4 tweets
Feb 28, 2023
The Productivity Paradox

Much of "productivity" is *theft of productivity* from others.

Productive legislators, content creators, game developers, lawyers, influencers, marketers, athletes, divert time & attention from others' productivity to casual consumption or admin.
The question is what are we optimizing for?

If it's jobs, then loss of productivity creates a need for more workers.

If it's personal satisfaction, you'd want as much focus as possible.

If it's economic strength, productivity must focus on exportable categories/activities.
The productivity paradox would be moot if it were purely market driven & benign. It's neither.

We're making conscious choices to regulate, incentivize, or ignore countless addictions, powerful technologies & rapacious partisans, who don't have our best interests at heart.
Read 5 tweets
Feb 16, 2023
The Great Replacement?

I thought this would go away. It hasn't. A quick thread on what I think is really happening, from an Economics POV.

Start w/this post. Like most scoring systems, it's highly subjective & suggests a misguided interpretation of what's happening today.
1/
The Great Replacement Theory came to light in the US in Charlottesville, where white supremacists chanted "The Jews will not replace us" & other variants.

What they were alluding to is a conspiracy that Jews (who they think run everything) want to replace whites w/minorities.
2/
These white nationalists are mis/re-interpreting:
—the US constitution, which despite our failures to live up to its ideas—was never about "blood & soil", like many European ethnostates
—the prescriptiveness of French philosopher Camus's Great Replacement theory
3/
Read 22 tweets
Feb 4, 2023
I'm reading Confessions of an Economic Hitman. Have to admit, it's taking a toll on me.

If even ½ is true (based on history, I'd bet it is), it's hard not to feel powerless & cynical in the shadow of immense soulless forces behind global exploitation & our simplistic narratives. Image
The more I think about Confessions of an Economic Hitman, the more naive cryptocurrency becomes.

In a world where we use dollar-debt to control third world nations, thinking we'd just surrender that power because libertarian tech bros want to get rich is so preposterous.
How the west controls the third world.

Good summation of the core premise of "Confessions of an Economic Hitman". amzn.to/3Ygcl4n
The details only make it darker.

As the CEO of Blackrock explains, the last thing markets want is democracy:
Read 4 tweets
Jan 8, 2023
The re-education of Jordan Peterson by Canada, like that of Jack Ma by China is a state taming forces that threaten its power.

The civic variant of forced apologies by employees whose cultural transgressions threaten revenues.

Compliance is the great societal stabilizer.
There is no due process here. Only the thinnest veil of fairness. Decisions have been made in closed rooms. Capitulation & compliance are non-negotiable.

Ironically, it's far kinder than more brutal regimes, where oligarchs rain down from the sky.
Funny thing about state control in "democracies" is it's stealthy...until it isn't.

And when it does assert its power, every failsafe falls silent.

Assange disappears for a decade

Congress become $100+ millionaires

Pfizer buys media

Blank checks for foreign wars

Not a peep.
Read 5 tweets
Jan 5, 2023
How I'd save Bed, Bath & Beyond🧵

First, a reality check:

1) There is no market for selling commodities inside of buildings. This has been true for small businesses killed by giant chains. It's now true for chains. Experience is inferior, data-poor, too expensive vs. online.
2) There is no middle. The population is bifurcating -> upper middle class & sub-middle class. Like Macy's, malls, or The Gap, the middle is dwindling. Especially, when it's non-specialized, undifferentiated. The numbers back that:

3) To succeed, three realities must be embraced: passionate niches, experiences & impermanence. I'll bucket my ideas this way.

A. Passionate niches
BB&B has several great assets: brand recognition, national physical footprint, supply chain, product categories that can be complex
Read 10 tweets

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