House of Eratosthenes

In one of the early jobs many years ago, I was one of two software engineers in a little start-up on Mercer Island that employed us, three-and-a-half salesmen, and nobody else…with a silent partner and ruthless venture capitalist shark thrown into the mix. I swear to fucking God, if I live to be hundred and fifty years old I’ll never forget it. Think Glengarry Glenn Ross on steroids except with the coders as convenient whipping boys, as a replacement for “the leads are shit.” We wrote what the sales guys referred to as “magic code,” and got all of the pressure and none of the authority or ability to do anything to positively impact the situation. No layers between software design and software marketing…none. Actually, there’s a difference between marketing and sales, and this wasn’t marketing. Looking back, that was the number one problem. Lack of buffering layers. Market research…requirements documents…design…project management…all non-existent.

One thing that stands out to me more than anything else, was this plan a couple of them were making together on a Friday afternoon. Wanna go deer hunting? Sure. Hey tell ya what. Let’s leave the rifles at home, and talk the deer into committing suicide.

I think, twenty years ago, I was gaining some insight into the planet on which Vice President Joe Biden lives: Selling things to people that will ultimately hurt them, is a form of sport. The Big Reveal? You’re much better off buying something from someone who doesn’t care one bit about you, than you are buying something from a guy like Joe Biden. And you know why that is? Because the guy who doesn’t give two shits about you, will sell you stuff that will make himself a profit…which may be to your benefit, or it may be to your detriment. It’s random. And because it’s random, there is opportunity for you to jump in there and leverage control of the situation. You can say to yourself, “this guy claims to be representing my interests, but I can tell he’s a bullshitter; nobody else is representing my interests so I’ll take care of that part of it.”

But guys like Joe Biden go a few steps beyond this. I’ve met them before. They aren’t true bullshitters, because they care enough about your interests to sell you things reliably contrary to them. They talk the deer into committing suicide. That is where the sport is, you see.

“And folks look, AARP knows and the people with me here today know, the president knows, and I know, that the status quo is simply not acceptable,” Biden said at the event on Thursday in Alexandria, Va. “It’s totally unacceptable. And it’s completely unsustainable. Even if we wanted to keep it the way we have it now. It can’t do it financially.”

“We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation,” Biden said.

“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.”

Because talking the deer into running off to live another day, would be boring.

And telling us that yes, the way to go bankrupt is to spend money and the way to avoid it is to save money — that would also be boring. So it’s out of the question. Salesman Joe has to have his fun.

Out comes the irony. Poison is healthy, the way to outrun a monster is to walk really slow, you have to spend all the money you can grab to avoid bankruptcy, and dumping a bucket of gasoline over your head & lighting a cigarette is a wonderful skincare technique. Gotta sell those ice cubes to the Eskimos to have your fun. Leave the rifles at home, talk the deer into offing themselves.

The issue here is the difference between the liar and the bullshitter. As Harry G. Frankfurt wrote in one of our favorite hardcovers, On Bullshit,

What bullshit essentially misrepresents is neither the state of affairs to which it refers nor the beliefs of the speaker concerning that state of affairs. Those are what lies misrepresent, by virtue of being false. Since bullshit need not be false, it differs from lies in its misrepresentational intent. The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to.

This is the crux of the distinction between him and the liar…A [liar is] responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it…For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

Joe Biden. Liar. Not bullshitter.

Are you still glad you kept that hockey mom outta there? Have any doubts left that she might, perhaps, maybe, just maybe, have been a tad more economical?

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- House of Eratosthenes | 07/21/2009 @ 06:34

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Going Bankrupt if We Don’t Spend MoneyThursday, July 16th, 2009

Going Bankrupt if We Don’t Spend Money
Thursday, July 16th, 2009