Sometimes i wonder how much "business" is about getting gov. subsidies, grants or scamming the masses, then distributing wealth to friends and family horizontally to elite peers.
Amounts that seem absurd to billions of working class people disappear on the daily apparently with zero value ever created - i've seen this happen enough times IRL to realise that most business is part performance, part deception around very little actual core value, - businesstheater almost.
I've seen a lot of that crap on e.g. the Oslo Stock Exchange over the past two decades. Lots of money from local and very inexperienced (e.g. fishing/shipping/oil money) companies/people, looking to invest in tech and often randomly landing on investing in quite far out gambles where it's legitimitely really hard to figure out of there's an intent of fraud or not. The exec teams tend to draw disgustingly high comps though. Then the weird companies get insanely hyped for no reason by local "economy journalists". Then there's loads of insider leaks and trading. Oslo Stock Exchange is like the wild west.
I thought this was largely isolated to small immature markets like e.g. Norway though.
In a lot of established businesses, executives are basically just looting to enrich themselves and their friends. Wherever I've worked I've seen it, inner circle comes first, then running the business. It's double true in venture capitalism. VC buddies get installed into high paying "jobs" as part of raises, executives taking advantage of the perks every way they can. Free money corrupts. But the model I've seen again and again is someone gets access to money, they call their friends and have a party on other people's expense. It's how the world works. If you're into that sort of thing, best thing to do is figure out who is likely to have money to dole out and kiss their ass...
Sometimes i wonder how much "business" is about getting gov. subsidies, grants or scamming the masses, then distributing wealth to friends and family horizontally to elite peers.
Amounts that seem absurd to billions of working class people disappear on the daily apparently with zero value ever created - i've seen this happen enough times IRL to realise that most business is part performance, part deception around very little actual core value, - businesstheater almost.