The Hollow Men
American capitalism is rotting from the head down. We have replaced the "Owner-Operator"—the risk-taker-with a new, parasitic class of corporate bureaucrat: The Risk-Free Insider.
By "Insider," I am not referring to a specific title. I am referring to the entire administrative state that has captured the modern corporation. This includes the Directors who exist solely to collect fees, the Executives who exist solely to collect bonuses, and the Managers who exist solely to hire consultants.
These are the hollow men of the boardroom. They are masters of PowerPoint. They wear the right suits. They say the right buzzwords about "governance" and "ESG." But they are mercenaries fighting a war with someone else’s ammunition.
In a functioning economy, authority is tied to liability. If you make a bad decision, you lose your own money. That fear of loss is the only thing that keeps a business honest. It forces you to cut waste, obsess over the customer, and stay late to fix what is broken.
Today, we have severed that link.
We have rigged the game so that heads, the Insider wins; tails, the shareholder loses.
If the stock goes up, the Insider collects a massive performance bonus. If the stock crashes due to their own incompetence, they are fired with a "Golden Parachute" worth tens of millions. They are gambling with the house’s money, and they never leave the table poorer than they arrived.
This looting starts in the boardroom.
We have normalized a "Country Club" culture where directors are selected based on social profiling rather than their ability to build a business. The modern board member is often a professional tourist—paid an average of $350,000 a year.
Let’s be brutally honest about what that number represents. The average director is paid nearly five times the GDP per capita of the United States. They earn more for attending four quarterly lunches than the vast majority of Americans earn in five years of hard labor.
And for what?
Most of these directors are "over-boarded," sitting on three or four boards simultaneously. They treat directorships as a gig economy for the elite. They fly in, rubber-stamp a compensation package they didn't read, and fly out. They collect checks from companies they do not understand, do not use, and certainly do not love.
They are not there to ask hard questions. They are there to be collegial. They are there to protect the other Insiders.
And what happens when these boards hire executives who also have no personal capital at risk?
We get the Delegation Economy.
When a Risk-Free Insider faces a crisis—bloated expenses, a broken supply chain, or a stale product—they do not roll up their sleeves. They hire a consultant. They pay a strategy firm millions of shareholder dollars to produce a 100-page deck telling them what they already know.
This is not management. It is intellectual money laundering.
They use shareholder capital to buy an insurance policy for their own careers. If the plan fails, they can blame the consultants. They delegate the work because they are terrified of the responsibility. They would rather preside over a slow, comfortable decline than risk a bold mistake.
While American Insiders are busy optimizing their severance packages, our global competitors are optimizing their products. They are not slowed down by bureaucracy. They are not waiting for a slide deck. They are outworking us.
If we continue to fill our C-suites with administrators instead of operators, we will lose our edge. We will see iconic American franchises hollowed out by fees, managed for the benefit of the Insiders, while the true owners—the shareholders—are left holding the bag.
The time for polite governance is over.
If we want to save the American economy from mediocrity, we must demand a return to the "Owner’s Mentality." We need leaders who treat shareholder capital with the same reverence they treat their own savings. The era of the Risk-Free Insider must end.
@E_Xconvention Hola! Yo Participe en su evento de Monterrey como expositor con mis playeras bordadas, quería ver si en esta Edición van a tener stands en venta? Por que medio puedo hacer el contacto porque creo la otra vez lo hice por Instagram pero ya no me aparece, gracias! :)
@TheMagnifishit Who’s worse?
This guy making videos… or Vlad Tenev, the man who shut off the buy button?
Why go after random people instead of the real villains of the saga?
@ThePPseedsShow Hey PP! I sent you a DM, not about money, but about a different kind of Christmas gift. Hopefully you get a chance to read it :) Thanks for helping the community!
GameStop, a shitty retail stock that was "left for dead" and "no one cares about anymore" somehow now has THREE leveraged ETFs under creation or currently live
Can someone please explain to me how and why $GME has 3 fucking ETFs? it's fucking ludicrous
$GMEU
$GMEY
$IGME
I'd like to actually put out a thoughtful response since you both engage and have a large following
No, this is NOT the time to short GameStop
While the speculation about the future of this company is up for debate amongst outsiders, the current fundamental shift from $GME is undeniable
GameStop went from hemorrhaging hundreds of millions of dollars a year, to having turned a profit of over $130 million last year, and what will likely be 500 mill to 1 billion dollars this year. This because of an aggressive cost cutting strategy from Ryan Cohen, the CEO of GameStop.
Ryan and the team aggressively cut costs in the business. This includes a large reduction of brick and mortar physical store locations, decreasing it's overhead costs through less leases AND GameStop now carrying less inventory on hand. GameStop has one of the best distribution networks/centers in the country and so GameStop has made a bet that it can get its products out to consumers faster through the relationships it's built and it's world class distribution networks.
Beyond the aggressive cost cutting, the business has now shown its willingness to shift the core business from a heavy focus on video games, towards the collectibles market, having now partnered with PSA, the leading card grader in the world.
Lastly, and arguably most importantly, Gamestops debt and cash. GameStop by the end of 2025 will have 10 billion dollars in cash and assets. It's only debt is the 2 note offerings it did, which has a 0% interest on them for 5-7 years. This giving GameStop billions of "free" money they can turn around and choose to invest or use for operational expenditures in the future
So GameStop is not a behemoth business by any sense of the word. But you shouldn't be thinking about GameStop. You should be thinking about what GameStop will become in the future.
The legacy business? Is going to thrive. They will make billions of dollars a year with its new Power Packs and it's heavy shift towards collectibles. Not to mention, GameStop has 2 console cycles on the horizon, with the ps6 and new Xbox likely to be released before the end of 2030 while also currently going through a console cycle with the switch 2 and the new Xbox handheld which releases in late October
People should not be viewing GameStop for what it is. The share price currently reflects that. People should be viewing GameStop for what it's going to be. With tens of billions of dollars, Ryan Cohen at the helm and a massive army of retail investors akin to Tesla back in late 2019, this business will shock people in the future because they don't know or see the above
This company went from bankruptcy, to making a billion dollars, in 5 years. What do you think that same business will do over the next 5 years, no longer starting from ground zero? Wall Street should fear what this company and it's army will do because whatever transformation Ryan and the team have planned for the future of GameStop, NO ONE is prepared for what it could bring in terms of future value for long term investors
@Conqueeftador29@Zer0_XIII@ryancohen Every post you make has an instant like or 2, are you liking your own post like a loser or you are working with more people, both are posible,