Vultures and Vampires: Bruce Karsh and Bernie Marcus

Zero Sum Empire

Billionaire #1: Bruce Karsh: 3/10 on the DKMALI Joe introduces us to Bruce Karsh, a vulture investor. Vulture investors buy distressed securities from failing companies or people, and then use legal and financial advantages to increase the value of that debt. We have a long discussion about an academic article that argues vulture investing is ethical. Seems weird that someone would have to do that. In our opinion, it’s generally not a good sign when you have to develop byzantine philosophical arguments to convince people that the thing you’re doing to make money isn’t as extremely unethical as it seems. While Karsh made his money in a pretty awful way, he otherwise hasn’t done much that we could find, so he only gets a 3 on our rating scale. Billionaire #2: Bernie Marcus: 8/10 on the DKMALI Bernie Marcus was one of the founders of Home Depot. Chad doesn’t say too much about Home Depot itself. Instead, he focuses on other dimensions of Marcus’ life, including his self-mythologization, his political and philosophical views, and his propaganda outfit the Job Creators Network. Although Marcus has made a big name for himself in the philanthropy game, he has done even more work to lobby against social programs that might actually help with the causes to which he donates money. Marcus is a true ideologue, a free-market fundamentalist to the core. Links: Vulture Investors article: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1005718715162 Job Creators Network sampler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03bmtmDvoA0 https://youtu.be/13CJO7BVEYk David and Rick Berman https://www.brooklynvegan.com/silver-jews-end/ https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/us/politics/pr-executives-western-energy-alliance-speech-taped.html?_r=1 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/03/rick-berman-job-creators-network/