If you run a traditional short (borrow and sell the shares), you need to be right on the direction and the timing to make any money. One random surge in the price can kill your short even if said surge is short-lived.
1. Inference providers are largely a commodity business. While demand outstrips supply, there are many providers of that supply, which does somewhat constrain how much leverage a provider has.
2. The models are not interchangeable as of yet (though this seems to be changing). A lot of people want the latest Anthropic or OpenAI model; as such, the labs still have considerable leverage.
3. A lot of the inference providers have used their leverage by doing equity deals with the labs, agreements to have some of the deal revenue spent on compute, etc.
GPU prices are sitting well above MSRP, even for older generation cards. Datacenter growth is also being pushed pretty hard by most of the cloud providers. More anecdotally, the model providers I use have been "throttling" my requests (usually by bumping them down to a lower model version) more frequently. Granted, that could be for profit reasons, but I think it all generally points to a lack of capacity.
>Is there a wait to get an inference provider or interruptions in availability?
I think that the inference providers and model vendors are mostly handling it behind the scenes with more aggressive quantization, increasing API prices, deprecating more generous monthly tiers, etc.
Nathan Fielder is pretty well-known for his work in The Rehearsal and Nathan for You. Nathan for You resides in the docu-comedy genre, where you take advantage of real people's reactions to absurd situations for comedic effect. Other examples are things like Kitchen Nightmares (where Gordon Ramsey goes into real restaurants and "fixes" them). It's a well-done version of the idea, but not revolutionary IMO.
The Rehearsal, however, extends the idea further. In that show, he helps real people "rehearse" for hard conversations. It involves Fielder building extravagant sets and having absurdly detailed set-ups with multiple actors, then running the conversation multiple times. What makes this "different" is that now the real person is partially in on it? Like, they know that they're on a set. They know that this is a simulation. So the show is more "meta" than previous entries in the genre, opening up other avenues for humour.
I say this because You Can See Everything is best understood as a further extension of those projects. Even the name indicates this, because by nature of a documentary, you can't see everything. You have a real person in Elizabeth Holmes, being interviewed by a person in Fielder that's known for his stunts taking advantage of "real people," where he watches fictionalized versions of Holmes with Holmes herself? Viewed in light of his previous projects, this feels like an extension of them.
But even with that, I think the setup does allow you to see something real in Holmes. She also knows how people "want" to see her! So there's also a sort of meta-narrative there too, where you know Holmes is on her best behavior to try and dispel the narrative from those fictionalized TV characterizations. The fact that she comes off poorly in the documentary says something, even accounting for the fact that Fielder is trying to sell a narrative.
It's a real mind game, but I think it's representative of Holmes because of that. She is going to jail for a fraud that amounts to a similar sort of mind game, she agrees to a documentary to show herself differently, but that documentary is also a mind game. Wild stuff.
I cannot imagine being so hostile towards curiosity. You approach this as "I already know everything there is to know, and therefore this documentary (that I haven't seen) has no value".
I was merely citing the known facts in this case. The facts have been well-established in the criminal trial and in the press coverage about Holmes. The facts are voluminous, and of all this mountain of evidence, very little of it is featured in this so-called documentary.
I am under the impression that most people are not watching this movie to find new evidence or dispute the trial outcomes. Like other commenters have mentioned, many people seem to be watching more out of a sense of curiosity, similar to wanting to see a magician reveal their tricks.
>she was a fraudster convicted of criminal fraud...
>a former celebrity with little self-awareness, who is incapable of seeing how absurd and ridiculous she appears now that she is no longer powerful...
As someone who has seen it, there's simply no way both of these descriptions of her are true. If you believe that she's guilty of everything she's accused of doing, she's incredibly self-aware and her entire participation in this movie is a desperate Hail Mary attempt to save face in the court of public opinion. At one point in the movie Fielder is having a conversation with another person and says something along the lines of "She's either innocent or maybe the most manipulative person in human history". The movie isn't as concerned with a true journalistic investigation of her guilt or innocence, there are better accounts of that elsewhere and plenty of people who can tell that story better than Fielder. What he seems to be most interested in is the absurd commitment to she has to her claimed innocence and how effective that is or isn't.
> If you believe that she's guilty of everything she's accused of doing, she's incredibly self-aware
There was a mountain of evidence against Holmes, and she was convicted in a criminal trial. So it seems like a safe assumption that she was guilty.
Does it follow then that, because she is almost certainly guilty, that she must be "incredibly self-aware"? Of course not. It's just as likely that she is totally lacking in self-awareness, and that she simply does not know when to shut her mouth because she has no idea how stupid she sounds.
>It's just as likely that she is totally lacking in self-awareness, and that she simply does not know when to shut her mouth because she has no idea how stupid she sounds.
No, because she doesn't sound "stupid" in the movie. The mountain of evidence against her is so extreme that being able to carve out any narrative in which her innocence has any plausibility requires such a calculated and well constructed plan that is shows a high level of social intelligence and self-control. Fielder literally lives with her 24/7 for weeks and her mask doesn't slip. You don't have to believe her story to recognize she's not a "stupid" person who "does not know when to shut her mouth".
You are talking about someone that spoke with a rather manipulated voice almost 24/7 for years. Of course she can act all day, every day. It's a big part of what her job was.
Maybe I wasn't clear. I'm not saying she's innocent. I'm saying this idea of her being guilty is incompatible with this view that she's just a stupid person with no self-awareness who doesn't know when to shut up. One of those two descriptions of her is wrong.
That's why I referenced that Fielder quote. Either she's innocent (unlikely) or she's an incredibly self-aware person with a remarkable degree of social intelligence. The image she's painting of herself is too expertly constructed for her to have gotten there accidentally, it's either the truth or a deftly orchestrated piece of fiction. You can't manipulate people to the level she has been accused of through nothing but dumb luck.
I don’t agree with this view towards two options. Humans are complex and reducing it to this narrative eliminates so many possible narratives where she could be incredibly self aware in one compartment and also completely delusional in another. Multiplied by 50 different dimensions.
Once again, I guess I'm not being clear. I agree with you generally, but we aren't talking about 50 different dimensions of her character. It's not like I'm not saying her behavior at Theranos indicates something about the type of mother she is to her kids. I'm saying if she's a manipulator she's a masterful and self-aware manipulator. That's just one compartment.
Trump is a manipulator. He is totally lacking in self-awareness in one aspect, and yet very aware of how to use his speaking and actions to promote himself in another.
It's never as simple as "they are very self-aware" or the opposite extreme.
It feels like people are trying their best to not understand me. I'm not saying every manipulator is self-aware. I'm saying Holmes is self-aware.
Maybe you all have to see the movie to understand what I'm saying. In many ways, the image she presents in the movie is nearly diametrically opposed from the image you have of Holmes going in. That shows she's very likely aware of the image she had previously. She's appears to be trying to counteract the narrative in such a specific way that it can't be accidental. It's more complicated than just her continuing to claim innocence, she's practically a different person in this movie. Someone like Trump could never transform themselves like that. And it is that transformation which makes me think she's self-aware.
This is exactly what sociopaths do. What would have been interesting is having someone who knows how to trigger one talk to her. For example the FBI have technical guides on interviewing sociopaths/psychopaths with techniques for getting them to drop the mask. Having this guy living with her for all that time made him the perfect patsy for her manipulation.
Journalist Ron Jonson had the same experience. He went into a prison to interview a convicted... serial killer I think, knowing that he was a psychopath and having read up on how psychopaths manipulate people, and still came out convinced he was a poor innocent guy wrongly convicted.
Delusional to what degree? Because fraud and manipulation typically require intent. If she has lost touch with reality to the degree that she believes her lies, she needs psychiatric help and I haven't seen a single person offer that defense including her legal team or the two successive men that served the joint role of her business and romantic partner. If she's that detached from reality, wouldn't it be more likely that she's the one being manipulated by the non-delusional folks around her? How could she be the ringleader of this fraud and manipulation if she's the delusional one and everyone else is sane? Those are some of the questions the movie explores.
If she has delusions of grandeur, I think that makes it even more likely that she's self-aware. Once again, Fielder lived with her 24/7. If Fielder didn't see it over that time, it's likely because she was hiding it, and if she's hiding it, she's likely aware of it.
You're making this out to be a binary, where delusions are more of a spectrum. She can be aware of the fact that she's deceiving people, but the motivation can be delusional. Often such a unrelenting dedication to a series of deceptions is fueled by a core delusion.
Some people live like this their entire lives to the point that constantly deceiving themselves is part of the mindset. There is likely some deep mental illness at play here.
One wonders if Theranos had been a software company, would she be lauded instead for her bold moves? Would she be on her fourth company instead of in prison? Or would she need to be male? Just seeing how the AI companies are allowed to behave.
Epstein seems to have gotten away with defrauding a couple billionaires and becoming rich and super connected in the process.
>There's absolutely nothing about her that is different from all the other con men and fraudsters sitting in jail or prison.
Have you actually seen the movie? You seem to be talking around that question in an almost Holmesian manner. Because this statement is incredibly definitive to a degree that is bordering on objectively wrong. I mean "absolutely nothing"?. At the very least, she's a lot weirder than your average conman. The simple act of selecting Nathan Fielder for this project is a bizarre choice that shows something unique about her.
I've read Bad Blood and seen the movie. Both can be true. Some con men or confidence people have the ability to uphold untruths much longer than a normal person would be comfortable with. Reading Bad Blood, you're distanced from the psychology of Holmes, but in the movie your placed directly in front of her.
Holmes constructs a world with her lies. I don't how much time she spends brushing it off, or she just adapts it to her normal behavior, but there are scenes which are telling. Like when she explains how the device works and speaks in a painfully roundabout way to make it seem like she's not lying. Watching a panel about the movie with the Bad Blood author someone mentioned she almost is dressing the exact opposite of her old appearance. Earthy brown sweater instead of black turtleneck and hair down instead of in a pony tail. Even her initial image is eerie in how much she directly knocked off Steve Jobs' appearance on reflection.
>Watching a panel about the movie with the Bad Blood author someone mentioned she almost is dressing the exact opposite of her old appearance. Earthy brown sweater instead of black turtleneck and hair down instead of in a pony tail. Even her initial image is eerie in how much she directly knocked off Steve Jobs' appearance on reflection.
Isn't that a sign of her being self-aware? The image she presents in this movie being almost diametrically opposed to the image she had previously (and that goes beyond wardrobe) shows an awareness of that prior image.
Your question implies that anyone who has not seen this latest film about Holmes is unqualified to form an opinion about her guilt or innocence. And that is what really matters in this debate: whether Holmes is in fact guilty or innocent. So it's worth asking what knowledge you have acquired about her case.
Have you read John Carreyrou's award-winning book Bad Blood? Have you seen the HBO documentary directed by Alex Gibney that chronicles the rise and fall of Theranos and its blood-testing claims, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley. For my part, I have indeed read Carreyrou's book, and I watched Gibney's documentary, and I also followed the press coverage of Theranos and the criminal trial of Elizabeth Holmes. It is on the basis of all this evidence that I am speaking knowledgeably about the facts concerning Elizabeth Holmes, including the likelihood that she is a almost certainly guilty of the crimes for which she was convicted.
And what about you? Do you know anything about Holmes beyond the pseudo-documentary you just saw? The reason why I have replied to your question with a question is because you also seem to be talking in a "Holmesian" manner, taking everything she does and says at face value. So it seems like a valid question to inquire about your level of knowledge about her criminal record. Another interesting question is: Do you really believe, against all the evidence, that Elizabeth Holmes could be innocent?
>Your question implies that anyone who has not seen this latest film about Holmes is unqualified to form an opinion about her guilt or innocence.
No, my question was meant to imply that someone who hasn't seen the film is unqualified to discuss what's contained in that film. You weren't just making definitive statements about Holmes, you were making definitive statements about the movie itself without having seen it.
This made me wonder and checking rotten tomatoes, those are indeed some high scores. Time seems to be an exception and everything it said makes sense to me as someone who hasn't watched it.
Don't worry too much, while a certain sphere will watch this movie I doubt "most people" will watch it. Personally I won't watch it only since it's been a long time and I have no interest in this topic anymore. I suspect this will be common.
Walmart makes a coffee mug for like $2. Louis Vuitton will sell you one for $385. But there's an entire class of coffee mugs in the middle, where you're paying more than it "should" cost, but less than you would for status signaling.
An example is this mug [1]. It's $18, so it's not even close to being a status symbol. It's also a little nicer than a Walmart mug. But I'd be hard-pressed to argue that it's 6x as nice like the price would imply. I suppose you could consider it a luxury good? But in my mind, it feels weird to lump it in with a Louis Vuitton mug.
Playdate feels like it sits right in the middle of the spectrum? I dint think the price is being marked up for status related reasons. But they probably could have made something similar in functionality for a lot less money. It's just a product that's nicer than it "needs" to be.
This reminds me of a story of Diogenes the Cynic [1], who embraced minimalism to the point that he slept in a large wine jar and owned only a few simple possessions, such as his tunic and a drinking bowl. One day, he saw a boy drinking water from a trough by cupping his hands and bringing it to his mouth, so Diogenes threw away his drinking bowl and stated that the boy had found true minimalism because "nature had already provided him with a cup."
I don't know, it feels like "reading a claims summary and classifying the type of claim" should be the bread and butter LLM use case? Not that executives are blameless for pushing AI everywhere, but we should also be able to "blame" AI for doing poorly at a task it's supposed to be good at.
The interesting thing about AI v. other disruptive technologies (like the internet, steam engine, etc), is that AI has been personified both by the manufacturers of it (Anthropic being the most blatant by using a human name for its product) and users.
That makes it way more likely that people blame AI (doesn't make it right by any means, but does mean that the actual blame gets diffused even more).
How is that a problem? That makes it far worse for companies, after all. If an employee of a company makes a mistake then the consequences are:
1) employee was willingly sabotaging the company: employee gets jail time plus fine, employer is on the hook financially
2) employee was involved either in accident or just made a stupid decision: employer is on the hook financially
So if that's the case, then employers are financially responsible for everything the AI they use says. That's the rule for employees.
Note: this is different from, say if a company uses a car and it just starts by itself and drives into the next door warehouse setting it on fire (ie. some sort of designed-in decision/issue)
: in that case the maker of the car is responsible, both financially and criminally, even if an employee or even the boss/owner/everyone at the company were involved.
Of course, guaranteed that governments will change this the first time a court makes this obvious connection. Why do I think that?
Well, for example, the UK government changed the rule when it turned out the post-office's written software (written by contractors, under post office and thus government responsibility and accountability) decided to cause incredible damage by blaming innocent people for stealing. Then, a special law was voted that in that specific case it didn't apply, and the government department, nor any of it's employees, were responsible.
Just like, for example, Pennsylvania changed the rules for unwittingly-but-directly aiding criminal activity when it turned out half the Pennsylvania government was complicit in the kids-for-cash scandal (because in that case, normally, you wouldn't be criminally liable, but you WOULD be liable for any financial damage you do)
>You can't 'blame' the AI, as it can't be held accountable.
Seems like more of a semantic distinction IMO. Yes, I can't technically "blame" the AI because it's not accountable. But what word would you suggest for "I had [X technology] handle [Y task] and it failed to perform that task?" I can't "blame" my router if I lose internet and it prevents me from jumping on a Zoom call, but it's also true that the router failed to do the thing it was supposed to do.
Do you blame the hammer for bending the nail, or the person driving it? AI is nothing more than a tool being used by people.
When my internet goes down, I blame either my ISP for having an outage, or the manufacturer of my router (assuming it's a router issue? Haven't had that happen personally but I'm certain it exists) (Or i did something dumb with my ufw again but that's on me)
If you create an autonomous system and it fails, blame should be on you, imo.
The word is still 'blame', it just needs to be applied correctly.
Part of the problem is the distribution of images (and text) you get from claims is not the same as what the model was trained on. A classic problem in ML.
Another part of the problem is that a model not specifically fine-tuned to make a total loss determination won't know the relevant factors, nor how an insurance company's concept of a total loss differs from the public's.
And still another part of the problem is that most total loss claims aren't what you, dear reader, are imagining: They are very rarely "the car is a thin pancake after being crushed by a meteor".
The much, much more common scenario is: "50% of the body panels sustained at least paint damage, both headlight modules need replacement, and the front wheels look funny. Given that the vehicle has an MSRP of $FOO, $BAR miles, no prior collision history on carfax, and is a popular color, is it cheaper to repair or total the vehicle?"
Of course, the model can turn over the hard cases to a human adjuster... but then what are we doing here? It only takes 10 seconds for the human adjuster to handle the "crushed by a meteor" case also.
Source: Listening to my SIL rant about being asked to stop training bespoke total loss models and just send it by 1-shotting a commercial LLM.
Not that it is necessarily the case here, but when execs go "AI shopping" they have absolutely _zero_ idea that there are basically 3-4 SOTA models, thousands of smaller models, and then an uncountable number of wrappers on whatever underlying model. The AI landscape that is totally familiar to us is covered in shroud for them.
So they Google "Insurance claim AI tool", land on a vibecoded SaaS that is just a wrapper on a pocket Chinese model spun as "your next insurance pro", and then are getting the whole department on some lone 19 yr olds weekend project.
An exclusive theatrical window is one of the big reasons to go to a movie theater: you want to see a movie before it's available on streaming. Removing copyright seems like it would harm theaters pretty significantly.
The screen would become the thing. If anyone can watch anything anywhere at any time, having a 200 foot screen differentiates a theater from watching something on a phone. 99% of the time, people will choose the phone, will choose to watch sports on tv, etc. that remaining 1% might be a big enough market and without licensing fees, theaters have a lot more margin.
Actually, it seems surprising they haven’t moved into sports (especially with sportsbooks becoming so popular).
Some cinemas do present some sporting events. The rights negotiations for sporting events are multi-layered and complex. Your average soccer or MLB game is not likely to be negotiated for that venue, and a whole-season license is unlikely. Playoffs, championships, and the like are sometimes worthwhile but it's not going to be the corner mom & pop cinemas paying for that content. It's going to be IMAX or Regal Cinemas or someone huge.
For example the 2024 Summer Olympics, with NBC owning exclusive rights to the US market for video coverage (meaning NBC Universal, meaning Comcast) IMAX licensed the opening ceremony to be picked up from NBC and delivered to their US cinemas over IP with fixed latency. It was only the opening ceremony and no scored events. That involved NBC, IMAX, and LTN to carry the video in between. IMAX and NBC negotiated the rights and LTN got statements of agreement on that from NBC. There was involved planning and engineering work to make sure the technical part went smoothly. I'm sure the negotiations, contract writing, redlines, and final sign-off between the source and destination took longer than the tech work.
I think the point is more "why is the outcome of an event like an election considered a commodity" and not a question of the value of event contracts?
Like, why would the same agency regulating wheat futures also be responsible for regulating event contracts? I know the simple answer is that Congress said they should be, but conceptually it's a bit odd.
Even in the optimistic case where SA did have alpha, the position sizing was way out of whack. Based on the volatility of the stocks they were buying, the Kelly Criterion meant you'd need to expect a 900% annual return on the stock before leverage to justify being 4x levered.
What guys like Leopold either don't understand or understand but ignore is that being right directionally and being right on market timing are two different skillsets. When you've juiced a stock by 800%, the existence of alpha pales in comparison to your vulnerability to the stock market.
Just to jump in: Citadel buying this portfolio says nothing about how Citadel feels about the stocks. It's the bread and butter of large HFT hedge funds; if you see someone that has to sell stock, you leverage the fact that you can buy all of it to get a discount versus the asset value. Reports are saying that Citadel was able to buy the portfolio for ~10% under the market value, all at once. That's a no-brainer because you both get a discount and avoid driving the price down by buying small pieces over the course of a week.;
If I were a betting man, I'd bet that Citadel was also selling to Situation Awareness while they were on the way up. At some point, SA had juiced their stock prices so much that no "rational" investors (those that have a view of the stock based on some amount of fundamentals) would be on the other side of the trade. It's retail investors, bandwagon investors, and Citadel-caliber funds. This situation (over-leveraged company blows up due to some volatility) happens all the time in commodities trading, which is where Citadel started.
I'm assuming that Citadel LLC (the hedge fund) will be able to sell these stocks for a profit, not least because Ken Griffin also owns Citadel Securities which is market maker in most of them, even if he probably can't sell directly to them.
OTOH, perhaps there was also a self-serving element of avoiding market contagion that could have occurred if SALP had instead been forced to sell into the market.
Everyone in the markets was talking about SA for the last week and shorting or covering anything they had that overlapped. I am fairly confident that Citadel was net short a good chunk of the stocks they bought from SA (and long a SA's shorts).
Contrary to popular belief these people know what they are doing.
They might not have known it was SA specifically. That being said, they definitely knew a large fund with leverage was buying these stocks. The mechanism here (and I'm not an expert) is:
1. SA wants to buy stock with leverage. You do that through a major bank via total return swaps. Essentially, SA pays X% of the value on $100 of stock (for 4x leverage you'd pay $25) plus an ongoing financing fee (call it 5% a year), then you get the return/loss on that $100 of stock. SA was in these agreements with JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs.
2. The bank, because they don't want to actually hold that risk, goes out and buys $100 of stock.
3. Citadel and others see JPMorgan buying lots and lots of this stock. That's confusing, because normally JPMorgan wouldn't be making a huge directional bet on a stock. They deduce that a large fund is buying the stock.
4. Citadel starts widening their spread (the difference between what they'll buy a stock for and what they'll sell it for). They hedge some of this as best they can, or temporarily live with the risk.
5. SA, the highly leveraged fund buying volatile stocks, inevitably blows up because volatile stocks swing around in price. A dip causes margin calls.
6. JPMorgan or Goldman need to sell the stock fast, because SA is close to dipping below their required margin (i.e. SA paid $25 for $100 in stock exposure, the stock drops to $90, JPMorgan asks for more money because the stock went down by too much).
7. Citadel offers to buy all of the stock from JPMorgan. Because they're doing it in one big block, JPMorgan doesn't lose money selling on the open market (once you start selling, each successive sale is for less money because there are more people selling than buying). Citadel is compensated for this by getting a discount to the asset value (the stock is worth $90, Citadel gets to buy it for $81).
So Citadel didn't do anything to "set up" SA. But because they're hyper-aware of market dynamics, they would have known that someone is going to need to sell stock if the market takes a turn on these names.
I generally agree with you but given your comments, you might enjoy some additional details... Or please challenge me if you think I am wrong.
I've been paying for order-level data feeds on stocks and one thing you'll find is that a lot of the 'sensitive' trades will be anonymized or broken down in different ways to obfuscate who is trading. Citadel would still be able to see there's a surprising level of interest in a certain stock but might not be able to deduce it's one actor. A broker working for SA should know they need to do this, as it helps the broker do better via commissions, etc. too.
My understanding is that Citadel negotiated directly with SA to buy the book, so the final trades were likely taking place outside of the formal market feeds.
the last step, #7, is that fully automated or is this humans calling humans? I imagine everything before then is quite automated, and are thus happening very quickly, so I'm curious if the last piece possible being manual has the potential to blow the whole thing up by being too slow.
It's humans from other banks/funds bidding on the block of stock. As far as timing, for this situation it's basically overnight for regulatory and price reasons. Regulatory because there are legal margin requirements for levered positions and you can't handle the price going much lower, and price because if you had to sell this on the open market you'd keep selling shares for less and less.
So JPMorgan/Goldman prepare all the info on the book and start calling institutional investors after the market closes. The funds and banks prepare bids, there's some negotiation, and the block is finalized before trading opens the next day.
Speed does matter, but you're only calling investors you know "can" close the deal (i.e. they'll have enough capital to buy it all that day/night). So it's more of a price question than a speed one at that point?
And really, nobody wants the downward spiral of a fire sale in the tech sector. Someone will make money on that chaos, but it's a lot of risk when you can lock in a discount with the block trade.
> a "good" CEO is just one that keeps their hands off the levers of power, doesn't rock the boat or fuck anything up, and quietly lets a good company perform
How can you tell if a company is good? Because trillions of dollars are spent by banks, private equity, hedge funds, and others truing to figure out if a company is "good."
> By that measure, you might as well save yourself the executive compensation and potential for disaster by just not having a CEO at all
Sure, but somebody is still making the decisions the CEO would have otherwise made. Maybe it's a good thing that the power isn't concentrated in one person; I'd be open to that. But you now have to trust that each department head is making good decisions. That's fine if they were already making good decisions, hit it's disastrous if they weren't.
> But you now have to trust that each department head is making good decisions.
There is a lot of evidence that corporate mergers destroy value.
What if... they were disintermediated by markets instead of being one company?
There are tons of reasons why companies exist (the whole Theory of the Firm line of research), but the information asymmetry barriers are constantly coming down.
Sure, a college student can tell you if a company is making or losing money. But there are ample examples of "good" companies crashing because they didn't react to shifts in the market, which requires projecting into the future.
Blockbuster was good until it wasn't. Sears was good until it wasn't. Barnes and Noble was good, then it fell apart, and now it's good again. The lesson to learn is that by the time your financials say things are taking a turn, you're a year to multiple years late to start fixing the problem.
And in truth it's a paradox. The better a company is (generally correlated to an empowered workforce with a sense of agency and purpose), the harder it is to extract profit for the capitalist class.
Which helps explain the "need" for CEOs to meddle.
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