Poster Boy for the Roaring '20s?
April 24, 2021 1:07 PM Subscribe
Thank you for including the archive version of the Bloomberg link, chavenet.
posted by doctornemo at 2:40 PM on April 24, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by doctornemo at 2:40 PM on April 24, 2021 [4 favorites]
Oh man, this guy is in the middle of the Wirecard scandal. That's been a huge embarassment for Germany's startup scene. Sort of a Theranos for Germany. But we shrugged off Theranos because we have so many other examples of success, non-fraudulent startups. Not so much in Germany.
His Malta-based family office, Apeiron, helped China’s HNA Group purchase 9.9% of Deutsche Bank AG stock in 2017
Why yes, that all sounds like perfectly normal business. Deutsche Bank: because the Swiss banks stopped being crooked enough.
posted by Nelson at 4:12 PM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
His Malta-based family office, Apeiron, helped China’s HNA Group purchase 9.9% of Deutsche Bank AG stock in 2017
Why yes, that all sounds like perfectly normal business. Deutsche Bank: because the Swiss banks stopped being crooked enough.
posted by Nelson at 4:12 PM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
His Malta-based family office, ...
Corruption? In Malta?
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 4:40 PM on April 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
Corruption? In Malta?
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 4:40 PM on April 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
#Demeter
#Eleusinian Mysteries
#agariancool
posted by clavdivs at 5:35 PM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
#Eleusinian Mysteries
#agariancool
posted by clavdivs at 5:35 PM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
Christ, what an asshole.
posted by away for regrooving at 6:17 PM on April 24, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by away for regrooving at 6:17 PM on April 24, 2021 [7 favorites]
✓ Softbank
✓ Wirecard
✓ Bitcoin
✓ Deutsche Bank
✓ SPACs
Looking good! I almost have bingo. I can win with any of Greensill, Mohammed bin Salman, or NFT
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 8:01 PM on April 24, 2021 [15 favorites]
✓ Wirecard
✓ Bitcoin
✓ Deutsche Bank
✓ SPACs
Looking good! I almost have bingo. I can win with any of Greensill, Mohammed bin Salman, or NFT
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 8:01 PM on April 24, 2021 [15 favorites]
✓ Softbank
✓ Wirecard
✓ Bitcoin
✓ Deutsche Bank
✓ SPACs
At some point there has got to be money made just by investing against Deutsche Bank involvement.
posted by srboisvert at 3:40 AM on April 25, 2021 [7 favorites]
✓ Wirecard
✓ Bitcoin
✓ Deutsche Bank
✓ SPACs
At some point there has got to be money made just by investing against Deutsche Bank involvement.
posted by srboisvert at 3:40 AM on April 25, 2021 [7 favorites]
Of course he wants to live forever.
(On a side note, I really wish we would stop romanticizing the Hadrian and Antinoos relationship. For one, Hadrian probably murdered him, for another, you couldn't say no to the emperor. Same goes for Alexander, except for the murdering part.)
posted by lesbiassparrow at 5:54 AM on April 25, 2021 [2 favorites]
(On a side note, I really wish we would stop romanticizing the Hadrian and Antinoos relationship. For one, Hadrian probably murdered him, for another, you couldn't say no to the emperor. Same goes for Alexander, except for the murdering part.)
posted by lesbiassparrow at 5:54 AM on April 25, 2021 [2 favorites]
Only someone who has never really experienced suffering could want to live forever.
All I want is to make these fuckers experience suffering.
posted by deadaluspark at 10:09 AM on April 25, 2021 [7 favorites]
All I want is to make these fuckers experience suffering.
posted by deadaluspark at 10:09 AM on April 25, 2021 [7 favorites]
Only someone who has never really experienced suffering could want to live forever.
I have tended towards absolutist thoughts about those who want to live forever, at some points, but I know someone whose desperate wish not to die is founded (they believe) in the utter terror of abandonment that results from the profound abuse they suffered in childhood.
I also don't really think there's anyone (leaving aside a possible fraction of people whose neurology might prevent them from experiencing suffering, or limit the intensity of it) who has never really experienced suffering to some significant extent. People just don't, on the available data, seem to be made like that (and not being made like that seems to make sense). Some people certainly experience more suffering than others, but even then, the inverse correlation of suffering and wealth seems only moderate, and seems to break down almost entirely somewhere around the 80th centile of wealth in developed nations. Intense suffering is a somewhat different matter, with wealth and privilege providing a fairly decent shield. But even then, y'know, rich people abuse their kids too, or lose them in cruel and heartbreaking ways. I mean, look at the fucking Trump multi-generation disaster, or Charles Lindbergh (who also doesn't seem to have been in any way edified by going through one of the most horrific experiences one can possibly imagine).
I suppose I have a general contention with the worldview this comment gestures at*. It seems to suggest that the very rich are a breed apart, and I just don't see any evidence that it's true. Most very wealthy people are just people. The problem isn't in the ways they they aren't like us, I suspect, but mainly in the ways that they are. Power doesn't extend vision, or the capacity for empathy. We're none of us cognitively capable of wielding such power with anything approaching wisdom or morality. The problem is never "bad rich people". If it were, as Orwell notes, the answer would be the Dickensian approach of "better rich people". The problem is always "any rich people", and the answer is always "no rich people".
None of that excuses being vastly rich. It's still a choice. No-one forces anyone to be rich, and many of us would be delighted to help them choose another path. The people who end up rich, and the families that stay rich, will, I think, exhibit some tendency toward being among the less admirable and less imaginative examples of our species. But I think it's important to recognise that this isn't because they're different from us in some qualitative way. I don't think it's important out of mere piety, but because if we don't recognise that the problem is that human beings are utterly terrible at holding power, we will always focus on the symptoms of that problem, and never address its causes, and we will always live in a world controlled by some bunch of powerful assholes.
* With whatever degree of seriousness, or steadfastness. I don't think you necessarily hold such a worldview, or that you one can readily infer the complexity of a person's political stance from expressions of justified frustration at the presence and pronouncements of another one of these. fucking. guys.
posted by howfar at 5:45 AM on April 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
I have tended towards absolutist thoughts about those who want to live forever, at some points, but I know someone whose desperate wish not to die is founded (they believe) in the utter terror of abandonment that results from the profound abuse they suffered in childhood.
I also don't really think there's anyone (leaving aside a possible fraction of people whose neurology might prevent them from experiencing suffering, or limit the intensity of it) who has never really experienced suffering to some significant extent. People just don't, on the available data, seem to be made like that (and not being made like that seems to make sense). Some people certainly experience more suffering than others, but even then, the inverse correlation of suffering and wealth seems only moderate, and seems to break down almost entirely somewhere around the 80th centile of wealth in developed nations. Intense suffering is a somewhat different matter, with wealth and privilege providing a fairly decent shield. But even then, y'know, rich people abuse their kids too, or lose them in cruel and heartbreaking ways. I mean, look at the fucking Trump multi-generation disaster, or Charles Lindbergh (who also doesn't seem to have been in any way edified by going through one of the most horrific experiences one can possibly imagine).
I suppose I have a general contention with the worldview this comment gestures at*. It seems to suggest that the very rich are a breed apart, and I just don't see any evidence that it's true. Most very wealthy people are just people. The problem isn't in the ways they they aren't like us, I suspect, but mainly in the ways that they are. Power doesn't extend vision, or the capacity for empathy. We're none of us cognitively capable of wielding such power with anything approaching wisdom or morality. The problem is never "bad rich people". If it were, as Orwell notes, the answer would be the Dickensian approach of "better rich people". The problem is always "any rich people", and the answer is always "no rich people".
None of that excuses being vastly rich. It's still a choice. No-one forces anyone to be rich, and many of us would be delighted to help them choose another path. The people who end up rich, and the families that stay rich, will, I think, exhibit some tendency toward being among the less admirable and less imaginative examples of our species. But I think it's important to recognise that this isn't because they're different from us in some qualitative way. I don't think it's important out of mere piety, but because if we don't recognise that the problem is that human beings are utterly terrible at holding power, we will always focus on the symptoms of that problem, and never address its causes, and we will always live in a world controlled by some bunch of powerful assholes.
* With whatever degree of seriousness, or steadfastness. I don't think you necessarily hold such a worldview, or that you one can readily infer the complexity of a person's political stance from expressions of justified frustration at the presence and pronouncements of another one of these. fucking. guys.
posted by howfar at 5:45 AM on April 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
Wait, there are no good reasons to want to live for ever?
I always wanted to pop out of the freezer once a century to watch the glorious trainwreck that is humanity. Guess I missed the memo.
posted by butterstick at 4:29 PM on April 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
I always wanted to pop out of the freezer once a century to watch the glorious trainwreck that is humanity. Guess I missed the memo.
posted by butterstick at 4:29 PM on April 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
You must be new here: folks who want to live forever are "fuckers" that some Metafilter user wants to make "experience suffering." Welcome to the site!
posted by Nelson at 4:52 PM on April 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Nelson at 4:52 PM on April 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
I always wanted to pop out of the freezer once a century to watch the glorious trainwreck that is humanity. Guess I missed the memo.
I think curiosity is probably the best reason to wish for eternal life, and that it's often the last and only effective bulwark against giving up whatever period of life we do end up getting. I'm a hopeful person by nature, I think, but I've lost all hope of ever feeling even basic contentment or satisfaction more than a few times in my life. But my curiosity has barely flagged, even then. It's hard to seriously plan killing yourself when there's always at least one thing you want to know. I'd guess there's something about the fundamental need for brains to preserve salience systems for non-autonomic functions to work at all, which means that curiosity is likely one of the last things to go.
I suspect it doesn't work as protectively for everyone, of course. While neurodiversity has probably made me more prone to recurring mental illness, and so to despair, ADHD, in particular, is likely to increase the extent to which I am motivated by curiosity.
posted by howfar at 5:22 PM on April 26, 2021
I think curiosity is probably the best reason to wish for eternal life, and that it's often the last and only effective bulwark against giving up whatever period of life we do end up getting. I'm a hopeful person by nature, I think, but I've lost all hope of ever feeling even basic contentment or satisfaction more than a few times in my life. But my curiosity has barely flagged, even then. It's hard to seriously plan killing yourself when there's always at least one thing you want to know. I'd guess there's something about the fundamental need for brains to preserve salience systems for non-autonomic functions to work at all, which means that curiosity is likely one of the last things to go.
I suspect it doesn't work as protectively for everyone, of course. While neurodiversity has probably made me more prone to recurring mental illness, and so to despair, ADHD, in particular, is likely to increase the extent to which I am motivated by curiosity.
posted by howfar at 5:22 PM on April 26, 2021
« Older Imagining a post-pandemic... New Yorker magazine... | Lost in Thought Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by kaelynski at 2:35 PM on April 24, 2021 [2 favorites]