There is this milieu at the moment that I am starting to disdain but I cannot finger point where exactly or which part really gets under my skin.
I would say the word ‘billionaire’ is probably a starting point. I really loathe them. And not because they have a lot of money, but the amount of content between newspapers and influencers and just general fuck wits that want to always reference them before anything attached to them gets mentioned. Billionaire investor warns that bond markets could fail in Japan… Billionaire tech entrepreneur files for divorce…. Billionaire gives billions away… Can you catch my drift? It makes me sick.
If I were to have a billion dollars I would shut up and just go about my business quietly. I feel that if the rest of society suffers too much whilst these people swan around on jets we might reach one of those French Revolution lets chop of their heads moments.
There was this short bit of Scott Galloway on a reel the other day where he basically called it all out and distilled it beautifully on a panel interview on Piers Morgan with Kevin O’Leary also on there, two diametrically opposed views on what America ought to be, with Galloway being so clear that so much of what now exists in the USA isn’t for the people as a whole. I am not a socialist, please don’t misunderstand me. It’s just that as a small business owner I have watched the middle class purchasing power decrease over these past few years whilst the rich become so rich that the numbers allow them to keep mopping up like Hoovers.
Am I bitter? Not really, I just preferred a time when people were more together. Covid sort of made that happen didnt it? And then in its wake has come a new wave of overwhelming decadence where nobody wants to give up their consumption habits, myself included, in order to make for a fairer society overall.
Unfortunately, the war in Gaza very much reminds me of this. The rich and powerful shitting on the poor and displaced. And I am pro Jewish, pro the protection of Jews, especially in the diaspora, mostly because they have contributed to society greatly and wherever there have been Jews there has been prosperity in general.
The unrest in Los Angeles has reminded me once again, of that overall feeling that, as Margaret Thatcher said - the veneer of civilisation is very thin. I watch all of this from the safety of a small set of shops in Vaucluse where unrest seems a distant concept, glad that we have very few people armed to the teeth, that our general concept of democracy seems rooted in our penal colony tall poppy syndrome and that we are hard working but still relatively laid back.
I haven’t mentioned China yet but I want to say that recently I also watched on Instagram, because I so rarely enjoy regular television these days, that Charlie Monger said before he passed that he loved what China had done to transform themselves with order and less chaos into a powerhouse merely by adopting the Singaporean model of using the savings of the people to invest in themselves. Whilst I love dealing with Italy, over the past two years I have had so many interactions with Chinese factories, and, I have come to love dealing with them. They are super fast, they are super attentive, they are super advanced in their production. 17 years ago when I started you wouldn’t ask the Chinese to do anything of quality.
I remember it well, the labels for example would come in and look so rough and ordinary. These days I cannot fault them on much, they remind me of that block of clay and the art class. The art teacher divided the class into two groups, gave them each a block of clay, told one to make the perfect vase, told the other one to make as many vases as possible. The result being that the one that made as many vases as possible made the best looking vase, because when you do something over and over again you eventually get very good at it. Like us with bow ties I suppose.
So where are we now ? I leave on Thursday and the website shuts and I am going to do to switch off from social media and take some time to finish reading the books that I am half way through. Then I want to focus on an idea of what comes next. I have been chasing a product, a new one to make of our silks, for long now. I asked all the premium AI models, they couldn’t offer me anything worth chasing. It was depressing. The worlds biggest computers could not spit out a new product for me. So, I wait, and I wait, and I wait. And in the meantime I seek out something else to work on, which lately has been our worry beads, key rings and what not. Time will tell. Thank you for your support to date. I look forward to serving you when I get back.