'Fear really drives him': is Alex Karp of Palantir the world's scariest CEO?
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I had no idea Alex Karp was black.
Anyhow:
> On CNBC’s Squawk Box, he shook both fists simultaneously as he railed against short sellers betting against Palantir, whose share price has climbed nearly 600% in the past year: “It’s super triggering,” he complained. “Why do they have to go after us?”
This and a few other sections make me wonder how much introspection the guy has and whether he ever concedes that he is wrong.
Our culture is currently at a moment where it confuses the faux confidence of narcissism with strength, and promotes those people to positions of leadership. However, it's pretty much the opposite of that, it is escaping into an imaginary persona with faux infinite confidence, because you are too afraid to be a real person that has faults like everyone else.
There have always been weird people in positions of power. Look at Alexander the Great, for example, or Mao or Idi Amin..
A few more examples here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCahA0MP_G0
However, while it's absolutely not a new thing that people with these personality traits rise to positions of power, e.g. see "The Prince" by Machiavelli, it ignores the uniqueness of the current moment.
We have a widespread far-right movement right now that has a particular ideal of strength and masculinity, which is exactly the symptoms of narcissism, and has formed a cult of personality around a particular malignant narcissist. This is something new that has formed over the past 10-15 years, starting out of certain internet communities including 4chan, 8chan, and "the manosphere" and is a marked cultural departure from how things were ~20 years ago.
Like, if you're trying to recapture the demented retail magic of the Gamestop moment, and I think a lot of these meme-aligned stocks are, then railing against short-sellers is probably a good way to endear yourself to that crowd.
They just can't picture themselves ever being in the wrong. They are genuinely convinced they are the hero. Logically any opposition comes from villains.
With the ego of people like Musk and other idiosyncratic, autocratic, and sociopathic CEOs, I think there needs to be a rational strategy behind it.
The success or failure of the short hinges on which side is manages to convince/intimidate/sway the majority stockholders regardless of fundamentals. If the short sellers manage to recruit more stockholders (by value) - they win (in terms of value), if the company's supporters are move more money - the price doesn't go down and the short sellers are left with the bills.
Haha!
(There is a third scenario, where the likes of Hindenburg Research take out a short position and then reveal problems with the target company, which naturally pushes their price down, but again that's rare.)
Not really. I've shorted 100s of instruments on the financial market and this just doesn't ring true.
Often the best shorts are not the worst companies but the once that have had performed the best over the past 6 months to a year because that generally means they've overshot their valuation and should rationally come back down to a more reasonable level. PLTR certainly fits the bill here.
I think a big misconception the public has about short sellers is that they short to zero. The vast majority of directional shorts look alot more like "short company that has 3x n the last year from $200 down to $120 where its fundamentals or financial ratios make more sense".
And this ignores that from a money manager's standpoint more than half the shorts put on aren't negative bets on a company but rather a downside hedge against another bet that a related stock will go up. IN this case you really don't care about how the shorted stock performs as long as its a good hedge for your upside bet.
Never once have I initiated or participated in a public campaign to promote my short and the vast majority of hedge funds fit that profile.
The fact that there have been a few high profile short cases that most of us know actually helps illustrate just how rare it is.
Quite a bit introspective and humble actually?? These are arguably defining qualities of Karp. See for example https://youtu.be/ChwSTuDa9RY.
Karp interpreted the question if he regretted working with ICE as a question if he had suffered because of it. This was self centered.
He implied it had caused conflict between him and his family. He complained employees he liked left. He complained about protests. This was what he called suffering.
He said protesters protested him. Not Palantir. Not his work. This was self centered.
Were you impressed he said he asked himself if he would protest if younger and a student? Knowing your political views changed requires not much introspection and no humility.
The interviewer asked what was protesters' most valid criticism. Karp asked if 1 instance of injustice tarnished all instances of justice. But this was not protesters' criticism.
He looks pretty white to me. I haven't find an image of this mother.
Won't someone please think of the multi-billion-dollar corporations and ultra-high-net-worth individuals actively working to eliminate the tattered remains of our privacy and to install still-greater systems of surveillance and social control?
I don't know if there is a name for this tactic, but it appears to be fairly novel, and I suspect it was invented by Roy Cohn, who was a mentor to Donald Trump.
It's an incredibly effective manipulation strategy, and I am not sure how to counter it.
This is very common in the defense and national security industries
arms way too open, body weight on both legs, right arm should not be bended, distance between two feet is way to long, left hand should be pointing up, etc.
And indded it's a single whip :-)
It also seems to be a bit weird to exclude his intellectual heritage, he got his PhD under Jürgen Habermas who is one of the best known anti fascist and pro liberal democracy scholars in Germany.
Karp obviously believes that the actions by palantir are necessary to safeguard liberal democracy as it has existed.
Karp has obviously studied German democracy, which has a specific concept for this "wehrhafte Demokratie", meaning that democracies must defend themselves, with force if necessary.
I'm not sure what's obvious about that. No less when his own self interest is in play.
Hilariously this who thing was one of the central debates in Germany, which got significantly influenced by Habermas. If some people are "just evil", then National Socialism will just spontaneously come again and again, it is not a coherent theory of human behavior.
What's bizarre is acting like there is not a huge profit motive here. You're the only one that offered the value judgment of "evil" so I don't think that's a fair response anyway. It's perfectly coherent otherwise.
>Hilariously this who thing was one of the central debates in Germany, which got significantly influenced by Habermas. If some people are "just evil", then National Socialism will just spontaneously come again and again, it is not a coherent theory of human behavior.
No one here said anything like that.
Exacz. Remember when I ask the other guy to make his argument explicit and you told me there was no need to. This is completely ridiculous.
If Karp isn't evil for creating "racist AI", what else should I make of it. There is no actual argument to engage with, which is why I asked for it.
>What's bizarre is acting like there is not a huge profit motive here. You're the only one that offered the value judgment of "evil" so I don't think that's a fair response anyway. It's perfectly coherent otherwise.
You are completely disregarding what I said. Nobodies internal narrative is "I murder people to make money".
I said it was obviously an argument that this guy was a hypocrite. You jumped from that to evil. Let's just pretend you were having a conversation with me and I wrote "sounds like the guy is a hypocrite."
>If Karp isn't evil for creating "racist AI", what else should I make of it. There is no actual argument to engage with, which is why I asked for it.
Only accused him of being a hypocrite; fueling that which he claims to fear, for his own personal gain.
>You are completely disregarding what I said. Nobodies internal narrative is "I murder people to make money".
No, their internal narrative is "I make money". Again, typing your words into my own posts.
His biographer obviously disagrees, if you read the article.
Nothing. The U.S. lost Vietnam, not because it lost battles, but because it offered no governing alternative to Ho Chi Minh that the Vietnamese accepted. Millions of Vietnamese died and still they rejected every colonial gov't the French and then the U.S. tried to prop up.
The U.S.'s power coming from its ability to project organized violence is really a statement about the limits of its power. It can blow up anyone it wants to. It still can't remake other countries as it wishes.
-snip-
Karp referenced the political scientist Samuel Huntington’s belief that “the rise of the west was not made possible ‘by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion … but rather by its superiority in applying organised violence’.”
-snip-
Karp seems to be using that idea to pat himself on the back for tapping into the stream of money that flows toward "the guns" so to speak.
Does he think about whether the US' global hegemony will flourish under domestic fascism that he's paving the way for?
I was thinking even before this line that he gives off the impression of really admiring IBM, especially their German stint from 1933 to 1945.
Well, if you keep preparing for one you'll be the one starting it...
It also doesn't mean you should build private surveillance companies tightly coupled to a single political party, with all the conflicts of interest it brings
If you walk around with a gun in your pocket drooling about self defence scenarios you might end up escalating a situation that could have been avoided altogether.
> If you walk around with a gun in your pocket drooling about self defence scenarios you might end up escalating a situation that could have been avoided altogether.
True, but this is another big assumption about the character of the person carrying the gun. The statistics on people with a permit to carry and the usage of their weapons tell a different story than you present. That is, they are much more likely to deescalate, most defensive gun usages require no shots fired, and license to carry owners are much less likely than the general population to commit or be convicted of a crime.
I am because it is