Jerk Patterns: The Ziff Bros and Scott Cook

Zero Sum Empire

Billionaires in the News: Zero Sum Empire goes international. There were two strange international billionaire stories we wanted to talk about: the death of the world’s richest banker, Joseph Safra, and the deadly poisoning of Chinese billionaire Lin Qi. Our last story is about the Corporate Transparency Act that was just passed as part of the defense spending bill. Surprise! It will do very little to mandate corporate transparency for the corporations and LLCs run by the rich and powerful. Billionaire #1: The Ziff Brothers, 3.5/10 on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index (DKMALI) Joe introduces us to the Ziff brothers. The brothers inherited their wealth from their magazine publishing magnate father. Instead of continuing in the publishing business, they decided to create an investment firm. The brothers gave Joe the opportunity to investigate family offices a little more, as he promised last episode. The rise in popularity of family offices should be linked to the increasingly oligarchic control of the planet. It’s a consolidation strategy that provides greater cover from scrutiny for the super-rich. Do you remember that the Ziff family was embroiled in the infamous Manafort/Kushner Trump Tower meeting with Russian lobbyist Natalya Veselnitskaya? I didn’t! Joe also goes over some of Dirk Ziff’s (that’s his real name) other assets, which you’ll want to stick around to hear about. Billionaire #2: Scott Cook, 5/10 on the DKMALI Scott Cook is a boring man. He started the software firm Intuit, and if you’ve ever used TurboTax, then you’re familiar with at least one of the company’s products. Chad discusses a story some of you may have heard about from last year involving Turbotax, which involves a controversy that’s a little too complicated to explain in the show notes. However, please heed this Public Service Message: you can almost certainly use TurboTax for free and you should. Chad then discusses how the practice of double-entry bookkeeping (which is what Intuit’s bread-and-butter product Quickbooks does) is the notation system that makes modern capitalism as we know it possible. Double-entry bookkeeping is a necessary precondition for any capitalist system that extends beyond limited, local boundaries. P.S., in case you didn’t recognize it, the final clip is from The Grapes of Wrath. As always, thanks for listening! Tell you friends. Leave a review. Links: Ziff Bros: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/memo-undermines-russian-lawyers-account-of-trump-tower-meeting https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/20/how-bill-browder-became-russias-most-wanted-man https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.economist.com/leaders/2018/12/15/how-the-0001-invest https://beachgrit.com/2020/06/breaking-dirk-ziff-owner-of-world-surf-league-also-co-owner-of-plantation-that-once-housed-500-slaves-but-is-now-americas-most-expensive-and-snootiest-private-clubs/ Scott Cook: https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-just-tricked-you-into-paying-to-file-your-taxes https://darkpatterns.org/ Accounting for Rationality: Double-Entry Bookkeeping and the Rhetoric of Economic Rationality: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2781637?seq=1 (if you don’t have JSOTR and want this, I’ll send you a copy)