Technological capitalism continuously disappoints its investors regarding what continually promises them. In 2022, when Masayoshi are announced losses of 23,000 million dollars in softbankthe market pretended to surprise what was inevitable: the collapse of a bubble inflated by the megalomania of its architects itself.
It was not the first time they were seeing a fortune evaporate. He had already lost 99% of his wealth in the Crash of the ‘Puntocom’. The pattern is repeated because it should be repeated: the eternal reproduction of the same, where each cycle of boom and Bust Technological needs its own prophets and martyrs. They are represents both roles with particular dedication.
Lionel Barber’s new biography about Masayhoshi are‘Gambling Man‘, portrays a man who has turned the extreme risk into a show. The book aims to unravel the genius after seemingly irrational decisions, but ends up revealing something more important: how modern technological capitalism has normalized recklessness as business virtue.
They are, who like to compare with Napoleon and Genghis Khan, embodies the violence of a system that has made the disruption its mantra. Invest 4,400 million dollars in Wework After a 12 -minute conversation because it can do it – as well portrayed the phenomenal Wecrashedfrom Apple Tv+ – because el System rewards the grandiloquent gesture about rigorous analysis. Economic rationality is subordinated to the imperative of the show.
The mechanism needs, of course, a distortion of the objectives it says. SoftBank does not really seek to identify the best technological companies in the future, seeks to feed the narrative that you can do it.
The reality is that the Vision Fund It operates as a validation machine: Validation for Son, which found in money and success a way to overcome discrimination suffered in postwar Japan; validation for founders who receive their investments; Validation for a market that needs to believe that someone, somewhere, can see the future.
“If you are intelligent you do not need leverage, and if you are silly you should not use it,” said Warren Buffett, who in addition to being the best investor in history is a great representative of a more sober and methodical capitalism. Perhaps the first is not understood without the second.
They are represents the antithesis of buffet: a system where the mass leverage –SoftBank came to accumulate more than 150,000 million in debt– It is not a means but an end in itself. Debt as a show, as a demonstration of power.
What surprises is not that they are survived their failures, but that the system needs them. Each multimillionaire loss reinforces its misunderstanding image, willing to bet against consensus. “At some point, everyone will tell you that you are crazy,” he proclaims. The line between vision and reckless has become deliberately diffuse.
Today, while driving A new multimillionaire bet in chips for AIThey are still playing their role in this work. The public applauds because it must applaud: the fiction that after each new technological bubble there is a visionary genius is too comforting to abandon it. He show It must continue, although we all know how it ends.
The Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi are
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