Sublime

In 2020, Avital Balwit had won a Rhodes Scholarship and turned it down, first to run Carrick Flynn’s congressional campaign and then to give away FTX’s money. Leopold Aschenbrenner, who had entered Columbia University at the age of fifteen and graduated four years later as class valedictorian, had just declined a spot at Yale Law School to work for

(As his predecessor John Pierpont Morgan had said about a banker’s reputation at the Pujo hearings in front of the House Banking and Currency Committee in 1912, “[It] is his most valuable possession; it is the result of years of faith and honorable dealing and, while it may be quickly lost, once lost cannot be restored for a long time, if ever.”)

“He can be, sometimes I think, probably too tough on people.” His point was that while it was one thing to maximize returns for shareholders, there was an array of stakeholders that had to be considered. Among others, employees fell into that category.

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la franchise transforme le chef d’entreprise qu’est censé être le franchisé en un investisseur pour qui l’exploitation du personnel est la seule possibilité de profit. McDonald’s reporte son risque entrepreneurial sur les franchisés qui eux-mêmes le reportent sur les équipiers.

I was of two minds about Mr. Durant. I admired his automotive genius, his imagination, his generous human qualities, and his integrity. His loyalty to the enterprise was absolute. I recognized, as Mr. Raskob and Pierre S. du Pont had, that he had created and inspired the dynamic growth of General Motors. But I thought he was too casual in his ways