Matt Stoller, A Billionaire Explains Why American Business Now Feels like the Mafia, BIG, June 5, 2026.
The article opens:
In 1981, a consultant named Elmer Smalling, an expert in pay-TV systems, was negotiating on behalf of Jefferson City, Missouri, to see about better prices for residents. Across the table was an executive for a giant corporation named TCI, which had 25% of the U.S. cable market and was known for the hard-charging tactics of its CEO, John Malone. The negotiations were not going well, because the city was thinking of taking away the franchise and going with someone else. Paul Alden, one of Malone’s subordinates, lived up to that reputation.
“We know where you live, where your office is and who you owe money to,” he told Smalling. ”We are having your house watched and we are going to use this information to destroy you. You made a big mistake messing with T.C.I. We are the largest cable company around [.] We are going to see that you are ruined professionally.”
The bulk of the article is a review of Malone's autobiography, Born to Be Wired: Lessons from a Lifetime Transforming Television, Wiring America for the Internet, and Growing Formula One, Discovery, Sirius XM, and the Atlanta Braves, 2025.
Stoller observes:
And this book, while not honest, is as close as I’ve ever seen to getting to the core of how the billionaires who took over American society really think. Malone’s book helped me understand the generation of media billionaires, before the tech oligarchs, who had to contend with the dying embers of New Deal regulations. And they knew a world where it wasn’t ok to do what they were trying to do, and yet they did it anyway, with energy, creativity, and a malevolent zeal to make the world safe for capital.
I'll give you three paragraphs from the review:
At age 27, he presented to the AT&T board of directors something that was then novel in corporate governance. He argued for them to buy back their own stock, which would reduce the total number of shares and thus increase earnings per share. The Chair of AT&T at the time, Fred Kappel, rejected the suggestion, while congratulating Malone on a fabulous presentation. Kappel told him, “If in your whole career, you can do a single thing that changes the Ma Bell system in even the smallest way, you would be very successful.”
It was a jarring moment for Malone. Though a rising star at AT&T, he realized he’d have to leave Bell Labs because it wouldn’t satisfy his need for control. But it’s also, unwittingly, the moment we see a young aggressive corporate leader’s reaction to that of an executive who was genuinely engaged in caretaking of a vast enterprise. Bell Labs had violated what would become a cardinal rule for Malone, which is that its leaders valued the corporation itself over the efficient use of capital in maximizing returns. Malone told his colleagues that Bell Labs, the legendary scientific lab, was a bureaucratic mess, a dinosaur, headed for extinction.
When he left Bell Labs for McKinsey, Malone writes as if it is an act of rebellion. “I wondered whether I had just jumped from the biggest, safest vessel I would ever board,” he wrote, “I felt ill.” This kind of odd faux rebellious streak courses through the book.
That middle paragraph is about a man who's sold his soul to Homo economicus.
There's much more in the article.
Nick Hanauer said... "And I never was impressed by moral reasoning that went something like “do the right thing, or we’ll burn your ass in Hell for all eternity.”
ReplyDeleteJohn Malone is a "burn your ass in Hell for all eternity.” type...
"“We know where you live, where your office is and who you owe money to,” he told Smalling. ”We are having your house watched and we are going to use this information to destroy you. You made a big mistake messing with T.C.I. We are the largest cable company around [.] We are going to see that you are ruined professionally.” ~ John Malone
... "and a malevolent zeal to make the world safe for capital."
"How to Destroy Neoliberalism: Kill ‘Homo Economicus’
Debunking the failed paradigm of traditional economics.
By Nick Hanauer Oct 13, 2018
...
"And I never was impressed by moral reasoning that went something like “do the right thing, or we’ll burn your ass in Hell for all eternity.”
...
"and as a student of economic theory, the more I have come to understand that this humanist ethos is a prerequisite for human prosperity itself.
I did note that I am the first capitalist to be honored with this award. I suspect that this may be because you all view the world I inhabit, the world of business and economics, as somewhat “morally challenged.” To be clear, contemporary American business and economic culture does have a moral framework: neoliberalism. But I think it is safe to say that this framework is dependably orthogonal to the last 50,000 years of moral norms and traditions.
Is that too harsh? Maybe. But the canonical moral expression of modern capitalism—“It was a business decision”—has far more in common with The Godfather than with The Golden Rule. Let’s be honest: Whenever you hear somebody say, “It’s not personal, it’s strictly business,” you know that really terrible things are about to happen.
...
https://evonomics.com/how-to-destroy-neoliberalism-kill-homo-economicus/
Capital gets worse... "We are watching a system become fully self-referential: blind, asocial, ruthless."
From...
"The Final Delusion
Capital Becoming Itself
fabio vighi Jun 02, 2026
"There is no plan B—only the headless forward-expansion of fictitious capital, accelerating because it no longer pretends to know what lies outside itself. We are watching a system become fully self-referential: blind, asocial, ruthless. A dynamic of self-expansion that simply does not care what it destroys along the way.
"The market is all-in. It prices everything as “growth.” War, crisis, ceasefire, escalation—all translate into swelling financial capital. The distinction between the real economy and the fictitious one has collapsed into pure reflexivity. Money-capital has become its own notion, and it likes what it sees.
"The Market That Prays for No Escalation
"The market is currently trading not peace or resolution in Iran, but the absence of any “meaningful escalation.” Investors have stopped demanding minimal conditions for certainty and balance. They have recalibrated their psychology and their algos to accept survival as sufficient condition for buying. US strikes on Bandar Abbas, Iranian MRBMs on Kuwait’s Ali AlSalem Airbase? Oil surging then fading, ceasefires nominally in place, Trump pulling the rug on every imaginary deal? None of it seems able to break the spell of fictitious capital.
"In its ultimate delusion, the system geopoliticises risk in order to financialise it.
...
https://www.savageminds.co/p/the-final-delusion?
SD
ReplyDeleteThe businessmen whose decisions led to the collapse of the South Fork Dam, hence the Johnstown Flood, perhaps a bit different in the nature of their greed and indifference to people "below" them? Something qualitatively different, though I can't quite put my finger on it.