The Economics Of Bullshit

1) The Basics

Bullshit is often defined as untrue talk or writing. It is synonymous with utter nonsense. Over the course of the last few years, the Bullshit Research Institute (BRI), an NGO founded by Dr. Rony Robbins, Adam Zuckerburger and myself with the precious help of Human Behavior researchers at Columbia University, has carefully studied master bullshitters at work and the genesis, emission and diffusion of bullshit (also known as the Bullshit Ripple Effect). In the years ranging from the dotcom boom and subsequent bust until the present day, there has been an incredible increase in Bullshit Density (the amount of bullshit that we are collectively exposed to us as measured in Basic Bullshit Units or BBUs).

The amount of Bullshit Density measured by our 180,000 sensors placed around the world seems to indicate that it has increased by a Compounded Annual Growth Rate of 52% since 2000. We expect that rate to remain steady over the foreseeable future and even increase due to unpredictable factors. Dr. Rony Robbins, Managing Partner at the Bullshit Research Institute (BRI), motivational speaker and life coach.

Among many other goals, the main focus of the BRI has been to identify and isolate the most common factors (herein referred to as Main Bullshit Factors) prone to mutate into bullshit as measured in BBUs.

President Obama at the Bullshit Research Institute's launch party during which he gave an emotional and encouraging short speech:

The research being done here... by here I mean at the BRI and... not this pub of course... is of critical importance...aaah... to homeland and national security...aaah... I mean the United State's unrelenting efforts to remain at the cutting-edge of research and development. As President Kennedy stated before me talking about the moon and the stars: ask yourselves what you can do against bullshit and not what bullshit can do for you... Thumbs up to all the team at the BRI! Now let us drink more...

Steve Wozniak, Apple's cofounder and a staunch supporter of the BRI, at the same launch party where he came with his own pack of chips. When asked about his real feelings towards Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, the Syrian marketer who went on to become a UNESCO Protected Icon (criticism of Jobs is considered racist and is punishable of over 10 years in a Syrian prison), Wozniak subtly responded: "well let's just say that I was the chips and Steve was the bag...".

2) Main Findings

I am proud to publicly present on behalf of the BRI (and despite co-founder Dr. Rony Robbins' absurd attempts to censure some of the BRI's findings, accusing them of going against many of his non-BRI teachings) the results of several years of extensive research here below, i.e. the 7 Main Bullshit Factors (MBFs). This list is by no means exhaustive…

1) Opinion without principle. Probably the most common BS factor. Used and abused for over 2,000 years by men and women of all ethnicities, religions and social strata. Considered to be one of the pillars of bullshit and often credited to have caused bullshit biogenesis (i.e. the initial emergence of bullshit on Earth).

2) Rules without purpose. Utter nonsense and an open door to fascism and other authoritarian and fanatic regimes. Also abundant in many large corporations and governmental institutions lacking basic common sense. Said to be growing at exponential rates in the field of law, insurance and healthcare.

3) Tradition without flexibility. Another form of mental poison mainly found in religions and politics and among groups of people that fear and refuse to adapt to change. Following Pareto's principle, this bullshit factor seems to owe 80% of its Bullshit Density to only 20% of the total population.

4) Wealth without conscience. The wealth of the simple minded expressed in monetary terms only and devoid of any sense of ethics, morality and gratefulness. Mostly found in people leading a lavish life with no purpose. Such wealth is often short-lived and meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

5) Complaint without action. Another classic BS factor around since millenniums. A favorite of many politicians and demagogues. Also prevalent among many married couples. Akin to Zuckerburger's concept of "linear whining" and the concept of singularity (i.e. a point at which a function takes an infinite value, especially in space-time when matter is infinitely dense as at the center of a black hole).

6) Leadership without vision. Similar to a fast car driving 200 miles per hour down a dead end street. Often correlated to ego and a sense of entitlement. Similar in many ways to Rony Robbins' "7 Forces Of Business Mastery", a pricey compilation of bullshit advice (sorry Rony) carrying the false promise of financial success. Also prevalent in many large corporations used to producing indecent profits with no sense of perspective, innovation or consideration for the greater good.

7) Work without passion. A total waste of time and most often a recipe for failure. Currently experiencing exponential growth mainly through the "get rich quick" Ponzi schemes made available to the masses through television and, in a much bigger order of magnitude, the Internet revolution and the low cost of mass emailing. Despite consistent and repeated warnings from enlightened thinkers, this seventh MBF is akin to a unpreventable and unstoppable tsunami.

3) The Normalized Bullshit Formula

The BRI team was able to derive from the 7 MBFs above a formula to calculate the cost of bullshit over the course of a year:

B = P * BRE * L * DJI (Normalized Bullshit Formula)

B is the total cost of bullshit over the course of a year, P is the population exposed to that bullshit, BRE is the Bullshit Ripple Effect (measured on a scale from 1 to 7 depending on how many MBFs are involved), L is the lack of knowledge of the sample population (measured from 0 to 100%) and DJI is the Dow Jones Industrial Average at the present date. Therefore, in a certain company of 100 employees where 5 MBFs prevail, the aggregate cost of bullshit over the course of a year is roughly equal to:

B = 100 * 5 * 30% * 17,280 = 2,592,000 USD

Hence the sample company used in this numeric example loses around 2.5 million USD annually due to bullshit. Naturally, the BRE is variable as is the lack of knowledge. So the same company incurs significantly different costs of bullshits over the course of time.

Dr. Robbins advising the CEO of Arkansas Payroll Solutions, Simon Garfunkel, on how to reduce the company's cost of bullshit:

You see my foot Simon. It's huge. Think of it as your cost of bullshit. Now by buying my latest book on how to unleash the superhero inside of you, you can reduce that cost. In other terms, my foot can eventually shrink. Of course, it can't really but what the f*... Now look at your fat legs. That too can be considered excess bullshit. But my buying my podcasts "Your Ideal Body Mass Index", you can get rid of those short fat legs."

Simon Garfunkel, who was named "CEO Of The Year" in 2008 when Arkansas Payroll Solutions successfully acquired legendary investment bank Pepperman Brothers for a symbolic dollar is said to have responded:

You see this finger Rony. That's bullshit. Now if I take off my shoes, that finger is still there. If I take off my pants and sit down in this elevator in my underpants, that finger is still there too. No matter how much I lie to my shareholders, I feel the presence of the finger. Bullshit both fuels my company and hurts my credibility... It's insane... And that's why I want to learn how to harness my company's cost of bullshit because ultimately the damage to my credibility will overshadow all my lies. It's my ass on the line Rony...

This coming from one of corporate America's top CEOs only stigmatizes the essential need for urgent research and subsequent breakthroughs in the field of bullshit. It is testimonies like that of Garfunkel that motivate the BRI and its ever-growing staff of researchers to come up with much needed tangible and actionable solutions if the USA is to remain an economic superpower. Recently, even Alan Greenspan (once and for a very long time the Chairman of the Federal Reserve) delivered an incredibly emotional and candid plea.

Once and for a very long time the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan broke out in a semi hysterical mea culpa during a congressional hearing in Washington DC:

I was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006. That's a long time folks. I mean a f* long time for an old-timer like me. Was I aware of all the f* bullshit happening under my watch? Sure I was. But I never understood a thing about derivatives, technology let alone those asset backed pieces of s*. I mean look at me. I am an old man that was propelled to this position against my f* will. I always wanted to be a dancer. I'm told I even look like an old Fred Astaire. But what can you do? When the President of the United States asks you to serve as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, you just say yes and hope for the best. That's what I did for almost 20 years. But it was all bullshit! My only policy was to make the Dow go up. And to do that, I said and did whatever it f* took. They told me to hike interest rates. I did. They told me to slash them. I did. And now I am being accused of being the root of all evils... Come on guys, you know how it works around here... Cut me some f* slack! I'll recommend you on LinkedIn and we'll call it a day...

4) Applications Of The Normalized Bullshit Formula

Experimental research has been trying to link the cost of bullshit (B) to the amount of energy lost on bullshit (E) using Albert Einstein’s famous equation E = MC2 and replacing M by B where C is the speed of light as defined by Einstein himself (299,792,458 m/s).

Using Einstein's famous equation was the breakthrough in linking the financial cost of bullshit to its energy equivalent. It allowed us to approximate a useful new metric (energy lost due to bullshit) that in turn is allowing us to expand aspects of the BRI's research to the field of energy, something unthinkable a few years ago as the BRI first published its initial findings. Adam Zuckerburger, PhD in Quantum Mechanics at Columbia University and Founder of BullBook.

This would imply that our sample company losing 2.5 million USD/year due to bullshit would be incurring an annual loss of energy equal to...

E = 2,592,000 * (299,792,458 m/s)2 joules

This represents a significant amount of energy by all means and enough to account for the total amount of bullshit generated by a typical Wall Street firm in 53 seconds. Sanjit Gupta, CEO at the Sarasota Energy Company.

5) Weapons Of Mass Bullshit (WMBs)

On February 5 2003, then-Secretary of State General Colin Powell addressed the world at a key UN meeting where he exposed for the first time what the Pentagon had identified as “The Belize WMD Program”. For the first time on record, a high ranking government official admitted:

Listen to me well because I am here at the UN to address not only the United States but the world at large. I am here to denounce the massive production of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in Belize. Actually it seems that the Belize government is planning a bona fide invasion of the United States. Yes, I know it makes no f* sense at all but Bush… I mean the President told me to get my fat ass to New York and make up some bullshit story. Dick and Donald… aaah… I mean the big guy at DOD and the guy who tells the President what to do told me to do the same. Satellite images are here to prove it. Look at this giant chemical weapons plant (yes, I know, it is bigger than the entire island but that’s because half of it is built on a landfill gained on the ocean…). These Belizeans are smart and ruthless people and if we do not strike first, pina coladas may soon be pouring down over the skies of our major cities.

Three weeks later, when it was confirmed by the Belizean government that the closest thing to a weapon (let alone a WMD) was a toe clipper left by a German tourist 3 months earlier, Powell was forced to drag his fat ass back to the UN to explain himself.

You see this test tube. Inside it is a liquid that resembles sperm but is actually a highly potent bullshit inducer. It seems, according to Secret Service agents, that a similar liquid was inserted in my orange juice minutes prior to the February 5 meeting. This liquid, a definite Weapon of Mass Bullshit (WMB), is therefore 100% responsible for what I said and proved to be untrue on that infamous day. There is no doubt that the liquid was added to my orange juice by Saddam Hussein’s Presidential Guard and we now have the smoking gun to bulldoze Iraq and get our hands on Iraqi oil. I was wrong but then right and actually it doesn’t really matter anyway because Bush, Donald and Dick have already decided on the invasion of Iraq. This unacceptable release of WMBs on the United States’ soil will not go unpunished! Let’s bomb these assholes back to the Middle Age! If we don’t know what they did, they surely know so feel no pity. And we’ll be inventing new bullshit on a regular basis. Saddam had it coming and poisoning my orange juice with WMBs was simply a red line he never should have crossed.

Another highlight in mass bullshit history is the letter Steve Jobs wrote to his daughter Lisa for Christmas 2009:

Dear Lisa,

I am well thank you. I won’t bother to ask about you since I sent you a few iTunes free downloads and some cool Wal-Mart coupons last week. Should save you a few bucks as I know writing is not much of a cash cow is it? LOL. I always told you, like most of my employees at Apple, that you wouldn’t amount to much. I’m sad (but not surprised) to see that my prophecy came true…

Yesterday, I gave a speech at Harvard Business School. At the end of the speech, I was so stoned by all the weed I had been smoking that day, that I suddenly uttered: “the lost donkey will be found”. The next morning, everyone from the NYT to TechCrunch was speculating as to what I really meant by those words. Business Insider claimed it was a veiled announcement of my plan to buy… Google. I don’t fucking know… I think the lost donkey shit made them think of search and you know, when you think about search around here, you think of Google.

It reminds me of when we launched the iPhone. I had spent the whole day working on a new font. It kind of looks like Arial but lacks a “je ne sais quoi”… Anyway, at the end of the day, Matt Bianco, the moron that handles new product development comes into my office with his BlackBerry. So I pick it up, play with it and tell him that the keyboard sucks. Bianco then stares at me and lets out a “M. Jobs, you are a genius. You truly are…”. What the fuck did I know what the kid was on about? All I know is that he rushed out of my office and spent the next three days locked inside his working like a fucking lunatic (I spent the next three days finishing work on my new font). When I get back to Apple three days later, Bianco storms into my office with his dull grin and pulls out of his pocket this phone with no keyboard. Just one fucking big screen. Ridiculous! When I ask him what the hoopla is all about, he swiftly answers: “M. Jobs, the entire department thinks your idea may very well disrupt cell phones forever”. I have trained myself to nod as soon as I hear the word “disrupt” so I immediately shout back at him: “why did you think I made the comment Bianco?! I knew it was going to fucking disrupt an industry. I am Steve Jobs. Every word I say has deep and profound meaning”. I quickly setup a press conference hinting I had just had one of my “great visions” again. I fired Bianco just in case he tried to take credit for his project. You know… these fucking ambitious kids! They do all the work and then they fucking want credit for it too! At 4 PM, I put on my turtleneck, jeans and sneakers, rushed down to Apple’s main auditorium and announced to the world that I had just come up with the most disruptive phone ever. Needless to say, the press was simply ecstatic. One woman reporter called me the “Edison of my times”. Which I found to be a quite obvious statement but hey what the heck? Some people are just slow…

Anyway, seems like whatever I say these days is considered pure genius. Like those people I call morons no matter what smart things they say, the entire world seems to praise the senseless things I say as godly prophecies.

I am attaching a photo taken at the latest Apple event. Some kind of asshole had the audacity to question whether my latest invention (well actually the invention of a certain Sanjay Patel that I naturally fired since) was really disruptive. Here’s me yelling back at him: “you fucking miserable piece of shit, who the fuck do you think you are to even question the viability let alone the disruptive nature of my new creation. Security! Please get this motherfucker out of here!”.

I am telling you Lisa, the world is becoming a dangerous place when a fucking young punk allows himself to disrupt the course of one my carefully crafted product launches.

Your father,

The great Steve Jobs

PS: regarding your concern about the working conditions at Apple’s Chinese factory, you need to know that the Chinese are not like us. They are culturally conditioned to work in giant factories assembling all kinds of shit. Even the kids are OK with it. We have around 100,000 kids working on putting together iPads. They love it. I mean what the fuck else would they be doing? Playing dominoes? Come one Lisa, get real…

5) The End Of Times

It has long been believed by the scientific community that our planet is doomed to experience a global catastrophic risk (what the religious community often refers to as Armageddon). This hypothetical future event will have the potential to inflict serious damage to human well-being on a global scale. Some such events could destroy or cripple modern civilization. Other, even more severe, scenarios threaten permanent human extinction. These are referred to as existential risks. Natural disasters, such as super volcanoes and asteroids, pose such risks if sufficiently powerful. Human-caused, or anthropogenic, events could also threaten the survival of intelligent life on Earth. Such anthropogenic events could include catastrophic global warming, nuclear war or bioterrorism. The Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University actually believes that human extinction is more likely to result from anthropogenic causes than natural causes.

Such a threat began to concern me ever since I became a father. Before that life changing event, I indulged in a life of spontaneous debauchery, random sexual parades and writing songs of freedom and redemption. All that changed with the birth of my daughter. I became obsessed with how our world would end. It is only several years later, while dedicating my life to studying bullshit on both a macro and micro level, that an incredibly potent explanation of the end of the world emerged.

Indeed, like most scientists, I believed that the most likely end to humanity would result from anthropogenic causes (i.e. human caused). Only recently have I been able to single out one event that has never been listed as a global catastrophic risk. That event is the Big Bang of Bullshit (BBoB),an unpredictable and phenomenal explosion that would increase by more than 1,000,0000 times the Bullshit Density, i.e. the amount of bullshit that we are collectively exposed to us as measured in Basic Bullshit Units or BBUs, bringing it to levels impossible for humanity to function. The basis of my theory (developed alone without my BRI co-founders Robbins and Zuckerburger) lies in the following statement: the amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit has grown to 3.5 times the amount needed to produce it (the Costa Coffee Hypothesis, named after the coffee shop chain where my theory first emerged). The Costa Coffee Hypothesis clearly states that it takes far more energy to “fight” bullshit than to “accept” it. And this is the tipping point that explains the exponential decline that ends in the Big Bang of Bullshit. In a matter of a century or two, humanity will gradually come to totally and unconditionally accept bullshit, incapable of fighting back, lacking the energy to do so. A snowball effect, the rule of bullshit will coerce humanity into submission and eventually rendition.

Consider the words of Michel de Notredame, a reputed Franco-Scottish seer who published a collection of famous prophecies...

Michel de Notredame (left) with his famous disciple Jeffrey McAfee. McAfee, a researcher and pioneer in the analysis of deadly viruses, was accused of being Notredame's lover and hung for being homosexual. Notredame was spared such a death by the Last Scottish Emperor but remained scared for life by the loss of his follower and true love. One of his prophecies alludes to his personal life tragedy:

And thus, as more and more of us, vilified for our so called sins, speak out and admit to our so called perversion, the love of man for man and woman for woman will be condemned by the ignorant and malicious keepers of the ancient traditions as a medical condition brought upon us as a punishment from the Almighty himself. Only centuries will bring back reason to the lost souls ostracizing us now. As humanity embraces the third millennium, the dark advisor to the second Bush Man, master of deceit and destruction, waging war against the innocent tribes of the land of origins and great holders of the black gold, will even admit to an unholy daughter. His demise will pave the way for the first black emperor of the Federation. Decades more will be needed to bring to power the first of our kind...

Back to this article's main focus, few scriptures are as precious as Michel de Notredame's following and probably most famous prophecy of all, the revered and enlightened Modem Prophecy:

Just when humanity shall be thought to be basking in the light of its modern makings, great instruments and creations built by a few hooded young men and women, these interconnected machines of destruction will suddenly turn against them, akin to waves of fury unleashed by the very sea these false prophets claimed to master. Men and women heralded as leaders and visionaries will pave the way to inferno, making it impossible for the masses to harness the folly now corroding the planet. And as the mass of nonsense comes to completely overshadow truth and common sense, humanity as we know it will plunge into a gigantic abyss of confusion and misinformation, desperately incapable of retaliating, finally embracing its inevitable and lethal fate. This, comrades, will mark the golden age of the shit of the holy bull.

I will conclude this article by urging you to ponder these seminal words of Michel de Notredame, hoping that the Bullshit Research Institute's scientific evidence of the emergence of a bullshit dominated society is still avoidable...

About The Author

Charles Corm is a Founder and Researcher at the BRI whose background in management, finance and technology has been instrumental in taking the BRI's body of work from cutting-edge academic research to mainstream insights that are leading to a boom in exciting new ventures capitalizing on the BRI's findings. This research paper is the first of a number of similar insights that were gathered by the BRI's ongoing study of bullshit. Similar breakthroughs are currently being made in the essential and promising scientific fields of Buzzword Bullshit Bonanza and Herd Mentality Biogenesis. Despite being highly skeptical of Robbin's and Zuckerburger's main bodies of work beyond the BRI, Charles also acts as a caretaker and death coach to his oversized and Frankenstein looking BRI co-founder Robbins. He also founded an apparel company that produces gold coated reversible hoodies for young and trendy billionaires. You can learn more about Charles right here on LinkedIn or at charlescorm.info.

Disclaimer: the author of this article, Charles Corm, is not an investor or supporter of the Rony Robbins Network (a cash cow collection of bullshit books, products and random events produced by Dr. Robbins and the army of ghostwriters working for him). Nor is Corm an investor in BullBook, the successful social media network founded by Zuckerburger. Adam Zuckerburger is however an investor in Corm's hoodie company.

About The Author

Charles is the CEO at Corm Capital, a global multi-sector holding company founded in 1998 and active in five main sectors: finance, investments, technology, media and real estate. Charles is also the Founder at OX Factory (an ICT startup incubator), the Founder at OX Media (a fully integrated online media company) and a Founding Partner at Inco Capital (a boutique investment banking firm). He is a shareholder in a number of global startups since 1996, having created a solid, extensive and diversified portfolio of what are now, for the most, successful businesses (some publicly listed). Charles acts as a Trusted Advisor to several global companies where he brings his combined expertise in management, finance and technology to help them achieve a number of critical funding, strategic and business development oriented goals. Charles also acts as a Professional Connector, having assembled one of the most extensive contact networks in the MENASA region and beyond. Other than that, Charles was a hedge fund analyst and investment banker on Wall Street for several years.