🧗 Our Investing Journey (#2): Independent Thinking
Thoughts on why news is similar to science fiction
Every time I come back home for a few days, I notice people around me are really up to date with current events. Current events sadly translate to political drama, the latest catastrophes, and sports. Political drama comes in the form of the latest scandal (made up or actual) which may include some form of corruption, but can also be a random senator’s third cousin’s wife's parking ticket write-off constituting corruption. In the end, current politics comes down to a bunch of people screaming at each other equal levels of irrelevant, inconsistent, and pointless nonsense. In a way, politicians are paid too little for the amount of content that they create. Oh, if only our president was a streamer…
The second category, catastrophes, includes local, national, and international events that could be sold as standalone headliners for any newspaper. These are usually cyclical as they heavily rely on popular interest. For instance, the war in Ukraine is still ongoing but is barely covered by the news as the newer interest comes in the form of the more dramatic and devastating (visually) war in Gaza. The relevance of events seems to be a secondary factor as media gauges success by optimizing for impact. These events are also regularly shown in connection to corruption as it makes corruption pale in comparison. Who really cares about millions being stolen from the public arcs when you have children dying in huge explosions in a faraway country? Please don’t take this as a minimization of war in any way. War is hell. I’m barely attempting to point out the way that some of these events are used as a magician would use misdirection during a performance to distract the audience from what’s actually going on. In this case, distracting citizens from events that damage their lives directly.
The third category is sports. Human beings are naturally gregarious creatures and sports come to the rescue when it comes to people's position within a social hierarchy. To some extent, your collective persona (aka identity) is connected to a team, passion, and/or hobby. However, I feel like money, power, and special interests take over the organizations behind these to the point where this collectivist nature is exploited. I’ll provide an example with the help of a recent event. My football team Athletic of Bilbao recently made its way to the cup final. They disputed the title on April 6th against Mallorca and won. The customary celebration attracted millions to watch the ascent of the gabarra (a flat cargo boat used to transport mining-related goods up the river). The event limited participants wanting to sail their boats upriver accompanying the champions. The limitations made sense for security reasons. We don’t want boats crashing around during a chaotic celebration. However, the club's majority owners (regional government, bank, and insurance) decided that each boat should charge boats 250€-3,000€ to make the trip. Sadly this follows the pattern of organization leaching off of emotion. These exploit our ability to connect organically in the form of a region-wide celebration for a few extra bucks.
So, who are the masters?
Back to the topic. News is regularly scheduled for lunch and dinner and is presented by the following mainstream TV, radio, and newspapers in Spain:
left-leaning media such as Antena 3, la Sexta, Cadena SER, eldiario.es
right-leaning such as Telecinco, Trece, COPE, El Confidencial; and
government-led RTVE
In Spain, the predominant ideology is social democracy. This translates to support from the general population for government intervention and Keynesian economics. These come in different forms, on the left we have support for labor unions and price controls. On the right, government intervention comes in the form of immigration controls and protectionism. But overall both sides place their chips on increased spending on the welfare state (education, healthcare, pensions, etc.).
Social democracies were extremely popular at the end of the 20th century. Its popularity was derived from the aftereffects of the world wars and the fascist regime lived by the greatest (born 1901-1925) and silent (born 1925-1945) generations. Questioning this is quite hard, as the seed of its demise is placed at the center of the origins of republics, elective democracies, and democracies in general: They are POPULAR. Popular in the sense that they originate from an alleged perspective of “for the people, by the people”. However, in essence, we all know this is not the case as the ruling class can determine actions against the people at any point with the constitution as its sole limitation (think taxes, prohibitions, regulation on individuals’ ability to make choices, etc.). Unlike a monarchy or a tyranny, where you can point directly at the person in charge, democracies in general and social democracies in particular, have a mass of temporary titleholders and a powerful bureaucracy that make it difficult to place the blame on a person or group of people. Take the slogan for the equivalent of the IRA in Spain (Hacienda). “Hacienda somos todos” which roughly translates to “We are all Hacienda”. I’m pretty sure I am not.
Adding gasoline to the fire, the general understanding of the news as it relates to people is based on a narrative of us vs them. Populism. This theme applies to all sorts of information but particularly applies to political, ideological, and economic positions. The appeal to emotion rather than logic permeates and turns healthy debates into parties exchanging monologues. Conversations that are a trip to nowhere.
And for all these reasons (and many more), I kinda hate the news.
This entire post is inspired by David Senra’s Founders podcast on Quentin Tarantino. In the book Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino, he talks about how his passion for cinema came at a very young age. His mother imposed no limitations on what he could watch which led to young Tarantino having an outstanding competitive advantage over his peers when it came to reading and writing (particularly on the R-rated side of things). In the summary presented by Senra, he presented the following quote from Tarantino’s mother:
I worry more about you watching the news, a movie won’t hurt you - Connie Zastoupil
The comment made me question what I would and would not show to my children. Who do I want them to become? Is making my child an independent thinker a positive or negative in today’s society? What would YOU do?
Thanks,
A. Yela