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And finally, our work in our own backyard has made the need abundantly clear. More than 8.5 million people live in New York City. In the 2013 Democratic primary for mayor, just 691,000 people voted. The winner—Bill de Blasio—captured 282,000 votes, and as the Democrat, the general election was a fait accompli. As a result, de Blasio was effectively elected with 282,000 votes in a city of 8.5 million people. He knows that, and his governance has been solely designed to appeal to those 282,000 people, even at the expense of the other 8.2 million. The same thing happened again in 2017, with de Blasio winning 320,000 votes in the Democratic primary and effectively again capturing the mayoralty as a result. This is not an anomaly, nor is it exclusive to members of one party or one jurisdiction. It’s exactly how candidates are elected—and then govern—across the country at every level of government—municipal, county, state, federal—in every branch of government (executive, legislative, and, in many places, judicial).
“Long-term thinking levers our existing abilities and lets us do new things we couldn’t otherwise contemplate,” Jeff wrote. “Long-term orientation interacts well with customer obsession. If we can identify a customer need and if we can further develop conviction that that need is meaningful and durable, our approach permits us to work patiently for multiple years to deliver a solution.”2 Key word: patiently. Many companies will give up on an initiative if it does not produce the kind of returns they are looking for within a handful of years. Amazon will stick with it for five, six, seven years—all the while keeping the investment manageable, constantly learning and improving—until it gains momentum and acceptance. The other key is frugality. You can’t afford to pursue inventions for very long if you spend your money on things that don’t lead to a better customer experience, like trade show booths, big teams, and splashy marketing campaigns. Amazon Music and Prime Video are examples of how we kept our investment manageable for many years by being frugal: keeping the team small, staying focused on improving the customer experience, limiting our marketing spend, and managing the P&L carefully. Once we had a clear product plan and vision for how these products could become billion-dollar businesses that would delight tens, even hundreds of millions of consumers, we invested big. Patience and carefully managed investment over many years can pay off greatly.
Working Backwards
Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
When epidemics of accounting control fraud are not checked by regulators there are two likely results of the recipe. The recipe is the best means possible to hyperinflate a bubble. When a bubble hyperinflates, fraudulent lenders can greatly extend the life of their frauds and the bubble by refinancing their bad loans. The saying in the trade is that “a rolling loan gathers no loss.” But there is a second finding that arises from control fraud theory that represents an even graver reputation of relying on “private market discipline.” The fraud recipe for a purchaser of bad loans is identical to the recipe for the issuer/seller of bad loans, except that the second “ingredient” changes from “making” to “buying.” When the “secondary market” purchaser of the bad loans is itself engaged in accounting control fraud its controlling officers find it essential that the fraudulent purchaser not exercise effective market discipline against the fraudulent seller, for doing so would kill the fraud scheme. The result is the financial version of “don’t ask; don’t tell” in which everyone involved pretends that the terrible loans are wonderful.
The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One
William K. Black
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