The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Ethics and Hidden Greed: Your Defense Against Unethical Strategies and Violations of Trust by Rob Docters, Hans Gieskes

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Ethics and Hidden Greed: Your Defense Against Unethical Strategies and Violations of Trust by Rob Docters, Hans Gieskes https://amzn.to/3MzVEwR Trust. Loyalty. Friendship. These were once the building blocks of good business relationships. Today, it's becoming increasingly difficult to know whom to trust. How do we protect ourselves and our business interests from the unethical behaviours of others? Why doesn't intuition serve as the best guide for detecting unethical strategies? Concern about falling victim to the tactics of unethical strategies is widespread. The authors connect time-honoured ethical principles to real-world cases and offer the building blocks and counter-strategies you need to fight greed: Knowing the five strategies of greed, and learning how to recognize them. Learning how trust really works, and being able to develop the skill of trusting with discernment. Applying, and being able to communicate, concrete, ethical rules. Ethics and Hidden Greed will reassure readers that while unethical strategies may have increased in sophistication and grown harder to detect in recent years, there are still only five categories of these behaviours. The authors will demonstrate how to recognize the patterns employed by greedy players and provide tactics for combatting all of them.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. As always, the family that loves you but doesn't judge you.

The Chris Voss Show, the place where you get all your intelligent, brilliant, high-minded data, and none of it comes from me because I flunked second grade. No, I didn't, but it's, I don't know, it's a funny joke we tried one time, and it failed once again. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing author on the show we're going to talk about ethics today and hidden greed my favorite thing what was it i grew up in the era i was coming of age in the era of age 18 when ivan bioski said the famous line that was made famous by wall street uh greed is good and thereby uh you you know, the Reaganism and illiberalism of it and all that crap went to hell. And here we are with the disappearing middle class. So that's a long story for other podcasts that you may have seen with Tom Hartman, actually,

the famed radio host. But today we'll be talking about ethics and hidden greed with the author of the newest book that came out May 24th, 2023. Wait, is it May 24th yet? Almost. It will be tomorrow. Yes. I'm in complete denial. I'm still living in January, actually.

I'm in complete denial. It's halfway through the year. So there you go. Rob Doctors joins us on the show with us today. He is the author of this newest book that comes out tomorrow, Ethics and Hidden Greed, Your Defense Against Unethical Strategies and Violations of Trust. We'll be talking to him about his book and all the stuff that goes into it. In the meantime, though, guilt, shame, and strong arm in a nice way, in a nice way.

Don't strong arm, strong arm. Don't do anything I wouldn't do. Which is kind of a long list. But get people to subscribe to the show. Go to YouTube.com. Fortress Christmas. Goodreads.com. Fortress Christmas.

LinkedIn.com. Fortress Christmas. Follow us on the TikTok show channels. Plugs out. Rob Doctors is a partner at Abbey road lop and leads their ethics practice he is a former senior manager uh i'm sorry senior partner ernst and young canada a former lecturer in management yale university school of management and led bcg's asian pacific pricing practice based in singapore he is also a member of the New York bar.

He gets free drinks there. No, I'm just kidding. That's the lawyer bar, not the bar. Anyway, I'm sure he gets free drinks somewhere. He's formerly head of market innovation and development at Bloomberg LP, focused on the vertical markets and previously a senior member of McKinsey and companies marketing and sales practice. Welcome to the show, Rob. How are you?

I'm fine. Nice to meet you, Chris. There you go. Do you get free drinks at the New York bar there? Absolutely, yes. Oh, there you go. Things go better when they do that. There you go. That's the whole reason to be there. Anyway, all lawyer jokes aside, welcome to the show. Give us your.com so you can tell us where to find you on the interwebs please uh well

the uh the the website is called greed sorry uh ethics and greed and uh yeah it's also obviously you can find my email and stuff on the book so forth this is this has always been interesting topic to me when i was a realtor uh about every two years, I think, or I think it was every year, we had to take an ethics class because realtors. And I was one for six years, but I was a mortgage company owner for 20 years. And one of the reasons I became a realtor was because of the lack of ethics in much of the real estate business that I saw. And so I've always been interested in ethics because I'm big on trust and loyalty, friendship. It's a huge masculine sort of issue for me. So what prompted you to write this book? Well, I was actually having breakfast with a lady who's CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. And she paused and she said, you know,

it's funny, I think I've been the victim of greed, but I'm not even really sure when and where. And I thought, Jesus, if this really, really smart woman isn't even aware of when it's affecting her, there must be something going on. It was. Greed had gotten smarter than it had been even a few years ago. And one of the things it does is it acts in stealth mode a lot of the time. Greed, acting in stealth mode. So expand on that a little bit. How does greed apply and how do we identify it, I suppose? Well, I'll answer the second

half of the question first the way you identify it is you have to know what it's going to do you need to know your enemy uh the way it does things without you knowing is it's changed some of the rules so for instance um there's what the book just outlines is there's five forms of greed. There are five strategies. One of them is it implants, it hides something in the head of a company, but from the people he or she hires afterwards. Wow. So if they put in a person who's 60, they just don't have much time left to get the real money. So they will often pass over the better candidate, if it happens to be an older one, as part of that. Now, is that because they get residual money from the continued employment of that person,

so the employment window is shorter? Is that my understanding correctly? Yeah, well, the window is shortened because that way when the CEO turns around and says, hey, thank you for recommending me. I now need my CFO or I need my chief marketing officer. They'll typically go back to the same headhunter. And if they're not around to do that, the headhunter doesn't make as much money. That is crazy, man.

But that actually explains a lot, a lot. Yeah. And other examples of what I call embedding, which is, you know, for instance, if somebody builds a house, apparently they are looking ahead to the point where the potential owner comes through the house and says, let me look. And he looks around and they won't be happy until they find something that is defective in the house. So what they do is they put in an easily corrected issue like apparently windows can easily be realigned so

if they're slightly off horizontal it's apparently not i'm not a builder but it's apparently easy to to realign the windowsill so what they'll do is they'll they'll deliberately put in some slanted windows. The guy walks through, says, ha, I caught you. You need to fix that. They say, yes, sir. And that way, the person, he's accomplished his mission. He found something to correct, and he doesn't look as closely at the rest of the house. Wow. That's kind of interesting.

And so five strategies that allow greed to go undetected. This is kind of interesting. Do you want to give us all the strategies or you want to tease a few more out? Sure. Another one is they steal the language. So you might think well you know hey i walk into a store i know what suntan lotion is i want to buy suntan lotion and you walk up to the shelf and you says something says suntan lotion and you bought it you've also paid quite a bit more than you needed to because what happened was the fda has succumbed to all the lobbying from the suntan lotion companies. And they said suntan lotions can only have five ingredients. Well, those happen to be the five that were patented by the incumbent suntan lotion companies.

So, for instance, the Europeans think there are 22 ingredients that can work well as suntan block. But, you know, here that doesn't matter. You're not allowed to use that word. And therefore you can't charge as much because it doesn't have that key word everyone's looking for. And therefore you must charge less. There you go. What about greed in the medical system, like prescription pharmaceuticals,

medical billing, et cetera, et cetera? I mean, is that unethical and greedy or how do you determine, maybe a better question is, you can follow up with that. I mean, how do you determine what's ethical and greedy or just, you know, someone saying, hey, this is what I feel the value of this is and I'm not going to budge on price or something. If I'm selling something, say I'm selling a collectible or something, and I believe that the value is a certain value, and I'm not going to sell it unless it comes to that value. Am I being greedy, or I'm just, I believe that that's what it's worth? Well, people are allowed to set their own prices what they're not allowed to

do is at least ethically is to conspire in a way that keeps the public from getting something so you know as we mentioned you know the suntan lotion if you want suntan lotion you have to succumb to you know what the fda is has done at the behest of the suntan lotion companies. There's also hiding stuff. Like, for instance, remember a few years ago, there were little signs that came out on tin cans called dolphin safe. Yeah. And the reason is because actually dolphins,

when they are in the same place as the tuna who's being scooped up by the nets, drown because they're getting held underwater. And that's a rotten thing to do to an intelligent animal. So that was fine. We had our little dolphin safe because they used certain techniques that were safe for the dolphin to hunt the tuna. But that wasn't suiting their purposes. So what they did was they then lobbied Congress, and they said, no, no, no, we don't want all those restrictions. But, you know, some of the companies that also manufactured the tuna,

protected the tuna, protected the dolphins, sorry, also went in. And the result is, you'll see on the cans, there's two kinds of those signs. One is colorful, and one of them is not. And the colorful ones,

they are the original protection of the dolphins. Then the ones that are not colorful, just plain black and white, those are the ones who have the new set of rules. That means they can do anything they bloody like to kill the dolphins and capture their tuna. Yeah. Let me play devil's advocate. You know, I'm not, I don't have an issue for the killing of, you know,

certain animals and stuff. But I do find that it's interesting that we pick the pretty animals that are the ones we shouldn't kill, but the ugly animals are just fine. You know, like when you say the killing of an intelligent animal, on the assumption that most fish are probably somewhat intelligent to some varying degree it seems like you know the selective killing of being like well uh you know killing tuna is fine but don't kill the dolphins you know i mean it's still like murder right you know i was watching i was watching this uh i was watching uh

what was it It's Portlandia And they were doing a joke about how People really care about They were doing a bit about how people really care about chickens And how they're raised But the thing's still murdered sitting on their plate And they're going to consume it And you're like, wait

Where's the line there And so I'm just playing a little devil's advocate with you On the concept of it It's a really good point. But, you know, part of it is you and I, we're both carnivores at heart. You know, we've been killing things for millions of years. But the question in part is, how do you kill it? So, for instance, lobsters.

Every year, 9 million lobsters get boiled to death. Well, actually, 250 years ago, we used to boil people to death as well. But they weren't as tasty. Yeah, well. Cannibal jokes on the Christmas. Exactly. Well, a little spice in with the criminal. Too soon.

But anyway, the point is only that there's no need to actually boil the lobsters to death. There's a University of Bristol in UK took a look and asked the question, how much pain are lobsters in when they get boiled? And the answer was surprising, which is crustaceans are actually more temperature sensitive than critters like us who are not crustaceans. And it takes about three minutes for a lobster to die. So it's actually considerably less humane boiling a lobster than it is boiling a human. Not that I'm advocating humans, but I'm just noting, although people still do. I mean, it was interesting. Apparently some of the Middle East terrorists have recently taken to boiling people in engine oil. Apparently it's not a pleasant sight. It's not fun either.

You know, I just realized after my joke on the show about how it doesn't taste quite as good as lobster when you boil people, that someone in the audience right now is thinking how does chris know that we need to check his fridge like jeffrey dahmer um so i mean here's here's the interesting uh quandary uh because i i believe that ethics are something that should be taught more and more because it makes people think about you know what are ethics What is ethical? And how do we determine what is good ethics and what is not? Where's the line there? Where do we set the bar or is it a moving target or is it a thing we have to question? You know, how am I ethical? Like if I ask myself, am I an ethical person or not? What standard or metric should I use? Well, I'll tell you what I

used in my book. There's an interesting guy. His name is Professor Henry Moore from Cambridge University, and he was their ethical leader for many years in the 1700s. And so he's been dead for a while, but I found his book extremely readable once it was translated from Latin. And he laid out all sorts of really good principles, one of which is highly relevant right now. He said, if you create a force that goes out and causes damage, you are ethically responsible for that. Now you may say, yeah, I get it. So what? You know, what else is new?

Well, it's interesting because yesterday, the New York Times sent an article that the Supreme Court had recently said that the creators of artificial intelligence devices and artificial intelligence programs were not responsible for what those machines did. So they have created actually an intelligent thing that goes out and can do any number of harmful things. But you're not responsible according to the Supreme Court.

I claim that's unethical. The Supreme Court has laid down something that's completely unethical, not only in that case, but in other cases recently. That brings up a good question to the alternative to that a little bit. I mean, the Supreme Court's, you know, I don't agree with a lot of the rulings, et cetera, et cetera. I think lately they've been, the court's kind of gone off the rails from as far back as Citizens United and other things we've discussed on the show.

But you're talking about ethics of what SCOTUS did. I'm not defending them. But their job is to interpret the law and the Constitution as the basis of its format and the amendments. Is asking them to determine ethics really their calling or their focus or the scope? Well, you're right. There's a difference between the law and ethics and, for that matter, morals. Those three are very different creations.

Nonetheless, they tend to overlap a little bit. I mean, some of the reasons the Supreme Court does things is it claims it's doing it for ethical arguments. What's it doing for moral arguments? Unless you're Clarence Thomas. Oh! Yes. That name comes to mind. You're owned by a billionaire yeah yeah but um so the answer is yes strictly speaking if there was enough law out there that it could cover

all the circumstances they wouldn't need to resort they might want to but they don't need to resort to those other aspects of morality and ethics but But there isn't. There aren't enough laws out there to cover all the circumstances. Our Congress hasn't done that many laws, and I'm not sure I want them to either, by the way. But nonetheless, so there are times they have to think about that. But the trouble is, their ethical rules aren't clear where they're coming from. Yeah. It's kind of interesting when you really understand what's going on between the Clarence Thomas issue and, and there's been a few other issues on the SCOTUS Court of Leaks and things like that as to whether or not they operate under, like most judges actually do,

federal judges actually operate. And I think state judges too, local judges operate under code of ethics and things they have to do. What's interesting is it doesn't seem like that is at SCOTUS. And having, recently seeing Roberson, I think it is, who leads the court, not want to appear to a house judiciary committee it's kind of a quandary because technically the three branches are supposed to stay separate

so can the legislative branch legislate for the scotus branch and apply it and of course the people are going to make that final decision of the people in power so who watches the watchers it's kind of interesting when you really think about some of the variations of it laws as i'm sure you have um uh if i might say so the the constitution is actually very clear the legislative branch does get to set rules for the judicial ah there we go so i need to go back read my constitution as everyone should. So there you go. The courts themselves can set very strong rules, too. For instance, some New Jersey judge recently acquitted somebody of rape because he said, well, the rape victim, who was apparently a 14-year-old girl, doesn't come from the same class of family as you do.

She deserved it because she's not going to go to college. She's not got the same level of education. She deserved it and dismissed the case. Now, later, for once, judicial branch said came down on this guy and told him forget it you're out of there you go thank god for appellate courts and reviews of judges but yeah they need that same thing uh uh given to them for um for uh whatchamacallit i i think i don't know that's a whole probably a whole separate podcast as to whether or not uh any judge should have a lifetime appointment or whatever i mean i i think we would certainly spin our heads around

or at least i hope we would as an american public if legislatures uh legislators gave themselves lifelong appointments although there are some that have um lifelong appointments they just keep getting elected by their voters so i guess in some way we we kind of validate that um so uh what about you talk about viewing greed as part of a clash between different groups generations social classes and economic interest um we do seem to live in this this power vacuum or quandary or uh you know we live in a very political uh hyperized uh environment and it seems like to me from the outside that it is a fight over power and many times it doesn't it seems to start out as a fight over equality but it it tends to bleed into dominance. And I could be wrong there, but that's kind of my observation. It goes from, hey, we all want to be, you know, it goes from open egalitarianism to, hey, we all want to kumbaya and be friends and hang out.

And then it becomes domination or, you know, someone who really wants a bleeding edge to dominate another group and have privilege that extends beyond them. Now, the argument can be that one class or one group or one political party or one whatever, as you've said here, you know, between these different classes already had dominance and power, and so they're trying to balance it. What are your thoughts on that? Because you talk about, at least the first part of my question in the book about different groups generations and social economics clashing over greed well it's it's it's interesting because uh exactly as you say different groups have different views on what they deserve and what they've got. So, for instance, an interesting clash is a generational one, that there has been a whole bunch of complaints by people who are currently

under 30, under 25, that they've not been fairly treated, that their economic circumstances are not as good as the boomers had when they were that age. Relatively few of them own houses, relatively few of them have the same quality of jobs, et cetera, et cetera. But it's an interesting subtle point, which is what is the right level? Is it what people have the opportunity to get or what is it what they have? So there was a time when it was opportunity. If you have the same opportunity as another person, that was fair. If on the other hand, you didn't have what that person, that other person from another generation or another group had that was some people say

not fair i grew up in the generation that said it is fair as long as you had the same opportunity that's shifting and what is considered right has been going on for a while um it's interesting because uh there's also going to be payback at some point. At some point, the boomers are not going to have the bulk of the money in the United States anymore. And then suddenly they will be at the mercy of a younger generation. That bad? Well, boomers may not like it, but, arguably that's fair too yeah i mean it's it's it's it's it's interesting to me to try and create the balance of well this person didn't have power

that person is in power um you know the opportunity thing like you mentioned is one that politicians will say you know america's land of opportunity but when you understand you know like with blacks and and whites in america you know between bank redlining uh different government policies you know you can say america is the land of opportunity but there definitely is a thumb on the scale on some of it but then you come to the opposite and go okay so where is the balance of power do we pay people millions of dollars reparations etc etc and i think uh you know i watched the balance of power? Do we pay people millions of dollars in reparations, et cetera, et cetera. And I think, uh,

you know, I, I watched the development of this and study it. And, uh, you know, I mean, there needs to be balanced somehow in the system.

Technically, I suppose we were supposed to do that through the justice system with the, you know, the figurine of the blind, uh, lady of justice, uh, on the thing.

But, you know, I mean, we see the opposite of that with money and politics, oligarchy sort of behaviors of billionaires, the extreme. But, you know, I mean, we see the opposite of that with money and politics, oligarchy sort of behaviors of billionaires, the extreme rise of people who don't pay much tax. You know, I was watching, oh, I forget the professor Goodman, but he was talking about how, you know, people that pay into social security, once you hit the max of Social Security, if you're a multimillionaire,

you don't pay any more into Social Security. You pay the same amount as the average person. And some of the different ways that people that are ultra-rich can get out of the thing. So it's kind of interesting to me. It seems like we live in a society, and I'm a capitalist, I'm an entrepreneur, but I do believe that unbridled

capitalism isn't healthy and it's almost the greed is good sort of generation of stuff as i watch that rise what do you think about that well by the way commenting michael douglas has come out publicly saying he regrets having that line in that movie actually i think it was appropriate because it really the the movie was about ivan bioski and and michael milken and people of that junk bond era i mean like the i i was trying to be a stockbroker down there i was trying to cash in i agreed it's good i worship donald trump and the deal is what was the stupid book? It was Ghost. Yeah. PR book. It's interesting, by the way, because the reason people are greedy is there's been a whole bunch of sort of look by psychologists, et cetera, into that. And they think it's because people feel entitled.

And there's a really interesting experiment one of them ran as follows. He put a couple of groups through some focus groups, and they had them sit in a waiting room, and there was a big jar full of candy. And the person introducing the focus group to the individuals in the waiting room said, big jar of candy. It's actually for a bunch of kids who will be coming through for their own focus group a little later. Please only take one candy. Well, they had one group that consisted of high net worth individuals, and they had another group that was consisted of working class middle middle class individuals they discovered that the high net worth individuals had a tendency to scoop up more than one candy they felt entitled they could raid the the big bowl

of candy the working class stiffs did not they They took one and that was it. And there's all these examples, more serious than a bowl of candy, where people are entitled. There was a New York Times article that actually had a great story title, which was The Angry Rich. angry rich. And it talked about how the rich, however they defined it, basically felt very entitled and resented it when there were certain equilibrations of income. So for instance, you remember that one of the investment banks went bankrupt, and the government stepped in and supported it and threw billions of our tax dollars into it but they said there will be no bonus this year that outraged the traders and all the others who felt they were entitled to multi-million dollar

bonuses even though they had been at the helm when this bankrupt had gone bankrupt. What is the same true for, you know, employees that, you know, we keep referring to the eighties and I should clarify something. I was a Donald Trump alkylite during 1986 when that book was released and it became very apparent in the recession in 1989 that he was a fraud. And I, I, I since lost that in, in, I bought one of the original books that now is taken out of print because of

what it disclosed, um, uh, about his, his failures. And I wish I had kept that book because it's now out of print. Uh, but it,

it, it openly discussed, you know, he, he bragged about the negotiation of how he brought the banks to the table by threatening bankruptcy. And, you know, since then, in following him, it just became apparent to me. I mean, I knew he was fraudulent way before I think it was the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal came out with their expose. So I want to make that clear.

But we've been talking about the 1980s era. And it kind of seems like this was the real emergence of the greed is good era. And Ivan Biosky, I think was the marker for that. And like I say, Michael Douglas can take it back all he wants, but that was one of the, that was like the defining moment of that era. And it was the beginning of, you know, I grew up in that sort of era. I believe you may have grown up in that era too, where my father lived with that belief that he went to work for a company for 40 years or 60 years or whatever and left with the golden watch, the retirement package, had the two car garage, the picket fence, the Levittown fantasy dream that I guess was true for, I don you know, laying off employees raised stock prices and we switched from this market thing. And I believe the Goldman Sachs or, uh, the other big, uh, power firm has openly talked about this. We moved from a structure where we didn't give a shit about main street and power and, and employees.

We started giving a shit about investor returns. And so, oh, oh, we fire fire people lay them off and stock price goes up let's do that and we became this churn society where uh you know short-term options over long-term were a thing and we killed off main street and you can talk about a little liberalism throughout all the presidents in history but especially in the reagan era um so i think it's important to talk about that but what about about when employees get laid off? I mean, do they deserve something? Do they have a right?

Should they be, you know, is there entitlement there? I mean, it's a question of what the deal they struck is with their company, right? In other words, the deal I'm striking with you, dear employer, is I will work my head off. I worked 100-hour weeks for many, many years. So I thought I was working my head off. And as a result, I'd like to be rewarded. Now, the only trouble here is that the question, but, you know, indeed, stock prices went up. But in part, they went up because the people who were evaluating those companies were plain stupid. They literally were oblivious to the fact that, for instance,

General Electric is worth about a quarter of what it was in real terms when Jack Walsh took over the company. The result was because he basically threw away their future. He cut their R&D. He did all the things that made them a company that people wanted to work with. And he tossed them out the window. And in the short term, Wall Street applauded. Stupid Wall Street, don't do that. Because you knew that there was a payback time.

And so instead of saying, hey, you know, Mr. Welsh, you've just pissed away the R&D for the next 10 years. You currently are head of the leader in the following five industries. You're not going to be very shortly. Your company is worth a lot less. Instead, there was no word of that. That's too bad that people didn't have better watchdogs, that they didn't have, you know, people who did the numbers. You know, that's really interesting.

And that's a form of greed from Wall Street's aspects of doing short-term greed. Because, you know, I mean, I've been a day trader. You trade on the day. You're doing greed of the day, greed of the moment, greed of the 20 minutes, you know, you pick a 50 grand in 20 minutes, you lose 20 grand in 20 minutes or 10 minutes, or sometimes a few things, you know, the.com boom that I ran through was, was, uh, you know, high in that sort of thing. But we moved like, again, like I said earlier, we shifted from this long-term sort of uh visionary thing i can't remember the gentleman we have on the show who was the ceo of a major company and he openly

said the quiet part out loud he goes one of the problems with being a ceo in this country now is you're only a ceo usually for maybe two to three years before they're going to roll you out and put somebody in so you don't invest in r. So you don't invest in R&D. You don't invest in long-term projects because you're not going to see or benefit from the results of those. Some other guy is. We actually kind of see that with presidents if you really look at the four-year history and how policies affect. And sadly, we have a real idiot electorate,

I'll just say that, and I've been included as one of them, that thinks on a very short-term basis. They look at a president and go, we don't like what's going on right now, taking in-term inflationary measures. And we don't see how prior presidents may have done that going back to almost 20 or 40 years ago, policies that were put into effect, et cetera, et cetera. It's really interesting how we don't see the long-term effect of that one of the one of the things you talk about your book is is the using language as a way to manipulate things

and George Carlin spoke about this it was kind of interesting and always sticks with me about how he talked about how language is used to, to kind of disassociate, take the emotion, take the power out of words. It used to be, they used to, I think it was called battle damage or battle. Some, they used to have a really crude word that, that, uh, exposed how, how ugly and painful, uh, damage and mental damage was in war. And now we call it PTSD, you know, which is much, you know, he talks about different words in his, in his bit that he would do about language and how we use language to, to basically neuter the painful words,

the words that shock and are painful. And we do that to wash away their power in our minds so that we don't have to face how ugly those things are. Well, it's too bad, but the people have not decided for themselves that they're interested in society being a good society. There is a moment where they all decided money was all that mattered, which I would argue it does not. But a lot of people decided that.

And, you know, like I say, I worked like a dog for many years to get some money. But I think I did it honestly, and I bet you a lot of people did. By the way, including billionaires, interestingly enough. For instance, Ken Langone, who was one of the three founders of Home Depot, after he made a lot of money on Home Depot, went back and reimbursed investors in an earlier venture he had put together where they'd all lost their money. So his sense of fairness was to go back and do that. But most people who have a lot of money don't do that. There's a biblical expression, which is, it is easier for the camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven

and sadly that's probably true yeah i mean i think one of the famous expressions of that is when google for the longest time had had the mantra of their corporation you know don't do evil was it do no evil or something like that yeah and then they finally had to change it because they were just getting so much shit from it. And of course, uh, Mark Zuckerberg never even bothered. There's a joke there. Uh,

let me ask you this. Cause I've, I've always been curious about ethics, uh, loyalty, trust, honesty, authentic nature has always been what I've always tried to do.

Um, I don't think I've always been perfect and perfection is never achievable, but you, you send the move towards that value. And so, like I say, from the early days of my friendships, my relationships,

trust, loyalty, friendship has always been a big deal for me. It's been a very big masculine trait for me. And I believe it's been something men do but females can operate in masculine as well i i i have recently over the few recent years come to the conclusion that when i find that men who operate in their emotion and they don't operate with logic and reason a very masculine trait i can't trust

them i find that i have problems with their loyalty with trust and honesty and i've started to theorize because i'm always operating on on a arcing scale of of like what is reality and what is not and trying to find it which i probably will. But that's the law of science and theory. But to me, there's been a real connection that I've made that when I find a man in my tribe who operates by emotion in a very feminine trait, and that is a predominant way he processes his data and reacts to it in a non-stoic way, that I cannot find loyalty, trust, and honesty with him.

And I'm almost at the point of describing it as a masculine trait. Now, women can do the same. Women can operate in their masculine, and they do a large part in business. Is that a masculine trait, or is my theory flawed? Well, to be honest, I hadn't really thought of that uh but here's what a doctor professor moore said in 1677 he said the two traits that he looks for to see whether someone is ethical or one do they have a sense of humor and i think that's really interesting you mentioned george carlin who i love by the way yeah i love him too sense of humor indicates you've risen a

little bit above the greedy nasty sees things and secondly what dr uh uh sorry professor moore said what Dr. Sorry, Professor Moore said was that if someone shows gratitude, chances are they are not greedy. Chances are they are trustworthy. That's interesting. With humor and gratitude, chances are you are sufficiently in touch with how the world's working

that we can trust you. I think narcissists and sociopaths they're not really big into comedy uh or being self-effacing in their comedy you know one thing you have to do when you're when you try and be funny or try and do comedies you have to be self-effacing and people have to see that that you're not just making fun of other people you make fun of yourself too and you throw yourself in the mix and you go hey i'm not perfect either i mean that's kind of what you're communicating but but you're not just making fun of other people, you make fun of yourself too. And you throw yourself in the mix and you go, Hey, I'm not perfect either. I mean, that's kind of what you're communicating, but, but you're also shining a light on, on how human behavior can be a bit hypocritical and there's a, there's a funny comedic thing to it. So maybe that's kind of it. I think the gratitude part too, I mean, certainly sociopaths and narcissists, I don't think

experience any sort of gratitude. Maybe it's selfish or solipsistic in a way. But it is interesting to me because I always look for people I trust. I keep a very tight circle of people around me, and I have for years. And I've been betrayed by very close friends. And in my study of it and constant moving target of it. It's been interesting to me that I found that people who operate in the very stoic, stoic, stoicism,

stoic, is that a word? Stoicism, nature of logic and reason, a very masculine trait and people that operate on emotion, a very feminine trait that they don't, they do not. Uh,

I cannot, I find I cannot trust them. They're not honest. And, uh, I, I can't expect loyalty from them. So if you want to think about that, give that some thought. And I'd be interested because you study this more than I do. But I seem to have studied enough to find that's the one common denominator across 55 years of betrayal is an basis character that who lives in their emotions and, and behaves in that way.

So I'm always curious about that. Something to think about. Well, I suggest the stoicism is actually a sign of somebody who's willing to forego things. It's the stoic who goes out in the rotten weather to gather firewood the the sensitive oh i'm gonna get cold person doesn't do that yeah so i i think you're dead on with the stoicism even though professor moore didn't disguise that discover that 400 years ago

well the logic and reason aspect of stoicism is how you process your emotions so you look at emotion and you go okay i'm feeling something right now you don't there's a lot of people who think you dismiss your feelings but you don't you go i am feeling something right now what does this mean how do i react to it you control your reaction and thereby you control your response and your perception of the world and you self-judge part of stoicism is realizing you're not perfect but also you're processing with logic and reason so i'm asking myself if i feel an emotion like greed like hey i should maybe take advantage of this person or situation i go wait i operate from a law of of loyalty trust, do unto others as you would do to yourself. So if I break this law,

I'm breaking the contract that I have with myself. I'm betraying myself. You know, you have this whole thought process you go through, probably with someone who tries to figure out, am I ethical or not? Am I operating in an ethical way? Is this a good thing?

Am I doing to others as I would have done unto myself? Am I breaking a an ethical way? Is this a good thing? Am I doing to others as I would have done unto myself? Am I breaking a contract with myself? Am I being true and authentic to myself? You're asking those questions. When you're operating in pure emotionality, you're just reacting with emotion of the wind. Whatever you're going to react to is, I don't know, whatever rage you have to whatever. And you're not containing it to whatever you're not. And you're not containing it either because you're going to react in an

emotional way. You're going to get angry. You're going to get violent. You're going to get happy. You're going to get whatever. And there's no control there. In fact, there's no control into how you process that emotion. You can go from being a Karen screaming at someone on the street that we all see the videos of to someone who goes i just really don't like this but that variation of emotion and how you react i think can betray you know you don't you're not self-reflective it's very solipsistic it's about my emotions you know it's how i feel as opposed to how i think so well that's it the phrase I want is purely emotional.

There's nothing rational about it. So it's funny to me, like, for instance, you know, one of the more notorious greedy people is Martha Stewart. And if you think about why she ended up in jail, it boggles the mind. Why the heck she did this? She had just recently gone public. She was worth $1.9 billion. Her stockbroker came to her with this, you know, not very ethical deal. And she stood to gain $100 million. So here she was.

She said, I want that $100 million. You here she was, she said, I want that $100 million. More is better. Instead, she should have said, hey, I've got $1.9 billion. I'm not going to end up in jail. I'm not going to do bad things. The answer, dear stockbroker, is no. she didn't do that she her motion was i want it i'm going to do it and she did it and and i think one of her big fallacies legally uh not only is that's unethical as you you know you talk about your book but legally uh she was trained to be a stockbroker on license i believe and so one of the problems was was was a violation of her training, you know? So, you know, it spoke to intent because you, you can't say, well, you didn't know the law. You were trained as a stockbroker and someone can correct me if I'm wrong on that, but I believe that was the basis of the law that prosecuted her. But you're right.

It wasn't ethical, you know, and, and having that long-term logical reasoning where you go, wait, and as you said, you go, wait, this isn't ethical. This can get me in trouble. I could go to jail. Yeah, I should process this from a logical aspect of reasoning is the real difference there. And I had a mortgage company for 20 years and somewhere in that, in the vastness, uh, we had a mortgage company move into the building next door to us with the, that was in like, I don't know, 10, 15 feet. And we could see the mortgage, uh, company next door to us, which was very small compared to mine. Uh, and we could see him go up to the window and trace signatures. And I was the mortgage

company that, you know, number one, I didn't want to go to jail, but I didn't want to do any unethical. I, I, you know, I've kind of talked about how trust loyalty and stuff is a basis for, for an axiom towards me. And that's my contract with myself that I try and keep, uh, and I'm not perfect. Um, but, uh, I would have, uh, these loan processors that would come to me and they'd be like, hey, Chris, where's the light table in the processing department? And we go, what do you mean the light table? And they go, yeah, the light table used to trace over the signatures. And I'm like, that's illegal.

That's forgery. That's illegal. Well, no, it's not because they signed for the loan. And we're just doing the application. We're just filling the blanks because they didn't send the forms back in. So, you know, there were some additional forms we needed from them and, you know, they haven't sent it back in. We mailed them out to them. So we're just going to go ahead and sign these so we can get the closed on. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's illegal. And that's, that was one of the big cruxes of the mortgage crisis or a contribution to it. But, and so my employees would see the guy next door,

you know, signing these things in the window. In fact, the mortgage companies were very well aware of it. And we'd hopefully talk about it, but somehow still he would get mortgage companies to buy his paper, even though they knew, you know, there was kind of a blind eye that was being turned there. Big surprise when 2008 crashed.

And I would have a conversation with my loan officers and I say, listen, you have a license that you have had to go to school for. You have to do FBI background checks. I mean, I, I had to do Interpol checks with my Vegas license and background checks for the mafia. Uh, every year I'd have to pass Interpol. If I had a felony anywhere in the world, I could lose my licensing. And so I would say you have, you know, put all this money in investments. You're doing, you know, we were doing hundreds of loans a month. And as a loan officer, you're making 10 or 20 grand a month. You're processing, I don't know, 10, 15 loans or something.

I don't remember how many they do. But they were making a lot of money and they sometimes they would come to me and go hey chris i got this one loan and there's kind of a weirdness to it it's my family loan or whatever i actually i actually left and resigned from a mortgage company in nevada that i helped build because they wanted they had snuck uh fake uh relative loans by me me on an investor's mother. And it had gotten by me, and then we caught it. And I was like, I'm not going to jail for this.

Fuck you. I'm out. And I resigned and turned over the authorities. And so they would ask me this. And I'd be like, look, you're going to do all these mortgages. You're going to make all this money. Do you want one loan or a small percentage of loans that you've done illegally or broken the lawn to make it so you can't continue those loans? I'm like, we're going to do billions of dollars worth of loans over the years in the future. Do you want to do this for the one thing?

And I think that's where you're right. Greed is the thing that people look at and they get lost in sometimes over the short term over the long something else you highlight there which is greed usually doesn't happen alone usually there is a network of greedy people that's interesting too i'm gonna have to watch for that so there's there's enough people that go hey we should turn a blind eye exactly so for instance uh the guy um who recently got put in jail for harassing uh young aspiring actresses um in hollywood his name slips my mind at the moment. In any case, the point was he was protected by this network of wealthy people who basically made sure that those actresses couldn't go after him, at least initially, who actually protected him from these unscrupulous and greedy things. I mean, greed, by the way, I think claim has many forms.

It could be lust, it could be his search for cute little actresses. It can be fame. It can be influence. It doesn't just have to be money. They're all actually convert into one another.

You're talking about the uh the the famed uh me too guy i think who uh uh the producer or it was the big studios that he ran is that the gentleman you were talking about yes yes one thing that's interesting to me about the alternative that is no one spoke up until after they won all their Oscars and awards and stuff. And there seems to have been an element of greed to get powerful and successful first. And then somehow they claim to the other things. I'm not saying what he did was right. I'm not trying to whitewash that in any way.

But to me, this is one of the, I guess what i'm trying to highlight is you know it always is saying to me that being ethical and trying to be on the right side of something is a bit of a challenge and a bit of a moving target and so i'm always curious you know with books like yours and discussions like this how we get you know better down to the down to the brass tacks of of am i ethical or not am i trustworthy or not am i ethical or not? Am I trustworthy or not? Am I honest or not? Because I can tell myself I'm honest with myself all day long, but I probably bullshit myself on so many different things. I mean, I think yesterday I was doing my intermittent fasting,

and somewhere about midday I was like, well, I'll just have a little bit of this, and then I turned to that, and then intermittent fasting, out the door and there goes a pound well but you're right people there's amazing capacity for self-deception one of the favorite quotes i have is there's a gentleman who said here i am pursued and treated like an animal when all i've tried to do is bring people happiness and pleasure. Guess who said that? That was Al Capone. Oh, my God.

Same guy who did the St. Valentine's Day massacre and all that. But he felt very good about himself. You know, we've had a lot of chatter about oligarchs, illiberalism on the show. We see interesting things. I mean, I think Elon Musk is on display almost every day of his selectiveness. And when you study the oligarchs that we have in this country, the billionaires and stuff, whether they're on either side of the political spectrum, it always seems like they're trying to run their game. You know, we've had a lot of discussions with the SCOTUS rulings that have enabled that,

where you can, you know, buy a politician for whatever you want, you know, on either party. I'm a moderate Democrat, full disclosure, but I've also been a Republican. I seem to be moving around the thing. Actually, I don't seem to be moving much. It's actually the extremes of both political parties have been moving uh farther and farther out move me towards the middle but uh you know i understand that there are billionaire classes and donor classes on both sides of the political parties that have a major influence on who gets elected and and what policy is it's been kind of interesting to me how you

know one person is right as another person is wrong conveniently. And what is good for the goose is never good for the gander, as were. Am I saying that right? I don't know. I think the expression is quite correct. But the thing I think is everybody is so darn short-term. Yeah. That there are win-wins out there.

They just usually are not a month in duration. For instance, if we could actually educate enough people, if we could actually have fair labor laws, if we could actually have fair return to investors, I think, in fact, we would all do better. But that's not the game anymore. It is not a short-term, it is a short-term gain. And that didn't used to be the case. There used to be a time when people have longer-term views. The Marshall Plan in Europe, that was not supposed to correct Europe in one month. It was supposed to rebuild an ally. And they knew that that would take 20 years, and it did.

It was Jay Samet who came on the show, and I can't remember what company he had CEOed for, but he was the one who spoke the truth to me in his book, Future Proofing of You. And what was interesting to me is he talked once again, like I mentioned before, the CEOs issues that they have nowadays where they're paid extraordinary amounts of money and they're paid based on stock price payout. So they're not paid out on long-term payout and they don't see the results of investing in R&D and other things because someone else is going to get credit for that. And so, you know, you're going to dump 40,000 employees because the stock price is going to pop

and your bonuses are based on the stock price. And he talked kind of about the quandary of that and the issue of that. And one thing you mentioned was the Marshall Plan. I theorize that one of the challenges that we have in our... Let me throw this away. I know we're going along. But when I was 18 or 20,

one of the problems they were talking about was the middle class, because it was very heavy back then. And of course, we were still, I mean, Reagan years or post-Reagan years. And the trickle-down economics. That's not going to turn out well. And that was supposed to be a long-term project too which technically has been when you really see the the willing of the middle class

but i remember people calling out and going there's a real problem with what's going on with the transfer of the boomers to the new generation where the boomers built long-term wealth they own real estate they own companies they own property. They had these whole portfolios of stocks and everything else, but they had this property that was being earned. And I remember seeing reports in the Wall Street Journal and different things where people were calling out and going, there's a real concern here because what the new generation is doing is they're taking and liquidating these inherited assets they're getting that are long-term things. And they're taking and liquidating these inherited assets they're getting that are long-term things and they're buying rims and they're going to wall you know they're they're shopping at luxury brands

and they're just burning through the money they're they're just liquidating the long-term interest assets and you could argue that we've kind of moved from a long-term society that focus on logic and reason to a very emotional based consumerist. I mean, we're almost, I, it's a sad thing to say, but we're almost consumer locusts. We, you know, we've gone from having the main street to where now everything is consumerism. You know, every strip mall is about, you know, fast food, fast, this fast, this single serving, this, everything is about consuming now consuming, you know, no one saves anymore, you know. It's all about, you know, doing stuff now and serving, you know, the emotion of, of I need, I need, I need.

There was actually a time in my life where when I got money, I was buying things, you know, that I't have uh growing up being poor and i i got into this mental addiction of going to the mall and going to the store and i had to seem like i had to buy things every weekend and i started to realize that i i was having some sort of uh psychological issue of of uh of some sort of uh hole in my soul or myself where I was insecure if I wasn't buying stuff. And I had to sit down with myself and go, Hey man, you, this is a sick way to live.

You know, you just can't, you just can't keep buying stuff for every weekend. Calm down. You know? And I think it was when I saw the, what was the fight club, the things that own you end up owning you.

And I was like, Holy shit. I got a lot of shit that owns me. Uh, any thoughts on that? Well, I think the word is materialism. That's highly relevant, right? There was a time, and I think there is in many cases, still with a lot of people, a belief that it is the material that matters.

It is what you have made of yourself it is what you believe are you being a good person and there are rewards to that let me say that the support for that way of thinking has diminished over time i mean i i belong to kind of an off-the-charts religion called Quakerism. Oh, yeah. And we actually, for instance, don't believe materialism is that important for people. It is, do you actually understand what a higher being wants from you? And if you don't believe that, there's no telling what you will do with your life. There you go.

I'm sorry to come on your show and then, you know. No, that's relevant, I think. You know, I believe in what happened to me after fight club was I became a minimalist. You know, I had three different houses in three different fricking States, multiple companies in different States. I had a BMW parked in any given airport, any given time in a Jaguar in Denver at any given time. Like I would park one BMW in Salt Lake city airport, uh, go live in Vegas for the weekend

where my other BMW was in short term park. I mean, my, my bill was like, I think a thousand dollars a month in short-term parking for a BMW to sit in the airport at any given time. It was extraordinary, the money I was blowing through. And I became a minimalist after Fight Club because I realized that what I own was owning me. And it reached a point where I wasn't, I was buying shit that no one cared about you know no one was none of my friends were like wow it's really cool you own that stuff they're just like you're just an asshole which i i am still to this day i'm proud to say um but i'm a loyal trustworthy uh ethical asshole i try to be i don't know maybe i need to work on being a bigger asshole to really

fulfill the the the whole and whatever man it's a joke, but, uh, uh, Chris is a narcissist. Yeah, probably. Um, but I'm a, I'm an atheist. And so I don't think there's a difference between you and I in believing in a power that, uh, you know, a lot of this possession doesn't have to be there. So I don't, I don't necessarily believe there's a higher power to it, but I, I see the fallacy like you do through your religion of, yeah, I mean, all this crap is just crap. I mean, you can't take it with you, right?

Last time I checked. I mean, I'm just asking for insurance because I want to know. Yeah. Well, this has been a great discussion, Rob. Thank you for coming on the show. I mean, people really need to read your book and get into the depth of it. We tease that out, of course, on the show i mean people really need to read your book and get into the depth of it we tease that out of course on the show and and stuff to get people to buy it but i think it's a it's a really important discussion it's a discussion that people should have with

themselves am i ethical am i trustworthy am i honest am i honest and the biggest thing i think is being trustworthy and honest to yourself because if you lie to yourself all the time like i do i mean let's be honest, you're constantly trying to move towards that target and form, as they always say with the Constitution, a more perfect union. You're never going to achieve it. You're just always working there. There's a saying about that about perfection, too.

No one ever achieves perfection, but trying to advance towards it is the better goal. Any parting thoughts, Rob, before we go? Well, I think one person who actually put very nicely some of the things you just said, and maybe some things I've touched upon, was Confucius. And Confucius said, and he influenced about a billion people for over a thousand years before communism came along. He said, be ever watchful over yourself. And I think that's

true. If we're not watchful, there are evil forces that will unfortunately infiltrate what you do and you will regret it in the end. There you go. I'll probably butcher this too there you go i'll probably butcher this too but one of the watch words for me about me and it can be taken two different ways but there's a shakespeare line i believe that says to thine own self be true and this must follow as days tonight thou canst not be false to any man

and my interpretation of that is that i need to be honest and true to myself not from a narcissistic sociopathic sort of way because that can be misinterpreted that way but from a thing of of am i bullshitting myself am i being honest with myself am i operating in a trustful ethical manner and if i try and hold that contract with myself and make I operating in a trustful, ethical manner? And if I try and hold that contract with myself and make sure that I'm fulfilling the contract that I have myself towards that, I can offer that to other people and honor that commitment. And once again, I'm not perfect because if I was to stand up here and say that, you know, there's probably 5 million people in the audience going bullshit and they'd be right so uh it's it's

a great discussion to have and i think it's important that we need more books and we need more discussions on what are ethics what are rules uh like i said in the realtor trade every year they would give us an ethical course that we had to take and pass and i loved the discussion they would talk about they would talk about an interesting thing about levels of different things of ethics. Like Jesus and Martin Luther King or Gandhi were special sort of ethical people because they would go beyond what was the law, but what was moral and what should have been moral for people or the Magna Carta, et cetera, et cetera. And then there's the operating within the law to, to sustain the law.

And there was like, I think four or five different levels of ethics they talked about. And I always thought that was interesting how that worked, but interesting discussion for another time. Thank you very much, Rob, for coming on the show. Thank you, Chris. Really appreciate it. There you go.

Give us your.com. So if you can find you on the interims, please. Sure. By the way, the book is available on Amazon. It's called Ethics and Hidden Greed. And you can also look up our website, which is ethicsandhiddengreed.com.

There you go. There you go. Thanks, Manish, for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfoss, youtube.com, 4chesschrisfoss, LinkedIn. Of course, this will be on the LinkedIn newsletter. Subscribe to that as well. The big 130,000 group on LinkedIn. And we're over on TikTok, Chris Voss 1 and the Chris Voss Show podcast.

Follow us over there for all the cuts of the show you'll be seeing as well. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you next time. And that should have us out, Rob.