I was reading this post on what would happen to George Santos upon no longer being a member of the US House of Representatives (https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/investment-…), which got me more interested in the idea of the business value of a pathological liar. George Santos is interesting because everyone knows he is a pathological liar. Most liars tend to lie about important matters which benefit themselves. This is a more understandable form of lying. George Santos lies about trivial matters which either have no benefit or even harm him. For example, he lied about being part of producing the Broadway flop, Spider Man: Turn Out the Dark. This musical was such a failure that no reasonable person would associate with it. From this, we see that George Santos lies about important and trivial things with the same ease.
What then is the commercial value of someone who is a known pathological liar, lying about serious and trivial things? What purpose in business can they have? Lying in business is often a useful trait. We see it in lobbying, marketing and promoting stock market frauds. But in most instances, the lies are less effective when the other side knows that they are lies. P.T. Barnum reputedly said "there's a sucker born every minute" and not "I lie and everybody knows it."
Could a George Santos be effective as a Dos Equis "The Most Interesting Man" spokesperson? The basic premise would be that he crafts a new lie about something he has done in his past. The original character was humorous because he might actually be telling the truth. He was suave enough that it seemed plausible. How does this character change if you have someone who is a known fraud?
Could George Santos have broad appeal like this, or is he only fit for scamming the few who actually believe him? Are there other use cases that I'm missing?
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A liar is worth dirt. Never be a liar.
In a certain sense, sure, but in another sense, no. If I recall, you have some experience in the armed services (thank you for that), and if so, you’ll know that there’s value in lying to protect the country from various threats.
Ignoring the pretty obvious use cases that most people would agree are moral if not heroic, lying is most often simultaneously immoral but effective (as discussed in my post above). My post is interested in the rational use cases for someone like George Santos, regardless of morality.
You're thinking too narrowly. Spread it out to what you know is the real question. You're talking about sociopathy. Being able to carefully and skillfully guide people or quietly dog them with no remorse or regret. If we know it's blatantly and comically out of proportion, we can call it. But with some clever crafting we can get you to buy into something piece by piece. It's why I love having talks with friends of friends in the mental health field and toying with them because they think they're so smart and won't recognize that I can screw with you just because I want to just to prove a point. Santos is an obvious clown, but look into local and state politics and you'll discover the ones playing the "drip, drip, drip" game. Same in the business world. Seen more than enough c-levels try and play that string of moves.
This is all very intriguing, and I watched your video from the timestamp to the end.
Just to clarify, are you saying that the drip drip campaign is possible with an over-the-top overt strategy like Santos, or does it have to be more covert? I don’t know if he’s capable of being more covert, so if the strategy required that, then he wouldn’t be much use for it.
To what extent are people susceptible to a drip drip from a known liar? Are there examples you can point to? I think the Goebbels philosophy sounds pretty similar to what you’re saying, but just wanted to see if you had anything else. Excellent response.
First off, Profit is an amazing series. And honestly, I'd pick him over Bateman as the go to Wall Street bad guy. You think Bateman is a messed up character? Whew lawd.
Second, the drip, drip, drip is as the description implies; a covert longer-term method. Similar to the story of the series Profit actually. I know you mentioned Santos, but I won't name anyone who I think has shown themselves to exhibit that kind of behavior on the political side.
Santos was so egregious that it was comical. It's the ones who come back and say "No, no no. I said we were shooting for 6% ROI. I never promised that, but I get you're upset we only hit 5%." Meanwhile it could've really been an 8-9% net-IRR and they found a backdoor way to siphon off the difference. Sure enough, they keep that cool, calm and collected demeanor and before long you're happy just with that 5% and don't even think about what you're missing while they're enjoying it.
It's one thing if you know they're a liar, it's something else if they're able to obfuscate it and keep it from you. Those are the dangerous ones. Cue the lawyer jokes.
Edit: Elizabeth Holmes, Madoff (obviously, lol), probably plenty of the GC's I've worked with. On the political side, I will say there's a reason they say the D.C. area is the absolute highest concentration of sociopaths in the country.
And while it's fascinating studying the monster to know to hunt one when you find one, be careful lest you become one yourself.
Problem is, we like liars, because we want to believe.
When I say we like liars, we like what they feed us, we want to get wrapped up in something emotionally and we like to hear things. Take something as basic as how someone looks. Say someone is overweight, they know they are overweight, but when someone tells them they look thin they like it, they feed into it.
Couple points:
-If you watch the HBO documentary "Bad Blood" about Theranos, they talk about liars in the beginning, and how Elizabeth Holmes was doing what many others have done in terms of overpromising, she just was too grand. It's really only a lie because it didn't work out.
-They say when Steve Jobs first presented the iPhone it didn't work completely, that's why he had multiple on stage and had to keep putting down and picking up new ones because they would crash; was that a lie?
-Look at a company like FTX and SBF. In the back of people's mind they probably had questions about everything he was saying, prob knew it was a lie, but people went along.
It's a major asset until it isn't, and then it usually ruins you. Some people are habitual liars and it works out well. Some people believe their own bullshit, which is self-evidently bullshit, and it works out well.
Elizabeth Holmes is probably going to be just fine once she's out of prison. I'm sure she has plenty of money socked away. Donald Trump rode a pretty much unceasing wave of mendacity to the White House, and has spent the last two years bilking his supporters out of their hard earned dollars on another wave of lies. Adam Neumann may not have "lied" but he made hundreds of millions of dollars serving obvious bullshit to greedy and credulous investors.
Every single one of those people has profited enormously on the sole basis of being shameless liars. There are countless more. Generally speaking it's probably not good policy in your day to day life, but that doesn't mean you cannot get ahead.
What if George Santos is just trolling us all. Like a shit poster but IRL
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