Principles

About the worst thing you can say about someone is that they’re unprincipled. Right? We say that a lot about politicians.

Have you ever noticed that the principled politicians don’t get very far?

I’m going to take a contrarian view and say that having principles is not a necessary nor sufficient condition for success. In fact, your principles might get you in trouble. In college, I embarked on a quest for truth and justice (cue the Hunger Games theme music) and I got squashed like a bug. The only good thing that came out of that experience was that I lost my idealism and acquired my cynicism when I was 19 years old, and not 39. I learned that lesson early in life, when the cost was low, rather than later in life, when the cost would be high. I try to find the good in all situations, and I can tell you that almost getting kicked out of the Coast Guard Academy was one of the best things that ever happened to me. And it happened at precisely the right time.

The word “always” is not in my vocabulary. I don’t always tell the truth. In rare circumstances, I will lie—but never to protect myself. I don’t always treat people with decency and respect. I do most of the time, but in rare circumstances, I will be a dick when necessary. I don’t always believe in capitalism—sometimes, some accommodations must be made.

None of us are in the business of being idealists. Around the time that I almost got kicked out of the Academy, my favorite quote was from Pearl Buck: “Life without idealism is empty indeed. We must have hope or starve to death.” What a crock of shit. Now, my favorite quote is from Animal Mother in the movie Full Metal Jacket: “If I’m going to die for a word, my word is poontang.” I already told you that I don’t vote, and I don’t get involved in politics. I don’t care about the starving children in Africa, I don’t care about the war in Ukraine, and the only reason I care about the outcome of the election in Argentina is because I have a financial stake in it. Sure, I have opinions on all of these things, but what I’ve found is that when you share your opinions on these things, you tend to diminish your usefulness to others. You split people into two camps; they either love you or hate you. Imagine being a politician, and having 50% of people hate your guts. No, the only thing I really care about is myself and pursuing my own happiness. And you know what? I am pretty happy. Idealism can piss up a rope. I am as unprincipled as they come.

In the markets, you get people who invest on the basis of what should happen instead of what will happen. Remember in the late 2010s, when you had all these hardhat Zerohedge types shorting stocks because the market was going up because the Fed was printing money, or something? That hurt like a frozen tampon. And then, in October of 2022, after the market had already gone down 25%, and people were limit short on the lows, because of Cathie Wood and Chamath and crypto and something? That hurt like a buttcheek on a stick. In the markets, you absolutely cannot, must not, under any circumstances, have principles. Dennis Gartman used to say that you had to trade like a mercenary guerilla, ready to switch sides at a moment’s notice. If I thought that becoming a communist country would make stocks go up, I would buy stocks. Or, a more relevant example, from 15 years ago: if I thought that bailing out banks would make bank stocks go up, I would buy bank stocks. I’m sure some people thought that bailing out the banks was wrong. It doesn’t matter what you think. Everyone knows by now the story of the Big Short, but the part of the story that doesn’t get told is that there are a lot of people who overstayed their welcome in that trade, betting on the zero, and gave back all their profits and more on the way up. Because they were doing what they thought was right. There is no right or wrong in the markets. The markets have no morality. There is only making money or losing money—nothing else. The one thing that all great investors have in common is that they are unprincipled. The principled ones run for office.

The other thing that people say about politicians is that they lie. If only there was a politician that told the truth. Trust me, you don’t want to know the truth. Politicians are supposed to lie. This isn’t unique to Karine Jean-Pierre, but is true of press secretaries in general—they are lying all the time. Gaslighting, in fact. Can you imagine what would happen if they told the truth? Mayhem. What I’m saying here is that not only do politicians not tell the truth, you don’t want them to tell the truth. And any politician that told the truth would have a short career indeed. Like Justin Amash, who told the truth, got kicked out of Congress, and is doing nothing in particular at the moment, except to point out on Twitter that politicians are not telling the truth. Thanks pal.

While the unprincipled are going to work and making money, the principled are out in the streets, protesting. Let’s walk through the calculus on that. You believe in a cause, so you grab an Amazon box and make a cardboard sign and head down to Main Street to yell at nobody in particular. The protest gets a little raucous, the paddy wagon comes around and scoops everyone up, and now you have a mugshot in an orange jumpsuit on the internet, and you can’t get a job. Nicely done. Was it worth it? The idealists will say, yes, because my cause is just, and so on and so forth. With the passage of time, and with some maturity and the benefit of a little hindsight, they will conclude that it was not. Really, the only people who have the luxury of being idealists are the ones who are independently wealthy. Money buys idealism. Elon Musk told advertisers on Twitter to “go fuck themselves,” saying that he was not going to be blackmailed into censoring speech. He’s already set $40 billion on fire, and he’s got more behind that. The reality is that we cannot all be Elon Musk, which should be obvious.

I have been writing this column for almost two years now, and I have expressed a lot of shitty opinions, including this one, but you have probably noticed that I have never taken any truly controversial issue head-on. I am not Elon Musk; I don’t have that luxury. Also, I don’t want 50% of people to hate me. That’s not to say that I don’t have opinions. My wife gets to hear them all, sitting next to me on the couch. I’m not a celebrity, but you have probably noticed that some celebrities get involved in politics and others don’t. The smart ones don’t. A few years ago, some liberals were trying to sleuth out whether Chris Pratt was a conservative. He never said one way or another, and his reputation is intact. Alyssa Milano is a liberal bomb-thrower, and she’ll never get work again—too polarizing. Not sure if you know who Milana Vayntrub is—she’s Lily on the AT&T commercials who has a cult following on the basis of her, uh, decolletage. I went to her Twitter page one day—she is appallingly left-wing. I was actually pretty surprised that AT&T tolerated it. Jack Dorsey used to follow her, and I was left wondering whether it was because of the politics or the decolletage.

Being unprincipled is being a pragmatist. I won’t fight for what is right. I won’t even necessarily fight. I’ll run. Staying alive is more important. John McCain’s exemplary conduct as a POW in Vietnam has been well-chronicled. Nope. Couldn’t do it. I’ll say whatever you want me to say so you stop pulling my fingernails out. Does that make me a bad person? Let’s just say that I’m in the right job—not everyone is cut out to be a war hero. The military, in general, doesn’t have a lot of unprincipled people in it. Sure, some people join for economic reasons, but most people want to be a part of something greater than themselves. Look at the recruiting commercials—they appeal to people’s sense of idealism. I used to feel that way about trading, you know. I showed up to Lehman Brothers up to my eyeballs in Ayn Rand, and at the end of seven years, it was just a job, and I was scrambling for money along with everyone else.

Once you are free of your principles, you can accomplish a lot of great things. Because that is what it means to be self-motivated—you are doing things for yourself, not for encomiums or to please anyone else. You know how they tell you when you’re a kid that we can all make a difference? Another lie. A small minority of people can, and you’re probably not one of them. I try to be cynical, but it’s hard to keep up.