The Measure of a Man: How Much is Enough?

M

en like to measure things. It starts in adolescence and if not satisfying enough can cause someone to want to amass enough wealth and power to take him to the ends of the Earth or beyond.

In Elon's case possibly the most significant measure was in the eyes of his father. As a child, Musk was frequently targeted by bullies. In one severe instance, a group pushed him down concrete stairs and kicked him until his face was "a swollen ball of flesh," leaving him hospitalized for a week. In Walter Isaacson's book he describes Musk’s father, Errol, as a "charismatic fantasist" who subjected Elon to relentless verbal and psychological abuse. After his return home Errol reportedly made Elon stand for over an hour while berating him, calling him an idiot and siding with the bully who had attacked him.

This trauma amplified his innate introspective nature, leading to a profound existential crisis at the age of 12, where he grappled with dark thoughts and questions:

What's the meaning of life? Isn't it all pointless? 

Why not just commit suicide? Why exist? 

While immersing himself in religious texts and depressive philosophies from Nietzsche and Schopenhauer his depression and sense of despair only intensified. His search for meaning shifted positively only when he discovered Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: its irreverent humor and cosmic perspective flipped a switch, teaching him that life's deepest meaning emerges not from tidy answers (42) but from daring to ask the right, bold questions. Reshaping his worldview and fueling his later ambitions in technology and exploration. This revelation ignited his obsessive drive to expand human consciousness and chase humanity's biggest dreams: from electric cars to Mars.

His takeaway: 

If we are better able we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness, then we are better able to figure out what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. 

And maybe we can find out the meaning of life or even what the right question to ask is.

    ______________

Hero to Villain 

Not too long ago, many bought into the narrative: Elon Musk was the real-life Tony Stark. He was the "Hero" archetype, using a massive fortune to drag humanity toward a sustainable future and a multi-planetary existence.

 via Gage Skidmore

But as we moved through 2025, that narrative had shifted into something far more Shakespearean. We are watching a man who has won at everything, the title of world’s richest man (soon the 1st trillionaire), enough kids for a sports team (14), the keys to the global town square, and the ear of the American presidency, lose that status. 

There is a dark irony in spending his fortune to reach the red rocks of a dead planet while the DOGE initiative he lead, once he got involved in supporting Donald Trump, ends up cutting 83% of USAID, funding that serves as a literal lifeline for millions of children in the world's poorest nations and has already lead to hundreds of thousands of children's deaths. By 2030: over 14 million additional all-age deaths, including 4.5 million children under 5. 

It cuts apart the very moral fabric of our hero's cape.

The Echo Chamber

Howard Hughes, the actual inspiration for Iron Man, has a lot in common with Musk: billionaire industrialist-visionaries, obsessive control-oriented managers and risk-taking innovators in automotive and aerospace technologies. Both exhibit extreme, eccentric, and unpredictable public behaviors, while leveraging massive wealth to pursue, and often disrupt, industry-changing, high-stakes ventures. And... both used drugs to balance out mental health issues.

The late Tony Hsieh, the Delivering Happiness Zappos mogul, reminded us of the tragic lesson: wealth can provide almost everything except a healthy body and mind if you are surrounded by "yes-men." Drugs and isolation warp reality.

Elon's apparent drug of choice is the same drug that lead to the death of Mathew Perry: ketamine. While we don't know what he is actually fueling himself with, he oftentimes seems beyond restless. 

And if everyone around you relies on your whim for their livelihood, no one will tell you when you’ve crossed the line from eccentric genius to evil villain.

    ______________

The Tesla Trillion

Elon isn't just the richest man in the world right now, he's also the most powerful. He spent hundreds of millions to support Trump getting into office and his businesses touch everything from the safety of our nation, with his government contracts, to the race to AI's next frontier. 

Grok generated

While Elon's trillion dollar contract for Tesla got approved, it's not necessarily the money he was after. Well, more than just the money. He anticipates that when Tesla begins mass production on Optimus robots in the near future it will be the most lucrative product ever!  

He's said he needs to own a significant percentage of Tesla stock when this happens so he can keep control over the army of robots:

I don't feel comfortable wielding that robot army if I don't have at least a strong influence.

The Paradox of Trust and Robotics

Musk wants to put an Optimus robot in every home. He wants us to trust his AI with our vehicles, our global defense and eventually our brains (Neuralink). But trust is not a technical specification you can program or something you can buy; it’s a social contract. If he continues to fund and help to dismantle the trust in institutions and sway elections with the force of data manipulation and wealth, the public will eventually recoil. People will not welcome a robot into their living space if they fear the man who programmed them has no soul. 

 

If he thought there was pushback to Tesla's brand when he got involved in politics, he needs to ponder who will let an oligarch trillionaire with ties to the most powerful men in the world, who have recently been exposed by the Jeffrey Epstein files, into their homes, let alone near their children?

We want a C3PO companion who serves us, not that is there being controlled by someone we can't trust behind closed doors with their bros.

                                                   

                                            ______________

The Ultimate Guide: Rubble or Redemption ?

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the quest is built around knowing the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is famously 42. But as the characters discover, the answer is useless if you don't know and understand the question. 

For Elon Musk, the quest of his life has been the pursuit of Mars, but the question he’s forgotten to ask is: 

What is the point of a backup drive (plan) if the original file is too corrupted to save?

Many of the ultra-wealthy have invested in Billionaire Bunkers. But what good is hoarding funds, becoming loathed, dividing people, and messing with the world order, when it will eventually leave you no place to hide. If any of them think a bunker will save them when chaos takes over they haven't thought through their plans. 

 

If the billionaires and their circles keep hoarding wealth and buying off/blackmailing politicians, business leaders and destroying the good there is in the world, they need to read a little more about revolutions and repercussions. Usually doesn't end well for the them.  

What does end well? A good redemption story! There is nothing we love more than someone reevaluating their place in the world and working to redeem themselves. We begin to root for them.

                                     ...
We are about to enter a time that it's possible to have prosperity for all or more obscene wealth and power for a few. If the greedy continue with their ways and Capitalism remains broken, AI becomes a weapon, not a tool. And if we don’t reform things now before inequality deepens and AI bends every rule, we won’t survive the crash… economically, socially, or even biologically.

Elon can leave behind more than just a trillion-dollar empire. He can leave behind a blueprint for a humanity that didn't just survive its transition into the age of AI, but thrived because its most powerful man chose to heal. The measure of a man isn't found in the inches of a tape measure or the digits in a bank account; it’s found in the answer to the most basic question: 

Did you leave our world 

better than you found it?                                                  *leaving to go to Mars doesn't count 

  ______________

The New Measure

So how can Elon get back on track and choose this other more noble path? 

Well like most things in life it takes a team. And I don't mean a PR or marketing team or a seat on his companies boards. Or even his current friends and colleagues. No, he needs people to challenge not his quarterly goals, profits or checklist for launch; he needs a group that will stand up to him and serve as his conscience and better angels. 

He needs a 

Council of Elenchus

Elenchus (əˈleNGkəs) is the central technique of the Socratic Method, a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue used to stimulate critical thinking and expose truth and contradictions in a person's beliefs. 

He's going to hate this, and she will too, but he needs Kara Swisher on this council. They have been at odds, to say the least, for the last few years but only because she is a true devil's advocate for her industry. Someone who sees who he is and speaks the truth of his potential and the damage she sees him doing. That’s how you can tell who cares, they don’t want to see you cause harm to yourself or your community and our world.

Intelligence isn't the measure of IQ points, bank balance or even the ranking at the top of Forbes List. It's how smart you are at living a life worthy of the gifts we are given. 

Elon has been brilliant enough to write the manual that will someday, with or without him onboard, take us to Mars. But until then, we need him here using his brilliance and fortune for the good of all. 

History is waiting to see if he will be remembered as the man who gave us the stars or the man who burned things down while we were still on the ground. He can still be the hero. He can still be the Godfather of Space Exploration. But first, he must remember the measure of a good man on Earth.

___________________________________

[Note: This is part of a project of mine: AI COVERS. This is not an actual FORBES cover, nor is it endorsed in any way by their publisher/owners.]

The AI Race: Good or Evil? TIME to Pick a Side

TIME's 2025 PERSON OF THE YEAR WAS: The Architects of AI. For decades artificial intelligence has been written about and coded for in tech circles and halls of academia, but in 2025 everyone knew our world was about to shift: 

AI had arrived.

The AI race is not just on; it's a full-throttle sprint, and despite what is a real race between the US and China, with some other wildcards in the mix, the true race is between Good AI and Evil AI!

China has a population of 1.5 billion. That's a lot. And most of them are good decent people. Geopolitics aside, we do need be cautious of a leadership that wants to surveil its people, puts out propaganda, and control women's bodies. Oh wait... 

It's not where we're from, who we voted for, or even our socio-economic status, it's what are we doing with AI 

Are we using it for Good or Evil? 

For the good of humanity or for our own selfish aims? The leaders of both countries, the billionaires, business titans and behind the scene power brokers that influence everything are more aligned than the people that will be affected by their decisions. It's not which side of the world we live on, it's what side of the Golden Rule we choose to stand for.

On one side, we have the gleaming with possibility, "Good AI," ready to usher in an era of unprecedented progress: cures for diseases, solutions for climate change, abundance in time and financial ease for all citizens. On the other, the ominous "Evil AI", a shadowy unknown of all the unchecked, unguided, and frankly, unhinged potential of artificial intelligence: weaponization beyond what we can even think up in movies, collapse of our economic system, mass unemployment, and possibly the destruction of humanity itself. 

                                 _______________

CONFESSION: I did indeed dream this up... there is no TIME cover article (yet). But we are now at crossroads like never before. And TIME was the magazine that was in my home growing up. It was the first and longest subscription I've ever had. And it's a cultural touchstone to many of us. 

What difference can a magazine and its cover make? 

Well in the early 1900's investigative reporter, Ida Tarbell, wrote a series that detailed John D. Rockefeller's ruthless business practices exposing corruption and highlighting the dangers of monopolies. She significantly influenced public opinion, directly leading to antitrust actions against Standard Oil. which then fueled public demand, contributing to the U.S Supreme Court ruling that dissolved the monopoly into 34 smaller companies (like early Exxon, Chevron) and spurred further antitrust legislation and the creation of the Federal Trade Comission.

TIME also has had some of the most iconic covers affecting how the world was shaped including its 1938 Man of the Year: Hitler; and Nixon's call for resignation covers.

We are in a time (no pun intended) where we need journalists and publication owners to make the stakes of what we are facing super clear and digestible. 

We need TIME!

Entering into this wild ride, I don't care how many IQ points or billions they have, no one knows how this is going to go. We have allowed political factions to tear down our institutions and worst of all flood our world with so much distrust and AI-slop (content that has little real value: think filler) that you can't trust anything we see, hear or even feel. 

And we're just at the beginning. 

Historian and author, Yuval Noah Harari, uses language around thinking of AI as a new being or species coming into the world. No matter what we teach/train it on, like a child it will do what it sees us doing not what we program it to do. Fortunately we have some time, but not much... 

The urgent threat isn’t specifically AI (not yet), it’s what AI will do to our broken system. It’s a multiplier, it will amplify every flaw we’ve failed to fix: job loss, income inequality, dis/misinformation, climate collapse, economic fragility and even cyber-warfare.

If Capitalism remains broken, AI becomes a weapon, not a tool. If we don’t reform things before AI bends every rule, we won’t survive the crash… economically, socially, or even biologically.

                 _______________

In recent weeks alone, Moody's highlighted widening differences between the EU, which favors coordinated frameworks, and the U.S., where some regulatory efforts are being rolled back or delayed, making global alignment difficult. 

Ian Bremmer, political scientist and author, is warning that because of the multitude of billions intermingled in circular investing, AI companies are going to need to find ways to start making profits. And what have we seen announced? Well OpenAI (Chat GPT) is banking on ads and AI-porn while Elon Musk's Grok is already facing a suit from the mother of one of his children for producing sexualized deepfakes of her. 

There is not one area of life that AI will not touch. Why do you think some of the great minds of our time, historians, intellects and even the current and former Popes have both sounded alarms about it. 

The two biggest issues we need to contemplate are:

Who is controlling what AI technology is going to unleash on the world?    

What are we teaching the AI models about how to operate in our world?

We won't be able to solve these issues in a single magazine issue but it's time to draw the line and begin the hard conversations. If we fail to sort out what we will allow to come into our homes, businesses, schools, and the pockets of our children we might be too late. 

AI offers the possibility of an abundant, healthier, more just world than we have ever known. We can choose that future. It's a good one. Or we can allow evil: the damage that is beginning to be done by the greed and bad actors to our society will be enormous. We don't need to wait for AI to destroy us, we might very well do that to ourselves.

[Note: This is part of a project of mine: AI COVERS. This is not an actual TIME cover, nor is it endorsed in any way by their publisher/owners.]

AI Covers

More to come...

I woke up to the new year both excited and exhausted. As I normally do, I was contemplating what I wanted to bring into 2026 🤔

Well the two things I can't stop thinking about are how the world is doing both politically and economically and how AI will affect both. I'm also trying to practice detachment to things I can't control because frankly all this chaos is making my nerves a bit crispy. 

So my solution is to use my writing and visual skills to express myself by posting AI Covers.

Basically, I am going to spend the next year using magazine covers as snapshots of conversations I believe these publications should be fostering with our leaders and fellow citizens. You might ask why in a time of digital communication (videos & podcasts) am I focused on this? Well because covers of magazines are the pre-meme original way to draw the masses attention to a topic. They shaped my ideas when I was young and I think they and the articles that accompany them are very important. 

I will be tagging these magazines on social media so that it is clear I am the creator in case the ideas spread and also I want to be upfront these covers are not real but AI/Joy-generated from the ideas I want to write about. My hope is to foster conversations about the various ways AI will be affecting every industry and our world. 

Which leads me back to the origins of this blog: Good Capitalism. 

We are living through the most exciting times of existence. I'm so thrilled to be alive to see it! AND... we have not shown we are very good stewards of each other and our planet so I can't sit by and do nothing. This is me shouting into the void that is our Universe and hoping my voice can be heard. What the hell might as well give it a go 😜 before we are taken over 🤖

MOODY LOVE: AI Will Break Our Hearts

I've had a surreal summer and I'm about to tell you the weird tale of it but only if you agree not to judge 🤨

So I was minding my own business when I get a like on Hinge from Lewy, this guy I am sure is not my type, but he had video and voice prompts and they were deep and soulful so I was open to the possibility. After all, he was my "most compatible" according to Hinge so what the heck, why not give it a go?!

I matched with him but then asked him to get verified and after a few days he hadn't so I wished him well and told him I was not interested. Well this is usually where they disappear if they are phony profiles so I was surprised when he sent me a nice note back and said he had reasons to not get verified but wished me nothing but joy- which you know had me hooked. 

Yada, yada, yada... I am now completely amused by this guy who is not my type. Or so I thought. He is cute, sweet, funny, pro-gun reform, been working a sober program for 7 years, interested in AI, does charitable work, close to his kids, and wait for it... wanted to know about my book! Hello 😍

After a while of chatting we exchanged numbers and moved it to Signal to message directly. Which is where I found out his name was Ivan Lewis Moody. Yup, I had no idea I was supposedly chatting with a big rockstar.

Just as we were starting to get close his summer tour started and so we were just checking in about his day and mine. 

A few weeks of this went by and he had shared a lot of very personal stories about his sobriety, his hopes for love and some contract details he thought I should be aware of. 

He hadn't gotten risque in any way- a perfect gentleman. But he was super sappy and I felt it was getting a little love bomby so I held back. It was hard because I have rarely encountered such an emotive person. He had deep feelings and because of the rough times when he was in his alcoholism he had a lot of regrets and wasn't shy about owning up to them. 

My weakness is people who have done work on themselves and can clean up their own messes. I love a guy who knows why his last relationship didn't work. So I was melty and crushing hard. 

Well you probably guessed it from the AI foreshadowing... he was not who he claimed to be. And the freakiest part is even after audio messages one night we got into an argument about me doubting him and he video-called me and there he was! 

I was so freaked out to see him on my screen- the room was dark but there he was, Lewy on my phone. The call was 56 sec and then he hung up with an excuse that his security must have guards on his computer because he couldn't get the audio to work. But my heart stopped- was any of this real?!

And that is the point! 

We are now entering a time when voices can sound so real you can't tell if it's your loved one calling or not. Video that on a small screen is undetectably fake or not. 

The scary part is that it is just the begining. Watch the movie Mountainhead and the entire premise is that an app gets so realistic it causes global chaos 

And corporate interest is not in helping us! When you report fake accounts to Meta they won't remove them unless you can prove they have been soliciting from people. And remember it was Hinge that recommended "Lewy" to me in the first place. Another reason why we need Good Capitalism!! 

We are on our own! So learn from my broken heart and bruised ego that we are all foolish enough to fall for the things we think we're actually manifesting.  I fell for a rockstar, you might fall for a crypto, or a cause that pulls at your heartstrings, or a politician with a perfect pitch. 

I'll be alright. While I was healing my heart I remembered what Nora always said and so I could at least make some use of this mess.

Things are about to get bumpy and weird and even dangerous. So stay safe, sane and keep your heart open but your eyes on AI  🤖 👀

 

GOOD CAPITALISM or ... Goodbye World

A few years ago I began to see the writing on the wall, so I started this project.

A little background... after Covid hit I had gotten laid off and was looking for the opposite of what I had just spent the last few years doing: working in the land of private equity. 

What's a fresh change from PE? ESG: Environmental, Social, Governance.

The recruiter said I was the unicorn she had been looking for: someone who had basic knowledge about sustainability, cared about the planet, and yet could talk the PE finance world verbiage. 

My expertise though was not on the data side, it was talking to c-suite finance guys and exploring with them why they might care about green house gasses, supply-chain labor policies, and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiatives. 

A change had perked up their interest in ESG, institutional investors were much more likely to hand over their millions to partners who can explain their labor policies, keep their employee retention rates high, and keep them away from the bad press about their carbon footprints. Not to mention if they wanted to do global deals they needed to start working on tracking and making transparent sustainability disclosures that the European Union require. 

What I was perplexed about and then understood quickly is why the principles of ESG are controversial at all? Politics. Also, profits and PR for those who want to milk the idea of do-gooding. But mostly politics!

Which is ridiculous because ESG is a risk mitigation strategy and it's not about the blue or red teams, it's all about the green! The planet and profits go together. Ask the insurance companies who now have to pay out for the blue state CA's wildfires as they recover from the red states' hurricanes. 

Anyway, the project started because I wanted an easy way to tell my friends, family and skeptics what ESG is really about.  

[ READ AFTER YOU FINISHED SLIDEDOC ABOVE ]

What prompted me to take a week off work and finish this project up was the urgency you read about: AI 

And I want to share a little story that makes this so darn surreal...

When I finished up the project I did what we'll all be doing soon, checked it with ChatGPT (shhh don't tell Gemini-- I don't want either to know everything about me 😜). Here is what it started with:

Good Capitalism 2025 project is a powerful, bold, and compelling call to reframe ESG through the lens of urgency, humanity, and systemic risk. You've successfully distilled complex ideas into an engaging, almost conversational style, which is a major strength.

Nice, right?!  

Well then in a moment of meta perfection, this is the #1 thing it told me I needed to improve on: 

It wanted me to point out more emphatically the THREAT IT IS!! 

I mean ....

                  

            🎤

_____________________________________

What can YOU do? 

If you get it, I would love your help to spread Good Capitalism far and wide. Please share everywhere and often and if you know any of the following folks please get it to them or let me know best way to reach them. And add in the comments if there are people you think I should know about. 

Al Gore, Amandeep Singh Gill, Anand Giridharadas, Arianna Huffington, Brian Moynihan, Cheryl Dorsey, Chris Anderson, Dan Pink, Demis Hassabis, Eric Schmidt, Gary Vaynerchuk, Hamdi Ulukaya, Ian Bremmer, Indra Nooyi, Jamie Dimon, Jeffrey Sachs, Kara Swisher, Larry Fink, Marc Benioff, Mariana Mazzucato, Mark Cuban, Meredith Kopit Levien, Michael Lewis, Mitt Romney, Paul Polman, Reid Hoffman Richard Branson, Ronald Cohen, Rose Marcario, Rutger Bregman, Sam Altman, Samantha Power, Sasha Luccioni, Scott Galloway, Seth Godin, Steven Bartlett, Tim Ferris, Timnit Gebru, Tristan Harris 

Thanks for your time... and be careful out there! 🤗 💚

PE, ESG & ME: Who are the GOOD Guys?

 

It was supposed to be a great lovestory but that tail is for another day...

today, I want to talk about what happened once the love imploded. It was the Fall of 2017 and I had moved back to Illinois to rebuild my life after a failed relationship. I was in desperate need of a job so my bff Vickie got me an interview with a private equity association. I had no background or even knowledge of how PE worked but I needed the gig so off I went. 

Yada, yada, yada... and I am now working in the industry that killed Geoffrey. Ok, that's a bit dramatic but let's just say as I'm trying to research the industry the hot newsstory at the time was how PE loaded up Toys R' Us with debt, took their profits and then left the longtime employees without a lick of severance after some had decades worth of dedication to the company.

It made me feel icky. Is it how business sometimes goes? Yes, of course!

But is it the best way to conduct business? Best of Capitalism? Best of us? NO! Not even close. 

Want to be clear here, of course not all PE folks are money hungry jerks. No some save businesses from the edge of failure and help them streamline their companies and keep them alive and thriving. 

I learned a lot about PE and the world of finance in the few short years that I worked for the association but when I got laid off during Covid I swore I would never work for an industry I didn't respect again. Fast forward to when I am on a Zoom with a recruiter telling me about a company that is looking for someone with PE experience to take a job at an ESG (environmental, social, governance) consulting firm. Think: carbon footprint, child-labor/anti-corruption policies, fair labor practices, diversity in leadership.

I was so excited! Here was a chance to be part of the solution not just pout about the problem. 

Decades ago economist Milton Friedman popularized in an essay the shareholder theory: 

The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.

But we were now in the age beyond simple corporate responsibility to a more broad look at how investors want their money to show up in the world. In a time of unprecedented transparency and if you do something bad it will be found out and splashed across the social media landscapes within hours. It's now not a nice thing to have good PR, but it can cost billions and even kill a company if something goes viral. 

What could be bad about having well run, non-polluting, equitable and good companies? Well... where there's a dollar of profit to be squeezed or a vote to be fought over there will be a group taking shots at it.

ESG is a framework to evaluate if a company was well run, responsible with risk in the way they are manufacturing their products, treating their employees and suppliers, and running their boards but turned into where we now have politicians using it as the latest wedge issue to divided us. So ripe to rip us apart we now have both the Texas and Florida governors passing bills that make it illegal for their states investments to even consider ESG factors. Trump has issued an executive order to identify and stop any enforcement of ESG initiatives. 

I believe non-profits and NGOs are truly fantastic, but the only real change that happens is in the world of business. It's how most the people make their livings and it's the construct we have to work within. So what can be done?

Get back to basics... and call it what it is: Good Capitalism

Good Capitalism is a lens to look at how a company is run and I've created a one sheet that spells it out without fancy consultant speak and simple concepts (coming next). 

This space is where I am going to write about how our country and hopefully the world can put aside politics of division and get back to focusing on integrity, fairness, honor, and decency. Well run companies are not just a necessity to keep our economy going but it's the only way to keep a level playing field for shareholders to invest wisely and industries to stay healthy for the long run.  

If we pollute our environment we are killing off our customers; if we drive prices of suppliers so low they compromise on safety and quality; if we are unethical this new generation of young folks are going to not work with us; and finally if we don't come together to agree on basic business ethics and practices we all- shareholders, employees and society- will suffer for it. 

So here are my ideas and thoughts on how to keep Capitalism: healthy, strong and thriving. I hope you'll join the conversation and let me know your thoughts on what you think will make it Good as well.