Martin Shkreli Comes Home From Prison & Drops Knowledge On His First Stream (Archive cut)

Martin Shkreli (0:00)

Nineties corporate culture, coming out of the kind of roaring eighties, that was the mentality. And as you can see, there's a lot of toxic masculinity in it, whether you want to call it toxic or not, that's up to you. I think that there's that binary outcome of whether or not you succeed in business or you don't. You can see Alec Baldwin's character, who sort of has succeeded, and you see all these other guys who seem to be struggling, and you've got that alpha male, and then you've got everybody else. And the goal is to sort of be that large and in charge alpha male, if you will. And remember, this is a world where there's virtually only men. The world's changed a lot, but some people still live in that world. And to some extent, that world still exists and is doing fine. You know, this whole like, dude, you know, graduates college or whatever, goes to New York, whatever city, tries to make a living, and not just make a living, but paint the town red. You know, you may see yourself wanting to do that. You may be in that position now. I don't know, but basically all that's on your mind is, how do I succeed? How do I make it? And that sort of crazy attitude seems really crazy, right? You start to get possessed and obsessed, and you start thinking about nothing, but getting what you want. How do you get it? And I think it's fine, actually, for a little bit of time. But inevitably, you have to migrate to something that's a little more important.

Maybe that's something as somebody like Marcella. I don't know. Maybe it's something as having a family. Maybe it's a different passion. Computer programming, I don't know, is something useful. But that raw energy, aggression, willing yourself to become a successful business person, it's a real thing. And again, whether it's a good thing or a bad thing for the world, I don't know. But you definitely have those kinds of personas. They can be very negative in the long run. Most people like that end up...

Again, you know, certainly not well liked. But again, being liked in business is not the primary goal. It's fairly important to be liked and respected, but it's not the only thing.

So anyway, interesting world if you've never seen something like that, or personalities like that, right? So I've seen my fair share. I've been that as well. So, I've been that kind of person, I guess.

Okay, that's not what I'm looking at. There we go.

Make sure I got these numbers right, yes.

And yeah, for some people, that was, for that, some people that's the sort of apex of masculinity, and you decide what that is. But the guy makes a point, you know, it's at least in the 80s and 90s, it was like, oh, you don't want to go home to your wife and kids and say, yeah, I couldn't hang with the big sales guys or the big, you know, big fish today. I'm not good enough, you know. But that's not what should make you comfortable or uncomfortable being a man, a father, a husband, whatever, or, you know, any other gender.

You know, I think, thankfully, the world is, you can be, I think that the smartest people, and I actually think about my father as well here, yeah, it's, you can still have a lot of, and I think a lot of people forget this, that how much of a good person you are and how much of a self-respect you have and things like that. Just go on, call. And how much money you make are two very different things. They don't have anything to do with each other. Just because you're rich doesn't mean you're respected or you should be respected or you're a good person. That's completely separate subjects. And to some people, that's very obvious, but I think to a lot of people, like Alec Baldwin's character, you know, that's it. That's your reason for existence. That's all there is. You know, your whole identity is wrapped up in this, you know, how well can I do?

And I think it's easy to forget that. As funny as that, it might sound to some people like, oh, how could that be even a thought? Well, it is. For some people, that's it. Like in hedge funds, you're fairly obsessed with your annual performance and sometimes even to your monthly performance. So at the end of the year, if you ask yourself, did I have a good year? Basically, it's distilled down to a percentage number, which is kind of crazy, right? Because of all the human experiences we have, you know, how much percentage we made this year is not, should not be the one determining factor, right?