The Extractor's Dictionary

Making the numbers look better by destroying something real. “This acquisition is accretive to earnings” means “We fired everyone and called it profit.”

Someone who buys 5% of your company and demands you fire people, sell assets, and distribute cash. Activists never suggest building anything. Only extracting.

Private equity term for raiding pension funds and canceling promises made to employees.

"We're addressing legacy liabilities" means "We're stealing retirement money from workers who spent decades building this company."

The liabilities aren't legacy problems to fix.

They're obligations to honor.

Pensions were promised compensation.

Healthcare was earned through years of service.

Severance was contractual protection.

When private equity "addresses" these "liabilities," workers who were promised security get betrayed.

Safeway workers lost $1.3 billion from their pension fund when Cerberus Capital "addressed legacy liabilities."

Delphi Automotive workers lost pensions entirely when Elliott Management "addressed" them.

Hostess Brands Inc. workers lost their pensions when Ripplewood Holdings "addressed" them in 2004, then the company died in 2012 while Twinkies survived.

The companies didn't fail.

The promises were broken.

Governments remain silent.

Laws don't prevent it.

News barely covers it.

"Addressing legacy liabilities" is extraction code for "breaking commitments to workers who can't fight back."

Someone who gets paid to tell companies to fire people. Advisors don't have to live with the consequences. The companies do.

Making sure everyone loses money except the people who control the structure. “Our interests are aligned” means “You take the risk, I take the fees.”

Returns that come from being early, lucky, or lying. venture capitalists claim they generate alpha. Math says they generate fees.

Finding a price difference and exploiting it before it disappears. Or in extraction terms: finding someone who doesn’t know they’re getting screwed.

When something that used to be for using becomes something for extracting. Housing was shelter. Now it’s an “asset class.” Means institutional investors buy it, price out families, extract rent forever. Turns necessities into investment vehicles. Turns users into renters.

Owning nothing. Controlling everything. Making money from other people’s assets. Like Uber. Or Airbnb. Or any platform that calls workers “partners” instead of employees.

Buying a company. Selling everything valuable. Leaving a carcass. Legal when private equity does it. Called “theft” when individuals do it.

Venture capital term meaning "we win big if it works, you lose everything if it doesn't."

The pitch sounds sophisticated: "We're seeking asymmetric risk-reward profiles where upside potential significantly exceeds downside exposure."

Translation: "We're making bets where we collect fees regardless of outcome, but if something works, we capture most of the gains."

Here's how asymmetric upside actually works in venture capital:

Invest $10 million for 30% of company.

If company fails: venture capital loses $10 million but already collected $2 million in management fees across the fund.

Net loss: $8 million spread across Limited Partners.

If company succeeds and exits at $1 billion: venture capital's stake worth $300 million.

venture capital collects 20% carry on the gain = $58 million personally.

Plus the $2 million in fees already collected.

The asymmetry isn't risk-reward.

It's who-bears-what.

Venture capitalists get upside (carry on wins).

Limited Partners get downside (losses on failures).

Founders get neither (diluted to nothing or fired).

The term makes it sound like smart investing.

It's actually just: "Heads I win big, tails you lose everything, and I collect fees either way."

Real asymmetric upside would be: risk little, gain much.

venture capital asymmetric upside is: risk other people's money, gain personally, lose nothing.

When venture capitalists say "asymmetric upside," they mean: "The asymmetry benefits me, not you."

Fees measured in tiny increments so they sound smaller. “We only charge 200 basis points” means “We take 2% of your money. Every year. Forever. Whether we perform or not.”

Whatever McKinsey told your competitor to do. Usually involves firing people and calling it efficiency.

The $1.50 "Regulatory Response Fee" or "Driver Benefits Fee" on delivery app orders.

The wording makes customers think they're helping drivers.

"Oh good, my extra dollar goes to driver benefits."

Actually: it goes straight to corporate lobbying against driver protections.

Internal documents from delivery apps show a specific cost center called "Policy Defense."

That fee feeds directly into it.

Customers pay for the lawyers fighting to keep drivers uninsured, unprotected, and earning below minimum wage.

After labor laws passed requiring basic protections, apps added the fee.

Named it "benefit" to sound helpful.

Used the money to fund lobbying against those exact benefits.

The $1.50 doesn't go to drivers.

It goes to attorneys arguing drivers aren't employees.

It funds campaigns against unionization.

It pays for astroturf groups with names like "Drivers for Freedom" that oppose driver rights.

You order dinner.

Pay an extra "benefit fee."

Think you're helping your driver.

Actually funding the legal team fighting to keep that driver homeless.

Extraction doesn't just take from workers.

It makes customers pay to oppress them.

Then makes customers feel good about it.

A distributed database that's slower, more expensive, and less useful than regular databases. But sounds futuristic. Perfect for raising money from people who don't ask questions.

Reid Hoffman's term for growing so fast that everything breaks.

The pitch: "Move faster than competitors, achieve monopoly, win the market."

The reality: "Burn billions on subsidized growth, destroy all competitors with capital instead of products, then extract forever from the rubble."

Hoffman wrote a whole book about it.

LinkedIn co-founder turned venture capital philosopher teaching founders how to destroy sustainably.

The strategy:

Ignore unit economics.

Ignore profitability.

Ignore whether the business model works.

Just grow.

Raise money.

Grow faster.

Raise more money.

Outspend competitors until they die.

Then raise prices and extract.

Uber blitzscaled. Lost $31 billion. Destroyed thousands of taxi businesses.

Now rides cost more and drivers make less than before.

WeWork blitzscaled. Burned $12 billion on "community-adjusted EBITDA."

Filed for bankruptcy.

DoorDash blitzscaled. Loses money on every order despite taking 30% from restaurants.

The pattern: Blitzscaling isn't building faster. It's destroying faster.

It's not innovation. It's predatory pricing funded by venture capital.

Use investor money to subsidize prices below cost.

Competitors can't match it.

They die.

Once they're dead, jack up prices and extract.

The customers have no alternatives left.

The bridge is burned behind them.

Hoffman calls this "offensive strategy."

Translation: "Weaponize capital to destroy competition, not build better products."

Real builders improve quality, lower costs through innovation, earn customers through value.

Blitzscalers ignore quality, burn cash to subsidize losses, capture customers through capital.

When venture capitalists say "you need to blitzscale," they mean: "Grow so fast you can't build sustainably, become so dependent on our money you can't refuse our terms, and destroy the market so thoroughly that only extraction remains."

Post-crisis slogan meaning “extraction back better.” When the World Economic Forum says “build back better” after COVID, they mean: billionaire wealth increased 54% during lockdowns while small businesses went bankrupt. Building back whose wealth? Theirs. Who pays? Everyone else.

The biggest investment banks. Goldman Sachs. Morgan Stanley. JPMorgan Chase. Called “bulge bracket” because their names literally bulged out on the old printed league tables showing deal rankings. Wall Street loves jargon that makes things sound impressive. “I work at a bulge bracket bank” sounds better than “I work at Goldman Sachs advising companies on layoffs.”

How fast a company spends money it doesn’t have. venture capitalists love high burn rates. It makes companies desperate. Desperate companies accept terrible terms.

What extractors say when the "eggs" are people's livelihoods and the "omelette" is their quarterly bonus.

"You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs" means "We're destroying lives and communities but it's necessary for progress."

The people saying this are never the eggs.

They're always the ones eating the omelette.

When mass layoffs hit, executives quote this phrase and call it pragmatism.

When plants close and towns die, consultants cite this metaphor and call it economics.

But extraction isn't cooking.

The eggs don't become something better.

They just break.

The omelette goes to extractors.

The shells go to workers.

And calling destruction "necessary" doesn't make it true.

It just makes it easier to justify.

Firing people. “We’re focused on capital efficiency” means “We hired too many people last year and now we’re fixing it.”

Permission slips to pollute. Companies buy credits from marketplaces run by financial firms. Poor countries get paid to not develop. Rich countries pay to keep polluting. Financial intermediaries extract fees on every transaction. The planet burns anyway. But the World Economic Forum calls it “climate action.”

**Carry** (Carried Interest): The 20% of profits that general partners extract from limited partners. Taxed as capital gains, not income. Because extractors write the tax code.

Money coming in minus money going out.

Real businesses care about cash flow because it keeps the lights on.

Extraction economy obsesses over cash flow because it's what you extract.

"Passive cash flow" means money extracted without working.

"Positive cash flow" means extracting more than you're spending.

Every guru sells courses on cash flow.

Every podcast preaches cash flow.

Nobody talks about where the cash flows from.

Because it flows from workers who create value to extractors who capture it.

Real builders generate cash flow by solving problems.

Extractors generate cash flow by owning things other people built.

The term became extraction shorthand for "money I get without creating value."

When someone brags about their "cash flow," the question is where it comes from.

Usually: rent (extracting from tenants), dividends (extracting from companies), fees (extracting from clients), or interest (extracting from borrowers).

Cash flow is neutral.

What matters is whether you earned it or extracted it.

Buying all the competitors. Raising prices. Calling it economies of scale. Customers call it monopoly.

The part we’re keeping. Everything else gets sold or shut down. Usually decided by consultants who don’t understand what the business does.

Employees who don’t directly generate revenue. Like HR. Or legal. Or the people who keep the building from collapsing. Always first to be eliminated in “restructuring.”

Consultant-speak for cutting everything until the business barely functions. “We’re implementing cost optimization strategies” means “We’re firing experienced workers, eliminating training, reducing quality, and calling it efficiency.” Circuit City “optimized costs” by firing all experienced salespeople and replacing them with minimum wage workers. Customers stopped coming. Company went bankrupt. The consultants kept their fees. See also: Labor Arbitrage, Margin Improvement.

Loans with no rules. Borrowers can do anything. Lenders have no protection. Works great until it doesn’t. Then lenders lose everything. But they already collected their fees.

See “Blockchain” but add: pump-and-dump scheme disguised as revolution.

Firing people based on spreadsheets instead of judgment. Sounds scientific. Actually just cowardice with formulas.

Hidden metric delivery apps use to track how desperate drivers are for money.

Based on acceptance behavior.

The algorithm watches:

How quickly drivers accept low-paying orders.

How often they work during unprofitable hours.

Whether they'll take deliveries other drivers rejected.

The more desperate the driver, the lower the pay offered.

Single parents who need to make rent by Friday get worse offers than hobbyists earning side cash.

Immigrants sending money home get squeezed harder than college students.

Drivers in financial crisis accept anything.

The algorithm knows this.

And exploits it.

Not speculation—internal documents from former delivery app employees confirm this exists.

"The thing that actually makes me sick is the Desperation Score. We have a hidden metric that tracks how desperate they are for cash based on their acceptance behavior."

Translation: The algorithm measures human suffering and uses it to minimize compensation.

The more you need the money, the less they pay you.

That's not a bug.

That's the feature.

Extraction economics perfected: weaponize desperation, automate predation, call it optimization.

See also: Human Assets, Benefit Fee.

Medical billing fraud dressed as coding accuracy.

When insurance companies pay hospitals based on diagnosis codes, hospitals hire "coding optimization consultants" to downgrade diagnoses to cheaper treatments.

Patient came in with heart attack? Code it as chest pain.

Stroke? Code it as dizziness.

Cancer treatment? Code it as observation.

The medical care doesn't change.

The billing code does.

Result: insurance pays less, hospital extracts from patient directly, consultants collect fees for teaching fraud.

McKinsey pioneered this for hospital systems.

Called it "revenue cycle optimization."

Translation: "Teach doctors to lie on insurance forms so hospitals can balance-bill patients."

UnitedHealth does it systematically through its Optum division—owns the insurance company AND the coding consultants.

Codes everything down.

Denies everything possible.

Extracts from both sides.

The patient gets surprise bills.

The hospital blames insurance.

The insurance blames hospitals.

McKinsey and Optum collect fees from everyone.

When medical billers say "we're implementing coding accuracy initiatives," they mean: "We're downcoding everything we can get away with."

The codes exist to describe medical reality.

Downcoding uses them to extract from the sick.

Corporate euphemism for cutting compensation, benefits, or expectations.

Sounds technical.

Like adjusting a thermostat.

Actually means: "We're paying you less and calling it an adjustment."

Common uses:

Salary downward reset = pay cuts.

Benefits downward reset = worse healthcare, less PTO, fewer perks.

Expectations downward reset = lower quality, reduced service.

Valuation downward reset = marking down company value before a down round.

The term is designed to sound inevitable.

Like a computer resetting to factory settings.

Neutral.

Technical.

Necessary.

"We need to reset compensation downward to market rates."

Translation: "We're cutting your pay but making it sound like mathematics."

"We're implementing a benefits downward reset to remain competitive."

Translation: "We're eliminating your healthcare but using corporate-speak so you won't get angry."

Real resets restore functionality.

Downward resets extract value and call it optimization.

The direction matters.

Downward always means less for workers.

More for extractors.

When consultants recommend a "downward reset," they mean: reduce what you give employees, keep what you take from customers, extract the difference.

Taking a company that's already paid in full and adding a mortgage to it.

The private equity playbook: buy a company with 10% equity and 90% borrowed money, make the company responsible for paying back the debt it didn't borrow, extract fees while the debt crushes operations.

Like buying a house that's mortgage-free, taking out a new mortgage on it, making the house pay the mortgage, then charging the house rent for existing.

The company that was healthy becomes terminal.

The debt isn't meant to be paid back.

It's meant to justify everything that comes next: asset sales, fee extraction, dividend recapitalizations, eventual bankruptcy.

Debt-loading is legal.

It's documented in SEC filings.

It's taught in business schools as "financial engineering."

But strip away the jargon and it's simple: destroy a healthy company by forcing it to pay for its own acquisition.

Something competitors can’t copy. Extractors don’t build moats. They build walls. Then charge rent to cross.

Paying down debt. Sounds responsible. Actually means: “We loaded this company with so much debt it’s about to collapse. Better extract what we can before bankruptcy.”

Taking something that worked fine and adding venture capital. “We’re democratizing real estate investment” means “We’re letting regular people fund housing extraction.”

When your portfolio shrinks and allocations get out of whack. Limited partners use this as an excuse to stop sending money to venture capitalists who lost it all.

One ID for everything. Banking, healthcare, travel, voting. Sounds convenient until the reality becomes clear: every transaction tracked, every movement monitored, every dissent noted. The World Economic Forum promotes it. Tech companies (run by Young Global Leaders) build it. Governments (run by Young Global Leaders) enforce it. The inner circle completes. China already has it paired with social credit scores. Act up, money taken down.

When your ownership percentage decreases. Founders experience dilution every funding round. By Series E they own 3% of something worth less than they started with.

Losing money at scale until competitors die. Then raising prices above where they started. Uber “disrupted” taxis. Rides now cost more and drivers make less. That’s not disruption. That’s extraction with an app.

Buying loans from struggling companies for pennies on the dollar. Then forcing bankruptcy. Then buying the assets for nothing. Legal vulture capitalism.

Vultures that feed on leveraged buyout casualties.

When LBOs fail, distressed debt funds buy the debt for 20 cents on the dollar.

Take control in bankruptcy.

Strip remaining assets.

Leave nothing.

Oaktree Capital manages $166 billion in distressed debt, feeding on LBO casualties.

Apollo Global started in Drexel Burnham Lambert's ashes, now worth $500 billion, built on buying destruction.

The ecosystem requires LBOs to create corpses.

Distressed debt funds profit from the carnage.

They don't cause the failure.

They just ensure nothing survives it.

When private equity loads a company with debt and it collapses, distressed debt funds buy the wreckage and extract what's left.

The company dies twice.

First from the LBO.

Then from the vultures.

"Distressed debt investing" sounds like rescue.

It's scavenging.

When a company raises money at a lower valuation than before. Instant losses for recent investors. Happens when the previous valuation was fictional.

Uninvested capital sitting in a fund. Sounds ready for action. Actually means the fund is so big it can’t find deals worth investing in. Or the deals available are so overpriced that even extractors won’t pay. $2+ trillion in dry powder globally means the extraction economy raised money it can’t deploy. Sit on it too long and LPs get angry. Deploy it badly and returns collapse. Either way, dry powder is a sign the pyramid scheme hit its limit.

Reading the financial statements. Or in 2021 venture capital terms: “What’s due diligence?”

Fake earnings. Real earnings include interest and taxes. That's why extractors prefer EBITDA. It makes bad businesses look profitable.

The theory that bigger companies are more efficient. In extraction terms: “We bought everyone, now we can raise prices.”

Theory that stock prices reflect all available information and nobody can consistently beat the market. Created by Eugene Fama at University of Chicago. Used to justify: doing nothing (just buy index funds), paying executives in stock options (market knows best), and ignoring obvious bubbles (prices are always right). If markets are perfectly efficient, why do bubbles happen? Why did the market price Theranos at $9 billion? Why did crypto reach $3 trillion then crash 70%? The hypothesis works great in economics papers. Fails constantly in reality. But it gave extractors academic cover to claim markets are rational even while they manipulate them. “The market has spoken” means “Stop asking questions about obvious fraud.”

Layoffs.

Process where consultants analyze your organization and identify “redundancies.” Translation: they figure out who to fire. Usually conducted by people who’ve never done your job. Always results in layoffs. Never improves actual efficiency.

What shareholder value theory calls employee training, development, and investment in people. “Training is an expense that hurts margins.” Translation: “Teaching workers new skills costs money this quarter. Fire them instead.” Under extraction logic, anything spent on humans who aren’t directly generating revenue today is waste. Never mind they might generate revenue tomorrow. The quarterly earnings call is in 90 days.

How investors plan to extract money from your company. Usually means: sell to a bigger fool or dump shares on the public.

Taking value without creating value. The core philosophy of modern business. See: this entire book.

Legal obligation to act in someone’s best interest. Somehow interpreted to mean: “Maximize this quarter’s stock price by any means necessary.”

Making money by restructuring debt instead of building things. Real engineers build bridges. Financial engineers build collapses.

McKinsey euphemism for destroying evidence. “It probably makes sense to have a fire drill on emails in preparation for future subpoenas.” Not an actual emergency evacuation. Code for: delete the incriminating documents before investigators arrive. The phrase appeared in internal McKinsey emails during the opioid crisis when they realized their “turbocharging” advice had created 700,000 deaths. Partners suggested a “fire drill” to purge emails showing they calculated the dollar value of overdoses ($14,810 per “event”). The cover-up was as optimized as the extraction. Even their document destruction had corporate jargon. When consultants say “fire drill,” they don’t mean practice evacuating the building. They mean eliminating evidence of what they advised inside it.

World Economic Forum term for “inclusion in a system they control completely.” Central Bank Digital Currencies called “financial inclusion.” Means: everyone forced into trackable, programmable, freezable money. Can’t opt out. Can’t use cash. Included whether you want it or not.

Firing everyone who isn’t directly making money today. Ignore that they might be building what makes money tomorrow.

Money left after expenses. Extractors love free cash flow. Not to invest. To extract.

venture capital term meaning “We’ll screw you slightly less than other venture capitalists.” Still screwing you. Just with a smile.

Milton Friedman's 1970 essay claiming "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits."

Not law.

Not legislation.

Just one economist's opinion published in The New York Times Magazine.

But business schools taught it as gospel.

Wall Street repeated it as doctrine.

Lawyers cited it as precedent.

Over 50 years, opinion morphed into "law."

The doctrine claims corporate executives are employees of shareholders with one responsibility: making shareholders money.

Anything else is socialism.

Extractors weaponized it: "We're legally required to maximize shareholder value."

Except the law never required it.

Friedman wrote what executives "should" do, not what they're "legally required" to do.

He said conduct business "in accordance with their desires" — which could be anything.

Patagonia's owners desired environmental protection.

In-N-Out desired quality over growth.

Costco desired paying workers above market rates.

All consistent with Friedman's actual argument.

But extractors ignored that part.

They kept the "maximize profits" headline and discarded the nuance.

The Friedman Doctrine became the legal lie that justified every extraction.

Fire 10,000 workers? Friedman Doctrine.

Accept the buyout? Friedman Doctrine.

Cut R&D for quarterly earnings? Friedman Doctrine.

The most profitable lie ever told.

Not because it was true.

Because it sounded official enough that nobody questioned it.

What extraction leaves behind. Main Street with empty storefronts. Factories that closed after private equity buyout. Towns where Walmart came, killed local retail, then left. The human cost of extraction measured in boarded windows and “For Lease” signs. Extractors call this “market forces.” The people who live there call it what happened after private equity arrived.

Compensation that traps you.

Two versions: founders and employees.

For founders:

When private equity buys a business, they offer a deal: sell for 5-8x revenue, stay on for 3-5 years as an employee, earn a retention bonus upon completing the term.

Sounds generous.

Actually: the cash from the sale gets taxed heavily and spent quickly.

The retention bonus is large enough the founder can't walk away.

The non-compete clause prevents leaving.

The performance quotas make the job miserable.

Most realize the mistake within 6 months.

But the golden handcuffs are locked.

Can't afford to quit (retention bonus too big to lose).

Can't practice elsewhere (non-compete traps them geographically).

Can't fix what's being destroyed (private equity controls decisions).

So they stay.

Extracting from the community they built.

Watching quality collapse.

Implementing quotas they hate.

For employees:

At age 30, making $400,000 a year at McKinsey or Goldman or private equity, with mortgage, private school tuition, and lifestyle built around that income, taking a $150,000 pay cut to build something becomes impossible.

Not just financially.

Psychologically.

Their entire identity built on this career.

Their entire social network people who do the same thing.

Their entire skill set extraction skills.

They're 35 years old.

They know how to model leveraged buyouts.

They can't build a birdhouse.

The golden handcuffs locked when the money looked good.

By the time they realize extraction isn't building, they can't afford to leave.

The "golden" handcuffs feel like regular handcuffs.

Just more expensive to unlock.

Rules about who controls what. In extraction terms: “We own 20% but control 60% of the board and all major decisions.”

World Economic Forum book/initiative launched during COVID. Official pitch: “Use the crisis to reshape capitalism.” Translation: Use the pandemic to accelerate extraction. Billionaire wealth increased 54% during lockdowns. Small businesses closed permanently. The Summit called it “building back better.” They built their wealth back better.

Starting something new. Extractors hate greenfield. Building requires time and risk. They prefer buying something that works and destroying it.

Late-stage venture capital funding. Also called: “We’re buying in at the peak and hoping for a greater fool.”

Spending investor money on customer acquisition at unsustainable rates. Then calling it innovation.

Growth projections that look like a hockey stick. Flat for years, then sudden explosion upward. Never happens. But great for raising money.

How long private equity plans to own a company. Usually 3-5 years. Just long enough to extract everything valuable and dump it.

Employees. Calling them "capital" makes it easier to eliminate them. You don't fire people. You "optimize capital allocation."

What delivery apps call their drivers.

Not employees.

Not contractors.

Not partners.

Assets.

DoorDash, Uber Eats, Instacart—they all use this internally.

"Human assets" can be deployed, optimized, reallocated.

They depreciate over time (burn out).

They can be replaced when efficiency drops.

They're line items on spreadsheets tracking cost per delivery.

The term reveals everything.

Drivers aren't people building careers.

They're temporary resources to extract value from until a better asset (autonomous vehicles) replaces them.

When delivery apps say "scaling our human asset network," they mean: "recruiting more people we'll pay minimum rates until robots work."

The language isn't accidental.

It's designed to dehumanize so extraction feels like optimization.

See also: Desperation Score, Benefit Fee.

Minimum return required before general partners collect their 20% carry. Usually 8%. Sounds fair until the reality becomes clear: they collect 2% annual fees whether they clear the hurdle or not.

**Hutzpah** (also spelled chutzpah): Yiddish word meaning audacious nerve, shameless boldness. Wall Street appropriated it to describe the balls required for extraction without justification. “After Gekko, it just required hutzpah.” The irony: using a Jewish term to celebrate the kind of predatory capitalism that destroys communities.

Structuring deals so everyone loses except the people who structured the deal.

Anything new. Extractors love saying this word. Rarely doing it.

Everything employees know that isn’t written down. Usually lost during “restructuring.” Then rediscovered at great expense. Or never rediscovered and the company collapses.

How venture capitalists measure returns. Highly gameable. Can be inflated by timing tricks and creative accounting. Perfect for making bad investments look good.

When a company sells shares to the public. Also when early investors and founders extract money from later investors who don't know the business peaked.

Making numbers look better through accounting tricks. “We juiced EBITDA by capitalizing operating expenses.” Translation: “We lied on the books.”

Metrics that supposedly predict success. In extraction terms: numbers that look good while the business dies.

Making money. Or claiming to make money. Or raising money while losing money. In extraction economy, all three mean the same thing.

Firing everyone except the minimum needed to keep the lights on. Also called: “One person gets sick and everything collapses.”

What extractors say when companies charge fair prices instead of maximum prices. "You're leaving money on the table!" Translation: "You could be extracting more."

Costco "leaves money on the table" with 11% markups and $1.50 hot dogs. Result: $400 billion company with 90%+ customer renewal. Meanwhile extractors who "captured all the value" are bankrupt.

Leaving money on the table is actually leaving money in customers' pockets. They come back. Forever. Turns out the table that matters is the one 20 years from now, not this quarter.

The monopoly nobody's heard of.

Controls 85% of mozzarella cheese in America.

Supplies every pizza chain, every Italian restaurant, every frozen pizza.

Papa John's, Domino's, Pizza Hut, Hot Pockets — all Leprino cheese.

That "artisanal" pizza place? Same cheese as Pizza Hut.

The monopoly works through patents:

Leprino owns 50+ patents on cheese manufacturing processes.

Not cheese itself, but how to make it melt properly, stretch correctly, brown evenly, freeze without breaking down.

Want cheese that doesn't separate when reheated? Leprino patent.

Need mozzarella that browns in conveyor ovens? Leprino patent.

Other manufacturers can't compete — the patents block them.

Make similar cheese? Patent lawsuit.

Make different cheese? Doesn't perform for restaurant applications.

So restaurants buy Leprino.

Through Sysco.

At whatever price Leprino sets.

The monopoly stays invisible by design: no consumer products, no retail presence, business-to-business only.

Customers eating pizza have no idea.

Restaurants know but can't escape.

Food critics don't investigate ingredient sourcing.

85% market share.

50+ patents.

Zero visibility.

The most successful monopoly is the one nobody knows exists.

Replacing expensive workers with cheap workers.

"We're pursuing labor arbitrage opportunities" means "We're firing Americans and hiring overseas contractors at 1/10th the cost."

Consultants love this term because it sounds like smart economics instead of mass layoffs.

The arbitrage: workers in Country A earn $60K, workers in Country B earn $6K, pay Country B workers, pocket the difference, call it optimization.

Quality collapses.

Institutional knowledge disappears.

Products fail.

But the spreadsheet looked great for two quarters.

See also: Cost Optimization, Margin Improvement.

Borrowing money. Private equity loves leverage. They borrow 90% to buy companies. Companies pay the interest. Private equity keeps the upside.

Buying a company mostly with borrowed money. The company pays the debt. Buyers extract the profits. If it fails, the company goes bankrupt. Buyers keep the fees.

What shareholder value theory calls employee benefits, healthcare, pensions. “Benefits are a liability on the balance sheet.” Translation: “Keeping workers healthy costs money. Cut coverage.” Under extraction accounting, taking care of humans who build your company is a negative. A cost to minimize. A burden to shed. Never mind they might stay longer, work better, build more. The quarterly report shows liabilities, not loyalty.

Derogatory term venture capitalists use for profitable companies that don't need investors.

"That's just a lifestyle business" means "The founder makes $500K annually, owns 100%, works 30 hours weekly, and answers to nobody. We can't extract from that."

A lifestyle business is what the extraction economy calls freedom.

It's not venture-scale because it doesn't need venture capital.

It's not disruptive because it solves real problems for real customers at fair prices.

It's sustainable, profitable, and controlled by the person who built it.

Everything venture capital claims to want but actually despises.

Because you can't extract fees from a business that doesn't need you.

**Limited Partner** (LP): The people who actually fund private equity and venture capital. They take all the risk. General partners take fees and carry. LPs would be better off buying index funds.

Term that ensures investors get paid before founders during an exit. Usually 1x. Sometimes 2x or 3x. Means founders can build a $100M company and get nothing if venture capitalists structured it right.

What shareholder value theory calls “inefficiency.” “Employee loyalty is inefficient. We can replace them with cheaper workers.” Translation: “Workers who stay 20 years expect raises, benefits, respect. Fire them. Hire cheaper.” Under extraction logic, dedication to the company that pays you is a character flaw. Commitment is a liability. Tenure is waste. Better to churn through disposable workers who cost less. Never mind they built the company. Never mind they know how things work. The spreadsheet says loyalty is expensive.

What extractors call it when poor people don't pay debts.

Same action as "strategic default" but committed by people without lawyers.

A worker who stops paying credit card bills after medical bankruptcy: moral failure.

A billionaire who walks away from $7 billion in casino debt: strategic default.

The words reveal the game.

One is character judgment.

The other is business decision.

Poverty gets moralized.

Wealth gets strategized.

When a nurse can't pay hospital bills from her own heart attack, extractors call it personal responsibility and moral failure.

When Trump doesn't pay contractors who built his towers, extractors call it leverage and negotiation.

The debt is the same.

The inability to pay is the same.

Only the bank account balance determines whether you're immoral or strategic.

Moral failure is what the extraction economy calls bankruptcy when you're not rich enough to afford the better terminology.

When executives team up with private equity to buy their own company.

Sounds better than "hostile takeover."

Sounds like management taking control.

Actually means management becoming complicit in extraction.

Same scam as any leveraged buyout.

Management gets 10%.

Private equity gets 90%.

The company gets loaded with debt.

Fees get extracted.

Workers get fired.

Eventually the company gets destroyed.

But now the executives cooperate because their golden parachutes depend on it.

Dell did this. Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners loaded it with $67 billion in debt.

Hilton did this. Blackstone loaded it with $26 billion.

Management buyouts aren't management saving companies.

They're management selling out their employees for a cut of the extraction.

The executives who built careers at the company betray everyone who works there.

They fire colleagues they've known for decades.

Raid pensions of workers who trusted them.

All for 10% of the take.

Management buyouts are what you call it when the guards join the thieves.

2% of committed capital. Every year. For 10 years. Whether the fund performs or not. The real business model for venture capitalists and private equity.

Increasing profit margins by cutting costs. Sounds like good business. Actually means: reduce quality, fire experienced workers, use cheaper materials, eliminate service, and hope customers don't notice before the exit.

"We achieved 500 basis points of margin improvement" translates to "We cut so many corners the product barely works, but it'll take 18 months for customers to figure it out and by then we'll have sold the company."

Consultants present margin improvement as strategy. It's just extraction with math. See also: Cost Optimization, Labor Arbitrage.

Pay that’s below what the person was making before. “We’re adjusting you to market rate” means “We’re cutting your salary and calling it alignment.”

Adjusting valuations based on current market conditions. Also called “marking to make-believe” when venture capitalists value unicorns that can’t exit.

The belief that success comes from skill and hard work. Used by extractors to justify why they’re rich and others aren’t. Ignores timing, luck, inheritance, and rigged systems.

Competitive advantage. Extractors don’t build moats. They buy companies that have moats, then extract value until the moat disappears.

Market with only one buyer. Opposite of monopoly. When private equity rolls up all veterinary clinics in a city, there’s one buyer for vet techs. Can’t negotiate wages. Can’t leave for competitors. Workers are captive. Wages stay flat while profits soar. Economics textbooks say monopsony is rare. Extraction economy made it standard.

World Economic Forum term for oligarchy. Corporate leaders making policy decisions without democratic process. Also known as: public-private partnerships, corporate coordination, stakeholder capitalism. History calls it: oligarchy. Means: Banking CEOs decide financial regulations, Tech CEOs decide content rules, Pharma CEOs decide health policy. Governments implement what Summit members decide. Private decision, public enforcement.

How many times earnings (or revenue, or EBITDA) someone paid for a company. High multiples mean overpaying. Or in venture capital terms: “Normal pricing.”

The fantasy extractors sell to founders. "Take our money! It's raining from the sky! No strings attached!" Reality: Every dollar from venture capital comes with strings. Growth targets. Board seats. Liquidation preferences. Exit pressure.

Money heaven is actually money hell with better marketing. The cash feels free when it arrives. The bill comes due when founders try to exit. Or when they can't.

Builders know: the only free money is profit from customers who value what gets built.

Extractor motto.

Attributed to Rahm Emanuel (Obama's Chief of Staff) during 2008 financial crisis.

Means: when people are desperate, vulnerable, and distracted, that's the perfect time to extract.

Financial crisis? Buy assets cheap.

Pandemic? Consolidate industries.

Natural disaster? Raise prices.

War? Profit from reconstruction.

The crisis hurts everyone else.

Extractors see opportunity.

Not empathy.

Not help.

Extraction.

Every crisis becomes a profit mechanism.

Hurricane destroys homes? Private equity buys the land.

Recession causes unemployment? Lower wages.

Bank collapse? Bail out banks, extract from taxpayers.

Extractors don't cause every crisis.

But they profit from all of them.

That's not opportunism.

That's sociopathy with a business plan.

When a product gets better as more people use it. Real for some businesses (phones, social networks). Claimed by every startup. True for almost none.

The cage that closes after the check clears.

When private equity buys your dental practice, the pitch sounds perfect: cash out at 5-8x revenue, stay on as an employee, keep seeing patients, no more administrative headaches.

What they don't mention:

The non-compete clause that traps you for 3-5 years within 25-50 miles.

The performance quotas that start immediately.

The scripted upselling required.

The extraction metrics tracked daily.

Dentist realizes the horror within months: pushing crowns patients don't need, recommending procedures for profit not health.

Tries to quit.

Can't.

The non-compete traps them.

Can't open another practice.

Can't work for competitors.

The cash from the sale? Gone to taxes and lifestyle inflation.

So they stay.

Extracting from patients they've known for decades.

The funeral director reads scripts to widows.

The vet recommends $4,000 treatments for $400 problems.

All trapped by the clause they signed when the money looked good.

Private equity calls it "protecting our investment."

Translation: "We own you for 3-5 years and you'll extract for us whether you want to or not."

Anything we can sell for cash. Buildings. Equipment. Subsidiaries. Doesn’t matter if they’re useful. We need cash now.

“You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.” What extractors say to justify layoffs, bankruptcies, destroyed communities. The eggs are people’s lives. The omelette never gets made. Or when it does, extractors eat it and workers get shells.

Consultant-speak for "fire people until barely functional."

Circuit City fired 3,400 highest-paid sales staff for "operational efficiency."

Sales collapsed.

Company died.

Nursing homes cut staff to "minimum legal levels" for "operational efficiency."

One nurse for 30 patients.

Patients develop bedsores.

Infections.

Falls.

Die.

But the spreadsheet looks better.

That's what matters.

When extractors say "operational efficiency," they mean: cut what keeps things running, extract the difference, blame failure on "market conditions."

Real efficiency means doing more with less waste.

Extraction efficiency means doing less with fewer people and calling the carnage "optimization."

See also: Rightsizing, Span and Layer Adjustments, Efficiency Gains.

Private equity's favorite merger justification.

Translation: "We're loading both companies with shared debt while extracting fees."

When Castle Harlan merged Famous Dave's and Don Pablo's in 2006, they called it "operational synergies."

Two regional comfort food chains combined to create "efficiencies."

Actually meant: one shared debt pile, one set of extraction fees, one bankruptcy when it collapsed.

The synergy isn't operational.

It's extractional.

Combine supply chains to squeeze vendors.

Merge back offices to fire people.

Consolidate real estate to sell locations.

Every "synergy" means someone loses their job or their business.

The only thing that synergizes is the extraction.

Private equity gets fees coming and going.

Management fees for the merger.

Success fees for "creating value."

Monitoring fees for "operational improvement."

The companies get debt.

Employees get layoffs.

Communities get closed locations.

But the PowerPoint showed beautiful synergies.

That's what matters.

See also: Economies of Scale, Consolidation, Strategic Merger.

What extractors call themselves when explaining why they loaded debt on a healthy company during a crisis. “We’re opportunistic investors” means “We exploit vulnerable situations.” Michael Saylor used this describing MicroStrategy’s debt-funded Bitcoin buying spree. Opportunistic sounds strategic. Professional. Measured. Actually means: saw someone bleeding, took what they had, called it timing. When extractors say “we’re being opportunistic,” translate it: “We’re extracting from people who can’t defend themselves right now.”

Making something work better. Or in extraction terms: Cutting costs until barely functional. Consultants love this word. “We’re optimizing operations” means “We’re firing people and calling it progress.” McKinsey’s favorite euphemism for elimination. When they say “optimization,” they mean layoffs. When they say “operational optimization,” they mean mass layoffs. The word sounds scientific, strategic, inevitable. Actually it’s just extraction dressed as improvement. See also: Rightsizing, Synergy Capture, Span and Layer Adjustments.

Employees who don’t generate revenue. Also known as: everyone who keeps the business running but isn’t in sales.

Investor terms that let them get paid twice. Once with their preferred shares. Again with common shares. Founders get paid zero times if investors structured it correctly.

Admitting the original idea failed while pretending it’s strategic. “We’re pivoting to enterprise” means “Consumers don’t want this and we’re desperate.”

Designing products to fail on schedule. Extract once when customer buys. Extract again when it breaks. Extract forever through forced upgrades. iPhone batteries that degrade. Printers that stop after exact page counts. Appliances that die after warranty expires. Textbooks say it’s “innovation cycles.” Reality: it’s scheduled extraction. The repair movement fights it. Right to Repair legislation threatens it. Extractors call durability “leaving money on the table.” Builders call planned obsolescence “betraying customers.” Patagonia builds gear to last decades. Apple builds phones to last two years. One extracts. One builds. The choice reveals everything.

Business model where you own nothing but extract from people who use your service. Uber doesn’t own cars. Airbnb doesn’t own rooms. They just extract fees.

Private equity term for selling good companies and bankrupting bad ones. The portfolio survives. Half the companies don’t.

Venture capital's justification for funding 100 companies knowing 99 will fail.

The pitch: "We diversify across many investments to reduce risk."

The reality: "We need 99 failures to make the 1 winner look good."

Real portfolio theory (from Harry Markowitz, 1952) says: diversify investments to reduce volatility while maintaining returns.

Buy stocks, bonds, real estate.

When one drops, others rise.

Net result: steady growth, lower risk.

Venture capital perverted this into: fund 100 startups, 99 die, 1 returns 1000X, call it portfolio management.

That's not diversification.

That's a lottery ticket strategy dressed in academic language.

The original portfolio theory reduced risk through non-correlation.

venture capital portfolio theory creates risk through deliberate destruction.

Markowitz won a Nobel Prize for showing how to build stable portfolios.

venture capitalists borrowed his terminology to justify unstable gambling.

Real portfolio theory: buy assets that move independently.

venture capital portfolio theory: destroy 99 companies to create the story that justifies the 1 winner.

When venture capitalists say "portfolio theory," they mean: "We're going to lose your money 99 times and hope the 100th pays for everything."

When Markowitz said portfolio theory, he meant: "Don't put all your eggs in one basket."

venture capitalists heard: "Break 99 baskets to make the 1 egg look bigger."

Venture capital's mathematical justification for systematic destruction.

The theory: in some distributions, a tiny number of extreme outcomes generate all the returns.

One Facebook pays for 99 failed companies.

venture capitalists worship this.

They throw it around like gospel.

"Power law dynamics justify our model!"

Translation: "We need 99 companies to die so the 1 winner looks good."

But here's what they don't say:

The power law doesn't require destruction.

It describes outcome distributions in nature, networks, creativity.

Bezos didn't need 99 other booksellers to fail for Amazon to succeed.

Zuckerberg didn't require 99 social networks to die for Facebook to work.

The power law observed phenomenon.

venture capitalists turned it into business model.

They claim power law dynamics are inevitable in venture capital.

Actually: venture capitalists create the power law by design.

They deliberately fund too many companies (artificial scarcity).

They deliberately structure 4-tier sorting (acquihire pipeline, zombie hoard, fast failures, unicorn hunt).

They deliberately extract regardless of outcome (fees from all tiers).

The 99% failure rate isn't natural power law distribution.

It's manufactured extraction.

In nature, power laws emerge from networks and probability.

In venture capital, power laws emerge from fee structures and liquidation preferences.

The math is the same.

The cause is opposite.

venture capitalists don't discover power laws.

They enforce them.

Then call it inevitable.

The greatest trick venture capitalists ever pulled was convincing founders that 99% failure is mathematical law instead of business model choice.

All the ways investors get paid before founders. Liquidation preferences. Participation rights. Dividends. By the time everyone else gets paid, founders get nothing.

Investor right to invest in future rounds. Keeps ownership from diluting. Also used by venture capitalists to double down on winners and bail on losers.

Government partnering with corporations to deliver services. Sounds efficient. Becomes extraction. Every single time. Who writes the contracts? Corporate lawyers. Who defines success metrics? Corporate consultants. Who profits from delivery? Corporations. Who takes the risk? Governments (meaning taxpayers). Who gets blamed when it fails? Governments. Perfect extraction structure. Socialize the losses. Privatize the profits. Call it partnership. The World Economic Forum promotes this heavily. Young Global Leaders become cabinet ministers. They approve contracts with companies advised by other Forum members. Everyone extracts. Taxpayers pay. The Forum connects government leaders with corporate executives. They don’t need corruption. They built the system where extraction is the official process. Public-private partnerships aren’t partnerships. They’re extraction with government enforcement.

Making decisions based on numbers instead of judgment. Sounds smart. Usually just removes accountability. “The model said to eliminate you. I don’t make the rules.”

When central banks create money from nothing and buy government bonds or other assets. Called “easing” to sound gentle. Actually: printing trillions of dollars and injecting them into financial markets. The 2008 financial crisis triggered $4 trillion in QE. COVID triggered another $5 trillion. The money went to banks, asset owners, and the already-rich. Not to workers. Not to small businesses. Not to communities. Asset prices soared. Stocks hit records. Real estate became unaffordable. The Fed called it “unconventional monetary policy.” Translation: printing money to bail out extractors while calling it stimulus. It eased the pain for Wall Street. Made it worse for everyone else. Quantitative easing is what you call extraction when the government does it.

Making barely enough revenue to survive. venture capitalists claim founders should accept this for years. venture capitalists themselves collect millions in annual fees.

Economic theory claiming humans always make logical decisions to maximize self-interest. Created by Gary Becker at University of Chicago. Used to justify: greed is rational (selfish behavior is optimal), altruism is irrational (helping others is inefficient), and extraction is inevitable (everyone would extract if they could). The theory assumes humans are calculating machines. Ignores emotions, ethics, community, legacy, meaning. Under rational choice theory, the person who extracts most efficiently is most rational. The person who builds sustainably is irrational. Cooperation is irrational unless it maximizes individual gain. Generosity is market failure. The theory works great for justifying extraction. Fails at explaining why anyone ever builds anything lasting, helps strangers, or sacrifices for principles. But it gave extractors academic permission to call selfishness “rationality.”

Firing people across multiple companies you bought. “We’re rationalizing the combined workforce” means “We bought three companies and eliminated everyone who looked redundant.”

**Recapitalization** (Recap): Restructuring debt and equity. Usually means: early investors cash out, late investors get diluted, employees get wiped out.

What companies call employees during mass restructuring. “We’re all reinventors now” means “We’re making you reapply for your own job with lower pay and worse benefits.” The term appeared during corporate “transformation initiatives” — usually after private equity acquisition or consultant intervention. Translation: Your job still exists. Your salary doesn’t. The security doesn’t. The benefits don’t. But now you get a fancy title that sounds like innovation. You’re not getting fired. You’re getting “reinvented.” Accenture, IBM, and other extraction-friendly corporations love this term. Sounds empowering. Actually means: “We’re cutting costs but making you feel like it’s opportunity.” Real reinvention builds new skills and capabilities. Extraction reinvention cuts compensation and calls it evolution. When HR says “we’re all reinventors,” start updating your resume.

Layoffs. Plus selling assets. Plus loading debt. Basically extraction with a plan.

Money made divided by money invested. Simple for actual businesses. Complicated for private equity. Because if you include fees, most ROI is negative.

The opposite of what it sounds like. “We’re rightsizing the organization” means “We hired too many people, now we’re firing them.” Consulting firms use this term to dress up layoffs. The premise: the organization was the “wrong size” and consultants determined the “right size” through analysis. Actually: they counted headcount, applied arbitrary ratios, eliminated whoever looked redundant on spreadsheets. McKinsey invented this term to make mass layoffs sound like precision engineering instead of human destruction. When they say “rightsizing,” they mean layoffs. When they say “organizational rightsizing,” they mean mass layoffs. The word implies there’s a scientifically correct size for every organization. There isn’t. There’s just whatever size makes the spreadsheet look better this quarter. See also: Optimization, Span and Layer Adjustments, Synergy Capture.

Private equity strategy of buying every small competitor in an industry. Then combining them into one company. Eliminate “redundancies” (fire everyone who looks duplicate). Raise prices (no competition left). Extract maximum cash. Load with debt. Either sell to bigger fool or bankruptcy. The playbook: buy 47 veterinary clinics, combine into one corporate chain, double prices, cut quality, call it “economies of scale.” Textbooks say consolidation creates efficiency. Reality: it creates monopolies and extracts from captive customers.

See “Roll-up.” Same extraction, different spelling.

How long before the money runs out. “We have 18 months of runway” means “We have 12 months before panic sets in.”

What financial institutions call buying U.S. Treasury bonds that pay negative real returns.

What extractors call it when rich people don't pay debts.

Donald Trump walked away from $5 billion in bankruptcy filings across 6 separate companies.

Still flies private.

Still owns golf courses.

Still lives in gold-plated penthouses.

Called "strategic default."

A teacher in Ohio declares bankruptcy once from medical bills while insured.

Loses her house, her car, her credit for a decade.

Called "moral failure."

Same law.

Different terminology.

The words do the work.

"Strategic" sounds calculated, intelligent, business-savvy.

Like a chess move.

Corporate restructuring.

Financial optimization.

The kind of decision Harvard writes case studies about.

"Moral failure" sounds like character defect, personal weakness, inability to adult properly.

Shame-worthy.

Avoidable if they'd just been more responsible.

But the action is identical: not paying money owed.

The only difference is the bank account balance when you do it.

Rich people get strategy.

Poor people get morality.

Billionaires "strategically default" and keep their mansions.

Workers "morally fail" and lose everything.

The bankruptcy code is the same.

The language reveals who wrote it.

When extractors can't pay, they're being strategic.

When workers can't pay, they're being failures.

Strategic default is the term that lets rich people do what poor people get destroyed for.

What financial institutions call buying U.S. Treasury bonds that pay negative real returns.

"Treasury bonds are safe haven investments" means "You're guaranteed to lose money to inflation, but at least you'll lose it predictably."

In 2023, 10-year Treasuries yielded 4% while inflation ran 6%.

Real return: negative 2%.

Pension funds call this "safe."

Retirees call it "getting robbed slowly."

The "haven" protects against volatility.

Not against extraction.

Banks love safe haven investing because it means: customers accept guaranteed losses rather than risk uncertain gains.

Perfect for extraction.

The safest investment is the one where extractors take your money legally, consistently, and with your permission.

You get safety.

They get yield.

But the "safety" is financial, not economic.

You won't lose everything overnight.

You'll just lose purchasing power every year.

Forever.

Safe haven investing is what you call it when the victim chooses the extraction.

When private equity sells the land a company owns and leases it back at inflated rent.

The playbook: buy a restaurant chain that owns its locations, sell the real estate to a REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) for cash, use the cash to pay dividends to themselves, make the restaurant pay rent forever on land it used to own.

The company goes from asset owner to tenant.

The balance sheet looks lighter.

The cash flow gets extracted.

The rent never stops.

Red Lobster did this in 2014 when Golden Gate Capital sold 500+ locations to American Realty Capital for $1.5 billion.

The restaurants that owned their land became renters.

The rent was set above market rates.

The leases locked them in for decades.

When seafood costs rose and customers disappeared, Red Lobster couldn't cut rent.

It was contractual.

The company filed for bankruptcy in 2024 while still paying rent on land it used to own.

Private equity extracted $1.5 billion in real estate value.

Left the company with permanent rent obligations.

That's the beauty of sale-leaseback for extractors: convert equity into debt, extract the equity as dividends, leave the debt on the company forever.

The cash is one-time.

The rent is permanent.

Toys "R" Us did it.

Payless ShoeSource did it.

Shopko did it.

All filed for bankruptcy while paying rent on their former property.

Sale-leaseback sounds like smart financial engineering.

"Unlocking value from underutilized real estate."

Translation: selling the foundation and charging rent to stand on it.

When private equity does a sale-leaseback, they're not optimizing the balance sheet.

They're extracting the real estate value and converting owned assets into rental obligations.

The company that owned land becomes a tenant.

The private equity firm that bought it collects cash.

The REIT collects rent.

Forever.

Sale-leaseback is extraction with a 30-year lease.

Ability to grow without proportionally increasing costs. Real for software. Claimed by everyone. True for almost no one.

Rebranding extraction as community.

"We're building the sharing economy" means "We're turning ownership into subscriptions and calling it progress."

Airbnb doesn't let you share your home.

It turns housing into short-term rental extraction.

Uber doesn't let you share rides.

It turns drivers into gig workers with no benefits.

The "sharing economy" shares nothing.

It extracts from asset owners (take 20-30% of every transaction), from workers (no healthcare, no overtime, no job security), and from communities (hotels lose business, housing becomes expensive, taxis go bankrupt).

But "sharing" sounds nice.

Better than "platform extraction economy."

The World Economic Forum loves this term.

Their 2030 vision: "You'll own nothing and be happy."

Translation: Corporations own everything. You rent it from them. Forever.

That's not sharing.

That's feudalism with an app.

Where investors sell shares before the company exits. Also where smart investors unload overvalued positions to dumb investors.

First venture capital funding. Used to be $500K. Then $2M. Now $5M. The numbers change. The dilution is constant.

Fundraising rounds named by alphabet. By Series E, founders own 2% and wonder why they’re working 80-hour weeks.

Doctrine that corporations exist solely to maximize shareholder returns.

Popularized by Milton Friedman's 1970 essay "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits."

Not law.

Not regulation.

Not even board duty in most states.

Just an idea that became doctrine through repetition.

Before shareholder primacy, companies balanced stakeholders: employees, customers, communities, shareholders.

After Friedman, only shareholders mattered.

Everyone else became costs to minimize.

The theory says: shareholders own the company (false—they own stock, not assets), shareholders take all the risk (false—workers risk careers, communities risk tax base), therefore shareholders deserve all the returns (false—but convenient for extractors).

Shareholder primacy gave executives permission to destroy everything for quarterly stock price.

It justified mass layoffs (cut costs, boost stock).

It justified stock buybacks (financial engineering instead of R&D).

It justified environmental damage (externalities don't affect stock price this quarter).

The doctrine that shareholders come first is what made extraction the business model.

Before Friedman, extraction was theft.

After Friedman, extraction was duty.

Maximizing stock price. Used to justify anything: layoffs, buybacks, environmental damage, fraud. As long as the stock goes up this quarter.

Urban surveillance infrastructure sold as optimization. Sensors everywhere. Cameras everywhere. Data on everything. Traffic, energy, water, movement, gatherings, behavior. The World Economic Forum promotes it. Tech companies (run by Summit members) build it. Governments (advised by Summit consultants) enforce it. The connected city becomes the controlled city. Can’t drive certain routes. Can’t leave your zone without permission. All tracked digitally. All justified by “optimizing for collective good.” The 15-minute city becomes the 15-minute cage.

What extractors call diversification when destroying a company that survived centuries by focusing on one thing. “Kongō Gumi built temples for 1,400 years. Smart risk management means diversifying into real estate speculation.” Translation: abandoning proven expertise for trendy extraction. The “risk” they’re managing is the risk that you might succeed without their involvement. Smart risk management killed more century-old companies than actual risks ever did.

A blank check company. Raise money from investors. Promise to find a company to buy within 24 months. If you can’t find one, return the money. Sounds fair. Actually means: taking sketchy companies public that couldn’t survive normal IPO scrutiny. The SPAC boom (2020-2021) took 613 companies public via this backdoor. Most collapsed. Investors lost billions. The people who structured the SPACs collected fees and left. It’s extraction with extra steps. Called “democratizing access to public markets.” Actually: democratizing access to fraud.

When corporations discovered they could rebrand shareholder capitalism with inclusive-sounding language. “We serve all stakeholders” means “We still serve only shareholders but now we say nice things about employees in annual reports.” The 2019 Business Roundtable Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation was signed by 181 CEOs pledging to serve all stakeholders — customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and shareholders. Within 18 months, those same CEOs laid off millions during COVID while their stock prices hit records. They brought the word “stakeholder” back from the 1960s. They didn’t bring back the meaning. It’s shareholder primacy with better PR. Stakeholder capitalism is what you call extraction when people started noticing it was extraction.

Someone getting paid to attend meetings and add no value. Usually a former executive. Sometimes an investor. Always overpaid.

Business relationship that sounds important. Usually means nothing. “We have a strategic partnership with Amazon” means “We use AWS like everyone else.”

International Monetary Fund code for extraction.

When a country faces economic crisis, the IMF offers "rescue loans" with conditions called "structural adjustment programs."

The conditions:

Cut government spending (fire workers, end subsidies).

Privatize state assets (sell utilities and infrastructure to multinationals).

Open markets to foreign investment (let extractors buy everything).

Deregulate industries (remove protections).

Raise interest rates (make borrowing expensive).

Translation: transfer public assets to private extractors, eliminate worker protections, destroy local industries, create permanent debt dependency.

The IMF has imposed structural adjustment on 80+ countries since 1980.

Every single one got worse.

Argentina took 22 IMF loans since 1956, still in crisis.

Greece got $330 billion in IMF loans, austerity destroyed the economy.

Jamaica accepted 19 IMF agreements since 1973, GDP per capita lower than 1970.

The countries never escape because structural adjustment doesn't solve crises—it exploits them.

Before IMF: country owns utilities, employs workers, subsidizes food, protects industries.

After IMF: multinationals own utilities (extract profit), workers unemployed, food unaffordable, industries destroyed.

The IMF calls this "reform."

History calls it colonialism with spreadsheets.

Staffed by former Goldman Sachs executives, JP Morgan economists, McKinsey consultants—the same extractors who broke the global economy in 2008, now "fixing" poor countries by extracting faster.

Consulting term for reorganizing reporting structures. Translation: “We’re eliminating management layers and firing middle managers.” The theory: organizations have too many management layers (layers) and managers supervise too few people (span). The solution: remove layers, increase span of control. Sounds like efficiency. Actually: eliminate middle managers who know how things work, overload remaining managers with impossible workloads, destroy institutional knowledge, blame failure on execution. When McKinsey says “we recommend span and layer adjustments,” they mean: “Fire the middle managers and make 8 direct reports become 47.” The consultants present this as organizational science. It’s just mass layoffs with diagrams. Companies that implement span and layer adjustments collapse within 18 months. But the consultants already collected their fees. See also: Rightsizing, Optimization, Synergy Capture.

Charging monthly instead of once. Sounds reasonable. Becomes: “You’ll pay us forever or lose everything.”

Savings from combining companies. In theory: complementary strengths. In practice: mass layoffs. “We expect $40M in synergies” means “We’re firing 400 people.” See also: Synergy Capture.

Consultant-speak for extracting the savings from “synergies.” Translation: “We identified duplicate positions across merged companies. Now we’re eliminating them.” The logic: 2 companies merged means 2 CFOs, 2 HR departments, 2 IT teams. “Capturing synergies” means eliminating the duplicates. Sounds rational. Actually: fire half the workforce, overload survivors with impossible workloads, lose institutional knowledge from both companies, destroy what made each company work. Consultants present synergy capture as value creation. It’s value destruction disguised as efficiency. Used in McKinsey decks to make layoffs sound like strategy. “We’ll capture $60M in synergies through span and layer adjustments and operational optimization.” Translation: “We’re firing 600 people and calling it efficiency.” The “captured” synergies flow to private equity as fees. The fired employees get severance if they’re lucky. Nothing if they’re not. See also: Rightsizing, Optimization, Span and Layer Adjustments.

What extractors call short-term thinking when they want it to sound strategic. “We’re being tactical about capital allocation” means “We’re chasing quick returns instead of building anything lasting.” Michael Saylor used this describing MicroStrategy’s aggressive Bitcoin leverage plays. Tactical sounds smart. Disciplined. Military-precise. Actually means: short-term extraction with no long-term plan. When extractors say “we’re being tactical,” translate it: “We’re optimizing for this quarter’s numbers while destroying next decade’s foundation.”

Contract between investors and founders. Founders read page one (valuation). Investors wrote pages 2-40 (where they extract everything).

Size of the potential market. Always inflated by founders. Always believed by venture capitalists during bubbles. Never achieved by anyone.

Evidence the business is working. Real traction: profitable revenue. Fake traction: unprofitable growth funded by venture capital.

Portion of an investment. “We’re investing in three tranches” means “We’re giving you one-third now. If you hit milestones we made impossible, maybe you get the rest.”

What shareholder value theory calls pension promises to employees. “Pensions are unfunded obligations that threaten shareholder returns.” Translation: “We promised workers retirement after 30 years. Now those promises cost money. Break the promise.” Under extraction logic, commitments made to humans who built the company are liabilities to eliminate. Freeze the pensions. Declare bankruptcy. Let the government pension insurance absorb it. The workers who were promised security get 60 cents on the dollar. The executives who broke the promise get bonuses for “tough decisions.”

Private company valued over $1 billion. Rare in 2013. Common by 2021. Most can’t exit. The valuation was always fiction.

Potential profits. Founders chase upside. Investors structure terms to capture upside. Founders get whatever’s left. Usually nothing.

What venture capitalists claim they provide beyond money. “We’re a value-add investor” means “We’ll introduce you to other companies we’re invested in. They won’t help either.”

Building something worth more than you started with. Real businesses do this. Extractors claim to do this. Actually they just redistribute value to themselves.

Schedule for earning your stock. Founders vest over four years. Investors vest immediately. Fair? No. Standard? Yes.

SoftBank’s $100 billion attempt to buy the future. Lost $32 billion. Proved you can’t buy vision.

The 10 Commandments for extracting from developing countries.

Coined in 1989 by economist John Williamson as policy prescription for "fixing" poor countries.

The International Monetary Fund and World Bank enforced it globally for decades.

The 10 policies:

Fiscal discipline (cut spending).

Tax reform (lower corporate taxes).

Interest rate liberalization (raise rates).

Competitive exchange rates (devalue currency).

Trade liberalization (remove tariffs).

Foreign investment (let corporations buy assets).

Privatization (sell state enterprises).

Deregulation (eliminate protections).

Property rights (protect corporate ownership).

Redirect spending (cut social programs).

Notice: every single policy benefits foreign corporations.

Zero policies benefit citizens.

Countries that followed Washington Consensus:

Argentina (economic collapse 2001).

Russia (oligarch takeover 1990s).

Mexico (peso crisis 1994).

Thailand (Asian financial crisis 1997).

Greece (debt crisis 2010).

Countries that ignored Washington Consensus:

China (became global superpower).

Vietnam (rapid development).

South Korea (technology leader).

Malaysia (diversified economy).

The pattern: Washington Consensus destroyed countries.

Rejection of it built them.

But the IMF and World Bank still push it.

Because extraction works.

For the extractors.

The "consensus" wasn't agreement among economists.

It was agreement among extractors about how to strip developing countries systematically.

Called it "reform" and "modernization."

Actually: the extraction playbook with international authority.

Distribution structure showing who gets paid first during exit. LPs see it and think “We’re at the top.” Then realize: management fees flow first. Then GP carry. Then preferred returns. LPs get what’s left. Usually less than they put in.

Market where one company dominates. Claimed by every startup. True for Google search. False for everything else founders pitch.

Money needed to run day-to-day operations. Private equity extracts this immediately after buying a company. Then wonders why operations struggle.

How investors cash out. IPO. Acquisition. Secondary sale. Bankruptcy. Only the first three count as successful. Most end up as the fourth.

Returns generated. LPs expect yield. GPs deliver fees. Not the same thing.

World Economic Forum program that trained 1,400+ future leaders since 1992. Not a scholarship. Not mentorship. A placement system. They identify rising politicians, tech founders, corporate executives under 40. Bring them to the Summit. Connect them with billionaires. Teach them stakeholder capitalism. Give them the agenda. Then watch them rise to power. Presidents. Prime Ministers. Cabinet members. Tech CEOs. Media executives. All trained by the same organization. All pushing the same policies. Lockstep. The Summit doesn’t overthrow governments. They trained the people running them. Emmanuel Macron. Justin Trudeau. Jacinda Ardern. Volodymyr Zelensky. Mark Zuckerberg. Bill Gates. Anderson Cooper. Over 1,400 alumni from 120+ countries. They list them on their website. They’re proud of it.

Situation where someone’s gain is someone’s loss. Extractors claim business isn’t zero-sum. Then structure every deal so they win and you lose.

Company valued over $1 billion that can’t exit. Still operating. Can’t grow. Can’t die. Can’t return capital to investors. There are 1,200 of them.

Strategic restructuring to unlock shareholder value through operational efficiency and synergy realization.

Fire people, sell assets, load debt, extract fees, bankrupt the company, move to the next one.

Learn to translate. Or become what they’re translating into profit.