The co-work space was spartan. There were no amenities except for a coffee station. Big plate glass windows lined the perimeter. Today, the desks were unoccupied except for three people. Frost crept up the plate glass so it was hazy. Ice crusted the window frame, and the sidewalks outside.
“Did you read this? That guy was a capitalistic douche. I don’t know why I even read his stuff.”, said the 20ish young white man with a blank black t-shirt, a grey hoodie, wild wiry hair, two days unshaven, black Vans, and the vintage IWC watch on his wrist from behind his computer screen. “He follows that e/acc account on X now. Those guys are losers.”
“Dunno”, said his counterpart. He was also white, in his mid-thirties. He wore his Big 10 college long-sleeve t-shirt with close-cropped hair and glasses. Clean cut, he had headphones wrapped around his neck waiting for his next Zoom meeting. “You know, he has done quite a bit in his life.”
“Yeah, like what? Probably stole all the money he made.”, said the 20ish. “Or, he just got lucky.”
“Look at his LinkedIn.”, said 30ish.
“Man, LinkedIn is so yesterday. It’s trash. Just a bunch of people trying to get attention. How many of those bios on LinkedIn do you think are real or fake?”, said 20ish.
“Dunno”, said 30ish. “But if you look at his it seems like the real deal.”
“How do you know?”, asked 20ish.
A frigid silence crept through the co-working space. A Black guy sitting a couple of desks away raised his eyes. “Who you guys macking about?”, he asked.
The 20ish and the 30ish looked at the Black guy. The 20ish showed him his computer screen. He had the LinkedIn profile up.
“Yup, I knew that dude.”, said the Black guy. He had short, cropped hair and a beard. He wore a wool V-neck sweater, and a white t-shirt with jeans. He had on a gold chain and an Apple watch.
20ish was startled. “You did. He must have been a money-grubbing pig? I heard he liked Trump.”
“He didn’t hate Trump. But, he didn’t love Trump either. The dude was a Republican through and through. He’d give you some pretty good reasons why and make you think. Guy knew his economics.”, said the Black guy. “You know, just because Trump doesn’t mean someone is all bad. Trump did some decent things for Black folks, course my girl would kill me if she heard me say that.”
30ish smiled. He said, “Guy traded on the floor. That was way before our times. I heard it was crazy on the floor. You had to be a Gladiator to make it.”
Black guy said, “You got that right. Those trader dudes were crazy. I heard some crazy numbers coming out of that place. Couple brothers I knew clerked down there. Shit was crazy. When you used to go downtown you’d see them walking around in their jackets and shit.”
20ish said, “It’s a lot better now. It’s all on computer and fair.”
Black guy said, “Yeah, it’s all on the computer, but it still ain’t fair.”
30ish said, “Yeah, when trading ended, I heard a lot of those guys had trouble. Bunch of them killed themselves or got divorced. He said he had a lot of trouble too, but he worked it out.”
20ish said, “Shit, he got lucky. It was a rigged game.”
30ish and Black guy shook their head and looked condescendingly at 20ish.
“Nothing rigged about the floor. Nothing rigged about investing in startups either. You think someone somewhere rigs it?”, asked 30ish.
20ish said, “It’s rigged to get into the best companies. They save space for people.”
Black guy asked, “How do you know which are the best companies that early or not?”
20ish looked blankly at him.
“You don’t have an answer for that do you Ivy League boy”, said the Black guy.
“Yes I do. Uber would have been a layup. How do you know him?”, asked 20ish.
“Pitched him on an idea.”, said the Black guy. “So you are saying of someone you didn’t know came and told you that they were going to get people to use their phones to call for a driver who used their own personal car, and at the time the guy had no drivers and no app, you’d have cut a check? C’mon man.”
“What happened? Did he cut you a check?”, asked 20ish.
“No.”, said the Black guy.
“See, told you he was racist. All those people are racists. He didn’t cut you a check because you were Black.”, 20ish said. “Surprised he’d even take a meeting with you. How’d you get on his schedule? Some KKK app?”
“Don’t be stupid. Dude met with anyone. Was easy to get a hold of. Race had nothing to do with it. If he heard you had a good idea, he found you. He didn’t care about anything except if you had a good business and if he could make money off investing in it. As a matter of fact, he saw the holes in my idea and he gave me some ideas to make it better. Then, he intro’d me to a bunch of people that helped me make it better.”, said the Black guy. “If you got your head out of your ass and woke up, you might meet some of them instead of spending your Daddy’s money.”
“Then, he cut you a check?”, asked 20ish.
“Nope.”, said the Black guy. “He didn’t cut me a check. He wasn’t cutting checks anymore. But, he put me in front of a bunch of people that did.”
“What happened then?”, asked the 20ish.
“I pitched. Didn’t get funded.”, said the Black guy.
“See, he intro’d you to a bunch of racists like himself. I told you. Fucking Republicans. They suck.”, said 20ish, the IWC watch gleaming in the sunlight that was filtering through the windows.
“You don’t get it do you?”, said the Black guy.
“No, he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get it at all.”, said the 30ish.
“Where is he now?”, asked 20ish.
“Left.”, said 30ish.
“Where?”, asked 20ish.
“Someplace warm.”, said 30ish.
“Fucker left for the weather like all the grays.”, said 20ish.
“No, he said he left because of the violence and the taxes. Didn’t want to support it and felt like there was nothing worth fighting for.”, said 30ish.
“It’s not violent here.”, said 20ish.
The Black guy shook his head and stared daggers at him. The 30ish shook his head and put his headphones on. His Zoom meetup was starting.
POSTSCRIPT
Chicago, with a “venture capitalist” as governor and a diverse leadership (Foxx, Evans, Preckwinkle, Johnson) politically in both city and county government ceased to be a “startup hub”. No one is leaving the mess that is San Francisco for the utter mess that is Chicago.
We just had a 30 year old relative and his girlfriend visit us to stay for awhile from California. Don't know him real well and never had met her before. Hard to process the visit. They are both nice people and seem to be supportive of each other. But they literally have no knowledge of the world outside a series of preconceived notions. What is worse, they seem to have no curiosity. It's the last part that is still troubling me. Everything they know is anecdotal and is assumed to be accurate. There was also no sense of time. Everything will ether stay as it is or automatically get slowly better. The future will come to them naturally and easily. It is not just a lack of effort. Effort is meaningless with knowledge and without curiosity there is no knowledge. The visit was slightly frightening and I am still trying to figure out why. It is more than just normal generational differences though. Like the 20+ year old in your example, there is a lack of depth that is disturbing. Shallowness and arrogance are bad traits when combined together in one package.
The departed capitalist is probably an amalgamation of people, with a hint of autobiographical?