I recently watched this video, which presents a theory that we’re stuck in 1999:
It says that in prior decades, they each had their own distinctive fashion, music, style, etc. But that all stopped with the 90s. If you watch a show like Emergency, you know it takes place in the 1970s. Magnum PI unmistakably takes place in the 1980s. But what about modern shows? Did it take place in 2007? 2013? 2024? There are few ways to tell. I can usually tell by the technology such as which phones the characters are using to narrow down the date range, but we’re listening to the same types of music and wearing the same clothes.
My theory isn’t a time loop. It’s the MBA and the financialization of business.
The MBA and Financialization of Business
The Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) emerged during the industrial era as businesses became larger and more complex and needed a professional class of managers. As we transitioned to a service economy, MBA programs proliferated and professional management spread throughout American institutions. I wouldn’t be surprised if cooking schools and flight schools also offered MBA programs.
As professional management became increasingly dominant in senior leadership, the way businesses thought about themselves changed. It was no longer about how do we provide value. It was about the shareholder and profit at any price. It was about EBITDA, Profit and Loss, growth, and pretty much anything other than creativity and service.
While there is nothing wrong with turning a profit, which no business can survive without, it’s how they frame the profit that causes the problem.
A Few Examples
Back in the 80s, Hollywood was effectively run by directors (they’ve always had studio executives), and the directors produced great movies. Now it is increasingly run through the same professional management mindset as other large corporations. The people making investment decisions don’t have to hate creativity; they just have to minimize risk. Rather than greenlighting the work of directors they believe can deliver, the safer bet is something that has already made money or resembles something currently making money for another studio.
Then there is private equity, which is also focused on making as much money as possible. This is where the financialization really comes in. They do Leveraged Buy Outs (LBOs) of businesses, then sell off whatever will make them money and leave what’s left of the business overloaded with the debt they used to purchase the business.
Look at Boeing. They used to be an engineering company that made exceptional and iconic American airplanes for military and civil purposes. Then in the 90s, McDonnell-Douglas bought them with their own money and started running the company off spreadsheets focused on how much value they could extract from it. While Boeing technically acquired McDonnell-Douglas, McDonnell-Douglas effectively took over Boeing’s culture. Now they can’t even design a new plane. The 737 MAX was the third update to an airframe designed in the 1960s, and with the end of its lifecycle coming up, they have nothing to replace it with. This is the difference between “we build extraordinary airplanes, and doing so profitably allows us to continue” and “we exist to maximize shareholder value, and airplanes are the mechanism by which we currently do it.”
The Heart of the Matter
This is a systems problem. Optimization narrows the solution space. Once everybody has the same spreadsheets, consultants, market research, KPIs, benchmarking, algorithms, and management education, everybody starts making approximately the same rational decisions. Nobody has to conspire to make culture homogeneous. Homogeneity emerges from everyone optimizing against similar metrics.
If ten companies independently ask, “What should we create?” they may arrive at ten different answers. If all ten ask, “What does the data show has the highest probability of delivering an acceptable return?” they are much more likely to arrive at the same answer. Each decision can be perfectly rational on its own while the aggregate result is cultural stagnation and somehow I still don’t have a flying car, can’t go to the Moon for lunch, and can’t afford a weekend in orbit.
No wonder people are starting to ask whether we’re living in The Matrix. Appropriately enough, that movie came out in 1999.
Though this is grossly oversimplified, we can summarize it as we didn’t get stuck in 1999 because people suddenly stopped being creative. We built institutions that systematically reward exploitation of proven value more reliably than creation of new value.
Perhaps the fundamental problem, then, isn’t profit at all. It’s what happens when something that should be a means becomes the end.
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (1 Ti 6:10). (2025). Crossway Bibles.
