Money Bags

It's an eat-what-you-kill world. Any basic college level economics class teaches us that we live in a world of limited resources: limited food, limited water, limited oil, limited wealth, limited everything. Economics is all about the distribution of wealth, deciding who gets what and how. Some countries do it well, others don't. Some countries assure that others can't do it well, by invading them and stripping them of their natural resources. We call that "third world development" or "protecting our national interest." Some people die of starvation, others take home millions upon millions of dollars, even when their company's stock is in a free-fall, because that's the deal they cut when they took the job.

The fact that it's an eat-what-you-kill world is never more clear than during a recession, when even those who are well off start to feel anxious. People in the First and Second World start getting laid off, business dries up, and suddenly your job, which was granite solid six months ago, now feels as light as a pumice stone. When the economy goes in the shitter, everyone gets nervous. And when human beings get nervous, they become even more selfish and self-protective than they were before.

Let me dumb it down for you using my profession -- the legal profession -- as an example. Here's how it works:

Clients hold the bags of money. When they get sued, or decide to sue someone, they decide they need a lawyer and they open the bags of money. Most of them, particularly during a recession, open as few bags as possible, and only open them a crack. You can barely see the money in those bags, but you know it's there. Clients are evaluated internally and by the stock market according to how many bags of money they retain, and how big their money bags get. Where do Clients get the money bags in the first place? The question is moot. They have them.

Partners get Clients to open the bags of money. When they feel there's no other choice, Clients come to lawyers looking for help. Partners have relationships with the Clients, and it's their job to advise the Clients regarding their problems, and oh yeah, encourage Clients to open the bags of money and throw as much as necessary at the problem. It's also Partners' job to ensure that Clients keep coming back and continue giving money to the Partners and the law firm for whom they work. This is called "rain-making." Partner-Client relationships, and Partner access to Client bags of money is the most important aspect of any private law firm. Client relationships are difficult to obtain, closely-guarded, and easy to lose.

Associates get Partners to open bags of money. Associates are the law firm's engine. They're the grunts. They do most of the work at law firms and are supervised by the Partners, who take the hit if there's a problem. The job of Associates is to satisfy the Partners, who in turn, must satisfy the Clients, so that the Clients will continue opening bags of money and giving it to the Partners, who in turn will share a (very) small piece of it with the Associates. As small a piece as the market will allow. It's a big enough piece, however, that Associates will work hard to sustain it. Associates' other job is to make themselves sufficiently indispensable to the Partners that the Partners will continue opening bags of money and sharing more of it with them. In this way, Associates hope to one day become Partners themselves and get their own Clients to open bags of money for them. This is called the "partnership track." The partnership track is unpredictable and an associate can fall off it quite easily by fucking up an assignment, hitting on a Client or Partner's wife, or being socially inept. Politics and the firm's current needs also play a role.

At their core, law firms, much like Amway, are pyramid schemes. As long as there's unlimited workflow, everyone's relatively happy. It's a Whoville party every week. But once the work slows down, as it has the past two years, those at the top of the pyramid begin to see clouds on the horizon. All of a sudden, Clients aren't opening their bags of money as easily. Everyone's looking at the bottom line. This leads to less work for Partners, who have suddenly become uncertain about their status at the firm and their own future. Will the work continue coming in as it did before? Am I still relevant? Will they freeze my salary? Will they (gasp) make me a non-equity Partner -- a salaried plebian -- who doesn't share in the firm's profits anymore?? Oh merciful heavens!

It's a precarious time. Partners become even more self-oriented and intensely interested in preserving their position and income level. They begin throwing elbows to protect their piece of the pie. They begin hoarding work, using every possible means of influence and power they have to ensure that the few bags of money that exist come to them and their Associate lackeys. They begin fighting over origination. So-and-so Partner says that it was THEY who got Client A to open the bag of money. Another so-and-so Partner says it was him. They become like children. It ain't pretty.

Why does all this happen? Because lawyers, like everyone else, are human squirrels fighting and clawing for acorns. Everyone wants the same piece of pie they got last year. Under the American capitalist system, it's really important to keep getting the same slice of pie, or better yet, a BIGGER piece, every year. That's nearly impossible to do in a recession. But people don't like to hear that. They still want more pie than last year. When you don't get more pie, or, perish the thought, when you get less pie on a given year, it smells like failure, like something went wrong. It's funny to think that these petty people are still making hundreds of thousands of dollars, more than more people in this world will ever see, and they're still not happy.

(Pies, acorns, money bags. There are way too many metaphors here. Sorry.)

It's not just law firms. It's your company too. Your job, your health, your future depends to a large extent on your ability to access open bags of money and take some for yourself. The pyramid scenario above is applicable to virtually any industry, even most political and economic systems. Communist and socialist systems have their own haves and have nots. It's the way we've structured things in this human race of ours. There's an extremely wealthy few at the top and a large base at the bottom that gets the crumbs off the table. Or nothing, in some cases.

It's funny how basic it is when you think about it. How so much human behavior is selfishly directed towards wealth accumulation and amassing personal resources for oneself and one's family. And it's not always healthy resources we're seeking to acquire. Sometimes it's drugs we want. Or sex. Or alcohol. And those, of course, require money too.

How evolved are we, really? Don't apes act like this, but on a more basic level? If all we are is educated monkeys, then I want to be a Bonobo. They know how to party, and I like the way they settle disputes by fucking their way to world peace.