Make $$$ With Your Pen

Macworld reports that:

Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi wrote in a widely quoted report that “we believe the iPhone is likely to be largely cannibalistic to iPod sales, rather than entirely incremental to Apple, limiting upside.”

How did Toni Sacconaghi learn to write like that? And why? I think what it means is: "People won't buy a new iPhone as well as a new iPod. They'll buy an iPhone instead. So Apple won't make as much money as they think they will."

The odd thing is, it's really hard to write that badly. To write that badly, you have to learn to think that badly, too: pompous, dehumanised and convoluted. Who is it meant to persuade? Who is it meant to impress? Who, at the cheque-signing end of the money-chain, is genuinely impressed by it? And why? Or are they all bullshitting each other with an inept and teeth-stripping rhetorical schema which none of them believe in really?

And that's why I'd have failed in business. I don't mind, as an astute businessman friend once said, that "most of business consists of sitting in expensive restaurants over expensive breakfasts while people tell you lies". Lies are fine. It's the language they're couched in which I can't take.

Comments

[Bo Stenberg]

Can I steal this outright? Or should I change a few words, represent it as my own and let the good times roll? If you truly think 'business' sucks--which, take my word for it, it's a black hole--check your local library and/or google the web for works critical of this nasty little avocation PER SE. I found one. By Earl Shorris.

Not capitalism. Business.

[Lobster Blogster]

I try to dehumanise all my blog writing. If fact I try to lobsterise it. I don't think I succeed very often, though.

PS Enjoyed reading the first few chapters of your Big Babies book. Are you able to keep up your wit and flair all the way through, or should I just send it back to the library now? If the second half turns out to be a dissappointment, at least I won't have wasted my time, and I will still have good memories of the first half.

[Tim Worstall]

"The odd thing is, it's really hard to write that badly. To write that badly, you have to learn to think that badly, too: pompous, dehumanised and convoluted."

You've not read much economics then?

[ariadne]

you always write something intelligent. not f*cking kidding.
thanks for that.