DePaulo Consulting, LLC.
1,576 followers
May 11, 2026
Part 1: The Gold Room of Corporate America
In one of the most chilling scenes in cinematic history, Jack Torrance—played with a manic, unraveling brilliance by Jack Nicholson—wanders into the empty, grand ballroom of the Overlook Hotel. He is stressed, deeply frustrated, and buckling under the weight of his responsibilities.
He sits at the dry bar, closes his eyes, and wishes aloud for just a single drink.
When he opens his eyes, the bar is suddenly fully stocked, glowing with warm, amber light, and tended by Lloyd—a ghostly, impeccably dressed bartender with a knowing, sinister smile.
Jack doesn’t have any money, but Lloyd waves it off with a phrase that serves as the thesis for the entire film:
“Your money is no good here, Mr. Torrance. Orders from the house.”
Jack happily takes the glass. He thinks he is in control. He thinks he’s just taking a quick edge off his stress. But as the old proverb goes (and as the Overlook Hotel eventually proves):
“First the man takes a drink, then the drink takes the man.”
It is a masterful metaphor for addiction and madness. But if you look closely at the modern landscape of corporate capitalism, you’ll realize we are living in a giant, real-world version of the Overlook Hotel. And our largest corporations have been sitting at the bar for a very long time.
The “First Drink”: The Pursuit of Healthy Growth
Every business starts with the “first drink.”
In the beginning, pursuing profit, seeking growth, and wanting to scale are entirely healthy impulses. Just as a moderate drink can offer relaxation, a business pursuing healthy growth is a force for good. It allows a company to:
- Fund genuine innovation.
- Hire more people and pay them competitive wages.
- Build a safety net for economic downturns.
- Deliver actual, tangible value to customers.
In this stage, the social contract is intact. The business serves a human purpose, and profit is simply the fuel that keeps the engine running. The company controls the “drink.”
When the “Drink Takes the Man”
The tragedy of Jack Torrance is that he didn’t know when to stop. The tragedy of modern corporate governance is that the system forbids stopping.
In the 1970s and 80s, corporate America underwent a profound ideological shift. Guided by economists like Milton Friedman, we embraced “Shareholder Primacy”—the idea that a corporation’s only social responsibility is to maximize profits for its shareholders.
With that shift, the “drink” took the man.
When infinite, exponential growth becomes a company’s sole, obsessive metric of success, the tool (capitalism) becomes the master. The obsession with hitting next quarter’s projections “possesses” the corporate board, hollowing out the human elements of the business.
[The Corporate Slip: From Value to Obsession]
Stage 1: Value Creation ──> Healthy Profit (The Tool)
Stage 2: Shareholder Pressure ──> Growth Obsession (The Habit)
Stage 3: Pure Financialization ──> Human Exploitation (The Addiction)
Just like Jack, the modern corporation under the spell of shareholder primacy begins to turn on its own “family”—its employees, its customers, and its community. The pursuit of profit is no longer a means to sustain a great business; the business is now a sacrificial offering to sustain the profit.
The Madness is Real
This isn’t just an abstract philosophical debate. This corporate “possession” is actively playing out in ways that directly impact our lives, our pockets, and our livelihoods.
Over the next few articles, we are going to walk through the grand corridors of this corporate Overlook Hotel to look at two glaring, modern case studies:
- The Algorithm of Exclusion: How health insurance giants are using advanced mathematics and AI to surgically strip the “humanity” out of healthcare to guarantee risk-free profits.
- The Layoff Paradox: How tech behemoths successfully laid off tens of thousands of workers while simultaneously awarding their CEOs eye-watering, nine-figure payouts.
Finally, we’ll look at how we can break the fever. How do we, as a society, incentivize companies to stay sober? Can we use the tax code to reward “socially sustainable” companies the same way we do for green energy?
The bar is open. Lloyd is pouring. And the house is footing the bill… for now.
Next Article — Part 2: The Algorithm of Exclusion (How Big Data Turned Health Insurance Into a Casino)
