A manifesto against the global prediction industry—from consultants to fund managers—arguing for statistical humility, transparent models, and paying only for measurable transformation.
The Industrial Complex of Prediction: How the Consulting Industry Organizes the Biggest Scam in Modern History
“We have built an economy where you can be paid to solve nonexistent or already solved problems—as long as you wear a suit and tell a good story.”
The Inconvenient Evidence It’s time to tell the truth: the narrative prediction industry is an organized scam on a planetary scale. This realization hits like a hammer when you understand that, given the impossibility of reliably predicting the future, an entire parasitic economy has been built on that impossibility.
Asset management is only the visible tip of the iceberg. Behind it lies an industrial complex of prediction that includes consultants, economists, analysts, political forecasters, and all those “suited influencers” who claim to know better than you what will happen tomorrow.
The Myth of Value Creation
The Impossible Transformation When a carpenter is paid by a client, they truly transform wood into a chair. A measurable, tangible, undeniable transformation. When a fund manager is paid by a client, did they transform €100 into €110? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Did that “performance” come from their work, their decisions? Very rarely. Do we have a way to know? Not really.
We are paid to solve a problem that is at best insoluble, at worst nonexistent.
The Performance Economy vs the Promise Economy This industry has decoupled compensation from real performance, creating a form of “parasitic capitalism” where value extraction substitutes for value creation.
- In the real economy:
- Doctor: symptoms → diagnosis → treatment → measurable recovery
- Engineer: technical problem → solution → functioning infrastructure
- Teacher: ignorance → transmission → acquired skills (testable)
- In the promise economy:
- Consultant: uncertainty → PowerPoint → uncertainty + fees
- Economist: complexity → predictions → complexity + speaking fees
- Manager: volatility → “strategy” → volatility + management fees
The Global Industry of Decision‑Making Storytelling
Beyond Finance: The 25‑Year‑Old Consultant It’s not just asset management. It’s broadly the entire consulting industry, the forecasting business that pretends a 25‑year‑old in a suit can better predict the future than others thanks to a PowerPoint deck.
- This spans many roles across many sectors:
- Strategy consultants (McKinsey, BCG, Bain...)
- Star economists and their macro predictions
- Financial analysts and their “recommendations”
- Political forecasters and their polls
- Advisors who outsource your decisions
Outsourcing Decision Anxiety
This industry doesn’t sell predictions. It sells reassuring narratives about uncertainty. It is psychological subcontracting, where decision‑makers facing inherently uncertain choices pay to:
- Dilute responsibility: “We followed the recommendations of …”
- Buy conviction: PowerPoint turns doubt into pseudo‑certainty
- Legitimize intuitions: “The analyses confirm our strategy”
It’s entertainment, really: outsourcing responsibility for an uncertain decision to someone else, even without a track record.
The Technology Paradox: We Have the Tools, We Prefer Stories
- The Real Tools Exist We have increasingly reliable statistical tools and technologies:
- Machine learning on massive datasets
- Complex probabilistic models
- Monte Carlo simulations
- Predictive artificial intelligence
But these technologies and stats don’t tell stories. What you pay for is the story the consultant will invent. Facts and evidence don’t matter.
- Story vs Data What the tools provide:
- “There is a 60% chance of X, with a ±15% margin of error.”
- “Our models suggest three main scenarios …”
- “The statistical confidence of this prediction is low.”
- What the consultant sells:
- “Our analysis clearly shows that X will happen.”
- “The trend is obvious, here’s why …”
- “Our experts are convinced the optimal strategy is …”
We prefer false narrative certainty to true quantified uncertainty.
The Illusion of Expertise: Templates and Intimidating Jargon
The Theater of Competence The traditional fund manager, the strategy consultant, or the wealth advisor add virtually no value in their advice. They recite templates triggered by keywords.
- Finance:
- “Nearing retirement?” → Usufruct donations
- “Have a PEA?” → 60/40 allocation + in‑house funds
- Strategy consulting:
- “Slowing growth?” → Digital transformation + cost optimization
- “More competition?” → Differentiation through innovation + customer centricity
- Economics:
- “Inflation?” → Restrictive monetary policy + vigilance on expectations
- “Recession?” → Fiscal stimulus + support for key sectors
- The Expert’s Suit The main job is to provide a marketing stamp of credibility:
- Consultant: buzzwords and fashionable frameworks
- Economist: complex macro models
- Manager: market “expertise” performance
- But none of them:
- Knows the future
- Applies rigorous statistical methods to decisions
- Has a track record validating past advice
The Entertainment Economy of Decisions
Netflix for Executives Entertainment for anxious decision‑makers. Like Netflix, but for executives afraid of deciding under uncertainty. Except Netflix doesn’t claim to predict your company’s future.
- The Astronomical Cost of the Illusion Hundreds of billions that could fund:
- Real R&D
- Useful infrastructure
- Technological innovation
- Education and training
- Medical research
Instead, we finance PowerPoints and suit‑and‑tie storytellers.
Concrete Cases: Finance and Beyond
- Asset Management: Patient Zero
- 85% of active funds underperform their indices over 10 years
- Only 15% of finance actually finances the real economy
- €103B revenues in 2020 for global asset management, mostly skimmed from savers
The investing problem is already solved: diversified indices, low‑cost ETFs. The “IKEA” of finance—efficient, democratic, transparent. But it doesn’t feed intermediaries.
- Management Consulting
- Armies of juniors billed at ~€2,000/day
- Frameworks recycled from one engagement to the next
- Generic recommendations dressed in client‑specific jargon
- No responsibility for long‑term outcomes
- Political Prediction
- Constant polling with huge margins of error
- Analysts who explain everything after the fact
- “Experts” consistently wrong about major crises
The Parallel with Institutional Astrology An industry of “institutional weather astrologers” siphons billions claiming to beat statistical tools, with pitiful hit rates. The astrologer admits it’s irrational; the consultant claims it’s scientific.
The Solution: Statistical Humility vs Narrative Arrogance
- What Should Replace the Industry of Promises Replace:
- Stories → probabilities
- Consultants → algorithms (when possible)
- Storytelling → statistical modeling
- Conviction → humility in the face of uncertainty
- Opaque fees → total cost transparency
The Real Criteria of Legitimacy
Compensation should come only from solving a problem measurably and efficiently. For any investment, consulting, or prediction decision, consider only:
- The process and its transparency
- Measurable past performance
- Explicit costs
- Humility toward uncertainty
- The Real Creators of Value Legitimate actors:
- Apply rigorous statistical methods with track record
- Create measurable value through intervention
- Optimize costs and transparency over margins
- Assume responsibility for recommendations
- Acknowledge limits of predictions
In finance: quantitative funds, passive managers, activist investors with track record. In consulting: technical specialists with measurable expertise, transparent decision‑support tools. In prediction: statistical models with explicit confidence intervals.
Toward a Post‑Narrative Economy
- Automating Decisions The future belongs to solutions that are:
- Automated when possible
- Transparent in how they work
- Measurable in results
- Humble before uncertainty
Not to suit‑and‑tie performers reciting prepackaged scripts for juicy commissions.
The Revolution of Humility Real disruption will come when decision‑makers accept statistical honesty over narrative certainty. Prefer “we don’t know, but here are the probabilities” to “we are convinced that …”.
- The Economy of Measurable Transformation Imagine an economy where:
- Every euro paid corresponds to a measurable transformation
- Every piece of advice comes with its performance history
- Every prediction includes confidence intervals
- Every intermediary justifies added value with objective metrics
Conclusion: The Necessary Awakening
The End of the Show Most “prediction professionals” are actors in a giant economic theater. Realizing this is step one toward a more efficient, transparent, value‑creating economy.
- The Urgency of Change Every tolerated day of this parasitic economy means:
- Billions diverted from real research
- Resources wasted on useless storytelling
- Suboptimal decisions from false conviction
- A society that rewards illusion over performance
- The Manifesto
- We refuse to pay for stories when we need solutions.
- We demand evidence, not promises.
- We choose statistical humility over narrative arrogance.
- We prefer automated efficiency to humanized theater.
The future belongs to transparent algorithms, open data, and the courageous acceptance of uncertainty—not to consultants in suits selling dreams at a premium.
“A euro paid for a nonexistent transformation is a euro stolen from a real one.”
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