Tobi Lütke

Obviously, other than the, I think, B-22s, none of the planes had any range, right?

So to fly into Japan,

you really had near airfields very, very close to Japan.

Some of the islands there had indigenous people on them.

And so the American bases,

were built, landing strips were created.

In some cases, this was the first time any of the indigenous people there had any kind of contact with the outside.

Their private contact with the outside came from, you know, every once in a while a wooden crate, which was how odd shipping was done there, like would wash up at shore with things in them, magical things, goods of society.

The people who then got these items, they called them cargo, of course, you know, just like, that was a status symbol.

And here were Americans, which of course all the people could observe, in these airfields, doing these things, and planes come.

And what we're bringing, more and more cargo, which, of course, means we're also very, very rich individuals.

And I don't know if they thought about the people they observed as demagogues, but they might as well.

So now World War II is over, and no one's going back to these islands for a while until people do.

And what they find is that they're still running the airports.

There's like the shamans are wearing like coconut shells, like headphones in straw towers, making sometimes noises that sound vaguely English.

There's straw airplanes on the runway and people are doing this because they want the cargo to come back.

And it just tells you something really, really important, I think, about the human condition.

We copy behaviors to try to create the same outcomes.

And we do it all the time.

So much of the business world, if you look at it, is just people cargo culting.