You begin a search for talented monkeys that can flip coins and generate more heads than tails.
You line up 100 monkeys. After 5 years flipping, 80 of the monkeys are more or less 50/50, 10 of the monkeys are exceedingly stupid monkeys with lots of tails. But ten of your monkeys are more talented and get lots of heads.
You fire 90 of the monkeys but keep the 10 top performers. You then recruit another 90 monkeys and start again. After 5 more years of flips, 90 of your monkeys once again are unexceptional or bad performers. Interestingly, this 90 now includes 9 of your former all stars. 1 monkey is at the top of the pack in both runs.
You once again fire 90 of the monkeys and keep the top 10 heads-flippers which includes your now two-time all star. You are fond of 5 of the now mediocre monkeys -- they seem smart and smile when you come in the room -- so you give them another go thinking they just had a bad break.
Entire industries are born tracking the performance of the monkeys. There is a flipping cable channel with a morning show called "The Daily Flip" and another called "Fast Flip."
At this point, the special monkeys begin to demand LOTS of bananas.
Meanwhile, another monkey emerges that promises to delivers 50% heads and 50% tails for 1/10 the number of bananas...other monkeys ridicule his acceptance of mediocrity.
You do this several more times.
If that one monkey continues to hang around he is either a super-lucky monkey or his name is Warren Buffett and he actually does know how to flip to get more heads than the other monkeys. He appears to do this by flipping fewer times, selecting coins that are slightly mis-weighted, and judging the wind.
The 50/50 monkey is named Jack Bogle.
Both the Bogle monkey and Buffett monkey are heralded as geniuses.
People worry that the Buffett monkey is getting old and will die soon.
People worry the Bogle monkey has trained legions of other monkeys who are taking over the world. People can now get monkeys to deliver 50/50 for 1/1000 the number of bananas. The world gnashes its teeth that the coin-flipping/banana market is going to become unstable...
...but the siren song of extra bananas continues to attract new monkeys to the coin flipping game.
One monkey begins to offer a triple leveraged coin contract where one head will count as 3 and one tail will count as 3. This is only for sophisticated coin flipping buyers who track recent coin flipping results and know when to push the monkeys to flip faster.
Other people build robot monkeys that can flip faster than real monkeys. They also try to re-use coins that just came up heads when another monkey flipped it.
Monkeys begin to flip coins make of copper, plastic, wood, ... they will flip anything.
Let the coin flipping continue!
(It made me smile to write this, I hope it made you smile to read it.)