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Lots to share with you in this November issue, including a quiz to take before you vote, a brief history of how I became a conservative, highlights of my adventure in October, investment advice on gold, real estate, and the fine art market, four book reviews, three TV/movie reviews, and something I’m very excited about: a 30-minute video course I put together on the economic genius Milton Friedman.

Plus…

* David Stockman on why Trump and Harris will probably both sink the US economy in the next four years

* Niall Ferguson on Israel

* Millionaires that can’t afford to buy their dream homes

* Freddie DeBoer on why largesse doesn’t help those it pretends to

* The brutal history of tarring and feathering

* Why you were probably taught to read the wrong way

* Another chapter from my forthcoming book The Challenge of Charity

* A chapter on “Inertia” from The 7 Natural Laws of Wealth Acquisition

* A life lesson from Arnold Schwarzenegger

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Catching Up: A Look Back at October 

Several readers wrote to say that they aren’t thrilled about my changing this blog to once a month. They were accustomed to hearing from me at least once a week, and they wondered if something terrible might have happened to me during October.

Well, not much of consequence happened to me. I wasn’t ill. I won no awards. I did have some fun and some happy surprises, though. Below, a short summary of the highlights.

A Surprise Gift from Montgomery Botanical Gardens 
And an Exciting Addition to Paradise Palms 

I was invited for a private tour of Montgomery Gardens, the sister of Fairchild Gardens, one of the largest botanical gardens in the States, to see their shade houses and grow beds and compare notes about managing palm trees. The tour ended with a small collection of a species of palm tree that had been thought to be extinct. For a palm tree grower like me, this was exciting. To make things better, they donated one to Paradise Palms. Since we opened Paradise Palms, we’ve proudly explained to visitors that we have on display all 11 of the species of palms that are native to Florida. Now we have another one – and another story to tell!

We Might Have Continued This Argument Forever… 
How K and I Stopped Arguing About Plastic Water Bottles.

When I drink water, I prefer to drink it from a plastic bottle, nicely chilled. So, that’s what I do. Whenever I want to drink water at home, I take one of the dozens of plastic bottles that K stores in our refrigerators.

But there’s a problem: K objects to it.

She says I’m wasting money. That I should drink tap water. I tell her I like my water cold. And besides, what are the chilled bottles of water in our refrigerators there for anyway?

She says they are there for our guests. And if I like my water cold, I should put some ice in my glass of tap water.

I tell her that I don’t like to drink water that way. That I don’t like the ice cubes clicking against my teeth.

She tells me I’m being ridiculous. I tell her I paid for the damn plastic water bottles. She shakes her head despairingly and goes about her business.

This has been going on for as long as I can remember. Probably since plastic water bottles were invented. We are both stubborn in the way only the Irish can be stubborn. She has never persuaded me of her opinion, nor have I persuaded her of mine.

Which is to say that this little disagreement probably would have continued until one of us kicked the bucket. But the other day, a light bulb illuminated just above my head.

I realized that I could have my cake and let K eat it simply by refilling the plastic bottle I had just finished drinking from with tap water. I put the top back on and put it back in the fridge. The next time I wanted a drink of water, I used that bottle. And that’s what I plan to do from now on.

Problem solved. And so simply, too.

So, now I’m wondering…

* Why did it take me so long to figure out this simple solution?

* How many such ongoing quotidian conflicts do I have that might be solved as easily?

The Fine Art Market Is Hot. Maybe Too Hot? 

One of Andy Warhol’s “Marilyn” silkscreens sold at Christie’s for an astonishing $195 million.

This blows away all previous prices paid for a work by any American artist at auction. In fact, it was the most expensive work of art sold at auction in history. And the bidding was completed in less than four minutes!

It eclipsed the previous high price for a Basquiat skull painting at Sotheby’s in 2017, as well as Warhol’s auction high for a car-crash painting that sold for $105.4 million in 2013.

According to several experts, this could be the beginning of a spurt of super-sized sales for super-popular artists created by a huge pent-up demand by new buyers that were reluctant to enter the market during and for a year after the economic uncertainty of the COVID lockdown.

I wonder who these new buyers are. Are they the same nouveau riche Wall Street traders and brokers that have been buying up this genre of art? I doubt it. Most of those guys had net worths in the $100 million to $800 million range. But $170 million is even too rich for someone worth a billion. I’m guessing this was Arab money. Maybe we’ll see “Blue Marilyn” hanging in the Louvre’s adjunct museum in Abu Dhabi.

Your Devoted Guinea Pig Is Getting Smaller 

I’ve said that I was contemplating taking a course of semaglutide, the wonder drug originally approved by the FDA in 2017 to combat type 2 diabetes (the kind you develop as an adult). It is fast becoming the weight-loss miracle the world has been clamoring for. Sales in the US are already $28 billion and growing.

The drug is manufactured and distributed under three labels: Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro. If you can get a doctor to diagnose you as “pre-diabetic,” your prescription will be (mostly) covered by your health insurance.

I’m taking Wegovy, which is prescribed for weight loss. Before deciding to take it, I did some research. It works in two ways: It sends a signal to your brain that you are “full” way before your brain would have figured it out itself, and it slows down your digestion so that you feel full for a large part of the day.

The efficacy, they say, is high. And that’s been my experience.

I am now in my seventh week of injecting semaglutide into my thigh and I’ve already lost 16 pounds. I weighed 224 when I began the program, and I woke up today weighing 208.

As for side effects, I’ve had none of the stomach or intestinal problems that some have taking this drug.

I am eating whatever I want, whenever I want, and as much as I want. The difference is that my appetite (for food – not so much for tequila!) has been greatly reduced. I used to consume about 2,000 calories a day (trying to watch my calorie intake). Now, I’m consuming about half that. Half is 30,000 fewer calories per month, which amounts to a loss of about 10 pounds, or 2.5 pounds per week. Based on the research I’ve done on dieting, that’s a healthy and sustainable rate of weight loss.

Meanwhile, I’m exercising diligently to reduce the percentage of muscle I’m losing. By next month, I should be down to my target weight (198) – and if you are lucky, I might include a photo in December’s issue of my 74-year-old body in a bathing suit!

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Why I’ll (Probably) Vote Next Week 
My 50-Year Transition Towards Conservatism

Brett, the young man who cuts my hair every three weeks, was an early voter this year. We talked about his choices – the votes he cast for the presidency, as well as those he cast for propositions on the Florida ballot.

I was surprised by how much study he told me he did before voting on the propositions, but he said that he felt that if he was going to vote, he should know what he was voting for or against. And I was more than a little humbled by our conversation.

I know Brett as a person with strong sentiments about most of the issues that divide American voters – freedom, equality, taxation, welfare, war, and more recently inflation, immigration, social justice, and abortion. So, I assumed he would cast his vote the way most Americans do: along party lines.

The fact that he had gone online and spent hours studying the pros and cons of all the propositions on the ballot reminded me of something I had gradually come to realize over the 54 years I’ve had the right to vote: I had little to no idea about who or what I was voting for.

During my 20s and 30s, I was a regular voter. I never spent any time studying the candidates or the issues I was voting for. I felt that I knew all I needed to know based on what I knew about the inclinations of my parents and favorite teachers – which were very much on the left.

I was, like so many young people today, a professed Communist and a card-carrying Conscientious Objector during my college years. I continued to protest the Vietnam War until it ended. And even then, as so many of my friends returned from their stints as soldiers and told me their stories, I developed an uncomfortable and disappointing distrust of my government and politics generally, not just the politicians that supported that war.

I declared myself an Independent. And I described my political views as many Independents do today: fiscally conservative, but socially liberal. That felt good. Even virtuous. But it was never helpful in making voting decisions because the Democrats at the time represented social liberalism while the Republicans were the party of fiscal restraint.

I tried to find a solution for this dilemma by, among other things, reading both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. But that only made things worse. Because I felt that the most important political issue was the question of war or peace, it became clear to me that President Eisenhower had been right when he warned Americans against the Military Industrial Complex, and I began to see both parties as pilgrims marching to the same Holy Site, just wearing differently colored clothes.

This led to several decades of mostly not voting. I could see clearly that both parties were aligned in supporting and extending the Cold War that had started soon after I was born, and that, for the most part, social welfare spending and taxes were going up regardless of which party was in office and/or dominant in the legislature.

When my youthful goal of becoming a writer morphed into becoming a publisher, I was forced to understand economics as it operates where the economy takes place – i.e., in business, rather than in government and non-profit institutions and academia.

And that changed my perspective a third time. I was still a fiscal conservative. And although I was still a strong believer in the sharing of wealth (all forms of wealth), I no longer believed that government could ever do a good job of that. On the contrary, my beliefs about the effective way to share wealth were almost entirely opposed to the philosophy that drives the social welfare programs of government and even most of the largest non-profit charities.

I am thinking seriously about voting this year, but although I feel like I know enough to make the right choice for the presidency, I haven’t done any work on Florida’s propositions – as Brett has – and I feel obliged to get that done before I make my final decision.

And this brings us to three of the things that I hope you’ll pay particular attention to in this issue, all of which might influence your decisions (present and future) as a voter: a quiz, a video lesson on basic economic theory, and a book review (one of the four book reviews in this issue) about the ideas of one of the world’s greatest economists.

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Last-Minute Chance to Test Yourself: Are You Knowledgeable Enough to Be a Responsible Voter?

This month’s quiz touches on American political and presidential history, including a few questions whose answers may surprise you.

The Questions 

1. There are only three requirements to be US President, according to Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the US Constitution. Which of the following are those three?

A: Must be a free man.
B: Must swear an oath of loyalty to the US.
C: Must be at least 35 years old.
D: Must have passed a literacy test.
E: Must have lived in the US for at least 14 years.
F: Must be a natural-born citizen.

2. When did Congress remove property ownership as a requirement to vote in elections?

A: 1812
B: 1856
C: 1884
D: 1914

3. Speaking in Pittsburg on Oct 10, Kamala Harris proclaimed she would engage in what Franklin Roosevelt called “bold, persistent experimentation” to stimulate the economy. How did Roosevelt’s “experimentation” work out?

A. It was a great success and rescued the country from the Great Depression.
B. It had no significant effect because Roosevelt never pursued it.
C. It was among the reasons that economic misery prevailed for so many years after his election to the presidency in 1932.

4. Who is the only US President to have served in both World Wars?

A: Herbert Hoover
B: Theodore Roosevelt
C: Dwight D. Eisenhower
D: Calvin Coolidge

5. Donald Trump was the first US President to run for election as a convicted criminal. True or False?

A: True
B: False

6. During the 1960 presidential campaign, Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Richard M. Nixon had four debates. According to polls conducted at the time, voters that heard the debates on the radio favored one candidate and voters that saw them on TV favored another. How did that break down?

A: Nixon was favored by television viewers and Kennedy was favored by radio listeners.
B: Kennedy was favored by television viewers and Nixon was favored by radio listeners.

7. Who was the first US President born in a hospital?

A: Herbert Hoover
B: Dwight D. Eisenhower
C: John F. Kennedy
D: Jimmy Carter

8. In his second run for the presidency, George Washington spent almost his entire campaign budget on what?

A: Newspaper ads
B: Campaign events in New York and Philadelphia
C: Building an addition to his personal residence
D: Liquor for potential voters

9. Most people believe that Abraham Lincoln was the tallest US President. How tall was he?

A: 5’ 10”
B: 6’ 1”
C: 6’ 4”
D: 6’ 7”

10. Trump never conceded the 2020 election to Biden. True or False?

A: True
B: False

 

The Answers 

1. C, D, & E. Read this.

2. B: 1856. Read this.

3. C: Constant changing of the rules in Washington disrupted the ability of individuals to plan and make decisions. Read this.

4. C: Dwight D. Eisenhower was the only US President to serve in both WWI and WWII. Read this.

5. False: Eugene V. Debs, a five-time Socialist Party candidate for the presidency in the early 1900s, was jailed in 1918 for his continued agitation against the government. He made his fifth and final run from a federal prison. He lost, but still received more than 900,000 votes. Read this.

6. B: Kennedy was favored by television viewers and Nixon was favored by radio listeners. Read this.

7. D: Jimmy Carter. Read this.

8. D: Washington spent it on liquor for potential voters. Specifically: 28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons of rum punch, 34 gallons of wine, 46 gallons of beer, and two gallons of cider served to 391 voters – nearly half a gallon per voter. Read this.

9: C: Lincoln was 6’4”. Read this.

10: True and False. Click here and here and here.

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The Genius and Charisma of Milton Friedman 
A Very Short Video Course That I Put Together

Economics is a subject that you should have at least a rudimentary understanding of if you want to speak intelligently about any political or social issues. If all the talk about the economy leading up to this year’s election has had your head spinning, the following video “mini-course” on Milton Friedman and his Nobel Prize-winning theory may be all you need.

1. Who was Milton Friedman? 

Here’s a short cartoon from the Fraser Institute that provides a quick introduction to Friedman’s life and ideas.

2. An interview with Phil Donahue 

Phil Donahue’s best quality as a talk show host was his earnest naïveté. He presented himself as a man that had a big heart but a modest brain. Here, he asks the questions any high school student might ask.

3. Who or what creates inflation? 

In this short clip, Freidman refutes the most common misunderstandings about the origin of inflation. As he explains, it doesn’t come from greedy corporations or trade unions. They can’t create inflation because they can’t print dollars. Only the government, he says, can create inflation.

4. What about unemployment? 

Friedman’s explanation of what creates unemployment and how, to some extent, it is inevitable, is a bit complex. You might want to listen to thisone twice.

5. Our “responsibility” to the poor 

Freidman answers the difficult question of what responsibility the government has in eradicating poverty and helping the poor. His answer is not one that those in the poverty-solving business would like or agree with, but it is consistent with his larger economic theory. Click here.

6. What about welfare? 

Along the same line as the previous clip, Friedman addresses another tough question. We all know that welfare tends to create dependency, but we surely cannot cut it off. So, what can we do? Click here.

7. Who serves the workers? 

In this clip, we get into another sticky subject: the role of labor unions. Those that support the unions believe that without them businesses would take unfair advantage of their workers, especially minorities and poor people. Is that true?

8. Immigration: the pros and cons 

A topic that is hot today. America prospered in its first several hundred years by having an open-border policy. Since 2020, the Biden administration has allowed at least 10 million foreigners to enter the US without vetting. As a free-market advocate, would Friedman think open borders make sense today? Click here and here.

9. The challenge with redistributing wealth 

In this clip, Friedman argues that when governments take it upon themselves to redistribute wealth, the poor stay poor and everyone else gets poorer.

10. Free-Market Capitalism vs. Socialism 

This clip rounds out your introduction to Milton Friedman’s economic theory with his rationale for why Socialism hasn’t worked and cannot work.

Beyond the Basics

If you’d like to learn more about Milton Friedman and free-market economics, here are some longer clips.

A Longish Conversation with Milton Friedman 

This one is worth the time (a little more than an hour) it takes to watch it. For one thing, it shows Friedman’s humanity. It gives a sense of what it was for him and his fellow economists at the U of Chicago during his tenure as a teacher there, and how they fought to bring his economic theory to prominence.

In Depth with Milton Friedman 

In this one (three hours long), Friedman talks about his life and work.

For even more, take a look at my review below of Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative by Jennifer Burns.

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Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative 

By Jennifer Burns 
592 pages
Published: Nov. 2023

I’ve just begun reading this book – another part of the Milton Friedman binge I’ve been on. So far, I’m very happy with it and would recommend it without hesitation to anyone who wants to understand how and why Friedman’s version of free-market capitalism has been so influential in the public conversation about government and economics that has been going on for more than 50 years.

Had I not already begun to study Friedman, I’m not sure if I would have been able to fully appreciate what a terrific job Jennifer Burns did with this biography. It’s not only comprehensive and detailed, it answers lots of questions I was asking myself as a late-in-life fan of this amazing man.

Critical Reception 

An Economist Best Book of 2023… one of The New York Times’ 33 Nonfiction Books to Read This Fall… named a most anticipated fall book by the Chicago Tribune and Bloomberg… finalist for the 2024 Hayek Book Prize.

Click here to read an extensive review of the book by David. R. Henderson in the Summer 2024 Cato Institute newsletter.

Click here and here to watch two interesting discussions with Jennifer Burns about Friedman and her book.

How the Mind Works

By Steven Pinker
660 pages
Published: 1997

How the Mind Works by the Canadian/American cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker is one of those rare nonfiction books that I can’t get enough of.

Like Sapiens by Yuval Harari, it is an engaging and accessible investigation into everything one thinks about when thinking about the human mind: awareness, intelligence, emotion, vision, consciousness, and self-consciousness. Pinker presents a convincing theory about what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and ponder the mysteries of life.

Pinker’s primary perspective is evolutionary biology, but his erudition is much broader than that, which provides the reader with many rich and interesting ways to understand how our brains work, including philosophical, economic, and social schools of thought. Thus, he gets into such subjects as feminism and “the meaning of life.”

His stance on evolution is nuanced. He explains the basics well and refutes the common misunderstandings. He rehabilitates some unfashionable ideas (e.g., that the mind works like a computer and that human nature was shaped by natural selection), and challenges fashionable ones (e.g., that passionate emotions are irrational, that parents socialize their children, and that nature is good and modern society corrupting).

Critical Reception 

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize… a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1997… featured in Time magazine, The New York Times MagazineThe New YorkerNatureScienceLingua Franca, and Science Times… front-page reviews in The Washington PostBook WorldThe Boston Globe, and the San Diego Union Book Review.

“This is the best book I’ve read all year!” – Michael Masterson

Einstein in Time and Space: A Life in 99 Particles 

By Samual Graydon
368 pages
Published: Sept. 2023

This my third attempt to understand Einstein – his life and his work. I bought the book because I’d read that it wasn’t a terribly lengthy (as so many bios are) and that, because it was written as a series of vignettes, it is easy to consume. And Einstein in Time and Space did not disappoint.

We all know that Einstein was a genius, that he was eccentric, and that the only subject he managed to earn good grades in was mathematics. But until I began reading Einstein in Time and Space, I had little idea about how complex and interesting his life was.

He was, as one reviewer summarized, “the curious child, the rebellious student, the serial adulterer, the wily prankster, the loyal friend, the civil-rights defender, the intellect unsurpassed in his time….”

Italy in a Wineglass: The Taste of History

By Marc Millon
336 pages
Published: May 2024

I wanted to read Italy in a Wineglass because I am always eager to learn about wine and it was strongly recommended in a magazine I was perusing in my doctor’s waiting room.

I expected it to be relatively short, entertaining, and informative. It was… and much more. Far from simply the guide to Italian wine that I expected, it is also a travel memoir and deep dive into Italian history, starting with the Greeks, Etruscans, and Phoenicians, then moving through Roman antiquity, early Christianity, the fall of the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, the Florentine Renaissance, the promise of Italian unification, and the two World Wars, and continuing into the present day.

I’m only about a third of the way through. I’m treating it as a bathroom book, reading one chapter at a time – and so far, I’m liking it a lot.

You can listen to the audio version of Italy in a Wineglass, for free, here.

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Garrett Baldwin on the Global Shift to Gold

As a consultant to Agora, the largest publisher of financial advice in the world, I read a lot of economic and investment commentary every month. Below, I’m reprinting a good part of an essay published in the 10/18 issue of Postcards from the Republic by one of Agora’s best writers.

Should You Be Buying Gold? 

The world has changed how it handles money. Gold now stands at the center of the global system.

For decades, the US dollar has been king. Countries needed dollars to buy oil, making the dollar powerful due to the demand to fulfill transactions. This system was initially called the petrodollar. It was the backbone of America’s economic power from 1971 to the early 1990s.

Following the first Gulf War, the US government expanded its focus. The Treasury quickly got nations (that weren’t so involved in the global oil trade) hooked on US dollar-denominated debt. After roughly 30 more years of additional dollar domination, things are shifting abroad.

We can pinpoint the day that the world shifted under our feet. The West put sanctions on Russia in late February 2022. Western leaders thought they’d cripple Russia’s economy.
Instead, it backfired. Now, the world is engulfed not only in physical wars across the Middle East and in Ukraine but in a quiet economic war that threatens everything we own.

Following the 2022 sanctions and ensuing price caps on Russian oil prices, the West hoped Vladimir Putin’s nation would be unable to engage in global trade. Instead, Russia and China saw an opportunity. They started working together to bypass the dollar.

Here’s how:

1. China created the petro-yuan. It’s a way to buy oil with Chinese money backed by gold.

2. Russia began selling its oil and gas in currencies other than the dollar.

3. Both countries started buying massive amounts of gold. In 2023, central banks worldwide added over 1,000 tons of gold to their reserves. We witnessed the largest purchases of gold by central banks since Richard Nixon took the US off the gold standard.

Why are all these central banks buying gold? Because it’s trustworthy. Countries don’t fully trust China’s money yet. But they trust gold. So, China needed a lot of gold to back up its currency….

Plus, as more countries move away from the dollar, the US might struggle to pay its debts. This could change the value of everything – stocks, bonds, and savings. But gold? It’ll likely keep going up.

So, what should you do?

1. Consider buying gold. Not just coins or bars, but also take a look at gold mining stocks and royalty companies. We have long advocated for the Sprott Physical Gold Trust (PHYS) as a simple, more liquid way to increase gold exposure.

2. Keep an eye on what big banks and countries do with their money.

3. Pay attention to international trade deals, especially those involving China and oil-producing nations. This election could lead to two very different outcomes, but regardless of who wins, the long-term trend is de-dollarization.

This change won’t happen overnight. The US dollar will remain the primary instrument of trade over the next decade. But we see this process accelerating at the moment.

In a world where paper money is getting shakier, gold is becoming the real deal again.
It’s not just shiny metal – it’s a way to protect your wealth and purchasing power in uncertain times.

Stay positive,
Garrett Baldwin

 

Millionaires Who Can’t Afford to Buy Their Dream Homes 
And Why They’re Renting Instead!

Before I took an interest in wealth and wealth building, I took for granted that it is always better to own a home rather than rent one. The logic seemed irrefutable: The dollars you spend on rent are gone forever. They are not “invested,” they are “spent.” But when you own a home, you own a piece of its price appreciation over the years. As the house becomes worth more, so do you.

I held on to this belief longer than I should have. But when I began investing in rental real estate, and had the opportunity to see how that industry works from the inside out, I soon realized that ownership only trumps renting in certain economic situations. And today, in many areas of the world and for many sorts of housing units, it is largely smarter to rent than to buy.

Here’s a piece from the WSJ on this point.

Has California Had Enough of George Soros’s DAs?

In 2014, California launched a grand experiment in progressive criminal justice, appointing George Soros-backed DAs that believed the way to reduce the disproportionate number of African Americans in California jails was to refrain from jailing them for a slew of crimes, including drug possession, resisting arrest, and theft of merchandise whose retail value was less than $1,000.

Advocates, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, said this would save money for taxpayers. What happened, however, was that the social costs have far exceeded any savings. And now California voters are rethinking that initiative.

Click here.

Niall Ferguson: My Journey from a Jerusalem of Ghosts to the Living Jerusalem 

“To make proper sense of the bloody events of the past 12 months in the Middle East, I had to go to Vilnius,” writes Niall Ferguson in The Free Press.

“That may strike you as bizarre, as Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania and roughly 1,600 miles from Tel Aviv. But Vilnius was once ‘the Jerusalem of the North’ – that’s what Napoleon called it when he passed through in 1812.”

Read more here.

The Debanking of America 

We’ve all read plenty about social media and government-imposed censorship, including demonetizing, deplatforming, and doxxing. Now there is a new way to make your political opponents disappear: debanking.

Click here.

Can the “Good Guys” Save America from Bankruptcy? 
David Stockman on Why Trump and Harris Are Dangerous

“When in the course of history’s twists and turns dire necessity becomes the mother of invention,” writes David Stockman in this essay, “it’s usually too late. That’s the case with America’s fiscal derangement at the present time. There is simply not a snowball’s chance in the hot place that either the Trumpified GOP or the beltway blog-controlled Democrats will lift a finger to deflect America’s fiscal doomsday machine from its appointed rendezvous with disaster.”

Read more here.

Freddie deBoer on “Deference Politics”
Why Woke Largesse Doesn’t Help Those It Pretends To

“When I talk about deference politics,” writes Freddie deBoer, “I’m referring to the tendency of left-leaning people to substitute interpersonal obsequiousness towards ‘marginalized groups’ for the actual material change those groups demand.”

Read more here.

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Kleo 

An 8-part series on Netflix
Approx. 1 hour per episode
First episode: Aug. 19, 2022

I reviewed the first episode of this series in the Oct. 25, 2022 issue. I stopped watching it soon after that. Not because it wasn’t good. It was very good. I simply got distracted. I’m recommending it again because… I’m watching it again.

Like Netflix’s Decameron, this is very smart and funny. Also like that Netflix series, it is a social satire. A political satire, too. I found it particularly interesting because it takes place during the late 1980s, when Gorbachev was opening up (and breaking apart) the USSR and after the Berlin wall had come down. My knowledge of that important period of history is limited to what I read in the newspapers back then. Kleo is a chance to understand it from a different perspective. I feel like I’m learning as I’m laughing.

Also worth mentioning:

* The characters are wonderfully invented and developed.

* The directing is perfect for the type of comedy it is.

* The acting is universally excellent, providing a new and thoroughly enjoyable take on the buddy-comedy genre.

I give it a 4.5 out of 5, but I know that not everyone who reads this recommendation will like it as much as I do.

You can watch the trailer here.

Playing with FIRE: The Documentary 

An 8-part series on Netflix
Approx. 1 hour per episode
First episode: Aug. 19, 2022

I reviewed the first episode of this series in the Oct. 25, 2022 issue. I stopped watching it soon after that. Not because it wasn’t good. It was very good. I simply got distracted. I’m recommending it again because… I’m watching it again.

Like Netflix’s Decameron, this is very smart and funny. Also like that Netflix series, it is a social satire. A political satire, too. I found it particularly interesting because it takes place during the late 1980s, when Gorbachev was opening up (and breaking apart) the USSR and after the Berlin wall had come down. My knowledge of that important period of history is limited to what I read in the newspapers back then. Kleo is a chance to understand it from a different perspective. I feel like I’m learning as I’m laughing.

Also worth mentioning:

* The characters are wonderfully invented and developed.

* The directing is perfect for the type of comedy it is.

* The acting is universally excellent, providing a new and thoroughly enjoyable take on the buddy-comedy genre.

I give it a 4.5 out of 5, but I know that not everyone who reads this recommendation will like it as much as I do.

You can watch the trailer here.

Playing with FIRE: The Documentary 

Cowritten (with John Phillips) and directed by Gene Stupnitsky
Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Andrew Barth Feldman, Laura Benanti, Natalie Morales, Matthew Broderick, and Marc Provissiero
Released: June 23, 2023

Watch Time: About 100 min.

Had I known the plot of No Hard Feelings before I clicked on it, I would not have chosen it. A comedy starring Jennifer Lawrence as a hapless bartender who is hired by a wealthy couple to romance their romantically and sexually inexperienced son.

It sounds like a cheap thrill, and there’s no question that it trades on one. But because of a solid script and immensely good performances by Lawrence and Provissiero, I found myself willing to suspend disbelief and enjoy it. Even the sentimentally predictable ending was satisfying.

This is not The Graduate, but it’s worth watching.

Oh… I almost forgot. You do get a glimpse of Lawrence running naked on the beach.

My rating: 3.8 out of 5

You can watch the trailer here.

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You Were Probably Taught to Read the Wrong Way 

Watch Time: 8.45 min. 

In this episode of Otherwords, a PBS series recently recommended to me, Erica Brozovsky provides a concise history of the pedagogy of reading, including a battle that’s waged for years about the best method to teach reading. If you are interested in this sort of thing, you may find it fascinating, as I did.

Click here.

A Scene from The Wolf House

Watch Time: about 2 min.

One of the most unnerving animated horror films EVER. The Wolf House (2018) is a stop-motion feature from Chile that really has to be seen.

Click here.

The Brutal History Behind Tarring and Feathering 

Watch Time: 10.5 min. 

I didn’t know this: Tarring and feathering, a brutal practice dating back to the 12th century, found notoriety in the late 18th century but persisted until 1981. King Richard I of England proposed this form of punishment for thieves in 1189, setting the stage for centuries of public humiliation.

Click here.

The Perfect Commuter Train 

Watch Time: about 7 min.

A fascinating explanation from a train architect on how to design the perfect commuter train.

Click here.

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Briana Wu on Bari Weiss’s podcast

Listening Time: 1 hr. 19 min.

I’d never heard of Briana Wu before I listened to this. Wu is a trans woman who supports trans rights and some progressive ideas, but in recent years has rejected some of the most popular causes of progressives, particularly in the political area. This conversation with Bari Weiss, the publisher of The Free Press, is worth a listen.

Click here.

“The Flower Duet” from Lakmé 

Listening Time: about 5.5 min.

I’ve been enchanted by this piece of music for as long as I can remember, but I didn’t know where it came. When I heard it on the radio, I could tell that it was from an opera, but I didn’t know which one. Recently, LC, a friend and fellow member of The Whiskey Wednesdays Discussion Club, texted this clip to me, saying it was his favorite aria. So, now that I have a name for it, I can recommend it to you: Sabine Devieilhe and Ambroisine Bré singing “Duo des Fleurs” (“The Flower Duet”) from Delibes’ Lakmé.

Click here.

The First Heavy Metal Song?

Listening Time: about 1 min.

Guitarist Anthony Parker contends that “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” which was composed in 1875 by Edvard Grieg, was the first “Heavy Metal” song. Listen to him play it and see if you agree.

Click here.

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A Hasty Site Plan, an Early Windfall, a Lesson in Real World Economics 

Chapter Two of The Challenge of Charity

It was a crude sketch, pencil drawn on the inside cover of a book I was reading. I think it was Mark Twain’s A Tramp Abroad

It represented our oceanfront lots. A grid of 36 lots in three rows. Twelve lots per row. We figured we could get $35,000 for the first row – the ones that sat directly on the beach. We priced the second row at $30,000, and the third at $25,000.

Thinking back on that now, and considering what those lots are worth today, it’s hard to fathom why we sold them so cheaply. And why we sold some of the best lots – the oceanfront lots – so early in the game.

The answer is that we knew practically nothing about selling this kind of real estate.

We’d each had some experience in real estate. I had even been a limited partner in similar Florida-based projects. But I didn’t run those projects. Nor was I included when it came to pricing the lots.

So, how did we arrive at those prices?

We didn’t look at “comps” – the prices of comparable properties – because there were none. In fact, in the late 1990s, there weren’t any beachfront housing developments within a hundred miles of ours on Nicaragua’s Pacific Coast.

A strategy we might have had, but didn’t, would have been to base our prices on similar lots in the States. US property was considerably cheaper than it became 30 years later, but beachfront lots in Florida or California typically sold for $500,000 to more than $5 million.

I believe what we did – and in retrospect, it does seem naïve – was to price those 36 parcels so that the total would equal the $1 million we had by then invested in the property. (A purchase price of $800,000 plus about $200,000 in development costs.)

How did that go?

From one perspective it went extremely well. We sold all 36 lots in 48 hours, sight unseen!

“Holy mackerel!” we thought. “We’ve struck it rich!”

Our next thought, of course, was, “Gee whizz. We probably could have priced them at twice or three times those amounts and still sold out.”

This was just one of the many mistakes we made in developing that rustic and desolate cow ranch into a five-star residential resort community.

* We never had the property surveyed.

* We didn’t test the soil.

* We hadn’t looked for natural springs or plumbed the aquifer for water.

* We hadn’t figured out how to bring electricity from the road to the building sites (a stretch of about two miles).

* We knew nothing about building regulations in Nicaragua.

* We didn’t even know a single builder.

Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. And although I do believe we could have sold the 36 lots at a higher average price, what we did by selling them so cheaply was generate the immediate cash flow that was critical to getting our fledgling business off the ground.

And there were two things that, even in our ignorance, we did right:

* We paid a very good price for the property we bought.

* We wasted no time in trying to sell the lots to our International Living subscribers.

From Cow Paths to Graded Roads 

In the first year after purchasing the property, we built a lot of infrastructure.

We built a two-mile long dirt road stretching from the main entrance on the dirt road that went from Rivas City to the ranch. We brought in electric from outside the ranch along the main road, from the entrance down to the beach. We dug two wells to provide water to the 36 lots we had just – to our surprise and delight – managed to sell.

As I said, all that took about a year to complete. It also took every cent of the $200,000 we had put aside for infrastructure.

Next on the agenda was an onsite sales office. Our idea for that was very basic: a 1,200-square-foot structure with an open floor plan, two small bathrooms, and a palapas-covered roof. We located it on a tree-covered bluff overlooking Playa Rosada, the stunningly beautiful beach at the heart of our first phase of development.

This, we finished in about six months.

Over the next 18 months, we added a three-room hotel with a kitchen and outdoor dining room, and a Tiki-style bar beside a small pool looking on to Playa Santana.

That construction was financed by selling additional lots along a cove on the other side of the bluff. These lots were also sold sight unseen to our subscribers.

Our initial capital investment – among the four partners – was less than half a million dollars. Way too small for a project of this size. But because we had a ready market that we could reach for free (by email advertising), I don’t think we ever tapped into that original capital pool.

A Home, a Problem, and a Disturbing Solution 

Encouraged by our progress and stimulated by our growing infatuation with the beauty and culture of this heretofore undiscovered coast of Nicaragua, several of the partners and I decided to build second homes in Rancho Santana for our own families.

We spent a day with Antonio, the local we had bought the property from (and now our partner), riding horses and walking ridges with fantastic views. I found a great spot about a quarter-mile from the first section we had developed. The lots we had carved out there were small – just a quarter-acre each. I claimed two of them.

Ours was one of the first houses built in Rancho Santana. Compared to what came later, it was modest in size, but felt spacious. At 1,500 square feet, it consisted of three small bedrooms, a kitchen, and a large open-air living room with a spectacular view of the northern shoreline and the hills beyond.

The house was completed in less than year. Soon after it was finished, K and I spent a week getting the feel of it.

The open-air living room, which we’d thought would be a brilliant way to take advantage of the views, turned out to be a bad idea. In the heat of the day, it was too hot. During the rainy season, it was cooler, but the rain often came in almost horizontally and soaked everything.

If that wasn’t enough, birds and bugs and bats ensconced themselves in the beams that held up the roof, from which they would occasionally drop down and sometimes settle on the dining room table while we were eating.

In the windy season, breezes blew continually through the open areas, leaving a layer of dust everywhere.

“It’s normal, my friend,” Antonio said with a smile when I complained. “If you want to live outdoors, you must submit yourself to Mother Nature.”

For the rest of that first visit, we tried to be outdoorsy. But the following year, we enclosed the dining and living “rooms.”

Meanwhile, it became obvious that it was going to be impossible to keep the place as neat and tidy as we were accustomed to in the US.

Antonio recommended that we get a full-time housekeeper.

In the US, a housekeeper is something only the wealthy have. We were financially comfortable, but we would never have considered having a full-time housekeeper in the States. When I asked Antonio how much it would cost, I was shocked at his answer.

“I pay $80 a month,” he said. “But for you, as a Gringo, maybe $100.”

But this created another problem that was just as disturbing. I couldn’t conceive of paying a full-time worker only $100 a month. It felt financially abusive – like pure, old-fashioned Colonial-era exploitation.

“Honestly,” I said to Antonio, “I wouldn’t feel at all comfortable with $100 a month. How about $400?”

He put his arm around my shoulders and gave me a little hug. “Sit down,” he said.

I sat.

“Mark, I know you. You are not a bad or a stupid person.”

“Thanks a lot,” I thought.

“You feel that way because you have grown up in America. You have lived all your life in a big, rich economy. But Nicaragua is different. We are a poor country. We want to grow richer, but we know that if it comes, it will come slowly.”

Antonio was not simply a local property owner and an entrepreneur. He also held two degrees, one in agronomy and another in business administration from a US university. On top of that, he had spent several years working in the US.

He understood the employment market in the US and in Nicaragua, and he’d had a few courses in economics. Which made him a good deal more knowledgeable in these things than I was.

More importantly, he had a genuine concern for the welfare of Nicaragua and its people.

My First Lesson in Real Third-World Economics 

Before we started building Rancho Santana, there were very few employment opportunities in this part of the country. It was a subsistence economy. Most people lived in the crudest shacks, with dirt floors and latrines. They literally lived off the land. Rancho Santana greatly expanded the demand for labor.

There had been something of an existing job market. The larger farmers employed some people, and there were a few small businesses that employed others. So, there was an established standard of how much one could expect to earn as a laborer. And that was the government-mandated minimum wage of about $80 a month. Managers and skilled laborers earned about twice that much. And doctors and lawyers earned, on average, about $400 a month.

This was Antonio’s argument to me:

“You are an investor in our country. And your investment will help us grow rich. But you must be thoughtful about the ideas you get about what you pay people. If you pay your one housekeeper four times the going rate, you will cause trouble not only for other homeowners, but for all the local people that would like jobs.

“Keep in mind that we are building a dream here with Rancho Santana – a project that could one day be employing hundreds or even thousands of people, people who right now have no employment.”

Embarrassing Afterthoughts 

The more I thought about Antonio’s argument, the more embarrassed I felt. Without giving the matter a moment’s thought, I had decided to pay my first Nicaraguan employee four to five times the going rate. Even at that rate, I felt like I was taking advantage, because $400 a month was still less than 25% of what an unskilled laborer would make in the States.

But I had never considered the potentially larger impact of what I was considering doing.

It would have made me happy and would have thrilled the housekeeper I would hire. But it would have ignored – at a considerable cost – the negative effect my singular decision would have on the social and economic reality of the hundreds of poor people living nearby.

This wasn’t going to be the last time I made this mistake. As I’ll explain in later chapters, I made it again and again in different circumstances and in different ways.

I was eventually able to understand what I was doing. I realized that, like most of my generation, I’d come to accept an ethos of fairness and justice and charity that felt inarguably true… so long as I didn’t think too much about it.

Lessons Learned 

* When it comes to developing property, the cost of the land is going to be a small part of the overall cost of the development. In the States, it may be 30% to 40%. In areas without a developed central infrastructure, it may be less than 10%.

* Culture is everything. When making business decisions in a foreign country, recognize that the effects of your actions are likely to have different ramifications than the same decisions made at home.

Inertia 

From The 7 Natural Laws of Wealth Acquisition

Let me tell you a story…

During the time I was publishing Early to Rise (from 2000 to 2010), my partners and I held annual conferences for our subscribers. They usually included events where we (the speakers) would sign books of ours that some of the attendees had bought in the pop-up gift shops.

I always enjoyed doing this because it gave me an opportunity to meet dozens of the attendees personally and have, however briefly, chats about who they were, why they had come, and what benefits they hoped to reap from the conference.

Roughly half of those who attended had not yet set upon whatever journey they were planning. They came hoping for some insight or introduction or advice that would get them on their way. And almost invariably, when I asked them if they had found the spark they were looking for, they said they had. And judging from their energy and excitement, I believed them.

A good number of those people returned in subsequent years. And if I asked them what progress they had made since the last conference, I was disappointed to discover that many had made no progress at all.

When I asked them why they were still stuck at Step One, they had all sorts of reasonable explanations ranging from unexpected financial problems to unexpected marital issues.

And the same thing happened again and again, year after year.

What was going on?

It wasn’t laziness. 

Most of these people had challenging professional jobs that required working 45+ hours a week. Some had second jobs to earn extra income. Many spent portions of their leisure time reading and doing research for side projects they were interested in. These were not sluggards. Something else was afoot.

Nor was it a lack of connections and/or resources. 

Among the people that kept coming back without having made any progress, there were plenty who came from affluent families, lived in upscale communities, and had all the money they needed to get working immediately on their goals. In fact, there seemed to be an inverse relationship between the resources people had and their ability to move forward.

Nor was it the “fear of failure.” 

A common explanation for this sort of procrastination is fear of failure, but that never rang true to me. I had started dozens of businesses. I knew that not all of them would be successful, but that didn’t stop me. And yet, I had often spent months planning or talking about starting some new venture that never got off the ground.

So, what was it? What could I learn from my own bouts with procrastination that could explain the inability to move forward on specific goals.

Since I have kept detailed journals of my daily thoughts and actions for more than 30 years, I spent some time looking through the entries I’d made, looking for a common thread.

It didn’t take long to find it. My problem hadn’t been laziness or a lack of resources or a fear of failure. My problem was that that I did not know how to start.

Think about your own dreams. Think about the goals you’ve set for yourself over the years but failed to achieve.

Perhaps you’ve always wanted to write a book. Or learn a foreign language. Or have an exotic adventure. Or start a successful business. And yet, as you are reading this today, you realize that you have not done it.

My proposition to you is that you haven’t accomplished those goals because you knew in some core part of your mind that what has held you back is the realization that you simply didn’t know how to take Step #1.

Let me see if I can convince you of this proposition with a very brief thought experiment.

Imagine this… 

You get a job in the accounting department of a successful company that sells widgets. You work like a demon six days a week and get one promotion after another until, after only three years, you are promoted to CFO, and the next year to COO. At this point, you know everything about how the business works. You know how to manufacture the widgets. You know how to sell them and who the buyers are. But there is something else you know. You know of a supplier that can get you the materials for half of what you are currently paying.

You’ve told your boss about this opportunity, but he’s said he’s not interested. So, you decide to open your own widget shop. You can hire a few key employees you already know from the industry. And you know just which customers would be happy to buy widgets from you.

Question: Would you be afraid to start that business? Of course not! 

On the contrary, you’d probably move as fast as you could, fearing that someone else might do it first!

This illustrates what I believe is the reason most people (like 80%) fail to accomplish their wealth building goals. In business and other forms of human endeavor, we call it procrastination. And it is caused by the very accurate (but often only subconsciously understood) fact that they lack a simple road map to follow.

In science, the tendency of an object at rest to remain at rest is referred to as inertia – which, you may remember from an Introduction to Physics class, is Newton’s First Law of Motion.

And inertia is one of our laws of wealth accumulation.

The Mistake Most People Make re Inertia 

Look at this tennis ball.

It’s just sitting on the ground, not moving. It exerts no energy, and it appears that no energy is being applied against it. Thus, from a physics perspective, we would describe it as being “at rest.” The same is true of a person who is sitting still on a bench.

But, in fact, both the tennis ball and the person on the bench are subject to multiple forces of energy that are negating their movement.

Inertia explains why 95% of those who embark on learning languages or playing a musical instrument never get past the introductory material. It explains why almost all New Year’s Resolutions are abandoned before the end of February. It explains why many new businesses never get off the ground – and why those conference goers came back year after year without making any progress on the goals they had enthusiastically set a year earlier.

Defeating inertia is 80% about “Getting Ready.”

If you’ve tried but failed to increase your income and/or become wealthier in the past, the advice I’m about to give you may prove more valuable than any strategies you’ve tried.

The commonsense approach to getting started on any goal is to do something – read a book or take a class or attend a lecture – that inspires you. And that is why there is an entire industry that specializes in this area of human psychology.

But if you’ve read the books or taken the classes or attended the lectures, you probably also know what follows. You’re busy with the demands of your current life – and so you promise yourself that you will start the following week or the following month or after your next vacation or after your upcoming wedding or after you finish remodeling the bathroom. And then, suddenly, a year has passed, and you’ve done nothing.

Overcoming Inertia as an Entrepreneur 

The first section of Ready, Fire, Aim, my bestselling book about entrepreneurship, provides a step-by-step guide to moving a business from revenues of zero to one million dollars. What I do in that section is provide would-be entrepreneurs with what could be described as an easy-to-understand guide to overcoming entrepreneurial inertia.

It boils down to discovering what I call the Optimal Selling Strategy (OSS). And it’s a simple matter of answering the following five questions:

1. Who are the people most likely to buy the sort of product or service I intend to sell?

2. Where (using what advertising media) am I going to find the largest percentage of them?

3. What sort of offer will be most appealing to them?

4. What kind of pitch will they most strongly respond to?

5. What can I do with my product that will make it 90% the same as the best of my competition, but 10% better?

You will probably see these questions as rudimentary. And they are. Which is exactly the point! But finding the OSS is how you gain the confidence to take action.

Overcoming Inertia to Get Rich as an Investor 

I’ve been in the investing business as a publisher and as an author for more than 40 years. And one of the things I’ve learned is that investing the way most people do it is a formula for failure.

Something like 80% of professional brokers and money managers fail to beat stock market averages over 10 years or more. Even on a yearly basis, the majority fail at this very minimum objective.

What’s worse, individual investors do three times worse than the pros. Over a hundred years, for example, the US stock market has gained about 10%. Yet individual investors, as a group, have made less than 3%.

The reason is similar to the reason most would-be entrepreneurs fail.

They may read financial newspapers or newsletters. They may watch the financial news. But they don’t have the confidence to take the kind of decisive action necessary to succeed long-term because they don’t know the answers to basic questions about how the stock market works and about the individual stocks they are considering buying.

Questions like these:

* What makes the market go up and down?

* What makes certain stocks go up and down independent of what the market does?

* What investment factors are responsible for producing market-beating returns?

* For the stock you’re looking at, which part of the business cycle is its industry in?

* How does this business make money, and what are its prospects for growth in the future?

* Does the company behind this stock reward shareholders?

* Does the company have an enduring competitive advantage?

* Does the company produce a product it can sell 50 years from now, or does it constantly have to reinvest in remaking or changing its product?

* What is the company’s position in its industry?

* What are the risks to the company that could drive its stock price lower?

When I was new to investing, I could not answer those questions myself. So, what I did was assemble three of the best investment analysts I had access to.

That led to the creation of the original Legacy Portfolio, which, from 2012 to 2024, produced a return of 10.4% per year on average. Moreover, the level of risk inherent in the approach we developed for that portfolio was much lower than that of other portfolios that had achieved similar ROIs.

When my personal broker and Sean teamed up to take over managing my Legacy Portfolio, they contributed their knowledge of various sectors of the market to make the portfolio not only safer, but able to invest and trade in categories that I had been afraid to venture into.

With each innovation, I questioned them about anything I didn’t understand. And their answers were always rational and clear. That eliminated the doubts I had. And with those doubts gone, so was the inertia I felt about moving forward.

What I believe we have now in the Legacy Portfolio is the investment equivalent of what I built for entrepreneurs in Ready, Fire, Aim. It is a strategy of stock selection and management that operates out of accumulated knowledge and the confidence that increases every year as the portfolio continues to outperform the markets.

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How times have changed…

When Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor of California, he donated a statue of himself to the hotel pictured above. At the time, he says, the hotel management told him that he could “come at any time” – that he would always have a room there.

But some years later, after his term of office, when he sought to take up the hotel on its promise, he was told he’d have to pay for a room because “the hotel was almost full.”

So, he brought a sleeping bag and lay down under his statue to have this photo taken.

“Do not rely on your position or the amount of money you have, or your power, or your intelligence,” he says, “that will not last. Nothing lasts forever. People come and go. Everyone’s interests change overnight. They may embrace you today and betray you tomorrow and even trample on you. The challenge, then, is to learn to choose our connections well, disconnecting from the toxic and opportunistic ones and taking the time to place, in our circles of trust, those who love us for who we are, and not for what they can take from us out of interest or reject out of disinterest.”

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“Someone you probably never heard of that made a difference in all our lives” – from GM

“Navajo Code Talker John Kinsel Sr. passed away at age 107. His remarkable life and contributions to both his community and the United States during World War II will forever be remembered.”

My Response: Thanks for this article, GM. Amazing story!

More on Statins:

“In case you are still evaluating this, here’s more on statins, with a few side comments on COVID-19.” – KI

My Response: Thanks, KI. This is a great summary of most of what I’ve been learning since I started researching statins and blood pressure medication.

“You inspired me!” 

“I have been following you for the past 20 years. You inspired me into entrepreneurship…. It is because of you that I now acquire companies [and] you continue to be an inspiration…. I wish you the best, Mr. Ford. The world needs more of you.” – SV

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"Were it not for hypocrisy I’d have no advice to give."
"Were it not for sciolism I’d have no ideas to share."
"Were it not for arrogance, I’d have no ambition."
"Were it not for forgetfulness, I would have no new ideas to write about."