The Invasion of the Digital Dollar 

There is indeed something that large governments like about Bitcoin. It exists on a blockchain, which means that each and every financial transaction that is made (including minor purchases) is recorded and can be retrieved. Thus, being able to access this information would allow them to monitor every commercial action done by every citizen and end the last vestiges of financial privacy.

Think about that. Every transaction from the hamburger you ordered at McDonald’s… to the donation you gave your church… to the news channels and streaming services you subscribe to… to every toll booth you went through on your trip out west.

This is a dream world for big government. There would be no corporate or bank crime that couldn’t be detected, no theft that couldn’t be tracked, no commercial or financial transaction that couldn’t be audited and prosecuted. Nor would there be a dime’s worth of tax avoidance. The government would have 100% control not only of money supply, but of money flow and money location and, most importantly, money “management.” Governments would, in effect, be the mediators of our money. Like children on an allowance, every decision we made about saving, spending, investing, or even giving away our money would be subject to government monitoring and approval.

That’s what big government people like about Bitcoin. What they don’t like is that it is virtually impossible for anyone, including the government, to get access to any of this financial information, because access to the blockchain is not available without a secret key code that only the Bitcoin owner has.

But don’t be deceived. When the government wants to, it can and will get hold of those codes. Not with cyber technology, but with very rudimentary technology – guns, handcuffs, and jail. (My young, Bitcoin-owning, Libertarian friends tell me they would never surrender their key codes. I shake my head.)

The reason that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies haven’t yet been made illegal is precisely because, for the moment at least, they pose no threat to the dollar. And yet, as digital currencies, they make us comfortable with currencies that can be meticulously monitored and controlled.

This is how I think the government will gradually make its move:

Step 1. Quietly encourage the use of digital currencies, particularly those introduced by Google, Amazon, Apple, and other big government allies.

Step 2. Introduce the Digital Dollar, with little or no fanfare to avoid scrutiny.

Step 3. Subordinate the Big Tech currencies to the Digital Dollar, also as discreetly as possible.

Step 4. Begin a national campaign (supported by Big Tech) against Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as vehicles for crime.

Step 5. Outlaw cryptocurrencies. Offer free exchange for the Digital Dollar (or any of its subordinate, Big Tech equivalencies).

Step 6. Go after those that do not surrender their cryptocurrencies. Most – probably 80% – will capitulate when faced with the threat of prison. The other 20% will be in prison, unable to use their cryptos.

At that point, the Digital Dollar will take over, and the government (and Big Tech) will have full financial control of its citizens.

Does that seem crazy?

Maybe it is. But China is already up to Step 2.

Click here to read an interesting take on this (sent in by JM).

My Beef with “Creatives” 

In my business – the idea-publishing industry – some workers are valued more than others. These are the so-called “Creatives”: writers, marketers, advertising copywriters, and sometimes publishers.

The reason they are valued more is that their work contributes more directly to revenue and profit growth. Thus they earn more – sometimes 10 times more – than an equally intelligent and hard-working person that happens to work as an accountant or inventory manager or customer service manager.

This relationship between rain-making and money-making is true of all businesses that operate in free markets. It’s the reason actors of questionable technical skill, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Will Smith, get paid tens of millions for every movie they make. And it’s the reason Tiger Woods and Floyd Mayweather were able to make hundreds of millions of dollars after their athletic skills were in decline. They bring the gate.

It makes perfect sense to me that this should be so. In any given profit-making business, some professions will contribute more to the bottom line than their peers. If you want the revenue pie to grow bigger, which allows the business to pay everyone more, including the “non-Creatives” you have to pay the rainmakers.

Nevertheless, I have a gripe about the rainmakers in my industry. I object to calling them Creatives.

In my experience, only two or three in 10 marketers, copywriters, salespeople, and publishers are creative. The rest are good at only one or maybe two ways of stirring up the rain.

A creative person, by definition, is someone that instinctively and incessantly innovates. Someone undeterred by obstacles. Someone that vaults over obstacles with new ideas.

That means someone with the emotional and intellectual flexibility to come up with and adjust to dozens of new and different ways to achieve any particular goal.

To merit the title of Creative, one has to be able to innovate easily, constantly, and brilliantly. When the business or marketing landscape changes, a Creative will see it as an exciting opportunity to quickly discard the old, proven practices and the ideas that were derived from them in favor of new ones that would have been considered idiotic just a few months or weeks earlier.

When I think of Creatives in my industry, I think of Jay Abraham, with whom I worked closely 30-odd years ago. What always astonished me about Jay was not his natural intelligence, which was considerable, but his ability in brainstorming sessions to come up with alternative ideas in rapid succession. If, as often happened, his client would object to his earlier suggestions, Jay rarely spent more than a minute arguing in favor of any particular marketing idea he had put forward. Whenever one of his ideas was objected to, for whatever reason, Jay would almost instantly come up with another idea. And if that wasn’t taken, he’d come up with a third. And on and on until his client was happy. That was Jay’s genius, in my view.

The idea-publishing industry has gone through several dramatic changes since the conveyance of ideas moved from printed paper and the post office to digital delivery on the Web. And with one of my clients, in particular, recent challenges have required fundamental changes in our approach to sales and marketing, from beginning to end.

To deal with this, my partners and I have been busy urging our rainmakers to start thinking out of the box. And I’m happy to report that some have responded to this quickly and even gratefully. But most are struggling, and some are downright resistant.

Those that are resisting are not stupid or belligerent. Nor are they blind to what is going on. The problem for them is that however smart and skillful they may be, they do not have the creative flexibility to succeed in this new environment.

The old tricks they mastered, the ones that worked so well in the last era, cannot work today. But since they aren’t accustomed to thinking creatively, they feel trapped. Rather than acquiring new tools, they insist on using the old ones that no longer work.

Tiger Woods was a world-class rainmaker. But he was not creative when it came to making his money. His trick was being the world’s greatest golfer and a seemingly nice person. But when his world changed, he had trouble finding a new way of earning back his fan base. His tendency was to stay under cover, and then to come out to play and keep his head down. Because of his enormous global popularity, he was still able to bring viewers to every tournament he played in. But it was a diminishing game, because he could not reinvent himself. After winning his last tournament, he retired. A smart ending to an amazing career.

Floyd Mayweather was a rainmaker too. He made tens of millions when he was at the top of his game. And he, too, had public image problems as well as personal financial problems that could have left him – like so many boxers before him – a once-great athlete struggling to pay his bills.

Instead, he reinvented himself by doubling down on his reputation for being financially irresponsible. He bought a strip club, promoted himself as Money Mayweather, and agreed to take on an exhibition boxing match with Conor McGregor, a top-notch MMA fighter. He made something like $50 million for slipping McGregor’s punches until he closed out the fight in the sixth round. It didn’t bother him that he was fighting a non-boxer, someone that was, in theory, beneath him. He not only embraced the change, he produced the fight. He made more money as the producer than he did as the star attraction.

And just last week, he did it again. With a social media personality that had no professional boxing experience but millions of followers, a percentage of which were willing to pay $50 a pop to watch the fight.

It’s great to be a rainmaker. It’s fantastic to develop a financially valued skill. But if you want to be in the game for the long haul – long after the world you entered has changed a half-dozen times – you have to be a Creative. And not just in name, but for real.

(I’ll talk about how to do that in a future essay.)

White Privilege and Black Power in the Windy City

What’s Happening to Chicago? 

Inflation is up. Employment is down. Storefronts are shuttered. Offices are empty. The streets are strewn with debris. And homeless people – drug addicts and the mentally disturbed, primarily – wander about asking for handouts, fighting with one another and intimidating passers-by.

But what is most disturbing is the recent surge in violent crime. By the end of May, there were 1,156 recorded shootings and 252 homicides in Chicago – up 20% and 5% over the same time frame in 2020.

There is also a scary new trend among the young: armed car jackings for joy rides. 632 of them were reported in the first 5 months of this year.

These are alarming facts. The sort of facts that merit media attention. But I’ve seen next to nothing about it in the NYT or on CNN. It’s as if none of this violence matters. Why would that be?

Maybe this could be a factor: The great majority (maybe 90%) of this surge in violence is Black on Black crime.

It’s true. Since George Floyd’s murder, the riots that followed, and, most importantly, the call for defunding the police, Chicago has experienced a tidal wave of violence and murder in its Black neighborhoods. And Chicago isn’t alone. In Baltimore, Memphis, Atlanta, and New York City on the east coast, and in LA, Portland, and San Francisco on the west coast, a surge in violent crime this past year in Black neighborhoods has forced mayors to request emergency funds to put more police on the streets.

Like some others on the left, Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, blames her city’s woes on White people. The argument, a layman’s version of Critical Race Theory, goes something like this:

Systemic racism makes it impossible for White people in power to treat Black people in non-racist ways. Even when Whites believe that they are acting in the best interests of Blacks, the actual effect of their decisions is to maintain a culture in America that keeps Black people from achieving success.

The solution is to have more African-Americans at the top of every area of life that matters – in business, in politics, in the media, in education, in entertainment, and in sports.

And the only way to do that is to abandon the inherently racist idea of equal opportunity and replace it with the Critical Race Theory concept of equity: a distribution of benefits according to race. If Blacks represent 13% of the US population, they should represent 14% of the CEOs, 14% of the engineers, 13% of the doctors, and so on.

Using the same reasoning, 13% of Ivy League students (and graduates) should be Black, 13% of law school graduates should be Black, and so on. Blacks should also represent 13% of America’s billionaires, and African-Americans as a group should have the same income level and net worth as Whites.

The most appealing aspect of this theory is that it is simple. Just legislate it. Pass a law that requires equal representation of Black people in every aspect of American life and these systemic problems will gradually disappear.

But here’s the problem with that…

Chicago is already such a city.

* The Mayor is Black.
* The Superintendent of Police is Black.
* The Cook County State’s Attorney is Black.
* The Chief Judge of Cook County Circuit Courts is Black.
* The Illinois Attorney General is Black.
* The Chicago Fire Department Commissioner is Black.
* The Cook County Board President is Black.
* The State Senate Majority Leader is Black.
* The Illinois Lieutenant Governor is Black.
* The Illinois Secretary of State is Black.
* The Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County is Black.
* The Cook County Clerk is Black.
* The Chicago Police Board President is Black.
* The Chicago Transit Authority President is Black.
* The CEO of Chicago Public Schools is Black.
* The Commissioner of the Department of Water Management is Black.
* 40% of the City Council belong to the Black Caucus.

No, getting rid of White people in power is not the answer to Chicago’s violence problem. Neither is defunding the police. And by the way, Chicago’s Black denizens already know that. Polls in Chicago and other large cities have shown time and again that the majority of African-Americans want more, not less, police protection.

So, what is the answer?

One possibility: Cities that have implemented what is sometimes called “the broken window” theory of policing saw a dramatic drop in violent crime.

The strategy consists of tougher policing and criminal prosecution for relatively minor crimes like breaking windows, public intoxication, petty larceny, and even vagrancy. By clamping down on the small crimes, the big crimes diminish considerably.

An extreme rendition of this strategy, frisking people that merely look suspicious, was correctly seen by civil rights advocates as unconstitutional harassment. In dismantling such policies, many cities took their agenda farther, instituting an assortment of catch-and-release protocols (such as the suspension of bail) that sent a signal to criminals that they were now in a prosecution-free zone.

Meanwhile, wealthy citizens are fleeing their cities in droves, moving to the suburbs or even to other states where they can work remotely and in peace. As a result, the tax bases of those cities are diminishing drastically… which will lead to the higher taxation of middle-income workers… which will lead to more capital flight.

You won’t hear much about this in the major media because it negates the BLM and Antifa narratives they have been supporting. But the governments of those cities will be very much aware of their diminishing tax base, and they’ll be forced to bring back efforts to establish some level of law and order.

As mentioned above, some are already doing that. The question is: Is it too late?