MarkFord
We are in Rancho Santana this week. K takes me on a walk along the beach or through the woods each day.
There are creatures here that you don’t encounter in South Florida. Like this tarantula.
“Bad news drives out good news. The irrational is more controversial than the rational. Concurrence can no longer compete with dissent…. The labor crisis settled at the negotiating table is nothing compared to the information that results in a strike… normality has become the nemesis of network news.” – Spiro Agnew
Anosognosia – a Greek word that roughly translates to “without knowledge of disease” – is a condition that affects how people view themselves and impairs their awareness of their health symptoms. (See “Interesting…” above.)
About my books:
“I’m reading your book The Reluctant Entrepreneur. And just read your book Ready, Fire, Aim. Very inspirational reads. Thank you.” – DV
From Bob Bly re the “Ketchup” brief in the Sept. 2 blog:
“I met and chatted with the ketchup author at an ASJA conference decades ago, when his book Pure Ketchup first came out. I was so fascinated and inspired by his pioneering work in the odd subgenre of ‘culinary history’ that I wrote one of my own, on hot dogs.”
An interesting conversation about copywriting and the direct marketing biz (the industry I work in) by two smart Englishmen. (Pay special attention to the question they try to answer at 16:20!)
Doing Our “Fair Share” for All Those Illegal Immigrants
You’ve heard about the governors of Arizona and Texas bussing illegal immigrants to New York City and Washington, DC. According to Politico, they’ve sent 4,000 of them to the Big Apple since May.
As the mayor of a sanctuary city, Adams is doing his best to welcome these people. He’s giving them free housing, free health care, and free cellphones, to boot. But, golly gee! It’s a big challenge. And expensive!
So, he’s demanding help from the federal government in the form of National Guard troops and billions of federal tax dollars. And he’s calling out the border state governors. What they’ve done is “unimaginable,” he announced in a press conference.
I agree. You can’t imagine the effect of policies you endorse unless you experience the full range of their consequences. And at a total of 4,000 new denizens, New York City is not even close to giving sanctuary to its “fair share” of those crossing the border each year.
Here are the numbers: In the case of NYC, the equation would go like this. The nominator is the US population – now at about 330 million. The numerator would be NYC’s population – about 8 million. Eight million is 2.4% of 330 million. So that makes NYC’s fair share of the 2.6 million migrants that have passed through our borders in the past 12 months about 62,000.
Subtract 6,000 (that Texas and Arizona sent) from the fair-share number of 62,000, and you get 56,000. Which means that Mayor Adams should ask Arizona and Texas to send him another 56,000 migrants asap!
Seriously, though…
The argument about immigration over the southern border has been politically charged (i.e., insanely stupid) for as long as I can remember. Every study I’ve looked at says that some degree of immigration is good for the US economy for all sorts of reasons.
But most Republicans fear that letting in hundreds of thousands of Central Americans (mostly) will result in unfair competition with unskilled US workers and the deterioration of American culture. Whatever that is. So their position is to put up the wall and keep the inflow to a well-vetted trickle.
Democrats and Libertarians, on the other hand, have favored letting in larger numbers of the politically oppressed and financially disadvantaged. And since Biden came into office, the free flow of illegal immigrants has been running at about 2.6 million per year.
My take: The US needs a sane (i.e., bipartisan and non-political) solution that will allow lots of Mexicans and Central Americans to come into our country each year. But they should be well vetted and come here on temporary visas, giving them the ability to fill the tens of thousands of low-paid jobs that illegal immigrants are filling now. And these work permits should allow them to return to their countries to be with their families.
They should be given the chance to find employment. When they do, they should be taxed, just as legal workers are. And the benefits they receive from those taxes should be no more and no less than what legal workers get.
The federal government’s job should be to figure out how many immigrants we should be letting in each year, and what sort of qualifications we (the US) needs. My guess is that the bulk of what we need (maybe 80%) would be honest, hardworking people happy to work at or below minimum wage. The other 20% would be people that were able to bring in other things we need. (Money and/or valuable skills, mostly.)
Of course, that won’t happen soon. In the meantime, Mayor Adams and the other mayors of sanctuary cities should stop complaining about illegal immigrants being bussed into their cities. They should do what they keep telling conservatives to do: Take responsibility for their “fair share.”
How to Change Minds
The general opinion of left-leaning Americans about the Israeli/Palestine conflict has been pro-Palestine for the last 10 years. Palestinians living in Israel are seen as second-class citizens. And those living on the Left Bank are seen as being bullied and bombed by the richer and immensely more powerful State of Israel. Opinions of conservative Americans have, during the same time, become more ardently pro-Israel. Interestingly, the opinions of Jewish Americans are bifurcated along the same lines.
Of course, like the immigration issue (above) and so many other issues, the Israeli/Palestinian problem is complex. Too complex for the average person to have time to research and understand. So, because we don’t have the time and patience to study it in any detail, we tend to align ourselves with some political or social tribe with which we identify.
That’s why, when Ami Horowitz first asked gay- and trans-activists what they thought about the Israeli/Palestine problem, they aligned themselves with the Palestinians. But when he provided them with facts and video footage about what the Palestinians thought about homosexuality and gender identity, thy were forced to rethink their views. Click here.
So Good They Can’t Ignore You
By Cal Newport
288 pages
Published Sept. 18, 2012 by Business Plus
I came across this book while reading a young blog writer that a friend recommended. In talking about something he called “career capital,” a lesson in a course he gives on personal success, he mentioned that his partner in the course had written something by this title.
The subtitle (“Why ‘Follow Your Passion’ Is Bad Advice”) sold me.That’s something I’ve been saying in my books and on my blog posts for 20+ years.
I asked G to order me a copy, and I read it over the weekend. I thought, “I bet this Newport guy subscribed to Early to Rise when I first began to write about this.” He made all the points I made. But he arrives at his advice through interviews: asking organic farmers, venture capitalists, screenwriters, and freelance computer programmers that loved their careers how their passion happened.
It turns out that it takes some thought and effort to end up in a career that you can love. Much of what careers look like from the outside feel very different when you are on the inside, trying to make them work.
Here is some of his advice:
- Select a career that can offer you all or most of what you want. That is usually some combination of challenging work, good compensation, and recognition for expertise and accomplishment.
- Identify the most valuable skills in that industry and commit yourself to acquiring them through purposeful learning.
- When in doubt about what skills to learn, ask yourself: How much will someone pay me to provide that skill?
- Work hard to acquire those skills and whatever knowledge is needed to go along with them. This becomes your career “capital.” The more career capital you have, the farther you will go in your career.
Note: Newport doesn’t tell you what particular skills are needed for any of the industries he studies. He seems to believe, correctly I think, that every business in every industry has its unique features.
* Ketchup With Your History – How every ketchup but one became extinct. Read about it here.
* Hope for Curing Opioid Addiction – Early trials of a new procedure (the insertion of two electrodes into the brain) have shown it to be remarkably effective. Click here for details.
* Take Off That Covid Mask or Don’t Come In – Retail theft has become such a problem in LA and other California cities that store owners are banning face masks. Click here to watch the video.
Doing anything worth doing is almost always going to be more difficult than you think it will be at the onset. But as Leonard Cohen said, “Why shouldn’t my work be hard? Almost everybody’s work is hard. One is distracted by this notion that there is such a thing as inspiration, that it comes fast and easy. And some people are graced by that style. I’m not. So I have to work as hard as any stiff, to come up with the payload.”