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!

Humble Bragging 

I recently spoke at a meeting in Miami of about 40 entrepreneurs, most of whom had businesses with revenues in the $1 million to $10 million range. Since they were in a range I had written extensively about in Ready, Fire, Aim, my book on “the four stages of entrepreneurial growth,” I thought I’d organize my comments around that.

The book was published in 2007, so I went back to it to remind myself of some of the details. I was half expecting to find statements I had made then that I no longer agree with. But to my delight, I found none. On the contrary, my feeling in reading it was, “Boy, this is really good!”

That assessment was validated at the meeting, as no fewer than half a dozen people stated in the Q&A session and told me privately afterwards that they had used the book in starting and developing their own successful businesses.

Two weeks later, a friend of a friend who “wanted to meet me” came to my office. I was a bit concerned that I was going to be sold something – but it turned out that he, too, had built a successful business by following the book. He had then sold the business for a price large enough for him to retire and begin a second career as a venture capitalist.

He was a young man: 34. He got rich and retired at 34! My first retirement (one of four that I have failed at) was when I was 39.

I’d like to tell you how happy I was for his success. And I was. But I was also mildly irritated by how early in life he had achieved it. I wondered if he had a net worth now that was larger than mine was at his age. He never told me.

She Listened. He Didn’t!

I’m writing this the day after the Harris/Trump debate. If you are reading it now, that’s because what I have to say is still relevant.

In the Aug. 23 issue, I said that the election is not about the Trump Haters or the Trump Lovers or even the Trump Haters-Haters, but about undecideds in the swing states. The advice I gave to Harris and Trump was about how to change the minds of those voters, not about pandering to the already decided.

Harris listened to me. She kept on script and didn’t wander. And she cleverly charged Trump with misleading questions and outright falsehoods (e.g., the “good people on both sides” lie) that she knew the moderators wouldn’t fact-check.

Trump didn’t listen to me. He did his usual bantering and hyperbole, which his base loves. But that isn’t likely to have worked on the undecided voters in the swing states.

Trump did point out, as I told him he should, the insanity of allowing 8 million to 10 million foreigners to enter the country since 2020, without vetting, without medical testing, and without legal grounds for them to be here. But he did not emphasize the angle on that which might have worked with the undecideds – i.e., the fact that the states and cities where these millions were shipped could not afford to house and feed them.

Nor did he make it clear that 90% of them were shipped around the country not by the governors of the border states but by the Biden administration itself – mostly on planes landing secretly in airports around the country at night, under cover of darkness. Had he listened to me, he would have come to the debate with data on the billions of dollars that have been spent to accommodate the migrants and the trillion+ the US will have to spend on them in the next several years.

He mentioned, as I had advised, the fact that the Mexican cartels have been making millions by transporting these people, the majority of which are young men and women who were put at the front of the lines because they had promised to pay their fees by working for the cartel strongholds in the destinations they eventually reached. He mentioned the fentanyl problem, but he should have drilled down on it with specifics on the enormity of that business in terms of dollars and deaths.

Had he stuck to my script, he would have come out of that debate a clear winner. But he couldn’t find it in himself to do the preparation he needed to learn some of the basic facts. Instead, he chose to back up his seemingly outrageous statements with one example: the pet-eating story.

Some of the facts he could have and should have brought up…

* According to NBC News, authorities are currently investigating more than 100 serious crimes that have been committed by an ultra-violent gang of migrants from Venezuela known as Tren de Aragua.

* Two alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang – Julio César Hernández Montero, 27 years old, and Yurwin Salazar Maita, 23 – are facing the death penalty for the 2023 kidnapping and murder of 43-year-old José Luis Sánchez Valera in Miami-Dade County.

* In New York, Bernardo Raul Castro-Mata, a 19-year-old from Venezuela with tattoos associated with Tren de Aragua, shot two police officers. Castro-Mata entered the country illegally last July, a member of Immigration and Customs Enforcement told CNN.

* Members of Tren de Aragua have reportedly established a significant presence in parts of Colorado, Fox News reported, having taken over at least two apartment buildings in Aurora. Gang members were not just living in the buildings, they were using some of the apartments for child prostitution.

* Officials arrested two gang members suspected of being involved in “stash houses” used for human trafficking in Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, New Jersey, and Florida, according to a criminal complaint reviewed by CNN.

Trump could have talked about all of that in detail. But he didn’t.

It’s impossible to know if Trump’s debate performance doomed his chances for reelection. Debates, the experts say, don’t usually cause major shifts. But I do think that Harris deserves an A for sticking to my plan, and Trump deserves, at best, a C-.

I doubt they will have another debate. Trump is smart enough to know that he will never be able to follow a script. And his advisors are no doubt telling him to put his time and energy into his rallies. If they don’t have another debate, I think we are looking at a very close election, with the party that loses almost certainly calling it stolen.

Another Thing the Japanese Do Better

Throughout the developed world, people are getting fatter. The British. The Germans. The Poles. Even, to a lesser extent, the Italians and the French. There are exceptions. One of those I’ve written about before: the Japanese.

I’ve been to Japan four or five times in the past 30 years. And each time I got there, I was once again shocked to see how rare it is to see a fat Japanese person. (During my most recent trip a few months ago, I saw only two – and they were both Sumo wrestlers!)

In the Sept. 11 issue of The Rosen Report, Eric Rosen confirms this. Citing data from the World Economic Forum, he notes that only 7.6% of Japanese adults living in Japan are “obese” as compared to 41.6% of Americans. Likewise, only 3.3% of Japanese children fall into this category as compared to more than 20% of American children.

A significant reason for this, Rosen says, is attributable to school lunches. “By law, every school [in Japan] employs a professional nutritionist who has undergone rigorous training, including three years of study beyond becoming a teacher. These nutritionists design meals that are entirely free of processed foods, with each meal prepared from scratch daily.”

Another reason: Japanese children walk to school.

Here’s a short video about this.

Here’s a summary of the data published by the World Economic Forum.

And here is a link to Eric Rosen’s excellent e-letter.

K and I were in the Big Apple this past week. And our time there was full of surprises.

The streets and avenues of midtown and downtown were relatively clean, and the sidewalks were crowded. The mood was vibrant, even upbeat. And the crazies – the drug-addled and lunatic homeless population – were more weirdly entertaining than scary.

The shops and restaurants were either full or half-full, and people were buying. Whether the dollars they were spending were the last they had of all the various government handouts or from wages or profits taken from stock accounts, I couldn’t tell. But the economic gestalt of at least those parts of the city felt remarkably healthy.

These are, of course, the parts of the city least likely to be suffering right now from our floundering (foundering?) economy, and the most likely to be feeling exuberant over the strength of the stock market. But still…

Worth Booking 

K booked us into the recently opened Fifth Avenue Hotel. Our pied-à-terre for the week, a standard guest room (about 250 square feet) with a king-sized bed, cost a thousand a night with an American Express Black Card discount.

K likes trying out new hotels, and she had, as always, researched this one carefully. The reviews, she told me, from both critics and guests, were uniformly excellent. “They better have been,” I thought.

Located on Park Avenue and 28th Street, it is walking distance from Madison Square Park, a few steps from the High Line, and a short cab ride to the theater district.

The interior is spacious, elegant, and features an excellent restaurant and bar that require reservations, even for guests, because of their well-deserved reputations. The décor – in both the public areas and the guest rooms (we saw three) – is tasteful and luxurious.

Most impressive, however, is the service. Every employee with whom we interacted, from the receptionists to the concierges to the butlers to the servers and even the housekeepers, was efficient, capable, and responsive. And they always sported a cheerful and helpful demeanor. In New York City! One can expect excellent service in any first-class hotel in NYC… but genuine smiles?

We were in the city to see our NYC friends, to visit some of our favorite museums, to walk in our favorite parks, and to attend a performance at the Shubert Theatre of Water for Elephants, a musical that’s been selling out since day one.

That was a special treat because the leading lady, Isabelle McCalla, happens to be our niece, the daughter of my sister JF and her husband SM.

Worth Seeing 

The show was very good. And Izzy was great – her third lead role in a Broadway show! I am so proud of her. During the intermission and afterwards at the stage door, I found myself initiating casual conversations with the ticket holders around me and mentioning, very humbly, that I was the leading lady’s uncle.

Although she didn’t do any dance solos in Water for Elephants, Izzy danced like the seasoned pro she is. As a child, she was privileged when it came to dancing. Her parents were for many years the lead dance couple for the American Ballroom Theater and taught ballroom dancing thereafter. Izzy began her training when she was in third grade.

Her acting was very good, too. Much better than it was the first time I saw her act when she was an undergrad at the U of Michigan drama school in 2015. Not surprising, because Izzy was always focused and determined to get better at anything she did.

What did surprise me about her performance in Water for Elephants was her singing.

I’ve seen her sing at least a half-dozen times since that first time nine years ago – and each time, I thought I could detect an improvement. I noticed an improvement when she sang as Jasmine in Aladdin, as Alyssa in The Prom, and a noticeable improvement when she played Maizy in Shucks.

In Water for Elephants, she brought her voice to an even higher level. She had, I think, three solos and two duets. In each, her singing ranged from excellent to mesmerizing.

Normally, at this point in an essay like this, I’d stop to provide a “takeaway” – some pragmatic observation or useful suggestion that the reader could benefit from. Well, there isn’t one. This is simply a bald-faced brag.

But in writing it, there was a takeaway for me…

It has always seemed obvious to me that while many skills can be greatly improved through practice – conscious practice – there are some for which achievement is limited by one’s DNA. You have it or you don’t. An aptitude for math, for example, is one of them. Singing is another. But Izzy’s progress made me realize that even a skill as “inborn” as the ability to sing well can be, with time and persistence, mastered.

I wish I knew that when I was younger.

Click here to watch Izzy and her costar, Grant Gustin, performing “Wild” from Water for Elephants.

Why I’m Moving to a Monthly Format 

If you read the Aug. 28 issue, you know that this is the last of my weekly posts. Several readers wanted to know why I’m making the change.

Here’s one big reason…

Until COVID-19 hit, I didn’t write much about current events. I knew that the news media had biases. But I thought they were mostly about politics and that those biases were easy to spot and, therefore, largely inoffensive. And on subjects other than politics, I figured they were mostly trustworthy.

I felt the same way about the larger social media platforms. And I had equal or greater trust in the government agencies that were charged with researching and informing the public about public health issues (WHO, the NIH, and the CDC).

But in early 2000, I began to notice that the numbers I was hearing and reading about COVID in the news didn’t add up.

Literally.

You didn’t need to be a virologist to notice the discrepancies You needed only a grammar school education in arithmetic.

The early estimates of the lethality rate of the virus, for example, ranged from 12% to 15%. If true, and if the virus was also as contagious as the media were reporting, we were looking at perhaps the deadliest pandemic in history, with a death count not in the talked-about millions, but in the billions.

Two variables alone – the fact that the virus was killing mostly the older and the obese, and the fact that a significant percentage of people who had tested positive were either asymptomatic or had only minor symptoms – made it arithmetically impossible to believe the official numbers.

Yet everyone seemed to accept those numbers as scientific facts, and the media passed them along to the public uncritically.

I was flummoxed. Was I the only one that noticed?

I decided to write about it. And, thus, the purpose of my first essay on COVID was not to inform my readers that they were being fed false information, but to explain my thinking and show them my arithmetic. I did the same in conversations with friends and neighbors. I asked. And I kept asking. But I got only two responses: polite silence or laughter.

This prompted me to double down on my research. I began with how and where the infection started. China and the WHO had issued a report stating that the cause was zoonotic – i.e., passed to humans from an infected animal at an outdoor fish market on December 31, 2019 in Wuhan, China. This was accepted by the CDC and passed along to Americans by Dr. Fauci, as head of the CDC.

Soon thereafter, letters and articles were being published in health and science journals arguing that the DNA of the virus could not have been zoonotic and might have come from a leak at a US-funded laboratory in Wuhan.

I read both sides of the argument but decided that I didn’t have the knowledge to go with one or the other.

In the ensuing weeks, the WHO, Dr. Fauci, and some of his colleagues at the CDC (and I think at the NIH) launched a harsh attack on proponents of the “lab leak” theory, accusing them of being anti-science and engaging in dangerous “misinformation” and “conspiracy theories.”

“What difference does the origin of the virus make?” I wondered. “What matters is how to stop or control it.”

But the campaign continued and deepened. Before long, anything published in support of the lab leak theory was being cancelled. Then several of the scientists and doctors who argued in favor of it were publicly condemned, sanctioned by their medical associations, and in some cases had their licenses revoked.

Today, everyone accepts the lab leak theory as the one that is most likely to be true. Even the CDC. And yet, I’ll bet if I asked 10 people that get their information from CNN and the NYT, at least six of them would still call it a “conspiracy.”

At the same time as I was researching the origins of the virus, I continued to study and write about the fatality rate. And over the years that have passed since I first put forward my guesses, the official lethality count was gradually lowered. But it took nearly four years for the WHO, the CDC, and the NIH to get honest with the public and begin publishing the real numbers.

I had the same experience with questions about the utility of social distancing and masks and the government shutdown of the economy. In every instance, the “findings” coming from government health agencies and the narratives promoted by mainstream media seemed, according to the facts I was discovering, less and less probable.

Eventually, I became a full-fledged disbeliever in anything the “official” sources had to say about COVID. And that led me to mistrust what my government was telling me about all the controversies during that time – from the earlier reports that Russia had interfered with the 2016 presidential election, to the accusation that Trump was “colluding” with Russia during his term of office, to the “facts” publicized following the BLM protests and riots, to the more recent controversies about the Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Hamas wars.

In almost every case, I found numbers that didn’t add up, or logic that was fallacious, or stories that had been fabricated, or facts that were not facts, and very little common sense applied.

I was drawn into these controversies. And when my essays on them were criticized, I was drawn in even deeper to prove my arguments.

It was intense. And intellectually and emotionally exhausting. Moreover, the research was taking up an increasingly bigger proportion of my working day. And so, about a month ago, when I woke up one morning still tired from working till the wee hours to finish another one of those essays, I decided enough was enough. There were plenty of other writers producing arguments on my side of the stories.

I realized that if I could free myself of what had turned into an obsession – if I could step away from researching and writing about current events and political issues – I would be able to free up at least 20 hours a week that I could devote to finishing some of my 18 half-written books.

I didn’t want to stop writing my blog altogether – but I didn’t have to post an issue twice a week. I could do a longer issue once a month. And I would still have time to fulfill my obligation to write several syndicated essays each month for large-circulation e-zines.

So, that is the thinking behind my decision to make this my last weekly issue. When you get to the Postscript at the end, you’ll see what I’m planning for the new monthly issue.

How Long Do You Want to Live? Here’s My Answer… 

Among my wealthy friends and coevals—let’s say, among the top 1% ($6 million+ net worth)—I’ve noticed that the great majority of them are still busy with their lives, eschewing conventional retirement activities for other games of accomplishment.

Interestingly, the most common of these games is accumulating even more wealth than they already have. (Game Objective: He who dies the richest wins.) But logically, it is the least consequential. These are individuals whose current wealth is more than enough to provide for them, their children, their grandchildren, and any other people or organizations they might want to help financially.

From an emotional perspective, continuing with the get-even-richer game is understandable. All the people I’m thinking of began their careers with little or no money. To build the kind of wealth they built would have taken an enormous, almost an excessive, amount of single-minded concentration and sacrifice. When you spend 40 or 50 years working like that, it’s not easy to break the habit. You can’t switch it off like a light bulb.

I know. I’ve tried to retire three times.

The first time, I went back to work because, although I had a significant net worth, the income I could conservatively extract from that each year was not enough to pay for my overgrown yearly expenses.

The second time, I had those expenses covered, but I realized that there were several things I had always wanted to do that I hadn’t done. One of them was writing books. Another was to make a few movies.

Ten years later, having written and published about two dozen books and scripted and produced three movies, I tried to retire for a third time. But I found that I could not get myself to do those things that one is supposed to enjoy in retirement – especially golf.

What I wanted to do, I had to admit, was just keep on working. So, I did. But I changed my manner and purpose. I devoted half of my working hours, about 30% of my income, and more than half of my net worth to three major non-profit projects that, with the help of K and my three sons, I built through a family-directed foundation.

That is how I bowed out of the get-even-richer game and began playing the get-poorer game. But I was, and am, still working crazy hours.

Among my friends that stopped playing the get-rich game when they retired, more than a few replaced the hours they used to spend working with the self-education game – reading books, going to plays and concerts, joining discussion groups, learning new languages, and taking academic courses. I presume it’s because, like I did after my second retirement, they are taking advantage of the time they now have to pursue interests they didn’t have time for during their get-rich years.

And there is another “game” that I notice many of them seem to be playing – one they don’t talk about overtly: the longevity game, the winner of which is he who lives the longest. These guys – whether they are vegans or carnivores or calorie counters – play seriously. They are very strict about their eating habits. They are equally diligent about their exercise, whether it be yoga and meditation, walking 20,000 steps a day, or playing basketball or jumping rope or lifting weights.

I admit to indulging myself, to the degree I can, in playing a similar game. But in my defense, I like to think that I’m not playing the same way. My goal in exercising is not to outlive anyone. My goal is to simply look like I’m going to outlive my fellow players. This is, I admit, a more superficial and less distinguished goal than living to 100. But I learned long ago that if you are 50 and in good health and do everything right in terms of eating well and exercising diligently and taking all the life-extending supplements you can get your hands on, the increase in your lifespan be minimal. The actuarial tables, which are the most reliable of such analytics, conclude unequivocally that it will buy you but a single extra year. Instead of dying at 82, you will die at 83.

So why, one might ask, do I continue to not only keep exercising, but also work like a mad man for 50 to 60 hours a week (and only about 30 hours when I’m “on vacation”)?

The obvious answer is that I can’t help it. But I do have a scientific rationale, which I bring up every time the question is put to me.

Of all the things one can do to increase longevity, the most important, at least according to the studies I’ve read, is having a reason to keep on living. And thanks to my lifelong habit of starting projects that are larger and more time-consuming than they at first appear to be, I have plenty of reasons!

I know that what I should be focused on in the waning years of my life is spending more time with friends and family. And I keep promising myself that I will do that. But somehow in my upbringing, I was infected with two moral commandments that are forever at the base of my conscience. One is to leave the world at least as sorted as you found it. The other is to always finish anything worthwhile that you start. So I also feel obliged to finish the many projects I’ve started over the years but have yet to complete.

So, there it is. And this brings me to a decision I made last weekend…

After Much Internal Debate, I’ve Made a Decision about the Future of MarkFord.Net 

This is the antepenultimate weekly issue of this blog. My plan is to publish two more of these weeklies, then go to a once-a-month schedule with a slightly different format.

I read and watch a ton of material every day to feed the briefs and essays I’ve been writing on current events and topical issues. The new monthly publication will have little to none of that, as I’ll be attempting to restrict my writing to topics that have more universal applications – i.e., topics that will still be worth reading after I’m dead and gone and, thus, will provide me with a way to win the longevity game even if I don’t make it to whatever age the actuarial tables and fate have ascribed to me. As a bonus, I’m hoping it will free up plenty of time for me to focus on the other projects I want to finish.

Meanwhile, before moving on to the new format, I want to thank all those who have helped and supported me on this latest writing adventure. On top of my list are Judith Strauss, my editor of 30 years, and Giovanna Koo, who runs the business side of my life and has been responsible for getting all these hundreds of issues out. I want to thank Sean MacIntyre for his contributions on investing. And, of course, I want to thank all my readers, especially those that have taken the time to affirm or challenge my ideas along the way.

My Plot for a Science Fiction Movie…
And, Like Most Good Science Fiction Movies, It Will Probably Come True!

I’ve been saying this for several years, knowing how implausible it sounds.

I’m talking about my observation that several of the largest social media platforms (and to a lesser extent Google) appear to be evolving into powerful digital nation-states with their own citizens, their own laws, their own penal systems, their own educational and communication systems, and their own forms of taxation.

And now it looks like members of the political classes have finally figured out what’s happening and are taking action to stop it.

I said the expansion of their power was inevitable because these digital nation-states will be providing their digital citizens with more and more of what they really want from life – comfort, entertainment, social engagement, and affirmation. The largest of them would therefore become increasingly rich through their voluntary taxation schemes (subscriptions, fees, etc.). They would also become more formidable than physical nations in the sense that they will become, by using their algorithms as they already do, more influential in the news and ideas their citizens are exposed to.

When I look at the digital landscape today, it seems clear that Amazon, Apple, X, and Google (I feel like I missed one. Did I?) are already in this position.

I also said that when members of the political classes that now control physical nations realize how much they are competing with these rising digital nation-states for money and power, they will attack and destroy them through legal means or appropriate them (in form or in substance) and thus maintain their dominance.

The Chinese were the first to recognize the potential threat and established their own state-controlled social media and internet search companies. The Russians and some of the larger Islamic states came next, exerting the one asset they have that the digital nation-states lack: physical force. And now you can see it happening in the US, in most European countries, and even in South and Central America. (Look at what Brazil did to X last week.)

If these big countries are successful at taking over the emerging digital nation-states, they will be in a position to gradually absorb most of the smaller countries of the world. They won’t have to physically conquer them. They will merely have to infiltrate them with their own digital platforms.

This will be welcomed by the members of the political classes that dream about a single world government. But I don’t see that happening any time soon because of the still very deeply established and active Cold War industry and because of some fundamental differences in cultural values that will be difficult to dissolve.

What I think we will end up with is five or six mega-countries that would break down as follows: the United States of America (with Canada and dozens of other countries), the United States of Europe (sort of like the European Union), the United States of China (with dozens of other countries), the United States of Russia (with dozens of other countries), and the United States of Islam, with one possible addition: Japan.

Speaking of digital nation-states having their own cultures, here’s a glimpse of what Google’s will include.

Just Got Back from a Great Family Vacation on Grand Cayman Island… 

I’m back from a week in Grand Cayman with the immediate family: K, our three sons, their spouses, and six grandkids (two each). Happy to be home.

Not that I did not enjoy my time in the blistering heat of that island of sand about an hour’s flight from Miami, just southwest of Cuba and northwest of Jamaica.

Grand Cayman is a prototypical beautiful Caribbean getaway, with soft white sand beaches and crystal-clear blue and green water.

I remember it from the 1980s…

Seven Mile Beach on Grand Cayman Island, circa 1984 

Back then, the population was about 40,000 people and the largest hotel was the Holiday Inn, which had 80 rooms. I wrote a sales letter then promoting an investment conference on the island that my boss wanted to host. I think the conference fee was $700, and we were aiming at getting 100 people to show up. When, looking at the sales report a week later, we realized that we had 700 sign-ups, we had to break the conference into two, one after the other, and we had to find accommodations for all those people. We filled every little hotel and motel, and even put some guests in private homes. It was an insane crash-course introduction to the investment conference business, which is as much about the comfort and amusement of the attendees as it is about the quality of information and advice they are receiving.

I could write a book about all the frights and surprises and misadventures we lived through. But by working 20 hours a day for 15 days straight, our little crew of six people managed to pull it off, with both the attendees and the speakers giving us great reviews on our post-conference questionnaire. A great relief to us all.

My boss chose Grand Cayman because it was known as an international banking center and a “tax haven,” two things I knew nothing about at the time, and still maintain a high level of ignorance about, despite spending the intervening years publishing lots of economic and financial content.

Back then, the island had a population of about 40,000 and 400 banks and trust companies. Today, it has a population of almost 80,000 and 600 banks and trust companies. If my mental arithmetic is right, that is one bank or trust company for about every 130 residents.

So, it’s still very much an international banking center, although it no longer serves as a tax haven because of US banking laws and regulations initiated about ten years after we held our events there. The changes were made, I’ve read, to put an end to the money laundering and tax dodging that was systemic to the Caribbean/Miami cocaine industry that exploded in the mid 1980s.

But I might have to give myself a bit of credit for those restrictions since the advertisement I wrote to attract investors to our conference mentioned that they could “write off” the cost as a business expense while they learned how to “take advantage of legal tax reduction schemes.”

That was 100% true. But I presume it did not read well with the IRS and certain Congress people as I was told that it was introduced into the Congressional Record as part of a campaign that later disallowed individual investors from deducting investment conference expenses. (Sorry, guys.)

As the banks, the trust companies, and the population grew, so did tourism. Again, I’d like to give myself some credit for this since our conference was the largest-ever two-week incursion of tourism that had ever happened to Grand Cayman. Today, banking is still its largest industry, but is followed very closely by tourism, as you can see from the current photo of Seven Mile Beach below.

Seven Mile Beach 2024 

Nowadays, there are daily Miami/Grand Cayman flights, which are primarily filled with US and Canadian citizens coming to enjoy the many natural attractions that the island always had but were known only to the locals in the ‘80s because the visitors then were staying at the Holiday Inn and having meetings with bankers and trust experts in Georgetown, the capital city.

Here is where we stayed – the Ritz Carlton, which actually sits on top of the old Holiday Inn.

And here is what Georgetown looks like now – a bit busier and more colorful than it was in the 1980s.

There’s a lot to enjoy in Grand Cayman, including swimming with stingrays, visiting the underground “Crystal Caves,” walking the Mastic Trail, and diving the wreck of the USS Kittiwake (an artificial reef teeming with marine wildlife).

But, as I said, I’m happy to be back.

What Matters Most (and Least) in Winning Fights… 

I can’t claim to be an expert, but I’ve learned some things about martial arts and fighters. I’ve taken lessons from and trained with many high-level amateurs and pros since I began practicing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu 27 years ago. I’ve watched, as many fans have, countless fights. But also, because of a close association I’ve had with American Top Team, one of the largest and most successful martial arts teams, I’ve sat in the corner of dozens of fights and been in hotel rooms where fighters were being given last-minute counseling on strategy.

This is what I have learned.

Most fighters win because of skill – i.e., when their combination of skills in any particular fight is dominant over the combination of skills of their opponent.

And of all the skills it takes to win, the greatest one is fighting intelligence: the ability to recognize the strengths of one’s opponent and adjust one’s fighting strategy accordingly.

Next in importance is endurance (or gas). At the highest levels of competition, the level of endurance needed to win is extreme. Endurance is not a natural gift. It can be achieved only by extreme training.

Next is tenacity (or heart), which can be improved through practice and coaching but is mostly inherent in the psychology of the fighter before he first steps into the ring.

The least important factors in winning fights are the two that impress amateur fans the most: muscularity and ferociousness.

A massive, well-built body is undeniably impressive. But as anyone who has studied the fighting game for years knows all too well, you cannot judge a fighter’s actual power or strength in the ring by his physique when he weighs in. And as every experienced fighter knows, ferociousness, which is, at best, a style meant to intimidate one’s opponent, derives from mental weakness. You may think that a great fighter like Mike Tyson belies that contention. But notwithstanding how ferocious he looks when he fights, he wins because of his extraordinary skill and his intelligence and his tenacity.

Finally, there’s this: Among the fighters, like Tyson, that make it to the top, there are some that rise even higher. You can see what I mean here by looking at the face of the winner after he’s achieved the victory he ferociously claimed.

Speaking of Fighting… 
This Is Blatant Stupidity Born of Evil 

I’m writing this before I’ve had the chance to see how Big Media responds to that female Olympic boxer being so quickly beaten into tears by a biological man that the Olympic Committee deemed to be a female.

That something like this was allowed to happen has nothing to do with transphobia. Nor is it a “non-issue” because it is focused on a very small percentage of the population. On the contrary, it is a deeply entrenched, fast-spreading, and extremely destructive intellectual contagion whose consequences reach far beyond post-modern structuralism, intersectionality, critical race theory, and gender fluidity doctrines.

It was never about any of those supremely and transparently stupid ideas. In my opinion, it always was, and still is, about indoctrinating society’s wealthiest, most powerful, and most influential people into a cult of thinking that contradicts everything good and progressive that has occurred in human history since the 18th century.

Megyn Kelly, Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, and countless others are correct in calling it what it is – unadulterated evil masquerading as compassion.

Click here and here and here.

What’s Going to Happen? A New Prediction… 

Since I wrote about the election last week, I have changed my mind about the COPs’ strategy – which, if I’m right, is even more clever than I’d been giving them credit for. So I’ve changed my prediction about how the election will play out.

Let’s begin with this: As I expected, Biden “decided” that he would not be running against Trump in November. I thought it would happen in the last two months of 2023 to give the COPs plenty of time to build a credible campaign for Biden’s replacement. And I believed the replacement would be Gavin Newsom with a Black woman (Michelle Obama, if they could get her) as VP.

But that’s not what happened.

Biden didn’t announce his decision at the end of 2023. Instead, we were treated to another several months of watching our president’s accelerating physical and mental decline, while Big Media and everyone around him kept telling us he was just fine and would continue to be fine for another four years.

Then suddenly, after what seemed to be a perfectly normal (for Biden) cringeworthy debate with Trump, the COPs, Hollywood, and a surging number of key Democratic leaders began to publicly question the abilities they had been so strongly defending just days and weeks earlier.

And after doggedly insisting that he would not resign, Biden apparently woke up one day and decided that the best thing for America would be for him to step aside at this eleventh hour and endorse Kamala Harris for president. Which made her – in an entirely un-Democratic move – the de facto Democratic candidate!

By having Biden wait that long to step aside, and then by having dozens of the most influential liberals in the country speak up in favor of Harris, the COPs had ingeniously converted the Democratic Convention into an endorsement party, eliminating the very likely possibility that had Biden’s announcement come months sooner, her chances for victory at the convention would have been virtually nil.

So, this is where my new theory and prediction come in.

The COPs knew that Biden wasn’t going to win if he ran in November. And they probably assumed he would step aside early, as I had predicted. When he didn’t, it was too late for Newsom. Too late even for Michelle Obama.

But there was one possible way to change the game: Schedule a debate with Trump early on, earlier than one has ever taken place, to make it clear to the country what they already knew – that Biden was not fit to serve. Then use that (perhaps with the promise of a little help in making all those Hunter-related problems go away) to get him to agree to step aside and go down in history as a loveable and loyal American.

Now there’s one more thing that needs to happen. And this is my new prediction. Sometime in the next month or so, Biden will have another health crisis and then regretfully resign from his duties as president.

It will be a heart-warming announcement. And the very next day, the presumptive candidate for president will become the actual president.

Nobody will complain. Maybe not even the Trump camp, because they will expect him to eat Harris up in debates and rallies and so on. But he won’t get the chance. Because the COPs will keep her in the basement until the election. She will make a handful of scripted statements, but she will not be allowed to face a live audience or go against Trump ad hoc.

And if Harris can resist the urge to initiate any significant political campaigns in the next 90 days… if she can stay calm and speak very little and very carefully… if she can resist the temptation to cackle and boogie too much… what might happen is that millions of Americans that currently don’t like her (or fear her) will begin to think, “Actually, she’s not that bad. And it would be cool to have our first Black/ Asian/ Female president!”

I’m Not Gloating, but… 

You heard it here first (and again and again). For more than a year, I’ve been predicting that Biden would drop out of the 2024 presidential race in order to allow someone with a better chance of defeating Trump to take over. I predicted that it would happen sometime between Thanksgiving of 2023 and the new year to give his replacement time to build momentum – but despite increasing pressure, he refused to do it.

It’s already past my deadline to post today’s issue, so I won’t say anything more right now about Biden’s decision to step down. But tomorrow, I will tell you why I thought it was inevitable so long ago, and what I think is going to happen next.

Worth Quoting

“Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.” – Sydney J. Harris

One Final Thought on Japan? Hardly! 

Today, I want to dig into one of a half-dozen thoughts that have stuck with me since coming back from this trip. Thoughts that I’m pretty sure will lend shape to Wealth Culture, the book I’m writing about why some countries and cultures are indisputably much better than others at achieving certain goals.

So, picture this…

I’m in Japan, and it’s 11:00 at night. I’m on my way somewhere, on foot, approaching an intersection completely devoid of moving vehicles. And nearly devoid of people, except for one middle-aged Japanese businessman (I can see that he wears a blue suit), stopped ahead of me at the red light, waiting to cross this narrow, noiseless, utterly unoccupied two-lane road.

He knows, as I do after being in this city for only a few days, that the traffic lights don’t change quickly. If they stay red for a full minute before turning green, you are lucky. Most stay red for what seems like an eternity.

What I want to do, as I near this patient man, is walk quickly past him to cross the street and continue on my journey. But as the distance between us shortens, my resolve disintegrates. When I finally arrive at the corner, I stop and stand next to him. And the two of us stay there like programmed automatons for the next 90 seconds.

I can think of a few plausible explanations for his behavior – much having to do with the respect for order and compliance that is so much a part of Japanese culture. But how can I explain my decision to stop and honor the electronic signal? Never, in the US, would I NOT just jaywalk to the other side.

Before I give you my not-yet-baked theory, I should admit that this very same situation happened to me once before, years ago, late at night, at an entirely deserted crossroad. But that was in Bonn, Germany. And that time, I did hesitate for a moment at the red light, standing next to the only other person visible in that part of the city. But several seconds later, I came to my senses and jaywalked on my way.

I’ve been thinking about why I ignored the red light in Germany and respected it in Japan. The superficial circumstances were the same. But there was a difference. And that difference speaks volumes about Japanese culture, and why I think it is the best and possibly the most enduring national culture that exists today.

“Made in Japan” 

After I finished with my business meetings and presentations late Monday, K had us on the train to Takayama, the first of several additional destinations (Hakone, Kyoto, and Naoshima) we have been visiting since then. I’ve been to Kyoto before, but never to Takayama, Hakone, or Naoshima, all of which have lots to offer in terms of natural beauty, world-class hotels and ryokans (traditional inns), art and history museums, gourmet restaurants, friendly food stalls, and more Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples than you could imagine.

We are in Naoshima as I write this, a lush little island in the Seto Sea that is heavily populated with fantastically serene and sophisticated sculpture gardens and museums of contemporary art.

I have to say this about Japan (and I know, I said it before): The Japanese may not be inventors, but when some other country creates something – anything from an idea to a technique to a style – the Japanese “appropriate” it and bring it to a new and better level.

So much of the art, the architecture, the crafts, and the decor in Japan is undeniably more subtle and sophisticated than the originals. And when it comes to anything trendy – from pop music to street art to teen fashion – the Japanese add a self-conscious note of irony to it that makes it less self-important and more fun.

I’m writing from Benesse House on Naoshima. It’s actually much more than a hotel, because it contains three separate museums, including one devoted to Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photography. I’ve liked his work when I’ve seen it in US museums, but to see so much of it curated and hung so tastefully here… I am feeling like I often do when I get to see a large collection of an artist’s ouvre. I feel like I really understand why he is considered great.

If you’ve never seen Sugimoto’s work, most of it is less like photography than reductionist paintings. There are some pieces that are strongly reminiscent of Mark Rothko. (Maybe even more intense!)

And others that are muted black and gray landscapes that remind me of Robert Kipniss, a favorite of mine who’s not well enough recognized.

This afternoon, we visited another nearby museum, the Lee Ufan Museum, a collaboration between Ufan, a sculptor that works mostly in steel and natural stone, and Tadao Ando, the architect who created this set of buildings, corridors, gardens, and rooms with views that is reminiscent of the Guggenheim Museum in LA, but smaller and much more affecting (and with better views).

Okay, I’ll stop now.

Well, just one more thing: Everything about Japanese architecture, public and private, interior decor and landscape design, furniture, lighting, doors and windows, bathtubs, showers, and even toilets is simply more ingeniously and more thoughtfully made than it is in the US.

The US has contributed many more inventions and novelties to the world, including artistic, cultural, and amusement concepts – but when you embed yourself in Japan, even a little, as we’ve been doing for nearly a month now, you can see how far from perfect American-made is.