The latest issue of AWAI’s Barefoot Writer

In this issue:

* How 3 Magic Ingredients Can Help You Earn a Strong and Reliable Writing Income

* 10 Really Good Reasons to Quit Your Job and Start Your Own Writing Business

* From the Brink of Burnout to the Best of Both Worlds…

* “Kinetic Mind Energy” for Head-Scratching, Humdinger Writing Projects

The latest issue of Independent Healing: “Prescription for Disaster”

80% of US medications are now made in Asian factories with abysmal quality control. The result? Taking prescription drugs has never been more dangerous. In the November issue, you’ll learn how to protect yourself and your family.

“The Persecution and Assassination of Donald J. Trump, Part 5″

In this essay, Bill Bonner’s take on the “deep state” is smarter and more realistic (less conspiratorial) most. It’s a perspective that should be seen by both the right and the left. These 4 paragraphs were the highlight for me:

There are three legs to the Deep State stool. One controls the guns. Another seeks control over the voters. The third controls the money.

 The most powerful and dangerous of the three legs is the one Dwight Eisenhower warned about: the military-industrial complex. It’s gotten much more complex… and much more powerful… since Eisenhower outed it in 1961.

 The second leg is the politically correct, mostly culturally liberal, non-deplorable elite who dominate the universities, the media, and the Health, Education, and Welfare complex.

 Wall Street is the third leg. It is not interested in politics. It is interested in money itself. But it knows that today’s fake money comes from politics, and it does its part, along with the rest of the Deep State, to keep it flowing.

“The Brutalist Strain” in Taki’s Magazine 

The Greeks and the Romans set the standard for architecture. They created buildings that were not only beautiful but functional, and they built them to last. Renaissance and Baroque architects elaborated on the classical principles and produced some impressive buildings. And for the following several hundred years, all the new “schools” of architecture were insignificant takeoffs.

But in the modern era, something terrible happened in architecture that has only gotten worse over the years. The telos of the field shifted from what is good for the user to what will make the architect more important. The result was all the bastardized, impractical, and ephemeral crap that has come into prominence since then. Among the worst was the so-called Brutalist school of architecture. In this essay, Theodore Dalrymple takes on the defenders of this indefensible genre.

China Grows Mutant-Like While the USA Founders 

It’s been about 40 years since I wrote Information Beijing: How to Do Business in China. I wrote it as an employee of Welt Publishing, which specialized in books and newsletters about doing business overseas. I wrote it like the uninformed writer I was at the time, from secondary research and a few conversations with colleagues. I hadn’t even traveled to Beijing. And yet it got good reviews.

Since then, I’ve been to China, for business and pleasure, about a half-dozen times. And I’ve seen firsthand how things have changed. Back in the 1990s, business opportunities were opening up for foreigners but with considerable restrictions. By the early 2000s, things had loosened up and all sorts of sectors were growing. And in the last 10 to 15 years, the Chinese government began to invest hugely in infrastructure, building roads and dams and cities like nothing I’d ever seen or even read about.

Instead of spending billions each year on policing the world, the Chinese government had a different idea: They would do everything possible to become the world’s leading economy –  leveraging their huge population and the combination of central control and semi-free markets and investing commercially in developing countries to open up new markets. And then, about 10 years ago, they began to buy lots and lots of gold as US reserves were depleting.

In short, it looked like China was outpacing the US in every economic and commercial category of growth. But in recent visits, I noticed two things that disturbed me: the enormous smog that hung over many of its most populated cities, and the unfathomable lack of people in some of the new cities.

Tom Dyson has been noticing the same things as he and his family travel through China. If you are interested in this massively important global trend, you might want to check out his blog post– “Prepare for ‘Stagflation’ by Owning Gold and Silver” – and perhaps subscribe to his service.

“The Persecution and Assassination of Donald J. Trump, Part 1” 

The S&P hit a record high last Monday, Oct. 28. But as Bill Bonner explains in this essay, if you measure the S&P’s total corporate earnings in real terms of gold, the stock market is creating half the wealth it was created 20 years ago. That bodes trouble ahead.

“Uber Is Going to Zero and Their VC Backers Know It” 

In a previous post, I wrote about the possible demise of Uber. In this essay on Medium.com, Matt Ward presents a similar view, comparing the deep “moat” AirBnB has against its competition with the shallow “puddle” that surrounds Uber.

The important lesson here is the idea I mentioned in my essay: User-built networks – like AirBnB –  get more valuable (and less vulnerable to competition) as they grow because they provide customers with more of what they want: reach. But company-built networks like Uber have no advantage over upstarts because, as Ward points out, they are essentially in a marketplace of local commerce catering to customers that have no loyalty.

“How Economists Cheat the Working Stiff” by Bill Bonner LINK

“How Fatherhood Should Be” by Tom Dyson 

Tom Dyson, a friend, and former protegé/partner of mine, recently made a major change in his life. He’s been on a journey around the world with his reunited family, and it’s given him a lot to think about.

In this essay, he talks about bonding with his children. LINK

“Arrests at MoMA” in ART news

This is an interesting example of how little some leftists understand about the issues they rally against. In this case, they seem to believe that lending money to poor countries is unethical. LINK