One huge and unsustainable dynamic of the U.S. economic system is the growing gap between rich and poor.
That’s going to reverse direction. One way or another.
BEST would be the Democrats taking power. And effecting a small part of the changes they’ve claimed to want.
Worst would be another 4 years of Trump stupid, incompetent and wasteful corruption.
Read No Mercy / No Malice – What We Leave Behind
Free trade is one way to ensure efficient use of resources.
In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold liberal economic positions while economically left-wing and nationalist political parties generally support protectionism, the opposite of free trade.
So when you see Trump impose tariffs, know that he’s a protectionist. And nationalist. Not a fiscal conservative.
Since at least 2005 there’s been increasing distrust in ‘globalisation’. We ended up with idiots like Trump making decisions, his unsuccessful trade war with China, for example. Both sides lose in trade wars.
Expect everything to get more expensive and/or unavailable as free trade continues to decline.
Singapore is the #1 ranked nation as of 2016 in the Global Enabling Trade Report published by the World Economic Forum.
It is made up of four sub-indexes:
USA is #22. Canada #24.
There is a broad consensus among economists that protectionism has a negative effect on economic growth and economic welfare while free trade and the reduction of trade barriers has a positive effect on economic growth and economic stability.
One bit of good news – USMCA Free Trade Agreement will come into effect soon. That’s NAFTA 2.0 with minor tinkering of auto exports, steel and aluminum tariffs, dairy, egg, and poultry markets.
The agreement also provides updated intellectual property protections.
Professor Scott Galloway’s rant about the American Payment Protection Plan.
Government could have given most families, $30,000 — instead most is going to the rich.
He blames both Parties.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Author Yuval Noah Harari would say my religion is Humanism.
My bible the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The first Humanist Manifesto was issued by a conference held at the University of Chicago in 1933.
Signatories included the philosopher John Dewey, but the majority were ministers (chiefly Unitarian) and theologians.
They identified humanism as an ideology that espouses reason, ethics, and social and economic justice, and they called for science to replace dogma and the supernatural as the basis of morality and decision-making.
So far, so good.
In 1941, the American Humanist Association was organised. Noted members of The AHA included Isaac Asimov, who was the president from 1985 until his death in 1992, and writer Kurt Vonnegut, who followed as honorary president until his death in 2007.
They advocate in Washington, D.C., for separation of church and state.
There is a sub-set called secular humanism that consciously rejects supernatural and religiosity.
I wouldn’t go that far, myself.
But I do believe strongly in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Kongoli virus in the book is much more deadly than COVID-19.
Kongoli kills hundreds of millions. Leads to world wars.
But, for the most part, readers are shocked at the many parallels between this fiction and COVID-19.
It’s a cautionary tale. And an excellent book.
The central figure is an American microbiologist named Henry Parsons. His personal story is engaging.
Henry tries to discover whether Kongoli arrived naturally like past viruses, or if humans (Putin) had been experimenting with bioweapons.
Lawrence Wright is a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, and fellow at the Center for Law and Security at the New York University School of Law.
In 2007 he won a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. A book about Islamic terrorism.
The End of October is fiction.
Wright’s fictional tale is about a mysterious virus that starts in Asia, sweeps across continents, cripples the health care system, wrecks the economy, and kills people worldwide.
“I knew from talking to all these medical experts that something like this was going to happen,” Wright says. “They all knew it. They just didn’t know when.”
Wright began writing the novel in 2017 and turned in his final draft in the summer of 2019.
Wright had started thinking about this plot line after Ridley Scott asked him what kind of disaster could cause what happened in the Cormac McCarthy novel The Road.
Netflix is among the studios considering making The End of October a film.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
I really enjoyed these 3 books by Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari.
Like Bill Bryson, he can make academic subjects interesting and lively.
Critics call it sensationalist infotainment.
He is a simplifier. I like his frequent analogies to well known references.
There are endless interesting factoids.
Critics complain he gets some facts wrong by over-simplifying.
In Sapiens he postulates that humans now rule the earth because of our ability to organize and coordinate in large numbers.
Bees, ants and other species cooperates even better, but they are too inflexible to evolve. And have comparatively small numbers.
We are the only animal that can believe in things that exist purely in our imagination, such as gods, states, money, human rights, corporations and other fictions, and we have developed a unique ability to use these stories to unify and organize groups and ensure cooperation.
He feels humans will continue to evolve, likely into some computer / human hybrid.
Click PLAY or watch his TED Talk on the topic on YouTube. (17min)
Rebecca Rusch and Huyen Nguyen were first to pedal the entire length of the 1,800 km (1,200 mi) Ho Chi Minh Trail through Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
Blood Road, according to director Nicholas Schrunk, “set out to document an epic cycling expedition as well as Rebecca’s personal journey to visit the crash site [of her father], but we ended up uncovering something much deeper.
It’s a story about the scars, both physical and emotional, that war leaves on families, countries, and cultures, and how they still exist today.
Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.
Superb cinematography. Incredible drone footage.
I was reminded just how stupid and futile was the Vietnam War and all wars. What a waste.
I learned of Rebecca Rusch from an excellent and inspiring interview on the Adventure Podcast.
What a badass. Mountain Bike Hall Of Fame. Mountain Biker of the Year, Endurance LIVE Awards. Adventure Sport Magazine “Queen of Pain” (2004)
Rebecca says she was never much of cyclist. Climbing was her thing. But she won a lot of races due to grit, determination and pain tolerance.
Says her toughest adventure was her first Iditarod Trail endurance bike race in winter.
The Capture is a British mystery crime-drama staring Holliday Grainger as hot shot Detective Inspector Rachel Carey of Homicide and Serious Crime Command.
She played Robin Ellacott in Strike, an even better recent British TV series.
Ron Perlman is excellent too.
A fascinating plot – the story starts with a soldier acquitted of a war crime in Afghanistan, based on helmet cam evidence.
But the most interesting part is CCTV video footage being manipulated.
Closed-circuit television (CCTV) is used for security as well as video surveillance around the world. Facial recognition software is used, as well. Scary.
There is one surveillance camera for every 11 people in Britain.
I did think writers had trouble ending this great story. It was dragged out. And I didn’t buy the wrap-up.
Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.
The story of Scott Harrison building Charity: Water to a half billion dollar non-profit is inspiring.
charitywater.org has funded 51,438 water projects for over 11 million people around the world as I post.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
My personal wish list for the world:
Having dealt with the distant past in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011) and with the distant future in Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016), Harari turns in 21 Lessons his attention to the present.
I really enjoyed this book. Harari is a BIG PICTURE guy who quickly puts things into perspective.
His chapter on God is excellent, for example.
21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018)by Yuval Noah Harari … attempts to untangle the technological, political, social, and existential quandaries that humankind faces. …
In The New York Times, Bill Gates calls the book “fascinating” and his author “such a stimulating writer that even when I disagreed, I wanted to keep reading and thinking.” For Gates, Harari “has teed up a crucial global conversation about how to take on the problems of the 21st century.”
related 2020 interview:
Rick McCharles 