I was educated by Ray Dalio’s recent publication of Why and How Capitalism Needs to Be Reformed (Parts 1 & 2), an earnest and learned exposition I would not have noticed were it not for Zero Hedge, which continues to offer a brilliant potpourri of useful daily insights. These two posts alerted me to Ray Dalio’s manifesto:
In brief, this patriotic genius who has made a great deal of money for himself and others by working hard and thinking clearly, focuses on the productive individual (generally enabled by a good education in the context of a good family) who is incentivized to work hard in a culture replete with fairness that fosters innovation and teamwork and is generally devoid of bureaucracy, corruption, debt, and excessive profit-taking as the expense of the worker, who is the root of all productive enterprise.
This writes Robert Steele, CEO of Earth Intelligence Network, founder of Marine Corps Intelligence Command, a former Clandestine Services Operations Officer who spent many years in Latin America and Asia. He is an upcoming guest at The Herland Report TV.
ALSO READ: Hedge-fund billionaire Ray Dalio says the American economy poses existential threat if Capitalism does not Redistribute, Business Insider.
He makes the point that capitalists are not inherently evil, they simply follow the money and in modern history the money has been generated around four core practices far removed from the reality of human productivity and potential:
- Technologies have replaced people [without regard to the true costs to community & country]
- Companies have migrated to cheaper people away from their home country [without resistance]
- Central banks [private enterprises] have made financial gamesmanship more profitable than real work [to the point that it is 5X more profitable to cheat at numbers than invest in real things]
- Policy makers have focused on budgets instead of return on investments [they lack intelligence]
There is no substitute for reading him in the original, including his 2017 treatise, 133 pages, Productivity and Structural Reform: Why Countries Succeed & Fail, and What Should Be Done So Failing Countries Succeed, see especially the table of factors to be calculated on page 30 and pages 44, 46 and 52 respectively scoring India, China and Thailand almost totally in the green.
I note with interest that Mexico is fifth in future growth productivity (estimated), after India, China, Thailand, and Singapore. Russia and Brazil and the Koreas are in the second rank but substantially superior to the USA.
Others have made similar points in the past, but others have not had Donald Trump as a President and a growing chorus of populist voices demanding an end to the Deep State and the Shadow Government that have subverted the Constitution and shut down government Of, By, and For We the People while also creating a mass surveillance virtual prison camp society of dumbed-down drugged-up peons. Below are my reviews of the books by John Bogle (RIP) and William Greider, followed by my two master lists of reviews pertaining to our negatives and our potential positives.
It is in the above context that I take Bernie Sanders and the Democrats and their latest line, “capitalism sucks,” with a bit of reserve.
Richard Wolff is the only serious person on the left mounting a reasonable critique of capitalism and his emphasis on democracy in the workplace – the workers must have a vote in the workplace – is where I will meet intelligent Democrats – all three of them – halfway.
Actress Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) is throwing out such moronic lines I sometimes wonder if she is actually working for The Donald and this is his way of being spectacularly funny while planning the demise of the Deep State and its Zionist underbelly.
Let me also say clearly that anyone (this includes Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) who suggests that higher taxes on the wealthy are “the” fixis either seriously stupid (unlikely), or seriously crooked (quite certain). This is not about an “income gap.” This is about – as our President said during the campaign, a “rigged system” in which every aspect of our lives is stacked against the 99% and in favor of the 1% — and that includes admissions to the best schools, regardless of your grades.
The same corruption that prevents enforcement of existing reasonable laws enables the rigged system – a rigged system that includes the manipulation of interest and foreign exchange rates as well as price fixing and tax fraud on a scale that would make Satan proud.
Across every mega-industrial domain from agriculture to banking to defense to housing to manufacturing and medicine and science, we have monopolies, price fixing, and collusion – yes, that word made so famous by the Russian witch-hunt that I was among the first to discredit – between Congress, industry leaders, the media, academicians, and even labor union leaders who refuse to properly represent the workers.
I stood up for the President when both James Clapper and John Brennan were lying their asses off to Congress and the public, and I will say right now that Russia is not our enemy, the Deep State is our enemy, and what I propose below will help bury the Deep State.
This is my foundation – this has been my foundation since I first supported our President with my article “Counter-Coup: How Trump Can Win” (CounterPunch, August 2015) – for arguing that our President cannot be the greatest President ever unless he first re-integrates many more eligible voters and ends the ability of one party to control “pay to play” legislation whether at the national, state, or local level.
We must first fix the fundamentals – voters and the people they elect and how those people are overseen by voters. If we do this we will at the same time set the stage for cutting the federal government in half, nationalizing the federal reserve, ending federal income taxes, restoring state sovereignty, legalizing marijuana, ending all forms of crime including pedophilia, and fixing capitalism.
Allow me to elaborate briefly. Long ago, in 1976, I published a graduate thesis on the preconditions of revolution, updating it for the Marine Corps University in 1992 and again for myself in 2011, most recently re-publishing it in 2018 as a short white paper, Revolution Now! Thinking About Revolution in the USA (Trump Revolution Book 23), available at both Amazon Kindle and free online.
The one-page graphic, recently updated to put every aspect of the USA in the red, is free online. That was the high level mechanical view of how five different domains – political-legal, socio-economic, ideo-cultural, techno-demographic, and natural-geographic – must ALL be nurtured in a holistic fashion if one is to be “civilized” – to be a good steward of the present and set the stage for advanced by others in the future.
It was not until 9/11, a modern atrocity “made in the USA,” that I began to reflect more deeply on the three facets of national health that are not discussed by Ray Dalio.
Ray Dalio’s ideas are necessary and implementable in the near-term by President Donald Trump, but they are not sustainable without embedding three additional domains:
- Civic engagement – 100% informed participation, fully transparent legislation at all levels
- Holistic analytics – decision-support with integrity about everything – end the culture of secrecy
- True cost economics – community, ecological, human health, local to national true costs (water, energy, toxins, displacement) of every product, every service, every policy, every behavior.
Below is a graphic I produced in 2002, updated in 2011 for an article in Greater Democracy, “Citizen in Search of a Leader,” when I realized it was impossible to achieve national security reform without first achieving intelligence reform, which in turn depended on governance reform, which in turn depended on electoral reform – hence my focus today on #UNRIG: Unity for Integrity (Election Reform Act Proposed).
I bring this up now because I believe that President Donald Trump is going to make a fundamental mistake in the next year, and assume that because the Democrats have devolved into what Michael William Lebron (popularly known as Lionel of LionelMedia.com fame) calls, a “dissembled cuckoo’s nest of fractious freneticism, a frisson folly of foundering falderol,” he can coast.
Not only can President Donald Trump not coast, he must lead, and Ray Dalio provides half the plan. I provide the other half. The President is running at 33% on his promises, and the biggest failed promise, on 9/11 disclosure, is right up there with his gratuitous giving of the Golan (it is not his to give) to Israel.
Add two full-time on-staff comics, one playing Bernie Sanders and AOC, the other dedicated to representing our President in all of his potentially comic magnificence, and it’s game over.
I have no doubt such a program could attract $1 billion in funding (50 million x $20 each never mind a few billionaires that share Dalio’s and my concerns) and challenge the President in every single Congressional District. My goal is to press the President to win big, not to defeat the President. Read the full article here.
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