Fulton Greenwall: The chief says that unless the sacred bat is returned before the marriage of the p
Shikaka!
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This commentary is being provided to you as general information only and should not be taken as investment advice. The opinions expressed in these materials represent the personal views of the author(s). It is not investment research or a research recommendation, as it does not constitute substantive research or analysis. Any action that you take as a result of information contained in this document is ultimately your responsibility. Epsilon Theory will not accept liability for any loss or damage, including without limitation to any loss of profit, which may arise directly or indirectly from use of or reliance on such information. Consult your investment advisor before making any investment decisions. It must be noted, that no one can accurately predict the future of the market with certainty or guarantee future investment performance. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Statements in this communication are forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements and other views expressed herein are as of the date of this publication. Actual future results or occurrences may differ significantly from those anticipated in any forward-looking statements, and there is no guarantee that any predictions will come to pass. The views expressed herein are subject to change at any time, due to numerous market and other factors. Epsilon Theory disclaims any obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements or views expressed herein. This information is neither an offer to sell nor a solicitation of any offer to buy any securities. This commentary has been prepared without regard to the individual financial circumstances and objectives of persons who receive it. Epsilon Theory recommends that investors independently evaluate particular investments and strategies, and encourages investors to seek the advice of a financial advisor. The appropriateness of a particular investment or strategy will depend on an investor’s individual circumstances and objectives.
Appreciate the reminder Rusty !
Too easy to fall into that trap
Clear Eyes, Full Heart
“Each is a symbol meant as obedience collar for its native audience and as provocative dog whistle for the opposition.”
So much goodness here and so many lessons…reminds me of a note I have been saving.
2019 will be a pivot for society, its not about inflation, growth or markets but it will effect everything…its not the apocalypse or a revolution it just emerges…
The Long Night is Coming
Written by an anonymous friend who also senses the arrival of the long night of networked tyranny:
"Today is the final day of 2018. As years go, it was adequate to its purpose, which was delivering us in one complete orbit about the Sun. Enough with retrospectives: let us understand what is coming in 2019.
The coming year will be an exceptionally difficult one for the republic, perhaps even uniquely so. Two major streams of events will at their confluence yield extraordinary outcomes: the advent of the 2020 Presidential-campaign cycle, and the nearly inevitable impeachment of the President by the now-incoming Democratic House. (Impeachment by the House will likely succeed, conviction-and-removal by the Senate will likely fail.) The mechanisms of it all will yield imperatives for maximal behavior by all parties. It will become impossible to compromise without communicating fatal weakness to the other side, impossible to retreat without being immolated by your own.
Imagine, if you will, the momentary hysteria of the Kavanaugh nomination — momentary because its principal perpetrators did not actually believe their own proximate case — revived and extended into a permanent state, with a real sense of existential threat animating all participants. That is our probable 2019.
This doesn’t stay inside the Beltway. This means heightened ideological conflict as a permanent feature of ordinary American life. We haven’t seen much of this before — the strife of the 1960s and 1970s being fairly localized in many ways, and that of the 1860s being mostly regionalized — with one major exception. That exception is the American Revolution itself, when neighbors really did turn upon one another in the name of political theory in a process more brutal and merciless than popular memory recalls. Even that, though, is not wholly the template for now, because there does not seem to be much by way of partisans for liberty in 2019. More apt, probably, is the example of France with its own tradition of ideological self-terrorization, devoid of any good guys, whether in 1792-1794, 1870-1871, or 1958-1962.
In our lifetimes, the single most significant threat to the life, liberty, and property of the average American citizen has always been the federal government. The danger in 2019 is that a consequence of that federal government’s crescendoing dysfunction will be the replacement of that most significant threat with one far more grave, far more vicious, and far more relentless: our own neighbors.
The perfected expression of democratic society is, after all, Twitter.
This is the probable 2019 and you should prepare for it. In times past one avenue of preparation and protection was withdrawal. That avenue is closed. There is no retreat, no refuge in federalism or community; no “Benedict option.” We have made our public square inescapable and pervasive — we even have electronic 大字报, although we generally lack the wit or perspective to grasp what that implies. Preparation therefore isn’t the seeking of the safe harbor. Nor is it the girding for combat and surrender to the awful machinery of mass democracy at its lowest point. Let the fanatics do that: there is no victory in their game.
The only preparation that matters is in conducting yourself and your family as if it were another era entirely. You cannot change what 2019 will probably be. You can, though, be an example in memory and history when the time comes to rebuild." --John Robb, Global Guerrillas report
***The tyranny of Dataism…Marshall McLuhan, drawing on the work of Teilhard de Chardin, argued that the technological changes of the last few centuries were propelling us, by changing how we think and interrelate with each other, towards a globally integrated system. Teilhard called it a noosphere, a global mind/consciousness. McLuhan called it a global village.
Clear Eyes and Full Hearts by Ben Hunt and Rusty Guinn is not just a way of thinking and seeing the world for what it really is or a pack…its more than that…its an open-source insurgency and you better start thinking that way…towards a balance system of new feedback loops, data privacy and open decision making! Zeitgeist…I hope its wrong, TBD
Thank you for this – I have been puzzled why start with something so controversial as 70% tax rate that doesn’t do anything anyway. But you’re right! So why does no one start a Meme called “Ban Lobbying!”?
Right? Alas, lobbyists are professional missionaries!
Thanks for the response. Powerful ideas here, although for my part I’m not yet ready to believe we have to be quite so fatalistic about it, or that this is any more pivotal a year than any other. You may be right - I just don’t know. I think the gyre has to widen for quite some time, and that it will. I think Ben may be situated much closer to where you are in his thinking.
Thanks, Peter!
Good points on the memeology, but the history of the 70s and 80s suggest that going back to a high marginal rate tax policy actually will suppress economic growth, economic growth, and entrepreneurial spirit, if only by providing economic incentives for expending resources on tax avoidance schemes. While the 70% proposal itself is probably going nowhere, that 70s mindset appears to be trying to make a comeback (including the renewed fascination of the young with communism and statism).
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
Had to post these thoughts, as they are so relevant and current…
IF you want to see how something goes “Viral” and turns into “Zeitgeist,” then look no further….it’s coming to America….The Long Night will arrive here too….
What are the abstractions here??? TBD
The UK is in the midst of a legitimacy crisis. Reader David summed it up well:
…. can I suggest that non-UK (and non-European) readers pay attention over the next week or so, at least? You’re about to see the unfolding of a political crisis the like of which happens in the Western world once a generation, if that. The combination of an essentially insoluble problem, an incompetent government, an enfeebled civil service, a bitterly divided political system, and government by convention and precedent rather than constitution, has produced a situation in which almost any outcome, including the most extreme, is possible. The effects on the British political system (and whether, indeed, it survives at all) are the real issue here, not Brexit, no matter how important that objectively is. Whilst I think the “sleepwalking” idea from the Grauniad is overstated, a more dangerous, related, worry is that Britain has had hundreds of years of political stability, and people assume that such stability (itself preceded by violence and revolution) will just go on forever. It may, but it also might not. And whereas in France, Spain or Germany, say, violent changes of political system are understood and lived with, that’s not the case in Britain.
If you think Trumpology ends with Trump leaving, it is just the beginning…this is just the buildup until it is selected-out as in evolution thru a systemic change!