Continuing Coverage whether you like it or not………..
Gary North – January 22, 2014
The superclass is meeting at Davos this week. In the words of Archie the bartender at Duffy’s Tavern, it’s where the elite meet to eat.
They will be able to attend a wide range of seminars, in an attempt to see what’s coming next. They don’t know. The accelerating diversity of opinions is overwhelming the narrow focus of the elite. They have enormous wealth, but this wealth is directed mainly by customer demand. Public opinion can no longer be directed by a centralized elite.
So, they will skip most of the seminars. They will meet in private rooms and bars, as the locals met at Duffy’s Tavern so long ago. They will talk over how well things are going with QE3. They will ask each other: “What will happen when the day of monetary reckoning comes?”
The elite seek this, in the words of R. E. McMaster:
Next, build a team of kindred souls
Who share your heart’s desire
Working together, all with a stake
Fans the passion for your fire.
They can do this. They can fund their non-profit projects. But the tyranny of the urgent tyrannizes them. Their vast wealth is not based on passive management. It calls them to put their noses to the grindstone every day. They have only 24 hours a day. They have only threescore and ten years, plus maybe another ten (Psalm 90:10). David Rockefeller has beaten the odds, and a few others have. But time collects its toll.
Can their heirs keep the show running? This is their central concern. It is every establishment’s central concern.
The answer down through history is a resounding “no.”
Duffy’s Tavern closed. Cheers closed. They all close.
New elites will meet at new taverns. But control is drifting away. Moore’s law is steadily overcoming Michels’ iron law of oligarchy.
TWO POEMS
From 1977 until 1979, I worked for Howard Ruff on a part-time basis. I answered questions on his investment hotline. I spoke at his seminars.
Another speaker associated with Ruff was R. E. McMaster. His specialty was commodities, but he also wrote books on economics and military affairs.
I lost track of him a quarter century ago. Time marches on.
Recently, I found his site. He has posted some poems that he wrote over 15 years ago. They are here: http://www.remcmaster.com/poetry/#top.
Two of them caught my eye. One of them is titled, “Winning in Life.” It expresses my own view quite well.
You say you want to win in life
Accomplish all of which you’re capable
Then get up off your procrastinating duff
Take action, be responsible.Decide clearly and precisely
Exactly what you want to do
Then with persistent perseverance
Work hard to see it through.
Don’t be distracted by urgent stuff
Focus on what’s important
Make plans progress toward your goal
Then to creativity’s voice you shall harken.
Next, build a team of kindred souls
Who share your heart’s desire
Working together, all with a stake
Fans the passion for your fire.
It goes on, but this is the heart of the matter.
I don’t know how many people figure this out. The younger you are when you figure it out, the better. The sooner you start applying it in your life, the better. That is because of compound growth. The steady increase — positive feedback — adds up over time.
Then there is “Our Lives’ Four Seasons.” It is in four sections. Section four speaks to me.
The fourth season
Our final one
Is our harvest
When we reap what we have sown
When what has gone around comes around
When our lives are hopefully better, not bitter.
Our harvest years begin between 55 and 65
And last until we,
Like our forefathers before us,
Collapse back into the earth
Dust into dust
The linear progression of the cycle completed
Our legacy of memories and mementos remaining
And, God willing, the laying to rest of loving good seed.
If you are not yet in the fourth season, then you should adopt this exercise. Sit down in front of a computer screen, or get a piece of paper, and write down your goals for season four. Then apply the scenario of the first poem to your list.
McMaster and I are well into season four. I don’t know how well he has done in implementing the first poem, on winning, but I am still on schedule.
CONCLUSION
The opportunities offered by the Internet are greater than anything either of us could have foreseen in 1994, just two decades ago. The world is a different place. The balance of power is sifting away from centralized institutions, especially those involved in communication. The diversity of opinions is drowning out the official opinions of the world’s establishments.
Davos is not the wave of the future. It is the owl of Minerva, flying at dusk.
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