Advanced Superintelligence as the next level of reliance on systems the lie at the fringe of our understanding

One of the more curious concepts to emerge from the world of AI is the idea of artificial superintelligence (ASI): a system capable of generating powerful insights that may lie beyond our understanding - like a five-year-old trying to follow Einstein explaining relativity. At that point, humanity will face a fascinating dilemma: Do we trust the recommendations of an intelligence we don’t fully understand and potentially benefit enormously - or do we dismiss it and risk missing out on a better life?

In a way, this isn’t a new problem. Humanity has long depended on systems we didn’t fully comprehend. We awoke to a world of natural forces - weather, seasons, disease, the movement of game - too complex to explain, yet essential for survival. We built myths, rituals, and early sciences to navigate these mysteries, gradually improving our health, harvests, and longevity.

Later, we came to rely on governments and markets - systems no individual could fully grasp but that shaped our prosperity and freedom. And again, we developed theories—some insightful, some inadequate - to guide how best to engage with these forces, even as democracies and dictatorships alike sometimes smoothed and sometimes amplified the chaos of economic life.

There is always a cost - whether we embrace or reject the systems that exceed our understanding. One might argue that Donald Trump’s rejection of global trade is rooted less in policy than in a basic distrust of a system too complex to fully grasp. But turning away from these systems carries a price: diminished prosperity, missed opportunities, isolation. His supporters distrust what they cannot understand. And yet, much of modern life depends on precisely that - trust in systems larger than us.

In this sense, ASI may simply be the next layer in a long human tradition: benefiting from systems we do not fully comprehend. Like nature, like markets, it may become essential before it becomes fully understood. Perhaps acceptance - grounded in results rather than full explanation - isn’t a surrender, but an acceptance of the realities of an interdependent, complex world.

The Limit in an Information Economy is Attention (or why you need to act rather than react in deciding on where to focus)

In an information economy, the limit is attention. If Trump and Musk can capture the attention of the pundits on their Friday wrap up of the week and of the citizenry in their consumption of social media and news ... Americans are not talking about a budget that simultaneously- Increases the deficit by record amounts,
- While offering a huge tax cut to the richest,
- And slashes support to the poorest - many of whom are kids

Know this about the next 3.5 years of Trump's presidency: he will shamelessly, recklessly, and incessantly say and do increasingly egregious things that will outrage, amaze and - most importantly - distract the American pundits and public. You can focus on that. You can be manipulated. Or you can focus on his agenda that is like Putin's wet dream, and push your representatives to resist cashing in our future for his strange impulses, instincts and greed. Even more importantly? Spend time thinking about and arguing FOR the policies that you think will create a better future.

You need to act - rather than just react - in how to direct your attention. 

Trump and Musk - A Collision Between Two Win-Lose Forces

Trump and Musk owe their success to a few things:

1. the ability to fascinate audiences in this information age in which information is unlimited and attention is not and the reward for fascinating people is massive. (TSLA has been a good company but its price has been inflated because it is a meme stock.)
2. shamelessly willing to try anything that feeds into 1.
3. measuring success without regard for any social norms or quaint sense of morality.

The fight between them that will spill over the next while seems as likely to destroy Musk's wealth and Trump's power as it is to result in Musk ending up with Trump's power or Trump ending up with Musk's wealth.

What happens when two win-lose guys go to war? My bet is on a lose-lose outcome.

The Deadly Cost of Living Under a Dictatorship

Estimates are that Russia has hit 1 million casualties in its Ukrainian war (about 100,000 to 150,000 of those are deaths). This is one of the few "advantages" to a dictatorship: in a democracy, ruthlessly throwing this many of your men into the meat grinder of war would lead to a big backlash in public approval and pressure to negotiate peace or even your ouster from office. Given Putin can't be safely challenged within Russia, he can continue to wage a war with devastating consequences for his people with no consequence for him.

Under a dictatorship, it's not just your right to protest and speak out that are compromised. So is your right to a full and healthy life.

Ukrainians Spend Hundreds to Destroy Billion Dollar Bombers

Yesterday Ukraine made a massive drone attack on Russian bombers deep in Russia.Ian Bremmer claims that the drones used to attack cost about $300 to $400 each, as opposed to about one $BILLION each for the Russian advanced bombers Ukrainians attacked (which the Russians no longer have the military capability to build more of). This is - in the odd calculation of war budgets - a 100,000X return on investment.

So many bizarre scenarios that could come from this.

The Virtual World Includes Multitudes ... of realities

The virtual world brought with it millions of parallel experiences. It didn’t just expand our access to information - it partitioned our lives.

One person is lost in Dungeons & Dragons, another in Friends reruns, another defines their reality through three friends - each of whom sees the group differently. Another orbits a band, a Twitch stream, a Reddit thread, a symphony.

Once upon a time, America was divided into 13 colonies, later 50 states. Now, in the age of virtual immersion, the United States is divided into 335 million personal realities - each fed by its own feed, its own curated symbols, memories, and narratives.

In this world, the idea that one political ideology - left, right, libertarian, socialist, populist - can command, convince, or unify more than a sliver of these realities seems less like ambition and more like delusion.

At best, a political ideology today can annoy a majority.
Commanding consensus? That’s not just unlikely - it’s based on an outdated map of a country that no longer exists in one place at one time. Jefferson's world had borders. This world does not.

The Deceit of the Internet and the Honesty of the Library

One of the ways a library was more honest than the internet is that it showed you the truth up front: rows and rows of shelves, a vast sprawl of knowledge that made it clear you could never consume it all. You knew your limits. So you focused on the book in front of you.

The internet, by contrast, only shows you a screenful at a time, and in doing so creates a subtle illusion: that infinite knowledge is within reach, just a few more clicks away. So we scroll. And scroll. Deluded by the tidy edges of our screens, we think we’re almost there - almost caught up - while the sprawl behind those edges grows exponentially.

The library was humble. The internet is seductive.

The library told you: this is more than you can ever master - so choose wisely, and dig deep.
The internet whispers: you’re almost done - just one more link, one more scroll, one more tab.

We are drowning in an ocean of information disguised as a mirage, a manageable pool. And unless we learn to recognize the shore—real conversations, deliberate thinking, quiet presence - we risk losing ourselves in the illusion of knowing, without ever truly understanding.

The Politics of Theater and Democracy's Intermission

The information economy is about getting attention and that is mostly about theater. The Greeks invented democracy and theater about 2,500 years ago and after 250 years we Americans have apparently decided we can only choose one.

Schrödinger’s Cash

Meme in circulation:
15 years ago, a man spent 10,000 Bitcoin on 2 pizzas, worth $41 at the time. Today, that number of Bitcoin would be worth more than one billion dollars.

Of note: this remains the last transaction ever made with bitcoin.

Commentary:

I know, I know - my "of note" is a lie. But think about what’s being communicated here:

You should invest in bitcoin because it’s the currency of the future… and only a fool would ever use it as actual currency.

It’s Schrödinger’s cash:

If you never spend it, it might be worth billions.

If you do spend it, it won't be worth much.

A Brief, Almost Plausible Theory of Memes

Perhaps you’ve been told that meme comes from a variant of gene - a unit of cultural information, replicating through the human hive mind the way genes carry DNA. That’s part of it.

Meme shares an etymology with mesmerize. They connect with our subconscious mind, the part that puts aside skepticism and is greatly susceptible to ideas that cozy up to our preconceptions. Memes mesmerize, hypnotize, captivate, bedazzle and affirm our priors in the most gratifying way. They are to the mind what junk food is to our gut.

Memes are partly like genes. They’re also partly like magic spells.

They don’t spread by reason - they spread like pop songs with catchy tunes, images, messages, variants on themes.

They’re less evolving ideas than mesmerizing daydreams, less reliant on a well-supported argument than a well-supported feeling, the Muzak of concepts.

The Priest and the Jester

What do the priest and the jester have in common?

Their wardrobe doesn’t let you confuse them for a member of the audience.

They both stand slightly apart.
Not because they’re better, but because they’re playing a role:
One to reveal the sacred, the other the ridiculous.
Both let you see the routine -
One as part of some profound mystery,
The other as part of some strange prank.

They don’t offer certainty, exactly.
They offer perspective.
One through reverence, the other through ridicule.
And if they’re good at what they do,
You leave the room slightly less sure of how things must be - 
And slightly more aware of how many possibilities remain.

So if this blog sometimes sounds like a sermon and sometimes like a setup for a punchline…
That’s because I’ve always felt the priest and the jester had more in common than they’re usually allowed to admit.

Crypto Fundraisers - Bake Sales Give Way to Block Chains

I’m launching my own cryptocurrency.

I'm calling it Fiat Money.

Backed by central banks. Unlike yours.

Another, targeted at fans of a particularly vivid world: "Tolkien Tokens"

• You call it crypto.
• We call it currency for a strange new world.

Whether you're bartering with hobbits, investing in elven startups, or escaping Mordor's inflationary spiral, Tolkien Tokens travel farther than fiat ever could.

Backed by myth, meme, and mild delusion.
Spendable anywhere dreams outrun reason.

Finally, as government spending continues to erode and the odd fascination with crypto continues, it is (weirdly) easy to imagine a world in which school fundraisers come in the form of issuing some odd crypto called "Baker Elementary Crypto Coin!" Crypto as the new bake sale.

“Instead of a bake sale, we’ve issued 10,000 $BKR tokens—buy now and help us replace the gym floor!”

You can almost hear the PTA meeting now:

• “Should we mint an NFT of Principal Ramirez doing the Chicken Dance at last year’s talent show?”

• “What if we offer staking rewards in the form of homework passes?”

• “Is anyone else worried that our bake sale is now subject to SEC regulation?”

Neighborhood schools could leapfrog from cookie dough to crypto wallets. It’s like merging Little House on the Blockchain with Silicon Valley.

A Man of Many Apps

He was the most literal man I knew. All of his apps were actual appliances - he just called them apps to sound contemporary. He had a rotary phone app. A radio app. A tea kettle app. A rice cooker app. A fire alarm app. A fireplace app. An easy chair app.

To be fair, his apps were - in some ways - more advanced than the ones cluttering his friends’ smartphones. “Do you have an app that can make toast?” he’d ask. “No? Well, I do.” And then he’d bring out his butter knife app and prepare the toast with a flourish.

The Allure of Racism and Nationalism

Why are racism and nationalism so alluring? Because they offer status without effort.

You’re told you’re somebody - superior, even - simply because of two things you didn’t choose and didn’t earn: your race and the place you were born.

It’s the seductive promise of taking pride in something that was - literally - effortless.

Trump Continues The Wild Swings Between Democrats Lowering Deficits and Republicans Raising Them

Notice how in this graph, starting with Carter and Reagan, Republican presidents sign off on the budgets that increase the deficit and Democrats signoff on the budgets that lower the deficit.
There are a few deluded souls who think that Trump will be signing off on a budget that lowers the deficit but that simply isn't the way politics works in these United States. Trump will cut benefits to the poor but not as much as he will cut taxes to the wealthy. He will increase the deficit he inherited while increasing the wealth of people already debating about whether to leave more money for charity or their kids in their will, people who won't even spend the extra money Trump will give them.

It could get much worse. One thing that few people - definitely not Trump - understand is that for every dollar of trade deficit, there is an offsetting dollar of financial inflow. It is accounting. And that means that our trade deficits with the rest of the world and the rest of the world's willingness to finance our debt are tied.

If Trump puts in place tariffs that lower trade deficits (an uncertain outcome but one he claims is his goal), it will actually raise the cost of debt as foreign capital inflows slow commensurate with a diminished trade deficit. Raise the cost of debt just as that rate of debt accumulation again rises.

Trump will cut benefits like Medicaid. Aid to the poorest. Some of those poor people voted for Trump, unclear they'd be losing benefits just for voting against immigrants and those trans people. But those budget cuts will be smaller than the cost of those tax cuts to the most affluent among us.

The gap between rich and poor will continue to widen. And the poor - still convinced that Trump policies have nothing to do with their poverty but convinced that they're brave warriors in a cultural war - will suffer more. And there will be yet another in a series of red bars that shoot upwards.

Why You Keep Hearing About Fascism

Everything evolves - and nothing is ever precise at the time. But here’s why you keep hearing the word fascism in 2020s America.

In Stalin’s Soviet Union, communism meant total state control:
Intellectuals were silenced or exiled.
The press printed only what the state deemed “true.” (Pravda means truth. )
Labor unions had no independence.
Corporations barely existed.

Fascism, as practiced by Hitler, kept all that but added corporate partnership:
Big business thrived under military contracts and infrastructure projects (think the autobahn).
The state and corporations shared power.

Communism: The state dominates everything.
Fascism: The state and corporations dominate together. Think of it as for-profit totalitarianism.

Now contrast that with FDR’s America:
Labor unions could strike. And they often did, to the annoyance of many who thought that this should not be allowed.
The courts blocked major legislation (like efforts to end child labor), to the annoyance of many who thought that this should not be allowed.
Congress resisted and often changed and sometime rejected FDR’s policies, to the annoyance of many who thought that this should not be allowed.
The press, intellectuals, and public argued – loudly, to the annoyance of many who thought that this should not be allowed.

It was slow, messy, and full of friction - but it worked. 

After WWII, Nazi Germany collapsed and the Soviet Union ossified, quality of life only slowly improving and dissent largely squelched. 

The US, after having loudly and clumsily gotten so many different moving parts aligned, enjoyed the fastest growing economy – and until about 1990 the greatest narrowing between rich and poor – in the history of the world.

So why do some Americans now flirt with fascism?

Because it’s tempting.

It promises:
Order in place of argument
Certainty in place of debate
Progress without (messy, contradictory, loud, inefficient, cognitively dissonant) process

To people exhausted by democracy’s delays and ossified, ineffective and inefficient institutions, a strongman who silences dissent and drives change looks like relief.
Dictatorship promises cognitive peace and quiet. It promises to “get things done!”

But that peace is a mirage.

Because in the end, a dictatorship must wage war on dissent - and on reality itself. Reality is always messier and more complicated than any model of it. If you try to ignore realities, you don’t just crash against different interests and opinions. You ultimately crash against reality itself.

Fascism appeals to those who want wealth and simplicity.

But the world isn’t simple.

And when systems stop evolving, something new continually emerging out of messy conflict and loud noise, they don’t thrive.
They break.

AI Promises Gales of Creative Destruction the Likes of Which We've Never Seen

 Stunning if true...

Google’s Jeff Dean predicts we’re about one year away from having an AI capable of performing like a junior engineer - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And the bigger challenge? Senior engineers may soon find themselves managing the equivalent of 40 AI assistants. (These claims are made around the 24-minute mark of this video.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq8MhTFCs80

If this doesn’t stir really, really strong feelings - both amazement and unease - you’re wired differently than me. It’s hard to imagine this won’t have sweeping implications for productivity, pay, and employment.

Engineers and developers may soon shift from being solo contributors or small teams to managing entire squadrons of AI assistants. On the surface, that sounds like a dream: productivity through the roof, rapid iteration, endless capacity.

But it should also make you pause - because it raises profound questions.

Will this replace jobs - since one person can now do what once took forty?
Probably.

Or will it create jobs - as companies scramble to hire every engineer who can manage a digital army and generate compounding returns?
Also probably.

The economic logic for hiring skilled people becomes overwhelming. The leverage of a single employee expands dramatically. And the fear that someone, somewhere, will be replaced by a machine is matched only by the hope that those machines will unlock new opportunities, industries, and tools we’ve only begun to imagine.

Either - or especially both - promises gales of creative destruction of hurricane force. It’s hard to imagine this playing out like anything we’ve experienced before.

In a moment like this, I feel like the only honest way to spell AI is as an exclamation:

“AI… Ay yi yi!”

It may be artificial intelligence - but the feelings it provokes?
Very real.

The Pyramids Created the Egyptian Empire

Consider the possibility that it was not the Egyptian Empire that created the pyramids. It was the pyramids that created the Egyptian Empire.

This inversion captures something essential about how civilizations emerge. It’s tempting to see great structures as the product of centralized power — as monuments built by empires. But it might just be that it’s the other way around: the ambition to create something transcendent becomes the catalyst that brings an empire into being.

To construct pyramids required coordination across regions, professions, and generations. They necessitated systems able to organize labor, standardize materials, distribute food, transmit and preserve ideas, and turn meaning into something everyone could see and grasp. Before you could create pyramids, you had to create institutions like religion, rulers, priests, managers and work hierarchies. And those institutions – like language itself – turned out to be plastic, could be used for something more than simply constructing a pyramid. Or more to the point, one had to create so many subassemblies before one could create a pyramid: an economy, a dynasty, a religion, and a mythology. All of that added up to an empire. Oh, and with pyramids as literal monuments to what they’d constructed.

Survival organizes tribes. Shared purpose organizes civilizations. When a society takes on a task that outlives any individual - whether a pyramid, cathedral, transcontinental railway, or a moonshot - it activates capabilities and connections that redefine what that society is. The monument becomes both product and producer of civilization. Not merely a reflection of something bigger than an individual life or lifetime, but the foundation and context for them.

Progress Is Reversible

 John Gray makes a quietly unsettling point.

Technology tends to build. Once we figure out how to split the atom or send emails or make vaccines, that knowledge tends to stay with us. We can build on it. Add layers. Each breakthrough has the potential to become the starting point for the next.

But moral and political progress? That’s more complicated.

Gray calls it entropic. It falls apart if you don’t keep after it.

Democracy doesn’t maintain itself. If a people or a generation ignore or distort it, it won’t be automatically discovered by the next generation who can use it as a starting point. It can be lost. Rights can be rolled back. People forget. Norms get corroded. One generation's hard-won freedoms can slip away in a generation — or less.

We like to think:

"Civil rights? That was a problem in the past but we’re beyond that now."

"Democracy? Obviously."

"War? We have peace treaties now. We’re not animals.”

But history says otherwise. The Roman Empire collapsed. Its roads outlasted its laws. Technology often endures. Civilization’s ethics and social norms are more fragile.

And here’s the really sobering thing.

We’re still running modern society on ancient hardware. Our instincts, impulses, and tribal reflexes haven’t changed much in thousands of years. Civilization is a thin layer of software running on old biology. No wonder it sometimes glitches.

Parents know this.

Raising a child is re-teaching civilization from scratch. Language. Fairness. How not to hit. How to live with others. How to find meaning or recover from failure or heartbreak.

We can build on past successes but it is not automatic. The lessons have to be learned. Again. And again. They’re vulnerable. They can be lost or distorted.

Progress in ethics and politics is not permanent. It’s provisional.

Again - and as Gray reminds us - entropic. It will lose energy without reinvestment. Ignore it for too long or begin to distort it with lies and moral shortcuts, assume that it’s already been solved, and you can start to lose it. You’ll think you’re building on the third floor and you might suddenly find yourself in the basement.

Of all the investments we make, working against entropy in the realm of politics and ethics might be the most essential.

250th Anniversary of the Wealth of Nations and the Declaration of Independence and The Pursuit of Happiness as the Compass for Progress

"Well, it means exactly what it says, it's a declaration. A declaration of unity and love and respect, and it means a lot. And it's something very special to our country."
— Donald Trump, on the Declaration of Independence

Let me offer a slightly different explanation.
2026 will be the 250th anniversary of two extraordinary documents.

In 1776, Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, and Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations.

One became the foundation of a new democratic government. The other, a defining statement of market economics. Together, they shaped the modern world through the interplay of democracy and markets — two forces through which ordinary people, not kings, express their will and shape their world.

Much of Jefferson’s Declaration is devoted to grievances against King George III, whose authority rested on divine right. By contrast, the new American executive would draw legitimacy from votes — not divine claims, but choices that could be counted and verified. Jefferson’s words marked a profound shift: from power ordained by heaven to power grounded in reason and consent.

Newton defined natural laws that governed the fall of an apple or the orbit of the moon around the earth or the earth around the sun. Jefferson extended that idea to government: political authority, too, should arise from natural laws or rights. Earlier documents, like the Magna Carta and England’s Bill of Rights, advanced liberty but did not fully embrace this view. Jefferson went further. In the Declaration’s opening, he invoked “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” anchoring Enlightenment thought at the heart of American self-government.
Isaac Newton had revealed the laws governing the physical universe. John Locke applied that logic to society, arguing for inherent rights to life, liberty, and property. Jefferson followed Locke, but famously revised his formula, replacing “property” with something at once more expansive and more human: “the pursuit of happiness.”

That change mattered. Divine right could not be verified. Votes could be counted. Where monarchs ruled by decree, presidents would govern by consent. Jefferson's was a world where legitimacy would no longer descend from above but rise from below, from what the people perceived would make them happy.

This was revolutionary. Britain held parliamentary elections, but the United States combined regular legislative and executive elections in a way that arguably made it the world’s first modern democracy.

Jefferson’s idea seemed modest: happiness, not divine will. Yet in that modesty lay its radical promise. Government and markets alike would exist not to impose order but to enable individuals to shape their own lives. Smith’s invisible hand and Jefferson’s ballot box became twin arenas where citizens, through dollars spent and votes cast, could pursue their ambitions and shape their world.

When Abraham Lincoln rose at Gettysburg to justify a war that threatened the nation’s survival, he did not turn to the Constitution. He returned to Jefferson. It was the Declaration’s assertion — that all are created equal and that government exists to serve the governed — that Lincoln called the nation’s true founding idea.

The Declaration of Independence did something extraordinary. It replaced the invisible decrees of monarchs with the visible hopes (or at least countable ballots) of citizens. It made happiness the compass for navigating this new world.

Jefferson’s Declaration and Smith’s Wealth of Nations together launched a world shaped not by kings or mystics, but by citizens — expressing their will through markets and ballots, building a future no monarch could command or predict.

Two hundred and fifty years later, that interplay continues. Happiness remains elusive, unfinished, and yet still animates the choices we make — at cash registers and ballot boxes alike.

So no — the Declaration has not always delivered unity or love or even respect. But it did deliver something far more enduring. It gave ordinary people the right to shape the government and markets as their tool, not a king’s.

And that, more than anything, is what the Declaration of Independence is about.

How Trump's Trade Policies Could Drive Down the Value of American Assets

Trump has announced a 25% tariff on imported cars.

Here's something to remember:
Trade deficit = Net inflow of foreign capital

If we buy more goods from abroad than we sell, we must also sell more financial assets - like debt, stocks, and real estate - to other countries. America’s booming stock market and the high valuations of its companies are directly connected to our trade deficit. The world sells us consumer goods; we sell them financial assets. And creating valuable companies is what America does best. No other country in history has matched America's track record at generating valuable businesses - particularly in California’s Silicon Valley and Washington’s King County.

So, if Trump succeeds in lowering the trade deficit, he’ll simultaneously reduce the inflow of foreign capital, leading directly to lower stock prices and asset values.

Everything Trump understands about economics can be summed up in one idea: life is easier when you inherit half a billion dollars from your father. Capital flows? Trade balances? Try explaining these concepts to Trump or a MAGA follower, and they'll stare at you like you're speaking some foreign language. They might even try to put a tariff on your tongue.

The Final Numbers Are in: Biden's Presidency Had Best Job Numbers on Record

Biden's presidency is over. He promised to prioritize jobs.

And he delivered.

His term saw the lowest average unemployment rate and the highest rate of job creation of any president since FDR.

By one key measure - the drop in unemployment from his first to last month in office - only Obama and Clinton oversaw a bigger decline. (Americans tend to elect Democrats to fix broken economies, their first job always seeming to be getting the car out of the garage and back onto the road.)

No other president in your lifetime has posted - or will post - better numbers.

Trade & Stephen Covey’s 3 Habits for Strong Relationships

Stephen Covey’s three key habits for building strong relationships are:
1. Think Win-Win
2. Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
3. Synergize

Here’s how they work in practice:
• You approach others—whether people or organizations—believing there’s a way for both of you to win.
• You listen first, understanding what a win looks like for them before sharing what a win looks like for you.
• Then, you synergize, finding or creating an outcome where both sides win—maybe even more than expected.

Some people don’t think this way—but that’s their loss.
Win-win thinking requires assertiveness—you have to let others know what a win looks like for you. That takes courage. The courage to stand up for yourself.
But it also requires consideration—you have to listen. Seek first to understand means respecting the other person enough to hear what matters to them.

This is where relationships can break down.
• Sometimes, you’ll realize there’s no real overlap in what a “win” means for both of you.
• But even when there is overlap, synergizing means getting creative—maybe you find a compromise, maybe they do, maybe you arrive at a solution neither of you thought of before you engaged in conversation.

And if you can’t? That’s okay too. With 8 billion people in the world, you don’t have to force yourself into relationships that can only survive if one of you loses. Instead, find, create, and insist on win-win relationships.

Of course, any normal relationship will include some win-lose exchanges—that’s life. The point is:
• Don’t be the person who insists every relationship must be win-lose—where the other person is always subordinate to you.
• And don’t be the person who always loses. Standing up for your own goals and desires isn’t selfish—it’s essential.

Why This Matters Beyond Personal Relationships
I bring this up for two reasons:
1. It’s just great advice. Covey nailed something fundamental, and it’s worth sharing.
2. It applies beyond personal relationships—especially in trade and economics.

Empires treat their colonies as win-lose. Or at best win, not caring so much whether the colony wins or loses. They extract resources and wealth, ensuring the empire wins while the colony is largely left to fend for itself.

But trade between independent nations – trade in a post imperialistic, post-colonial world - is expected to be different. Nations, businesses, and individuals trade because both sides benefit. Business and economics lend themselves to the win-win dynamic.

Trade wars are fought by people who get none of this. Wars are win-lose. Trade should be win-win. To make it a trade war is to ignore whether you’re making progress and instead just focusing on whether you’re doing better than them.

People with a reptilian mindset still see trade as win-lose—as if crushing the other side is the goal. But we have better options. We can think bigger. Both sides can thrive and prosper and their win can actually enhance yours. Would you rather trade with a country that was prosperous and creative or one that had only mud to harvest and sell? Everyone should aspire to have a prosperous trading partner. Even if you have no normal empathy for the condition of others, prosperous trading partners could benefit you simply because they will pay more for your stuff and have cool stuff to sell to you. And that's win-win.

Donald and the Confederates: Foes of the 14th Amendment

Raise your hand if you’re surprised that Trump thinks he can rewrite the Constitution with a memo.

This week, Trump attempted to overturn the 14th Amendment with an executive order. The last people to oppose the 14th Amendment so openly? The Confederates.

The 13th Amendment ended slavery. But it quickly became clear that the former Confederates were intent on treating freed slaves as second-class citizens, denying them basic rights. For instance, even former slaves who had lived and worked in the United States for generations were barred from voting because they were deemed "the wrong sort of people." For the confederates, it didn't matter if you were born here if you were born to the wrong kind of woman. Race and ancestry mattered.

In response, the Republicans drafted and passed the 14th Amendment to guarantee birthright citizenship, ensuring that former slaveowners could not deny citizenship to freed slaves by claiming they were "lesser people." One of the most beautiful principles this country has embraced is that you don’t need to prove you were born to “the right people” to be a citizen—you simply have to be born here. The 14th Amendment fundamentally redefined citizenship, basing it on place of birth, not race, ancestry, or property ownership.

The 14th Amendment did even more—for example, it redefined representation in the House by counting all people in a state’s population. But its core principle was the realization of an ideal penned by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: All men are created equal.

Donald Trump now holds the record as the oldest president ever sworn into office

Donald Trump now holds the record as the oldest president ever sworn into office. The Constitution specifies that one must be at least 35 years old to be president, but there is no upper age limit.

Donald Trump is older than Bill Clinton. Nonetheless, a person born during Bill Clinton's presidency would be old enough to serve as president by the end of Donald Trump's term. Clinton was first sworn into office 32 years ago.

Donald Trump was 14 when JFK was sworn into office in 1961. JFK has now been gone for more than 61 years.

George W. Bush was born 22 days after Trump, and Bill Clinton was born 44 days after Bush. All three were born within a year of Japan’s surrender. Rumor has it that someday baby boomers will die out, but there is, as yet, no evidence of this.

William Henry Harrison died just 31 days into his term. It took voters 140 years to summon the courage to elect another president (Reagan) older than Harrison. This decade, voters have shown no hesitation when it comes to electing the elderly.

The Alarming Math of Financing Retirement in a World With a Shrinking Population

The population explosion of the last century is poised to dramatically reverse in this century, and the consequences will be profound. One of the biggest? Financing retirement.

When FDR and Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins introduced Social Security in 1935, the math seemed almost too good to be true. By 1940, when monthly benefits began, there were nearly 160 workers for every retiree. To put that in perspective, if each worker donated just one hour of their monthly wages, it could fully fund a retirement income equal to the national average for every retiree in the country. Social Security wasn’t just a safety net—it was a hammock supported by a workforce the size of an army.

But by 1960, the ratio had dropped to just 5.1 workers per beneficiary. Fast forward to the program’s 100th anniversary in 2035, and we’re looking at a projected ratio of just 2 workers per retiree. Do the math: in this scenario, each worker would need to fork over nearly 80 hours of their pay—or about half of their monthly income—just to keep retirees afloat at the national average. That’s not a hammock; it’s a fiscal tightrope.

Faced with this reality, it’s hard not to root for a cavalry of saviors: immigrants, robots, AI, and grandchildren. So, let’s join hands across ideological lines. Team up with your conservative friends who champion family values and want more babies. Link arms with your globalist pals who advocate for more immigrants. High-five your tech-bro buddies banking on robots and AI to lighten the load. Cheer for all of these and all of them and all of us who aspire to enjoying retirement.

Or, if none of that sounds appealing, there’s always the option of redefining retirement as a couple of glorious weeks instead of a couple of decades. You know, like a vacation. Your call.

Reviewing Economic Forecast from One Year Ago and New Forecast for 2025 and 2026

2024 Forecast Recap (Posted 1/1/2024):
- Prediction: Unemployment would rise above 4%, possibly with one quarter of job losses.
- Prediction: Stock prices would rise along with unemployment, potentially dramatically.

What Actually Happened?
- Unemployment did rise above 4%, reaching 4.2% in November, up from 3.7% at the start of the year.
- Jobs: Despite higher unemployment, there was no month—let alone a quarter—of net job losses. The lowest job growth came in August, with fewer than 100,000 jobs added, the weakest since 2020.
- Stock Market: The NASDAQ soared, finishing the year up over 28%, fulfilling the prediction of a dramatic rise.

---

Forecast for 2025 and 2026:
The outlook depends entirely on whether the Republican-controlled Congress follows Trump’s policies of mass deportations and significant tariffs. If they do:
- Scenario: Deportations Exceeding 10 Million & Tariffs of 20–40%
1. Recession:
- The economy will contract for more than two quarters and shrink by over 2%, marking only the second recession since the Great Recession.
2. Inflation:
- Inflation will spike above 5%, driven by:
- Higher costs for goods due to tariffs.
- Domestic producers raising prices under tariff protection.
3. Stock Market:
- The market will decline by at least 5–10% as higher costs and retaliatory tariffs erode profits for U.S. companies facing supply chain disruptions and weaker sales.
4. Policy Response:
- Trump: Will remain oblivious to - but angry about - the economic consequences, offering no substantive explanation or course correction.
- Republicans in Congress: Some may recognize the damage and attempt to reverse these policies, though resistance within the party is likely.
- MAGA Supporters: Will reject economic reality, blaming the failure on conspiracies rather than the inanity of the policies themselves.
---
In Summary:
The economic trajectory for 2025 and 2026 hinges on whether Congress pursues policies that disrupt trade and labor markets. Sensible governance could avoid these pitfalls, but blind adherence to MAGA ideology will trigger self-inflicted economic wounds. We can only hope that Trump stays focused on crafting tweets rather than legislation.