God's Middle Finger

The subtitle is Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre and the author is Richard Grant (2008).

The author developed a fascination with the Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico and decided to travel its lengths from north to south.  This travel narrative is the result, and it reads like a more dangerous version of an Anthony Bourdain television program.

The Sierra Madre is a part of the world isolated from law and order, run by cartels, bandits and native american tribes unique to the region, and where whatever stereotypes about Mexico you may have with respect to drugs and machismo are seemingly realized.  The final story on his adventure, and the moment when he decided that it was time to put an end to his journey, he spent the night being hunted for sport by some drug-fueled Mexican hillbillies that worked for the narcos.

A quick and enjoyable read.

Crypto vs. Gold

I thought this analysis by Raoul Pal in a recent Real Vision interview was interesting:

And also, if you think about the set of opportunities that baby boomers had when they were in their 20s, right, they had the whole demographic wave in front of them. And they had equities by 1982. Repeat of seven in the S&P. They had interest rates at 15, 16%. So, they had the best setup in history to accumulate wealth, right? Nobody's ever been given that before. You cut to the millennial now, they've got the most expensive stock market in all history. They've got bond market that yields nothing. They've got real estate that is incredibly expensive that they can't buy. They have the absolute inverse of what the baby boomers have then. They have one thing, and that is crypto. Right. If there's one thing on a [30-year] pension retirement horizon that has the probability of going to a huge number, it's this area. That's the way I think of it. Yes, there's a whole bunch of other investments and you could do VC and stuff like that. But if there's one option bet that could pay off a thousand x, it's this. And so, if you're a millennial, you forget gold, because yeah, sure, gold may double. It may double again. But it's not going to have the same performance over time that cryptocurrency could if you get the right bets. Yeah, that's how I'm thinking of it.

Maoism

The subtitle is A Global History and the author is Julia Lovell (2019).

The book strives to make two general points: (1) that Maoism had a global impact and was not merely a Chinese phenomenon, especially in countries at the center of the Cold War, and (2) that the Chinese actively tried to export the ideology around the world, such as to India, Vietnam, Peru and Africa.

The story of Maoism sounds familiar to other socialist tales.  It is about “mass democracy”, preaching equality of outcome not just opportunity, and the disparagement of capitalism, imperialism, and the West.  But Mao Zedong’s version also emphasized that “political power comes out of the barrel of a gun”.  His vision was of perpetual revolution, with an ability to use simple language to invoke his ideas.  And he ultimately prioritized radical revolution over economic growth, which led to a splintering between China and the other great communist power, the Soviet Union.  From that foundation, Mao and China handed out huge aid packages to countries that were coming out of colonialism.  Yet, what seemingly was done with a view of spreading the gospel, ultimately became a power play for Mao and China to spread its influence and power over greater swaths of the planet.  The Great Helmsman, indeed.

So, in looking at the various iterations of Maoism that appeared globally, what one finds is that it provided a reasonable strategy for battling incumbent powers, but did not demonstrate a track record of success once power had been attained.  The emphasis on violence, and seeking retribution against any semblance of opposition, led to brutalization of many civilian populations that were supposed to be the greatest beneficiary of socialist edicts, encouraging a “process of degeneration”.  The greatest apostles of Maoism often took the propaganda at face value, failing to confirm for themselves whether China was as great as advertised, or that life in the West was as oppressive as the CCP claimed.

Two final things that I found interesting.  First, where Maoism took hold, what you can see clearly is the elevation to leadership of people who commonly used brutality to get there and who could be deemed “political entrepreneurs”, where the greatest priority was securing political power.  In looking at China now, the misery of the Mao period (encapsulated by the mass starvation and deaths during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution) is obscured by the growth that came after Mao’s death and subsequent shift in priorities under the leadership of a more market-oriented premier in Deng Xiaoping.  With the rise of Xi Jinping, though, and the return of a more authoritarian leadership again, we see China’s economic growth beginning to stall out.

Second, the rift between China and the Soviet Union ultimately played an important role in the final collapse of the USSR.  The competition that existed between the two global leaders of communism, to gain influence around the globe, led to huge financial outlays that burdened their domestic economies significantly.  When Mao died in 1976, China prudently stepped back from its efforts to fund revolution globally.  The Soviet Union did not, and felt compelled to stay the course as the global leader, preventing any possible détente with the U.S.