The Nonsense Factory

The subtitle is The Making and Breaking of the American Legal System and the author is Bruce Cannon Gibney (2019).

In a closing fury, the writer’s take on the American legal system is summarily explained:

“Law schools should teach students practical skills and receive appropriate public funding to reduce legal costs; Congress should expand its membership and staff so that it can fulfill its duties with something like minimal competence; agencies should be relieved of quasi-judicial powers; the shoddy and untenable doctrines of compulsory arbitration should be undone; correctional institutions should correct; prosecutors should be bound by codes of ethics enforceable by the public and the courts; and doctrines of sovereign immunity re-interred in their fourteenth-century graves.”

Of all things that he covers, though, Gibney’s biggest gripe is with the move in the past century towards an Executive Constitution, whereby the Executive branch has great facility to interpret and enforce the law however it deems fit – a perpetual state of the exception for the President to invoke and preempt other bodies.

He also takes great umbrage with the militarization of police forces.  As he deftly notes (quoting Battlestar Gallactica): “There’s a reason you separate military and the police.  One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people.  When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.”

He covers a lot.  And it's recommended.

The Great Successor

The subtitle is The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un and the author is Anna Fifield (2019).

For me, this book was about trying to understand the situation in North Korea.  It is a brutal dictatorship that has become a family business.  And that familial lineage is likely the reason that the country will never open up in the way that other communist countries (like China and Vietnam) have -- to loosen the system and allow freer flow of information would implicitly weaken the Kim family's grip on power.  As far as nukes, they will never give them up.  They view them as the only defense against US aggression, and also saw during the Korean War how the threat of a nuclear strike by the US immediately ended that conflict.  The goal is to never be forced to entrust any other country with its national security.  This book is not a dense, heavy historical narrative, but it's a reasonable primer on this topic.

Post Mortem

When I told my son last night that KD and Kyrie were heading to Brooklyn, he said "I hate the Nets" and stormed out of the room.  I get the frustration.  To be a Knicks fan is an exercise in heartache and perceived inequities.

But, if he were a little older, he would know that this organization has been a dumpster fire for a long time.  Jim Dolan is a disaster.  The culture with the team starts with him, and there are simply too many bad stories about this franchise during his tenure to ignore.  There are too many over-promises and miscalculations.  Too frequently they peddle hope, in the form of cap space, and then never even get the meetings with the top guys.  New York is still a draw, MSG should be a draw...but clearly you get most of that, plus a better-run organization, by going to Brooklyn right now.

I don't think the Nets will steal Knicks fans in droves.  There is a longevity to Knick fandom that has passed through generations, from parent to child, that is stronger than Dolan's ineptitude.  But, the team itself will continue to suffer as long as he is the face.  I don't think the perpetual failures will cease until he is no longer the guy in charge.

In the mean time...

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.

Never Split the Difference

The subtitle is Negotiating as If Your Life Depended on It and the author is Chris Voss (2016).

Mr. Voss is a former FBI hostage negotiator who mastered his craft under the most intense of circumstances.  I have already incorporated some of his methodologies into my daily life at work and at home, with success.  That’s the best endorsement that I can offer.

The tools that he introduces include mirroring (followed by silence), labeling, calibrated questions that commonly start with “How” or “What”, being open to discovering new information, staying tonally relaxed (talk slowly) and keeping a smile on your face, the Rule of Three, and a recognition that no deal is always better than a bad deal.  Ideally, in using these techniques, if you can get to the point where your counterpart says “That’s right”, you have opened the door to changing thoughts and behaviors and potentially reaching a successful outcome.