I read the review. The review seemed reasoning and I guess represented the book quite well and went on to offer the same criticism I'd have made given the representation of the book.
I don't buy the cyclical ideas. Yes, the idea that strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create bad times etc makes some superficial sense. A man creates a great company. His sons and daughters manage to keep it going for a generation. The grandchildren are dissolute entitled wastrels who fail it. That's a similar idea. That's also sort of true. Except that it omits that each descendant is only a hybrid of the great man who passes on only half his genes to each child, which then is halved again in the next. Even if he was cloned, a company is a product of its times which might not have a future once the product or technological life cycle has risen and fallen.
For example, optical fibre. In 1987 I was beside myself with excitement to find I had Karl Michel as a neighbour. uantwerpen.be He's a solid state physicist. His friend was inventing and producing optical fibre. For years in BP Oil International I had been promoting information systems and had concluded fibre and chips/solid state physics were the holy grail. In fact I was offered the best job in the world for me [to go to work for the bloke who was going to take over that for BP]. But we had decided to go back to NZ.
With the coincidence that I also happened to meet Bill Gardiner of Qualcomm in 1991 having conceived in 1989 of exactly what Qualcomm was doing I ponder how such coincidences happen. I wonder about the theory of reality as a simulation as that would fit the situation. But so would happenstance and confirmation bias = that's what I'm looking for and there are lots of solid state physicists and optical fibre makers and people working for Qualcomm [though only 350 in 1991].
Anyway, from that first optical fibre and solid state physics excitement only a third of a century ago, the product life cycle came and went. To such an extent that I have just cancelled our optical fibre service at home and though it was installed at our Tauranga house, I haven't bothered to buy the service, instead getting wireless data at sufficient speed and cost that it's not worth the extra expense.
Huge companies such as JDS Uniphase came and went. CenturyLink has turned into Lumen and has nearly gone bust, with share price now at $1.50 down from $50 and great dividends. A Silicon Investor acquaintance Kelly Kameyer who visited Auckland 20 years ago ended his life on returning to USA as he was bankrupt from tax on his investment in JDSUniphase but the share price crashed so he had the liability but no means of payment.
So theories on how nations and companies come and go need better foundations than simplistic cyclic theories. Greece was great but never came back. Egyptian Pharoahs, Roman Empire emperors had their day and have faded and gone. Islamic jihad spread from the Atlantic ocean out into the Pacific ocean and down into sub Sahara and up to Tours and the Gates of Vienna and into eastern China. But it was nothing much during the glory of vast European success. China was hot stuff 600 years ago but faded to not far off nothing albeit with a hefty population of warring and starving people. The Taiping rebellion was horrific and Mao's Maelstrom no good either.
USA has still got plenty going for it. I do think that mongrel genetics and competitive chaos have got something going for them, and democratic messes enable that chaos that's apparently awful but maybe allows the wonderful to be created and survive the mess. Totalitarian, organized, orderly, government-approved countries, planned and managed by bossy kleptocratic corruptocrat bastards have some good aspects, but they don't provide the best stuff. Though they can do okay as chaos is inefficient and costly. The USSR had excellent space station technology for example, though the Lada wasn't as swishy as a Lexus.
There does seem to be a good chance that 95% of the world's population is doomed due to MAD Americans not having an off switch and launching into full scale war with Russia, China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and whoever. But wait. Look what the chaos has coming, maybe.
Trump plus Vivek. Then Vivek for another 8 years after an apprenticeship.
If Vivek can get Ayn Rand/Mqurice/VVVs adopted by USA, and a lot more besides, this could be the beginning of the best time ever in biological history. Nothing less than what I've argued for decades is the purpose of it all = the launch of extra-somatic sentience.
The Great and Glorious British Empire enabled India to go democratic and integrate with the rest of the world, so that Vivek could become president of USA. Sure, it's a vast muddle of swarming billions, but look at the reality. Indians such as Sanjay Jha [Qualcomm], Sundar Pichai = Google, Satya Nadella = Microsoft, Jayshee Ullal = Atrista and how about Rishi Sunak = PM of England [I'm not in favour of him but there he is], Sadiq Khan = London mayor [arrgghhhh], Humzar Yousaf = boss of Scotland, Leo Varadkar = boss of Ireland. All created and enabled by the wonderful Christian mongrel democratic VVVs of England via the Great and Glorious British Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries. USA tediously glorifies their stupid Independence Day but they are just unappreciative offshoots of the same Greatness and Glory = one can't expect all one's offspring to understand their antecedents and genuflect with gratitude to their progenitors.
But appreciation or not, the future awaits. And that's where we're going.
USA via the Great and Glorious British Empire and the constitutional process that derived from the Great and Glory, now has, via bumble stumble and the abilities, energies and VVVs of Ashkenazi Jews, those high-powered Indians [Pakistan is just a wayward part of India] and everyone else who has muddled in, got the best off the world right there, right now, to go into calamitously catastrophic cataclysm in MAD nuclear war and almost complete obliteration of humanity, or choose Vivek/Big Don and Go for Glory into parabolically exponential acceleration to asymptotic hyperbole.
The dopey cyclic theory of countries is simplistic and stupid and false. Though it does have a bit of reality to it = somewhat like the CO2 Global Doomsterism of Global Warming/Greenhouse Effect/Climate Change/Climate Weirding has simplistic theory foundations, based on false premises of Earth in Balance and cyclic theories of harmony which in fact never existed in the big picture. Earth is in a crystalization process that has nearly killed off life by CO2 starvation and carbon burial. But that's another story.
Mqurice |
