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As we enter 2022, the distance between markets and Washington pundits has never been greater.
The markets keep rising. They point toward continued growth, with more of it concentrated in fewer corporate hands.
The pundits keep screaming about inflation stealing our savings, making everyone poor.
Both can’t be true at the same time. Blue skies don’t fall.
(To the tune of George Leybourne’s The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze)
Chorus
Oh, it flies through your nose on a cough or a sneeze
The daring young bug called the Omicron disease
It causes a sickness, like shit you may feel.
And my Grandma it’s stolen away!
<Verse 1>
If you’re vaxxed and you’re boosted, you have less to fear
You may not even notice at all
But if you’re unvaxxed, or old, or you’re ill then it’s true
You’re advised to stay in, shut the door, oh!
<chorus>
<Verse 2>
If we had just all shut down and had gotten our shots
This bug might not even exist
But it does and it’s going all over the world
To make this Christmas Eve something fierce, oh!
<chorus>
<Verse 3>
Omicron doesn’t care if you’re red or your blue
It just wants to be a cold or the flu
It’s just barely alive, hopes to reproduce
It’s the gift of 20 twenty one, oh!
<Verse 4 -- Make up your own>
<chorus> (extra loud this time)
Back in 2009, I covered Taiwan’s CompuText show, alongside my son, then 18.
We spent four days wandering the halls, on the hunt for “desktop Linux.” We eventually found Linux Foundation head Jim Zemlin addressing a small group in a corner of Taiwan 101, the city’s tallest building, miles from the show’s main hall. It’s become something of a joke between us since then.
The point is there was no desktop Linux. You can argue that Google Android is Linux, or that the Mac OS is based on a Linux, but these aren’t truly open systems. Linux is, and was, primarily a server technology.
This is important to note when thinking about Web 3.0, or the Metaverse, as the buzzword advocates call it. They say it’s the biggest thing since the Web was spun, nearly 3 decades ago. It’s certainly the biggest thing since the Cloud, which Amazon began selling 15 years ago.
I awoke recently from troubled dreams to find I had become Santa Claus.
My beard is white. My face is lined. My back hurts. Those bags are heavy!
The good news is a Santa Claus attitude toward life. I’m grateful for what I have, more willing to give to others.
Jenni and I celebrate our 44th wedding anniversary two days before Christmas. She’s a wonderful Mrs. Claus. We’re comfortable together. We also share home office space since her employer moved far beyond where MARTA’s sleigh can go.
What no one tells you about healthy aging is that it’s a lot of work. Exercise is no longer an option. Jenni’s metal knees aren’t new anymore, so our Christmas gift to each other is an Echelon indoor spin cycle. My back and legs demand yoga stretches every day. Long walks help, too.
Our kids are now old enough to write their own Christmas cards. I’ll just say that John has a job waiting for him in Taiwan whenever they process his visa application. Robin has a job waiting for her somewhere.
The future is also waiting, but it’s no longer unlimited. Jenni’s cancer has been in remission for over 5 years, and she is no longer taking medication for it, but we are not immortal. We don’t know where, or how it all ends, but we feel it in our bones.
We hug each other tight against the darkness. We wish you joy and we wish you peace.
Over the weekend, Google briefly carried through on its threat to remove 15 Disney channels from its YouTube TV cable replacement and cut the price by $15/month.
Coverage focused on the brevity of the cut-off. In the process they missed the story.
This is the first time anyone has successfully unbundled cable TV. Previous threats by programmers to cut off cable operators succeeded because customers complained. The operators never cut their prices in response, as Google did in this case, and as it threatened to do earlier with Comcast.
Disney’s bluff included the line that disaffected viewers could \buy the “Disney Bundle,” combining its ESPN+, Hulu+, and Disney+ streams, for less than the YouTube price cut. What Google wanted was for Disney to charge it no more than it would cable operations of similar size. They likely got that.
I spent my first three decades in journalism covering technology. But I started as a business journalist. In 2011 I returned to it.
Since then, I’ve learned a lot and the most important lesson is this. You’ll see perpetual change.
Moore’s Law is the most important economic fact of my lifetime. It’s not just about silicon. Moore’s Law spreads in every direction, accelerating change, transforming the economy and society.
The most important change of the last decade is the Cloud. Infrastructure was traditionally financed with debt. Cloud is financed with cash flow.
A decade ago, when companies like IBM, AT&T, and GE saw that the cloud game would start at $1 billion/quarter, and that the money would have to come out of cash they gave shareholders, they said no. Facebook, which didn’t have $1 billion in quarterly cash flow at the time, said yes. Facebook is now worth more than IBM, AT&T, GE, and their accumulated debt put together.
Companies like IBM were once called “value stocks” because they grew at a regular rate, they had solid brand names, and they paid dividends. Arthur Zeikel of Merrill Lynch, who preached the value of this strategy in the 1980s, passed away recently. His strategy died with him. Warren Buffett, who also preached value for decades and said he didn’t understand technology, now holds more Apple than anything else.
I’m not here to speak ill of the dead. My point is that tech means growth, and growth is the ultimate value. The investment strategies of the past no longer work.
When I first started writing about politics 15 years ago, my text came from my first poli sci teacher at Rice University, the late Dr. Gilbert Cuthbertson.
Doc C, as we called him, taught that politics could be explained by three variables:
Myth x Values = Power. This lets you solve for Myth and Values. Myth = Power/Values. Values = Power/Myth.
What this means is that power comes from what we believe and what is within our control.
Americans today act as though we’re in the Great Depression, World War II, and the Civil War, all at once.
On the right, our values are under dire threat from enemies within. On the left, our democracy is under dire threat, also from enemies within.
Yet if you look objectively at our situation, it’s quite the opposite.
Elon Musk is Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. He has a fortune estimated at $245 billion. But it’s clear he’s not happy.
America is the world’s wealthiest country. The cloud, its applications, the clients, and the services connecting to it, have made America more economically dominant than ever before. But none of that has trickled down. Even tech executives who would benefit most from the creativity of minds freed from want, have made it clear they won’t let it trickle down.
In a world where the 10th richest country, Canada, has a GDP this year of $1.6 trillion, four American Cloud Czars – Microsoft, Apple Amazon, and Google -- are worth more. In a country worth $63,000 per citizen, there are children going hungry and 9 centi-billionaires. Our wealth is tied up in assets. It’s not doing any work.
One weird trick is keeping this Second Gilded Age gilded. Punching down. When Elizabeth Warren proposed taxing billionaires, they promised to avoid it, and said go after the millionaires. The millionaires then said they were also adept at tax evasion, so go after the upper middle class. The upper middle class armed itself against the middle class, the middle class against the lower middle class, and the lower middle class against the poor, whose only hope is to reproduce.
We’re all so afraid of losing what we have that we reject anything that would let us create more. In West Virginia one-quarter of the population is missing its teeth, while their Senator rejects dental care under Medicaid.
It really is the best of times, and the worst of times. At the exact same time.
In one reality, stocks trade at record levels, homes are worth their weight in gold, and fortunes head for the stratosphere.
In the other reality inflation is rampant, people can’t afford to retire, and millions are losing confidence in the future.
The fact that all these things are true is a political choice, one Washington pundits insist will be reinforced in 2022 and beyond. The pundit class is driving Democrats crazy, and the seeming passivity of the Biden Administration has them hopping mad.
But a lot of things are going to happen next year, and most of them aren’t bad.
For starters, we have it relatively easy. Chinese consumers who pre-paid for homes now find they’re not being built. Turkish consumers are finding their money is becoming worthless. Britain is going broke thanks to Brexit. Inflation and COVID are much worse in South America and Africa than they are here.
Most countries across the world are sleepwalking toward crisis while the bill for climate inaction is coming due.
There’s only one force that can take decisive action against the crisis, the Creativity Economy.
Henry Ford was the great manufacturing genius of the early 20th century.
In 1921, he was at the height of his fame, fortune, and power. He was hanging out with Thomas Edison. His every utterance was chronicled by an adoring media.
But things were about to take a turn. By the time he died in 1947, Ford had wrecked his historic reputation. General Motors under Alfred Sloan had bypassed the company. If schoolkids knew him at all, it was thanks to his coddling of Adolf Hitler in the run-up to World War II. He was a fierce anti-semite.
Elon Musk is now at roughly the same age Ford was then. He, too, is at the height of his wealth, fame, and power. But there is a lot to be disquieted about.
Continue reading "Elon Musk is Dangerously Like Henry Ford" »
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