Grove’s solution

You can find a lot of people who agree with Grove’s assessment of the state of the American technology industry. However, where the real controversy is over his prescribed remedy. Grove concludes:

“Long term, we need a job-centric economic theory — and job-centric political leadership — to guide our plans and actions… The first task is to rebuild our industrial commons. We should develop a system of financial incentives: Levy an extra tax on the product of offshored labor. (If the result is a trade war, treat it like other wars — fight to win.) Keep that money separate. Deposit it in the coffers of what we might call the Scaling Bank of the U.S. and make these sums available to companies that will scale their American operations. Such a system would be a daily reminder that while pursuing our company goals, all of us in business have a responsibility to maintain the industrial base on which we depend and the society whose adaptability — and stability — we may have taken for granted… If what I’m suggesting sounds protectionist, so be it.”

Former U.S. President George W. Bush was a “true idealist” who displayed “genuine integrity and political courage,” former British prime minister Tony Blair reveals in his memoirs.

Immense simplicity indeed. And somehow he was able to fashion that into a compliment.

For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means “boy player.” The men like to boast about it.

Remember, it’s not wrong, it’s *different*.

Moral relativism would be a joke if it weren’t so fucking destructive.

The decline of American empire began long ago before the current economic meltdown or the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It began before the first Gulf War or Ronald Reagan. It began when we shifted, in the words of Harvard historian Charles Maier, from an “empire of production” to an “empire of consumption.” By the end of the Vietnam War, when the costs of the war ate away at Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and domestic oil production began its steady, inexorable decline, we saw our country transformed from one that primarily produced to one that primarily consumed. We started borrowing to maintain a level of consumption as well as an empire we could no longer afford. We began to use force, especially in the Middle East, to feed our insatiable thirst for cheap oil. We substituted the illusion of growth and prosperity for real growth and prosperity. The bill is now due. America’s most dangerous enemies are not Islamic radicals but those who sold us the perverted ideology of free-market capitalism and globalization. They have dynamited the very foundations of our society. In the 17^th century these speculators would have been hung. Today they run the government and consume billions in taxpayer subsidies.

An entertaining, if not depressing, read.

He maintains he has no interest in monetizing the operation by charging subscriptions or selling ads. “I already have a beautiful wife, a hilarious son, two Hondas, and a decent house,

This guy has consistently pumped out educational videos for years, and constantly turns down offers to make ridiculous money from his site. He’s sticking with simplicity, and I admire it.