for the win—

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<p>I have always preferred an elegant solution. A good fix in my book is transactional and balanced— it is win-win. In the winner take all world the win-win model doesn’t pay enough. </p>
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<p>Life in Silicon Valley has veered off the tracks and this digitally enhanced monster has escaped from its cage to come prey for our last ounce of life-juice. </p>
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<p>I wouldn’t have predicted South African malcontents would have so easily ferreted their way into our governance, but indeed the dictatorial sympathizers, the- my way or highway kind, have been flushed out into the open where their misappropriated sense of unfairness is on display.</p>
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<p>Let’s be sure to know that our best ideas do not rise above another best idea on the sheer pile of money they attract. Most of my favorite ideas are priceless, and why it is I am an artist and why my most profitable ideas hold so little interest. </p>
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<p>You may wonder if you have that book in you, the one you have always promised you would one day write. What you need not wonder about is whether this book you promise to write is one you have the stamina to do the hard work of bringing to the market. The two go together like oil and water. Where you work to write what you are desperate to explain it is another matter to set your ideas out in the marketplace while you witness your work missing its audience and not gaining traction. Don’t cry for me Argentina, our market based system will pluck luck and salience and set my work’s high or low water mark accordingly.</p>
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<p>Into this era parade a whole coliseum of grifters, flim-flam-men and swindlers. A plurality of voters here handed the keys to the kingdom to such a creature. Our All-Is-Lost- moment has arrived on schedule 248 years after our nation’s founding by our forefathers had so presciently predicted.</p>
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<p>It is baffling to me how so many serious men have been so easily persuaded to walk away from the rule of law. Bankers, brokers and bond traders all understand that without an enforceable contract our markets will no longer function as a rules-based investment safe haven. </p>
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<p>We play this waiting game. What day does the madman ignore a ruling by the Supreme Court? It is on that day and in that moment when the flight to safety will break out. It will be shocking, yet utterly predictable. You can’t see this coming? You have no forecasting skills? </p>
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<p>Fortunes are not just won and lost, there are instances when wealth is stolen. I don’t wish to get too technical but the treaties between the tribes of our Native Americans and our government are viewed as irrevocable, they never expire, they are bound by eternity, and what was promised and agreed to in 1868 is an agreement bound by all-time. These agreements stand as monuments to eternal truth. Here are your ancestral lands, here are your rights, here is your access to water. A treaty is ironclad, written in stone.</p>
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<p>Our present-day secular world collides with our past. Too many lessons to do with our spiritual nature have been lost. My weaknesses are many, I am this careening soul bouncing off vice and virtue, but my good luck is in my formation were teachers who helped walk me through the paradoxes of appetite and discipline. I learned enough about the truth of who I wanted to be to at least honor my virtues with the same zeal as I wallowed in my well-practiced vices. </p>
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<p>None of what we have set before us has changed. There is work and pay. There is a roof over your head and food on your table. We want most to enjoy the benefits that follow. A good leader will create more jobs, raise their workers wages, provide access to affordable housing and for good measure include a jigger of hope.</p>
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<p>A growing contented working class of many is the glue that holds self-governance in place. If even one factor tilts out of balance our leaders understand such strains can spin our economic system into crisis.</p>
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<p>I am heartened by Mark Carney, Canada’s newest liberal leader. Here is a 59 year old man of experience, education and reasonable temperament. Like Poland’s leader Donald Tusk, he is bound by duty to the common good. Macron of France has stood up too. </p>
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<p>The clever tongued devil can be the cause of much trouble, where the common man of open mind and cultivated spirit offers us a more promising future. That is the honest bargain I wish to make here in the midst of such troubling times.</p>
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