Simon Mikhailovich: "Wealth is created in spurts"

[Gold] is a means to an end.  Wealth is created in spurts.  Everybody thinks that you can invest and you can generate a certain return every year in the stock market over and over and over again.  And the last 35 years have taught people potentially this kind of lesson. But in reality if you look throughout history, wealth is usually created in bursts of time.

 ~ Simon Mikhailovich, lead manager of the Tocqueville Bullion Reserve, Grant's podcast, February 3, 2019

Lao Tzu on knowledge and wisdom

To attain knowledge, add things everyday. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.

~ Lao Tzu

Himmilicious on the learning process

Do question, even the basics!  You will be a fool for once!  If you don't, you will be, for a lifetime..

~ Himmilicious

Roger McNamee criticizes Facebook's business model as "addictive"

I'm convinced that the business model is the problem.  It's the problem at Facebook.  It's the problem at Google.  They essentially have this advertising business model that depends on monopolizing the attention and manipulating the attention of the user, and in order to do that, the algorithms are tuned to focus on emotional things that trigger outrage, that trigger fear, or tickle people with rewards of some kind.  When you're doing that for long enough, people first develop a habit, then you develop an addiction.  And once they're in an addiction, they're vulnerable to manipulation by bad actors on the outside.  And until you change the business model, that's there.

~ Roger McNamee, "Former Zuckerberg Mentor McNamee Criticizes Facebook's Business Model," Bloomberg TV, February 5, 2017, 7:23 PM EST

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on climate change (2019)

The world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change. 

~ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, circa late January, 2019

Adolph Hitler on central planning

If Germany intends to live, then it must run its whole economy in a manner that is clear and planned.  We cannot manage without a plan.  If we were to let things run on according to the principle that everyone may do as he likes, then in a very short time this freedom would end up in a terrible famine.  No, we have to conduct our business and run our economy according to plan.  Therefore the national socialist government cannot be dependent on any individual interests.  It cannot be dependent on the city or the country, not on workers, not on employers.  It cannot be dependent on industry, on the crafts, on trade, or on finance.  It can only accept one obligation.  The nation alone is our master and we serve this nation to the best of our knowledge and belief.

~ Adolph Hitler, 1936

Jordan Peterson on Cambodian socialism in the late 1970s

Marxist ideas were very attractive to intellectual utopians. One of the primary architects of the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, Khieu Samphan, received a doctorate at the Sorbonne before he became the nominal head of Cambodia in the mid-1970s. In his doctoral thesis, written in 1959, he argued that the work done by non-farmers in Cambodia's cities was unproductive: bankers, bureaucrats and businessmen added nothing to society. Instead, they parasitized the genuine value produced through agriculture, small industry and craft. Samphan's ideas were favourably looked upon by the French intellectuals who granted him his Ph.D. Back in Cambodia, he was provided with the opportunity to put his theories into practice. The Khmer Rouge evacuated Cambodia's cities, drove all the inhabitants into the countryside, closed the banks, banned the use of currency, and destroyed all the markets. A quarter of the Cambodian population were worked to death in the countryside, in the killing fields.

~ Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An antidote to chaos



A woman rides a bicycle by a stack of destroyed cars, cast aside by the Khmer Rouge as a symbol of the bourgeoisie.

Phnom Penh, 1979