Liberty

He's a wacko for other reasons, but he understands very well the importance of salesmanship/charisma/persuasion. I agree with him on many of these points, and I've had good discussions in private messages about with with a couple people form this forum; I just think it's too bad that the man who could sell himself so well and understand how to tap into the electorate's emotional hooks was someone of low character. Many presidents were also very good persuaders (Obama did it better than most, esp. his first election) who won over all kinds of rivals who might have been just competent but didn't have the charisma.

Trump will save us from the tyranny of billionaires, uh?

Troubling news, for sure. The most powerful man in the world is someone of low character and integrity, an anti-vaxxer, global warming denier, science illiterate, conspiracy theorist who said he'd attack the first amendment, global trade, and suggested banning people based on their religion and deporting millions of others. He's been caught on tape bragging about sexual assault and at least a dozen women confirmed it. He's so thinned skinned that he gets in multi-year feuds with people about the most meaningless things. He's completely entangled in conflicts of interests and doesn't apparently even know what a blind trust is, and his finances are still entirely opaque. He's been caught lying on camera countless times and then many times saying that he never said the things he said. His total lack of shame and ability to say basically anything and seem to mean it make me suspect sociopathy. The people from his party who were of any moral character and integrity didn't support him, so you know he's not going to forget that; meaning that he'll surround himself with those who lacked the backbone to stand up to him. We now have a salesman in chief who's obvious hunger for power and fame certainly won't get better; you don't treat narcissism by being elected to the oval office. I sure hope he proves me wrong and governs well, but even if he does, he's still not someone I'd want to run my kid's school or be my wife's boss, so how can he be a good pick to run the executive branch of the most powerful country in the world? 2016 is such a surreal year.

What are some other good ones? I would also be interested in some suggestions. Thank you.

I just listened to the Sam Adams episode on my walk today and it was excellent. I've liked them all so far. I hope this podcast keeps going for many years, there are so many entrepreneurial stories that have never been heard.

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2016/11/08/warren-buffett-drives-nebraskans-to-vote/ http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-QR662_WBElec_J_20161108145248.jpg

Maybe he had an unpaid intern give him a bullet point version...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/08/dear-ann-coulter-just-say-you-only-want-white-people-to-vote/ As I posted previously, Coulter is actually an advisor to Trump and he got some policy ideas from her books.

So he just made up an award and said he won it. In normal time this could be a big scandal, but this year it doesn't register...

China

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/07/campaign-manager-on-trump-charity-donations-ive-seen-him-write-checks.html Apparently Trump running for president is a huge sacrifice for him, even a kind of charitable donation, according to the man's campaign manager. Strange that charities aren't finding these checks. Maybe he writes them and keeps them in a drawer somewhere... ::)

Follow up video to the Rules for Rulers. If you liked the first one, chances are you'll like this one:

Glad you liked them. For the person who asked, I indeed discovered the podcast on John Huber's blog.

Tepper on Trump David Tepper: Trump didn't give one dime! http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000565869 http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000565869 David Tepper slams Donald Trump for being selfish, calls him 'father of lies' http://www.cnbc.com/id/104085338 http://www.cnbc.com/id/104085338

So basically, if they had followed the usual FBI procedure of not commenting on ongoing work, nothing would've ever come out because there was nothing after all.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/24/documenting-trumps-abuse-of-women "For his 1993 book, Harry Hurt III acquired Ivana’s divorce deposition, in which she stated that Trump raped her." Also, a good tweet storm by a combat veteran :

Did the FBI leak things to the Trump camp? ??? https://mobile.twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/794539625348038658/video/1

But that's not what Obama meant in context! If we paraphrase, he might have told Einstein: "You did great! Just don't forget those that helped you get there" which is completely different from your "you didn't think of that". It's a bit stretched here because I'm sure Einstein was aware and didn't need to be reminded, but in our society there are many very successful people who do think they are completely "self-made" and don't owe anyone anything, when that isn't actually true. In fact, most of the most successful people on the planet constantly echo that very sentiment about being born in a place that gave them the opportunity to do what they did and talk about giving back (Buffett, Bezos, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, etc).

I think so. I agree with every word that he's written, but he doesn't seem to have read what I have wrote. No one disputes that everything everybody does is built on the accomplishments and infrastructure built by others. My point is that is not the ONLY thing Obama was saying. He was saying all that (which is true) and then implying "thus we have a right to tax the hell out of you." Only he didn't say it like that he used the euphemism "do things together". I've read what you wrote. You're just projecting the same fight everywhere, regardless of whether it was actually part of the topic at hand. I wasn't talking about what Obama might have been implying, and he might or might not have been actually implying it in this speech. I was just pointing out that in context, the very famous "you didn't build that" quote is clearly about roads and bridges and things like that, not about "your business", despite the fact that on paper it seems like that because people don't talk the same way they write. They sometimes start a sentence and then think of something they wanted to add to a previous idea, and then go back to what they were saying.

All media has bias: Yes. It's all run by humans. The quantity of bias is the same in all media: No. Clearly not. I'll take the NYT or the WSJ over the Soviet Pravda or that 2003 Iraqi minister of information... Some organizations have bias coming from the top down and pervading the whole organizations; they consider it their actual mission to convince people of a certain cause or to support a certain ideology or political party; while others try to hold themselves to high professional standards of fairness and objectivity and have failures that are more on a case-by-case basis or in their blind spots. Sins of omission vs sins of commission, in a way. Or trying to do the right thing and coming short rather than trying to do the wrong thing to begin with.

Who said it diminishes it? Who said it couldn't have happened otherwise? Recognizing that it was built on an existing foundation, without which it wouldn't have happened, is just recognizing reality. Even in a theoretical libertarian dreamworld utopia, people would still be incredibly interconnected and interdependent and nobody's success would happen in a vacuum on any operation more complex than running a small farm. But people distort that statement and pretend that what he meant is that people who build businesses don't deserve credit for them or that they're somehow not theirs. That's not what I'm reading. He might not be a very business-friendly president, but that's still not what he said. He's stating the obvious: Those businesses don't exist without all kinds of other things that others (govt or not) built.

I know you're just having fun with the title of the podcast, but I hear that line often enough that I looked it up in context, and I think it's one of those memes that are actually pretty clearly not what the person meant and is used to ascribe them beliefs that they don't have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_didn%27t_build_that It's pretty clear to me it's exactly what he meant. Analyze what he's saying. You worked hard- that doesn't justify your success because a lot of people work hard and don't attain success. You were successful because someone else paid for the roads you used. You were successful because you had a good teacher. You were successful because of the founding fathers. You were successful because the government helped create the internet. In essence, you are not fully responsible for your success. Now, who here exactly is he rebutting? No one believe that businesses don't have employees. No one believes that children don't rely on teachers. No one thinks fighting fires ought to be done by a single individual. No one who says, I built my business, thinks that no one else was involved. When someone says they built their business, what they mean is that they, as an individual, knowingly took the actions necessary to achieve their success. Obama is switching the idea of 'responsibility' from meaning under ones control to entirely of ones making. The result is to undercut those who believe they deserve the fruits of their success. The political position this justifies is obvious. You think you deserve that $20 you made selling lemonade? Well, not completely. Someone else invented lemonade. I think you're interpreting it wrong. He's saying that Jeff Bezos can't build Amazon if the postal service and the internet don't exist. So you might be doing amazing things, and they are necessary for success (even if they don't guarantee it), but they are not sufficient, so it makes sense to give back to the system/country that helped you be successful. People fixate on the sentence that stops and then switches back to another idea, but what he's really saying is, you didn't build the bridges and roads and that kind of stuff, the platform on which everything else rests. Without police and military to guarantee your security, without a judicial system and strong institutions that defend property and enforce contracts, without clean water and electricity, etc.. A lot of things simply don't happen even if you're Elon Musk.

I know you're just having fun with the title of the podcast, but I hear that line often enough that I looked it up in context, and I think it's one of those memes that are actually pretty clearly not what the person meant and is used to ascribe them beliefs that they don't have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_didn%27t_build_that

I've started listening to podcasts at 1.5x playback. So for a podcast that was -30min long, you would only lose -20min. ;D So does that mean you gain 20min?................... I listen with Overcast at 1.5x with Smartspeed, which reduces the length of silences between words dynamically, so my average is over 1.75x. So I guess I'm losing/gaining even more, and I'm even more confused ???