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Saturday, December 17, 2011

Those In Positions To Know May Be the Least Likely To Know


The Profoundest Truths Are Paradoxical


Insiders don't know "The Big Picture" like Outsiders do.

Myopic insiders can only focus "the trees."

Outsiders have no choice but to look farther afield and therefore focus the forest in full view. 

It is true that outsiders can ignore the forest - and often choose some scotomizing soporific.

Even so - and whether they like it or not - the forest is smack dab in front of them; either in plain view - or hidden in plain sight.

Classic illustrations of blind "insider" behavior are 1.) businessmen concentrating on "the next quarterly report" and 2.) military brass pouring over "strategy and tactics" without determining if they've properly "chosen" their enemy. 


Political and Economic Reading List:

1.) “The American Dream,” by foul-mouthed (but brilliant) George Carlin - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q  

2.) Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, "Of the 1%, by the 1%, and for the 1%" -http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105 

3.) "Our Banana Republic" by Nicholas Kristof - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/opinion/07kristof.html 

4.) "A Hedge Fund Republic" hby Nicholas Kristof - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/opinion/18kristof.html 

5.) "How to End the Great Recession" by Robert Reich -http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/opinion/03reich.html 

6.) “A Dogma to Wreck the Country” by Thatcherite conservative, Niall Ferguson - http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/07/24/gop-antitax-dogma-endangers-the-country.html


8.) Ronald Reagan’s Budget Director David Stockman on America's inconceivable wealth inequality - http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7009217n

9.) “War is a Racket,” by Smedley Butler - http://www.fas.org/man/smedley.htm

10.) Benjamin Franklin “on Property and Taxes” - http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s12.html


"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice.  The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization.  We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal.  Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good.  The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”  Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander” -  http://alanarchibald.homestead.com/ThomasMerton.html  



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