The Committee of Public Safety

Here’s a universal rule of thumb for deciding on whether a “financial innovation” should be allowed to come to market: if your director of marketing can’t explain its technical details in full to regulators in a 15-minute PowerPoint presentation, it shouldn’t be allowed on the market.

Careful! Its furry and it knows deady kung fu!

Spengler mercilessly libels Kung Fu Panda in The day the slacker died:

The popularity of slacking is evident from the success of films on the subject. Well, they knew their demographics those who crafted Kung Fu Panda, in which a fat and feckless panda who in two easy lessons becomes a kung fu master. As film critic Carina Chocano lamented in the Los Angeles Times, “The slacker panda whose favorite word is ‘awesome’ is singled out for heroism when all the other characters have worked long and hard (the definition of kung fu) and sacrificed for what they’ve accomplished. The message – believe in yourself even when all evidence suggests you shouldn’t – is annoyingly familiar and frankly overdue for a serious debunking.” A young martial-arts practitioner of my acquaintance said it more simply: “Who made this movie? I want to rip out his trachea.”

A specter is haunting global elites everywhere — the specter of the Kung Fu Panda. All the powers of the world have combined into an unholy alliance to exorcise this specter.

When have the American people not been blamed for the Kung Fu Panda? Where is the global opposition that hasn’t accused both liberal Americans and their conservative adversaries we are the home of the Kung Fu Panda?

Two things result from this fact:

1. The Kung Fu Panda is already acknowledged by all global powers to be a power unto itself.
2. It is high time that the Kung Fu Panda should openly, in the face of the entire world, publish its views, its aims, its tendencies, and meet this nursery tale about the specter of the Kung Fu Panda with a manifesto of its own.

As Spengler’s rant shows, there is a lot of pent up plutocrat hatred at the Kung Fu Panda. The elites of all nations hate the “fat and feckless panda” lurking in the hearts of the proletariat. The Kung Fu Panda threatens the power they have seized by alienating the people from their labor and stealing their wealth.

The tale of the Kung Fu Panda will ring down through the generations. The Kung Fu Panda is the salt of the earth, dwelling among the people as a noodle salesman. His sense of freedom bridles under the patriarchal oppression of his father who, in a fit of false consciousness, believes that his son will carry on his bourgeoisie lifestyle as a noodle vendor. However, the Kung Fu Panda, in alliance with the progressive elements of society, wants to become a revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat.

He wants to become the Kung Fu Panda.

Beware cute babies in sealed cars

Then his class overlords, in a fit of madness, open up their ranks to attempt to co-opt the Kung Fu Panda. The Kung Fu Panda bides his time, learning the secrets of the capitalist running dog lackeys. When the Fascist Snow Leopard shows up, the capitalists fall one by one to his reactionary offensive. All that is left is the people and the Kung Fu Panda. Having used the Fascist Snow Leopard to lay waste to the imperialists (much as Lenin used Imperial Germany to break the Tsar), the Kung Fu Panda rises up and defeats him in order to bring on the rule of the working class. The Fascist Snow Leopard had mastered many styles of kung fu but was unprepared for the style of Dialectical Materialism. The Kung Fu Panda may be “fat and feckless” but he knows one truth that only those with revolutionary consciousness: the power of the resilient community.

The resilient community is the natural end state of the class struggle throughout history and its value is shown by the recent events in Bombay. The police were mauled by reactionary Pakistanis, the commando posse was 10 hours in coming, and the counter strike was messy:

Example: not a kung fu panda

If the population of Bombay was a resilient community, the Pakistani counter-revolutionaries would have met the fire of an army of Kung Fu Pandas. A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, would have responded much more quickly and gunned down the counter-revolutionaries in the streets as they came off their boats. This shows the value of a resilient community and devalues the corrupt global imperialist order.

Terrorists may come in and scare off the cosmopolitans and their capital but the proletariat remains. Global cash flows and international jet-setters come and go as the whims of plutocrats blow but the proletariat remains. If they are resiliant than the proletariat will not only survive, it will triumph. They will live the spirit of the Kung Fu Panda and be able to live fat, feckless, and free. And the nation-state will wither away, leaving resilient communities as the final stage of class struggle. Joy will be had. And the Kung Fu Panda will stand alone, the Iron Panda of Destiny.

historyguy99 has a nice roundup of news on the Bombay attacks.

The strategic rationale for the attacks is obvious (perhaps too obvious):

1. Launch a spectacular terrorist attack on India.
2. Link the terrorist attack to Pakistan.
3. Enrage India due to the attack and traditional tensions (over Kashmir, et al.).
4. Draw India into a military buildup on the Pakistani border.
5. The Indian military buildup triggers a counter-buildup of Pakistani troops.
6. The Pakistani military build up draws troops away from the Northwest Frontier, relieving pressure on the Taliban-al Qaeda base.

The same strategy (in that case, an attack on the Indian parliament) was used in 2001 to relieve pressure on the fleeing Taliban-al Qaeda remnant trying desperately to escape the American onslaught and it was used this week to relieve the pressure the Pakistani offensive in Waziristan was putting on al Qaeda and the Taliban. It’s a frame job on the Pakistani civilian government by (possibly) rogue elements in the ISI and their Kashmiri playthings.

The Pakistani government could also be framing itself. It gives it an excuse to call off a politically unpopular military operation and preserve its Taliban clients as a hedge against India in the battle to rule Afghanistan. They can do all this knowing that the US will bail it out by negotiating another “peaceful solution” to prevent nuclear conflagration on the Indian subcontinent.

If the Pakistanis are that reckless…

Your culture at work

Culture is the highest layer of functionality on the CPSOT stack.

Culture is the art of the unspoken assumption. Like an iceberg, we occasionally dimly perceive its exposed edge rising above the dark waters. The real behemoth lies beneath, unseen and escaping conscious observation, its bulk lost in the mists of subconscious habit. Culture is the oxygen of society, pervasive and all-encompassing yet invisible:

The laws of conscience, which we say are born of nature, are born of [culture]. Each man, holding in inward veneration the opinions and the behavior approved and accepted around him, cannot break loose from them without remorse, or apply himself to them without self-satisfaction. applause

[...]

But the principal effect of the power of [culture] is to seize and ensnare us in such a way that is hardly within our power to get ourselves back out of its grip and return into ourselves to reflect and reason about its ordinances. In truth, because we drink them with our milk from birth, and because the face of the world presents itself in this aspect to our first view, it seems that we are born on condition of following this course. And the common notions that we find in credit around us and infused into our soul by our fathers’ seed, these seem to be the universal and natural ones. Whence it comes to pass that whatever is off the hinges of [culture], people believe to be off the hinges of reason…

- Michel de Montaigne, Essays, “Of custom, and not easily changing an accepted law”

Culture is the great yet hidden teacher, its grasp light yet remorseless:

For, in truth, [culture] is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress. She establishes, little by little, slyly and unperceived, a foothold for her authority, but, having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannical countenance, against which we have no courage or power to raise our eyes to. We see her, at every turn, forcing and violating the rules of nature:

[[Culture] is the most effective teacher of all things (Pliny)]

- Michel de Montaigne, Essays, “Of custom, and not easily changing an accepted law”

Culture is about habituation, the subtle shaping of behavior. It doesn’t seek residence in conscious thought, but to shape consciousness unconsciously:

The Automatic System is rapid and is or feels instinctive, and it does not involve what we usually associate with the word thinking. When you duck because a ball is thrown at you unexpectedly, or get nervous when your airplane hits turbulence, or smile when you see a cute puppy, you are using your Automatic System. Brain scientists are able to say that the activities of the Automatic System are associated with the oldest parts of the brain, the parts we share with lizards (as well as puppies).

The Reflective System is more deliberate and self-conscious. We use the Reflective System when we are asked, “How much is 411 times 37?” Most people are also likely to use the Reflective System when deciding which route to take for a trip and whether to go to law school or business school. When we are writing this book we are (mostly) using our Reflective Systems, but sometimes ideas pop into our heads when we are in the shower or taking a walk and not thinking at all about the book, and these probably are coming from our Automatic Systems. (Voters, by the way, seem to rely primarily on their Automatic System. A candidate who makes a bad first impression, or who tries to win votes by complex arguments and statistical demonstrations, may well run into trouble.)

Culture is half Reflective System and half Automatic System. However, it’s hard to separate them that cleanly. They are closely intertwined. This makes it hard to change culture. Automatic culture is closely intertwined with instinct, the hardware layer of man. It may only change through evolution over time. Reflective culture is more plastic than other thought. It can change but the process is often arduous, only happening over extended periods of time.

Yet culture, despite, on average, changing over a long period of time, is an OODA loop. Culture is a complex adaptive system, a learning machine focused on survival and thriving in the face of changing external conditions. Cultural adaption occurs by dividing priority between goals, giving one goal greater priority at one time and lower priority at another. Each goal is a meme, a discrete unit of culture that seeks to expropriate priority for itself at the expense of other memes. Each goal is a hypothesis. Culture proposes hypotheses and the changing environment disposes of them. If a goal as a hypothesis is proven correct (correct in that it fits the current conditions of the external world), it gains priority. It it is found wanting, it loses priority.

The currency in which gains or losses in priority are measured is power. The instrument that culture uses to divide priority between its goals is politics, the division of power between goals. Politics is the tool of culture but it has its own logic and its own grammar. While culture shapes politics, its control is not inescapable. For politics, culture is like a gravity well: escape is possible with enough thrust and enough velocity. There are, on occasion, imbalances between the division of priority between goals and the division of power between goals. Politics can exploit these imbalances to shape culture. Feedback from a changing external environment, transmitted through political channels, can also forge culture.

Once priority is assigned, dominant goals frame all other goals (at least for a time). Culture is the realm of myths. Myths are framing goals. Culture manufactures and seeks to spread a dominant narrative framework. This narrative is internal but seeks to subvert and replace external narratives. Conflict between cultures is a battle between narratives, with one culture seeking to impose its narrative on the other culture. This is the most difficult and power intensive conflict, requiring a push completely through another culture’s tactical, operational, strategic, and political layers to its tasty, tasty cultural filling.

Culture is quirky, resisting rational and predictable outcomes. Culture is the realm of the jackalope and the pet rock. Strange, unseen inputs flow in and strange outputs flow out. Culture is ultimately an adaption to the outside world but its intermediate stages of evolution take on curious and often tortured forms.

Culture has all of the features of a complex adaptive system (per Howard Bloom):

1. Diversity Generator: cultural orientation that generates new goals.
2. Conformity Enforcer: cultural orientation that ensures that cultural elements have enough in common to exchange goals.
3. Inner-judges: cultural orientation that decides if an individual hypothesis is true (in other words, that it survives) or if something is untrue (if it fails).
4. Intergroup Tournaments: competitions between cultures that test the goals produced by the culture as a whole against goals produced by other groups. Victory produces truth and defeat is the father of lies.
5. Resource Shifters: cultural orientation and decisions that do the dirty work for inner judges and intergroup tournaments. They heavily reward winning goals and heavily punish goals that perform poorly.

Culture is the most powerful and yet diffuse layer of the CPSOT stack. It can aggressively seek to propagate itself and yet it is immaterial. Masters of it are rare and quirky, holding on for dear life while riding the tiger of culture for fear of falling off. Jacques Barzun covers the ill-starred and tumult of culture warriors in From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present.

An attempt to capture some unspoken assumptions:

• Life is a test. Passing the test is correct adaptation to external forces in constant flux.
• Adaptation is learning.
• Humans and human groups are learning machines and complex adaptive systems (CAS) (props Howard Bloom).
• External forces are a mixture of outside CAS and friction. Friction is anything that makes adaptation difficult (props Carl van Clausewitz).
• Learning is driven by the interaction between the forces of attraction and repulsion (Bloom).
• Attraction and repulsion drive the root processes of learning: synthesis-induction and analysis-deduction. Synthesis-induction is attraction and analysis-deduction is repulsion. Together they join the creative learning process of creation and destruction.
• Analysis-deduction is destruction of a complex thing by rendering it into its basic parts from the outside in (props John Boyd).
• Synthesis-induction is reassembling a complex thing into a new whole from the inside out (Boyd).
• Synthesis-induction and analysis-deduction are compression mechanisms to fit an infinitely complex universe in a finite mind. Analysis-deduction break down the world into bits and pieces and synthesis-induction rearranges it into a compressed format (props Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Boyd).
• Learning is a sequence of synthesis-induction and analysis-deduction, attraction and repulsion (Bloom, Boyd).
• Each individual and group is a hypothesis submitted for testing. Verification of the hypothesis is performed by the impact of external forces. Verification of a hypothesis is not for all time but is only as long as it meets shifting conditions (Bloom).
• A hypothesis is a prediction (props Jeff Hawkins).
• Learning happens through the interaction of five elements: diversity generators, conformity enforcers, inner judges, resource shifters, and intergroup tournaments (Bloom).
• Diversity generators create new hypotheses for testing (Bloom).
• Conformity enforces impose the efficiency of commonality for interoperability. Loose nails get pounded down (Bloom).
• Inner judges pass judgment on a hypothesis (Bloom).
• Resource shifters take power away from failed hypotheses and shift it to successful hypotheses. Division of power is never final and external forces always get a vote (Bloom).
• Intergroup tournaments pit individuals and groups against each other to test the hypotheses they embody. Winners get power and losers get the taste of ashes (Bloom).
• Learning is conveniently modeled as a loop involving Observation, Orientation, Decision, and Action, the OODA loop (Boyd).
  

  OODA

• An OODA loop is not a sequence of linear steps but a non-linear cycle. Observation always comes first, Orientation comes second, but Decision and Action can be bypassed (Boyd).
• Orientation is the most important state in the cycle. It’s where inner diversity generators, inner judges, and inner conformity enforcement occur through the interaction of analysis/synthesis, genetic heritage, cultural tradition, new information from Observation, and previous experience. Causes of novel input are inferred (Boyd, Hawkins).
• Observation is discovering causes in the world through the reception of input (Boyd, Hawkins).
• Decision is taking the product of Orientation and positing it as a hypothesis. Decision is making a prediction (Boyd, Hawkins).
• Action is launching the product of Decision or Orientation out into the cruel world of intergroup tournaments and friction.
• Culture divides priority between values and goals. Dominant values and goals frame all other values and goals.
• Culture is the realm of myths. Myths are framing values. Culture is where the dominant narrative comes from.
• Culture shapes politics but does not exercise dominant control. Culture is like a gravity well: escape is possible with enough thrust and enough velocity.
• Politics is the division of power between values and goals. It is the struggle first for survival and then for preeminence, both keys to winning more power.
• Much of culture and therefore politics is theater. Bad theater. Skill in theater, therefore, is skill in culture and politics.
• Politics is primarily about rationally seeking power. However, it can be bent by the myths and values produced by culture. This does not prevent the seeking of power but does hinder fully rational pursuit of it.
• At root politics is a struggle for power and at bottom the struggle for power is a struggle for the control of the mechanisms for coercion. Society is ultimately organized in the way that will best support the application of violence within and without itself. Society is a reflection of how it is organized to apply violence.
• Struggles for power arise out of its unequal distribution.
• Power is most efficiently seized by violence but is most effectively utilized with positive incentives.
• A ruling class is inevitable. The only thing that can be done is to effectively rotate elites for maximum adaptive capacity.

Technology is awash with stacks.

A stack is a hierarchy of layers of functionality rising from low-level functionality on the bottom to high-level functionality on top. The most basic stack in technology is the computer stack. From top to bottom:

1. Software: the instructions that run on a computer.
2. Firmware: the instructions that run a computer.
3. Hardware: the physical components a computer is built from.

An application stack is a computer stack whose functionality whose hierarchy is more sharply defined. An example of an application stack is the LAMP stack:

1. Python: the indispensable programming language and libraries.
2. MySQL: an optimized file system sometimes used in place of a database like PostgreSQL.
3. Apache: a web server.
4. Linux: an operating system.

A protocol stack is a stack of functionality used to communicate between computers over networks. Each layer of functionality in the hierarchy is encapsulated and modular so they can be easily be swapped out or upgraded without impacting other parts of the stack:

Individual protocols within a suite are often designed with a single purpose in mind. This modularization makes design and evaluation easier. Because each protocol module usually communicates with two others, they are commonly imagined as layers in a stack of protocols. The lowest protocol always deals with “low-level”, physical interaction of the hardware. Every higher layer adds more features. User applications usually deal only with the topmost layers…

An example of this is the Internet Protocol Suite. From Wikipedia:

The Internet Protocol Suite, like many protocol suites, may be viewed as a set of layers. Each layer solves a set of problems involving the transmission of data, and provides a well-defined service to the upper layer protocols based on using services from some lower layers. Upper layers are logically closer to the user and deal with more abstract data, relying on lower layer protocols to translate data into forms that can eventually be physically transmitted.

The Internet Protocol Suite has four layers:

1. Application Layer: directly interacts with the user (e.g. HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP3).
2. Transport Layer: forms a connection with a remote computer and monitors quality (e.g. TCP, UDP).
3. Internet Layer: slices information into packets (e.g. IP).
4. Link Layer: moves information over the physical network (e.g. ARP, Ethernet, 802.11).

Mankind has its own stack:

1. Culture: divides priority between desires.
2. Politics: divides power between desires.
3. Strategy: reconciles power and desire.
4. Operations: arranges power and desire in time and space.
5. Tactics: directs the interaction of power and desire with external forces.

A few notes on CPSOT stack:

• Each layer of functionality is an OODA loop (or, more likely, the aggregation of many OODA loops).
• Each layer is a point on a spectrum of goals.
• The medium of exchange is power.
• Lower layers are the tools of higher layers.
• Lower layers influence higher layers on the stack.
• Each layer forms a complex adaptive systems (CAS) and the full stack forms a larger CAS.
• Each layer, as an adaption cycle, is differentiated by the length of time it takes. Higher layers tend to take longer than lower layers.
• Each layer is under a varying range of immediate human command.
• Most adaption takes the form of optimization within a layer and its internal loop is largely encapsulated from the other layers. However, inputs from other layers have the capacity to shift a layer completely (in effect, a paradigm shift).

In an essay for Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century, Hew Strachan comments that Carl von Clausewitz has been selectively quoted since On War was published. Not wanting to break with such a proud tradition, I will indulge.

Book One Chapter One, the Howard-Paret translation of On War contends, was the only section of On War that Clausewitz completed to his own satisfaction. It’s also the source of the spectrum of war:

Noted Clausewitz scholar Christopher Bassford presented another version of the spectrum of war in The Relationship Between Political Objectives and Military Objectives in War:

The CPSOT framework is another user of the spectrum of war extracted from Clausewitz:

Clausewitz defined two poles on his spectrum:

War can be of two kinds, in the sense that either the objective is to overthrow the enemy-to render him politically helpless or militarily impotent, thus forcing him to sign whatever peace we please; or merely to occupy some of his frontier-districts so that we can annex them or use them for bargaining at the peace negotiations.

Clausewitz analysed the spectrum of war between these two points through the division of war into dueling natures: real war, war in real life, on one side and absolute war, war in theory, on the other. Through this duality, he could expose the components of war for deeper analysis and ready them for a new synthesis:

I propose to consider first the various elements of the subject, next its various parts or sections, and finally the whole in its internal structure. In other words, I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.

A defining characteristic of absolute war is escalation along the spectrum driven by each participant constantly trying to one up each other through a constant search for advantage over competitors:

The thesis, then, must be repeated: war is an act of force, and there is no logical limit to the application of that force. Each side, therefore, compels its opponent to follow suit; a reciprocal action is started which must lead, in theory, to extremes. This is the first case of interaction and the first “extreme” we meet with.

After tit for tat, war is fueled by a second escalating factor:

If the enemy is to be coerced you must put him in a situation that is even more unpleasant than the sacrifice you call on him to make. The hardships of that situation must not of course be merely transient-at least not in appearance. Otherwise the enemy would not give in but would wait for things to improve. Any change that might be brought about by continuing hostilities must then, at least in theory, be of a kind to bring the enemy still greater disadvantages. The worst of all conditions in which a belligerent can find himself is to be utterly defenseless. Consequently, if you are to force the enemy, by making war on him, to do your bidding, you must either make him literally defenseless or at least put him in a position that makes this danger probable. It follows, then, that to overcome the enemy, or disarm him-call it what you will-must always be the aim of warfare.

War, however, is not the action of a living force upon a lifeless mass (total nonresistence would be no war at all) but always the collision of two living forces. The ultimate aim of waging war, as formulated here, must be taken as applying to both sides. Once again, there is interaction. So long as I have not overthrown my opponent I am bound to fear he may overthrow me. Thus I am not in control: he dictates to me as much as I dictate to him. This is the second case of interaction and it leads to the second “extreme”.

Beyond the creeping unease of the possibility of being under another’s thumb is a third factor that produces escalation:

If you want to overcome your enemy you must match your effort against his power of resistance, which can be expressed as the product of two inseparable factors, viz. the total means at his disposal and the strength of his will. The extent of the means at his disposal is a matter-though not exclusively-of figures and should be measurable. But the strength of his will is much less easy to determine and can only be gauged approximately by the strength of the motive animating it. Assuming you arrive in this way at a reasonably accurate estimate of the enemy’s power of resistance, you can adjust your own efforts accordingly; that is, you can you can either increase them until they surpass the enemy’s or, if this is beyond your means, you can make your effort as great as possible. But the enemy will do the same; competition will again result and, in pure theory, it must again force you both to extremes. This is the third case of interaction and the third “extreme”.

These factors, as they feed forward momentum, escalate war (at least in theory) towards annihilation.

Here’s one post for you, the ever plotting von Massenbach.

Danger Room Debrief: Gang Threat Could Top Al Qaeda, Mr. President-Elect: Good overview on what’s going on down south. The most important foreign policy crisis facing the United States is the potential disintegration of a weak Mexican state under siege from hyper-aggressive narco-traffickers. Using Barnett-speak, the Gap is widening and it reaches deep into both urban and rural America through smuggling, ethnic, and familial links.

Whole neighborhoods in the US, even in small towns, are enclaves of Mexico. These provide a base that allows narco-gangs to pursue an inkspot strategy, slowly expanding their range of control within the US. This is where the benefits of the Iraq War will finally show: COIN techniques will be employed on the streets of America to suppress spillover from Mexico’s disintegration. This will require bringing troops home from overseas and stationing them in American cities and on the US-Mexican border. The US may even have to intervene in Mexico militarily (assuming we can still afford it) for the first time since 1917, possibly to seize a buffer zone in northern Mexico to shorten the border that must be defended.

The narco-traffickers may even morph into a political movement. Pancho Villa, for example, started out on the wrong side of the law. Given the fat juicy target of Mexico’s corrupt ruling class, Mexico is ripe for revolution (assuming the revolution happens before Mexico starts to suffer from the Hollowing). A second Alvaro Obregon or Plutarco Calles may be on the horizon.

So far from God, so close to the United States.

Charlie Munger

From Charlie Munger in a speech at UC Santa Barbara:

Another example of not thinking through the consequences of the consequences is the standard reaction in economics to Ricardo’s law of comparative advantage giving benefit on both sides of trade. Ricardo came up with a wonderful, non-obvious explanation that was so powerful that people were charmed with it, and they still are, because it’s a very useful idea. Everybody in economics understands that comparative advantage is a big deal, when one considers first order advantages in trade from the Ricardo effect. But suppose you’ve got a very talented ethnic group, like the Chinese, and they’re very poor and backward, and you’re an advanced nation, and you create free trade with China, and it goes on for a long time.

Now let’s follow and second and third order consequences: You are more prosperous than you would have been if you hadn’t traded with China in terms of average well-being in the United States, right? Ricardo proved it. But which nation is going to be growing faster in economic terms? It’s obviously China. They’re absorbing all the modern technology of the world through this great facilitator in free trade, and, like the Asian Tigers have proved, they will get ahead fast. Look at Hong Kong. Look at Taiwan. Look at early Japan. So, you start in a place where
you’ve got a weak nation of backward peasants, a billion and a quarter of them, and in the end
they’re going to be a much bigger, stronger nation than you are, maybe even having more and
better atomic bombs. Well, Ricardo did not prove that that’s a wonderful outcome for the former leading nation. He didn’t try to determine second order and higher order effects.

If you try and talk like this to an economics professor, and I’ve done this three times, they shrink in horror and offense because they don’t like this kind of talk. It really gums up this nice
discipline of theirs, which is so much simpler when you ignore second and third order consequences. The best answer I ever got on that subject – in three tries – was from George Schultz. He said, “Charlie, the way I figure it is if we stop trading with China, the other advanced nations will do it anyway, and we wouldn’t stop the ascent of China compared to us, and we’d lose the Ricardo-diagnosed advantages of trade.” Which is obviously correct. And I said, “Well George, you’ve just invented a new form of the tragedy of the commons. You’re locked in this system and you can’t fix it. You’re going to go to a tragic hell in a handbasket, if going to hell involves being once the great leader of the world and finally going to the shallows in terms of leadership.” And he said, “Charlie, I do not want to think about this.” I think he’s wise. He’s even older than I am, and maybe I should learn from him.