Worthwhile (recurring) Reading

If you are interested in investing, music, art, or practical philosophy, you might want to follow Vitaliy Katsenelson. Originally from Russia, he came to the US with his family in 1991 and is now CEO of the investment management firm IMA.   Here are some of his posts that I like.

Life is a Walk – Santa Fe

Why Value Investing Requires Thoughtful Arrogance

A Story About a Story

How Not to Lose a Job That’s Yours

Libertarian’s (Unexpected) View on the Bailout of the Banking System

The Real Country of Contrasts: Our Unforgettable Trip to India

Hidden Costs of Living in Switzerland

Me, My Boy and Warren Buffett

The False Sophistication of Sophists

30 Years in America

Random Pic

the magic city

Worth Pondering

CS Lewis, describing his protagonist, a sociologist, in That Hideous Strength:

..his education had had the curious effect of making things that he read and wrote more real to him than the things he saw. Statistics about agricultural labourers were the substance: any real ditcher, ploughman, or farmer’s boy, was the shadow…he had a great reluctance, in his work, to ever use such words as “man” or “woman.” He preferred to write about “vocational groups,” “elements,” “classes,” and “populations”: for, in his own way, he believed as firmly as any mystic in the superior reality of the things that are not seen.

This phenomenon is a plague of our present era, and is by no means limited to sociologists.

Previous Worth Pondering post.

Chicagoboyz Love Classic Transportation

Classic WWII “Liberator” military motorcycle, with all the necessary gear, including weapons holster and entrenching tool.

This motorcycle and 98 other vintage machines are at a small museum in Johnson City. Their facebook page is here. ( The museum is housed in an old garage which used to be a Ford dealership. At a market event in Johnson City some years ago, we talked to a gentleman whose father or grandfather had owned it then. LBJ used to come in and have them put his car on the lift with him in it so that he could hide from his Secret Service duty agents, and have a quiet drink and a smoke.)

Book Review: Year of Consent–Rerun with Additional Commentary

I reviewed this book in 2021.  Published in 1954, it is set in the then-future year of 1990–a time when though the United States is still nominally a democracy, the real power lies with the social engineers…sophisticated advertising & PR men…who use psychological methods to persuade people that they really want what they are supposed to want.  Events in the two years since I posted that review have even more strongly demonstrated the almost overwhelming political power that is exercised by the communications industry–traditional media, social media, also academia–and I think the review is about due for a rerun.  I’ll add some additional thoughts at the end.

The social engineers who are the true masters of the country are aided in their tasks by a giant computer called Sociac (500,000 vacuum tubes! 860,000 relays!) and colloquially known as ‘Herbie.’   The political system now in place is called Democratic Rule by Consent.   While the US still has a President, he is a figurehead and the administration of the country is actually done by the General Manager of the United States, who himself serves at the pleasure of the social engineers.  The social engineers work in a department called  ‘Communications’, which most people believe is limited to such benign tasks as keeping the telephones and the television stations in operation.  Actually, its main function is conducting influence operations.

One approach involves the publishing of novels which are fictional, but carry implicit social and/or political messages, via, for example, the beliefs and affiliations of the bad guys versus the good guys. Even the structure of novels is managed for messaging reasons: romance-story plots should not be boy gets girl loses girl gets girl back, but rather boy gets girl, loses girl, gets different girl who is really right for him.

Some methods are more direct, although their real objectives are not stated. One such objective is population control: If the fertility rate is running a little low, advertising is ramped up for a pill called Glamorenes, which are said to create the ’rounded, glamorous figure of a TV star…remember–it’s Glamorenes for glamor. Actually, the real function of Glamorenes, which is top secret, is to increase a woman’s sex drive and expand the fertility window.  On the other hand, if the birth rate is running too high, the ad emphasis switches to Slimettes for women and Vigorone for men, both of which have a contraceptive effect.  The book’s protagonist, Gerald Leeds, is one of the few who is in on the secret, and when he hears a Glamorenes ad, he realizes that this is the real reason why his girlfriend, Nancy, has been acting especially affectionate lately.

Few people, even at the highest levels of government, realize just how powerful the Communications Department really is.  “Even the biggest wheels only know part of it.  They think the Communications Administrative Department exists to help them–and not the other way around.”

The computer known as Sociac (‘Herbie’) accumulates vast amounts of data on individuals, including such things as shopping, dining, and vacation preferences. Thus, when the administration wanted to make a new move, they knew exactly how to condition the people so that it would be backed. Or they knew exactly what sort of man to put up to win a popular election.  Telephone calls are tapped, but are rarely listened to directly by government agents; rather, they are fed directly to a ‘calculator’ (perhaps a front-end to Herbie) and added to the huge stock of intimate knowledge about the people.