RWL #282
America the lucky
Greetings from the LHH! Happy Independence Day weekend! Independence Day is one of my favorite holidays because it is an opportunity to reflect on how lucky I am to be an American citizen. That luck was driven home with convenient timing by my having just finished two books by Peter Zeihan, Disunited Nations (2020) and The End of the World is Just Beginning (2022). I discovered Zeihand a few weeks ago in an interview I shared in RWL #276 - I immediately ordered Disunited Nations and waited for the End of the World to come out in June. His books are as good as his interview - and he writes like he talks - irreverent and incredibly well informed. Before you get the impression that Zeihan fawns over America, let me set the record straight. He thinks we are basically very lucky, not smart.
Zeihan is a political geographer. He uses his knowledge of geography - locations, natural resources, distances - alongside political and economic knowledge to explain the past and make predictions about the future. We live in a time when our elites are overly infatuated with social constructivism and refuse to see that, while that applies to some phenomena, much of the world is best explained by plain old positivism (i.e., there is an actual, underlying reality independent of social construction). Geography is fundamentally positivist. A mountain does not care how you feel about it, and the ocean will just swallow you up regardless of your theories on justice. You can grow grain in certain combinations of weather and soil, and you cannot grow it in others. The facts of geography have influenced political structures since the dawn of the human species. For an excellent explanation of human political development up to the Industrial Revolution based on geography, check out Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steal. I’m not sure Diamond’s theories work as well after the Industrial Revolution, but Zeihan’s do.
Zeihan believes that the “American Century” was largely an accident of geography combined with the fact that the European powers had exhausted themselves by 1945. America created an Order that allowed for more economic prosperity than the world had ever seen. The Order consists of military protection of international trade. This was a thing that had never existed before in human history. Billions of people are alive and out of extreme poverty because of the Order. But the Order wasn’t created out of generosity, but necessity - while the US was militarily powerful, it couldn’t stand opposed to the Soviet Union alone. The Order instead was a bribe. You could join the Order if you agreed to stand with the Americans against the Soviet Union. And now the Americans (we Americans) are wondering why we are still providing security for the whole world.
The books are Zeihan’s projections, based on geographical reasoning, about what will happen as the Americans stop patrolling the oceans and providing universal security and instead focus on North and South America. In Disunited Nations he provides a story by country (Germany, Japan, China, France, etc., and the US); in The End of the World is Just Beginning he provides an analysis organized by theme (transport, finance, energy, materials, food). The good news for Americans is North America should be fine. The rest of the world, not so much, but it varies depending on where. Zeihan has an excellent mode of analysis based on fact and rational thinking. I believe we need more grounded analysis like this.
Like I said at the beginning - the books make me appreciate how lucky I am to be an American. Not for some jingoistic reason, but for simple geography. But I also happen to think America, with all her faults, is exceptional in good ways. It has helped create a period of Order that has allowed more widespread prosperity than was ever possible before. It has also, from a constructivist perspective, created more hope than any other country ever before. America is still a young country and has a long way to go yet. Happy birthday!
So with that, willing good for all of you, I present you with the links!
(pic above is of tiger lilies at the LHH - all the lilies are out.)
Read
What: The Declaration of Independence
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
Why: Because the preamble to this document defines what America is.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
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What: Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just Beginning
Why: As mentioned in the introduction.Read it. Also read his earlier work, Disunited Nations.
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What: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Compensation costs in private industry averaged $38.61 per hour worked in March 2022
Why: In case you don’t know this, to convert an hourly wage into a rough estimate of annual salary, just multiply by two and add three zeroes. So average annual compensation is close to $76,000 per year. Not bad. But almost ⅓ of that compensation comes in the form of benefits, so actually annual cash compensation is closer to $52,000. Still not bad, but that’s a big delta of benefits. This report has a bunch of graphs that you can scroll through pretty quickly, with some interesting breakdowns by industry and by benefit type. Worth a few minutes.
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Watch
What: Talks at Google, Quentin Skinner, Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction (53 min)
Why: I am a fanboy for Machiavelli, if one can say that about someone who died 500 years ago. I first read The Prince in junior high because I heard about him as a Renaissance badass. It turns out he really was a badass, but not in the way I envisioned, nor as he is imagined by our culture. He was a republican (small “r”) and a proto-democrat (small “d”). He was also a nationalist in a time of political fracture. This is a nice introduction to him. Skinner does leave out some of the fun facts about Machiavelli - that he wrote a bunch of bawdy plays that were quite popular - in addition to being a leading statesman. It makes for an interesting mix. Hard to imagine a person like him in politics today.
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Listen
What: Wisdom From The Top with Guy Raz, Tiny Habits: BJ Fogg (48 min)
https://www.npr.org/2022/06/14/1104930902/tiny-habits-bj-fogg
Why: I’m really excited about the material in this interview. I immediately ordered Fogg’s book and I have started reading it. The core idea is that most of our bad habits are due to design, not will power. I know I’m going to have more to say about this later.
I’m still working on improving my habits - I am coming up on 6 months of my tracking experiment. I will share an update about that soon. But I look forward to integrating some of Fogg’s ideas.
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What: HBR IdeaCast, Leadership Lessons from a Republican Governor in a Blue State (29 min)
https://hbr.org/podcast/2022/05/leadership-lessons-from-a-republican-governor-in-a-blue-state
Why: Having lived almost as close to Boston as to Concord for the last seven years, what the Governor of Massachusetts is doing gets as much news coverage as our own governor - maybe more. Especially since we watch Boston news (well my wife watches the news - I happen to walk in on her and sometimes listen). I have to say Charlie Baker, the Governor of Mass, is an impressive guy. He has dealt with multiple challenges during his tenure, not the least which was COVID, and he has generally done an admirable job. If he were to run for president, I would not only vote for him, I would volunteer for his campaign. And I say this as someone who has never cast a vote for a Republican. Unfortunately, he laughs at the idea of running for the presidency - so I won’t have that opportunity.
Listen to this interview to get a flavor of what a politician should sound like, and think like. He’s no Machiavelli, but Baker is a serious man who has done a fine job. (I don’t believe he has written any bawdy screen plays - but maybe as he retreats from public life - who knows!)
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What: Honestly with Bari Weiss: America After Roe: A Roundtable (92 min)
https://www.honestlypod.com/podcast/episode/2d836b6f/america-after-roe-a-roundtable
Why: This is a nicely balanced roundtable: Bari is a liberal; Bethany Mandel is a conservative and the editor of the children’s series “Heroes of Liberty”; and Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor in chief of Reason Magazine, is an anarcho-capitalist (i.e., extreme libertarian). Rounding them out is Jeffrey Rosen, head of the National Constitution Center. I wasn’t familiar with Mandel. I have heard Rosen speak before. I listen and read Bari and Katherine every week - they are two of my favorite public intellectuals - so this was a real treat for me.
Thanks for reading and see you next week! If you come across any interesting stories, won't you send them my way? I'd love to hear what you think of these suggestions, and I'd love to get suggestions from you. Feel free to drop me a line at mark.bonica@unh.edu , or you can tweet to me at @mbonica .
If you’re looking for a searchable archive, you can see my draft folder here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jwGLdjsb1WKtgH_2C-_3VvrYCtqLplFO?usp=sharing
Finally, if you find these links interesting, won’t you tell a friend? They can subscribe here: https://markbonica.substack.com/welcome
See you next week!
Mark
Mark J. Bonica, Ph.D., MBA, MS
Associate Professor
Department of Health Management and Policy
University of New Hampshire
(603) 862-0598
mark.bonica@unh.edu
Health Leader Forge Podcast:
http://healthleaderforge.org
“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” – Pablo Picaso