Corpania Ideas

CAVEAT! I'm an amateur philosopher and idea-generator. I am NOT an investment professional. Don't take any of my advice before consulting with an attorney and also a duly licensed authority on finance. Seriously, this my personal blog of random ideas only for entertainment purposes. Don't be an idiot.

Saturday, March 21, 2020

MORE ENTERTAINING THOUGHTS & PREDICTIONS ABOUT COVID19 (FWTW):

MORE ENTERTAINING THOUGHTS & PREDICTIONS ABOUT COVID19 (FWTW):

Ok, so I kinda look like a prescient genius (at least temporarily) for emailing a bunch of friends a week ago with my repeated prediction that the market was going to drop even further (from S&P index ~2700 on Sunday night 03/15/20, down to ~2300 on 03/20/20), which is a delta of ~15% collapsing in 1 week (the worst week in over a decade).

I asked what would happen if "a GOP Senator or Trump family member or Hannity/Rush (got) seriously sick from (Covid19)"? 
And now LOU DOBBS is self-quarantining (sufficiently close as a test case for my hypothesis).
So this will be a natural experiment to see if my prediction further holds true. I maintain that some sort of bipartisan consensus on COVID19's eventual effects must exist as a prerequisite for a lasting market rebound with reduced volatility (stipulating that I'm a financial amateur).

Now, to fairly calibrate and quite fortunately, it seems partisan opinions of the dangers of COVID19 have begun to get into better alignment.

Purely coincidentally, right after my email because there's virtually no way they listen to me...
Perhaps, the better bipartisan alignment happened because FoxNews has auspiciously, conspicuously re-oriented to be much less dismissive of COVID19's harms and it has become more realistically cautionary.

To be fair, it's conceivable many short sellers will want to do profit-taking and the supposedly big money on the sidelines could want to "buy the dip" (as per Larry Kudlow's and Trump administration's recommendations), which would indicate upward pressure.
That's not my view, considering all of the factors in play. But I could easily be wrong.

The big picture questions that are currently most interesting to me are: 

• How much more panic and fear will we have to endure? 

• When will we see (and believe) that there's light at the end of the tunnel?

• Ron Paul's recent op-ed is like a gamer who'd prefer to lose actual friends IRL in order to win more points. So, given that perspective, how likely is our government to make an unconscionably cold calculus that saving 100k to 2MM+ American lives is not worth the economic catastrophe caused by such mandated "social distancing" and similar actions, for extended periods of time?

• What's the likelihood we never rebound to normalcy (as we knew it in 2019)? How many restaurants, bars, clubs, movie theaters, amusement parks, concert venues, gyms, hotels, etc. will close forever and which chains will subsequently strive to take their place (assuming society's behavior resumes with people going out the way we did in the "before times")?

• Given our massive increase in military interventions and spending after 9/11, and how it's likely that COVID19 will kill exponentially more Americans, what is the likelihood that that disproportionate response effects a massive re-prioritization of resources (devastating the MIC/arms manufacturers) and diverting greater resources into pandemic-related and health industries? 
>>> Seems like any company that can install "automatic doors" should skyrocket. Emoji

IMHO, the key factors in changing the equation are:

• When will there be a sufficiently *verified* cure/treatment and vaccine? As soon as we "know" it's coming, optimism and bullish investment seem likely to happen, in my amateur opinion, and well before the cure's and vaccine's rollouts (let alone before their positive effects take hold).

• When will we know how likely "herd immunity" is to result from those who recover plus those ultimately vaccinated? Is reinfection a serious concern? What's the likelihood of mutation (will there be a yearly Covid20/21/22 etc.) and comparable calamities?

• What will happen in the next couple of months or so when large numbers of functionally laid-off people (2% to 10%+ which is millions in the US) can't pay their bills? If the government doesn't find a way to give citizens direct payments & bill/rent/debt waivers (socialism!?!) and/or other sufficient social programs & relief in time, will there be rampant criminality? And if so, will there be an authoritarian government crackdown?

REMINDER: I'm just giving you my amateur opinions for entertainment purposes. I'm not a financial professional. #TWYFA - Talk with your financial advisor.

BTW - I love the podcast "THE YOUNG TURKS"! 
They're informative and fun to listen to, so please sign-up for membership and use my link: https://tap.tyt.com/corpania


Thanks and good karma to you!

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Wednesday, February 05, 2020

How are you going to win in a democratic republic?

How are you going to win in a democratic republic?


You either fundamentally believe in maintaining a democratic republic, or you don't. 


We might intuitively appreciate the theory that "politicians' campaigns, held accountable by a free press, will honorably inform and reasonably persuade the majority of voters based on verifiable facts." But most would agree that it has not worked perfectly well in practice. There may exist an inform-able and reasonably persuadable portion of the population, but at least in the USA in February 2020, that portion has, to date, been vastly outnumbered by apathetic non-voters, as well as those in each respective, die-hard ideological base.


If you do believe in maintaining a democratic republic, then you should need a majority of support to accomplish anything (if your country's laws require a supermajority, then the following argument is even more salient). So how do you get a majority? Sociopaths can try to employ fascism and genocide to exterminate opposition – this essay isn't for them. 


Normally, there's a wide variety of opinions, and the people that hold them have their own gradations and priorities. For an example of views on the right, a given person might be generally pro-life, but she might think that a rape victim shouldn't be compelled by the state to have the rapist's baby. Consequently, she'll vote for the pro-life candidate unless he crosses that line.


Similarly, on the left, someone might be for the humane treatment of immigrants who enter illegally, but that person could also be against completely open borders that have no restrictions whatsoever. 


Then there's the fact that everyone's priorities make politics even more complicated. Someone might have just three issues that are equally crucial in a voting decision and only another dozen issues that are worth some degree of care (simply ignoring every other policy matter).

• What happens when a politician barely agrees with two of the three crucial issues but is in total opposition to all of the dozen? 

• What happens when the politician strongly agrees with one and barely disagrees on two of the three crucial issues and is confusingly split on the dozen? 

One could develop an algorithm for methodically weighting the issues regarding one's vote (see AJU's 2012 TEDx Talk "Sports Can Save Politics" and any number of websites to "find your candidate"). But that could seem too formulaic, and consequently, one's vote is likely to end up being a gut decision. 


Given a society's regular difference of beliefs with an exponentially more complicated hierarchy of priorities, you probably need some version of a voter coalition to create your preferred majority. 


Of course, you can have dealbreaker "purity tests" on however many issues you like. A leftist could start out his dealbreaker list moderately and then increasingly, unreasonably keep adding to it until he guarantees himself a loss in elections. 

• So where should he draw the line on this list: completely dismiss anyone for being pro-slavery, pro-holocaust, pro-nuking of enemy countries, pro-fossil fuels, pro-private vehicles, pro-carnivore, pro-commerce of any kind, pro-having animals as pets, pro-religion, pro-having children?

Which of those definitively alienates the majority? The progressive voter doesn't have to be best friends with the people who drive their own cars or eat animal products, but he probably should try to get their vote. If not, he's going to need an overwhelming coalition of people who agree with him on most everything else. To reject this reality is to facilitate the right-wing strategy of encouraging progressive purity tests and thus balkanizing the left (i.e., "divide and conquer").

 

In elections, when choosing a metaphorical bus driver, you have to answer some key questions: 

• What's the driver's stated destination, and is that credible? A driver who says he's going West but lies and always goes East could be acceptable to a passenger heading East. 

• What's the driver's track record and route to see if that's viable? If there's no road, what are the solutions to overcoming obstacles? Sometimes, the electorate solely wants a driver who will avoid a crash, and everything else is secondary.

 

 If you don't believe in a democratic republic, then you need another system, and it's tough to make the case that anything other than oligarchy will ultimately prevail ("He who has the gold makes the rules"). Plato wanted the most honorable, intellectual elite to rule. But who would determine who merits becoming such a "guardian" and what's preventing those who currently have the most power from fraudulently designating themselves as the elite guardians?

 

It's especially relevant, in this period of rapid technological advancement, that civilization usually tends to embrace either diversity or uniformity. If it's uniformity, you better hope your particular sub-tribe prevails, or life will be miserable for you and all the outside tribes that lost. If it's diversity, such a pluralistic society will naturally encounter some conflict as the rival tribes have differing issues, priorities, and preferred directions. 


But so long as the consensus won't accept any tribe's absolute insistence on uniformity, you can coexist. That's generally the premise of the U.S. Constitution: enshrined rights to "free speech" and "peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" are integral to diversity and a complete rejection of uniformity. 


All reasonable people acknowledge the imperfection of the original U.S. Constitution, if for no other reason than it accepts slavery and excluded voting rights for women. Amendments and the Supreme Court's evolving interpretations have, over time, tended to modernize the laws more appropriately. 


Yet, the founders couldn't remotely fathom a future with an inevitably shrinking workforce due to A.I./robots ascendency. Unless one accepts genocide, MULTICULTURALISM and TOLERANCE need to take hold, permanently, before robots calcify the division between the owner-overlords and the oppressed (i.e., the doomed). Before such ubiquity of robots, there has always been a chance of a French Revolution-style uprising (the so-called "time for guillotines" where the underclass horrifically slaughters the 1%). But when robots can substantially do all of those underclass jobs, the 99% simply won't have the proximity or resources to execute. Consequently, for the good of the entire 100%, the citizenry needs to guarantee diversity before the robots can institute uniformity.


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