The Perfection of Imperfection

Welcome to This Week’s Leyendecker View

When we reach an impasse at any point in the creative process, it can be helpful to step away from the project to create space and allow a solution to appear.
–Rick Rubin

THINKING OUT LOUD

The Perfection of Imperfection

Most people in the US would agree with the following statement: The world seems out of whack.

Whatcha think? Sound like the world we live in?

Headline after headline screams all our problems. Protests are shutting down our colleges. Education isn’t educating our children. The country has too much debt. The income and wealth gaps are widening. Racism and sexism still exist. And don’t forget, modern society is destroying the earth.

Oh me oh my, what are we going to do? We have to do something, right? And we have to do something immediately, or there will be hell to pay, whatever that hell is.

The United States’ authoritarian adversaries love gloating about all our problems and dysfunctions. Autocratic rule prevents their societies from spilling much beyond the boundaries set by a few and are forced upon the many.

Autocratic societies tend to be more orderly because breaking the rules in an autocracy generally comes with the harshest penalties available. Off to the gulag at best, death at worst…Although maybe death is the better outcome.

Order. That’s what autocrats seek to create and enforce. A society that remains well within the boundaries of the rules of a few. This way, those “not smart enough” to be in power make fewer “mistakes.”

Many in the US seem to believe we need more order to improve economic and social outcomes. But when is the optimum point of order reached? And how would we know it has been reached? And what will it take to get there?

An alternative view of “order” was articulated by the Scottish social and economic philosopher, Adam Smith.

In his book The Wealth of Nations, Smith discussed how the invisible hand of self-interested parties was the most productive economic and social process.

Through the actions of the many come the most productive outcomes. Up to now, this invisible hand has been the basis of a market-based economy, the economy that made the United States the most prosperous and generous country in the history of the world.

In many ways, and at many points in time, our world seems far from perfect, sometimes very far from perfect. But we should resist the urge to deceive ourselves into thinking we can achieve perfection, however that is defined. Doing so would land us in the world of autocracy, where the invisible hand of the population has no influence.

Perfection is impossible, and its pursuit demands autocracy to strive for a day that will never come. Autocratic societies come at the enormous cost of personal freedom. Personal freedom comes at the relatively smaller cost of some imperfection.

The invisible hand does not and cannot deliver perfect results. But it enables individual freedoms and the best outcomes for the most people. Ultimately, the collective wisdom of the many triumphs over the intelligence of the few.

THE ECONOMIC VIEW

America’s enormous debt
Is set to become an economic drag
Company profits gain momentum
While employment weakens
Initial jobless claims jump
Does capital have the advantage over labor?

Consumers have a bunch of “phantom debt”
No one knows how much is out there.

INFLATION, DEFLATION, OR BOTH?

Consumers still feeling sticker shock
Inflation subsides, but prices remain high.

USPS to increase stamp price
Good old government greedflation?

Auto insurance rates have skyrocketed.
Here’s why

THE LABOR VIEW

What do working parents want?
More benefits from employers

Working women’s newest hack?
Microdosing magic mushrooms

The recent job boom?
The result of government spending

MEANWHILE IN EUROPE

Xi visits part of Europe.
Can he win back Europe?
Macron wants reciprocation from China
Xi hears that Europe needs trade tariffs

Will Paris become Europe’s banking capital?
It’s slowly grabbing share from London.

UK’s short-lived PM’s lesson?
Don’t cross government bureaucracies.

THE GLOBAL GAME

The world’s biggest displacement crisis
Is not in Gaza

2024 global trade to double
Let’s check the score at year’s end.

Argentina’s inflation is subsiding
Is it because the government cut spending?
Argentina’s peso is strengthening
But there’s still lots to fix.

THE UKRAINE FIRE

Ukraine needs more soldiers.
Time to draft the convicts

Russia saber rattles its nuke capabilities
Trying to scare Europe, eh?

Russia plans sabotage across Europe
Suggests intelligence agencies.

Western banks still operate in Russia
And paid €800MM+ in taxes last year.

THE GAZA FIRE

Why Israel invaded Rafah
From the Times of Israel.

US tries to strong-arm a cease-fire
Biden needs a win here, badly.
Israel does not care

Gazans vent anger at Hamas
Who is the real enemy?

THE SLIPPERY SLOPE

Robot dogs with rifles
Will AI turn them on us one day?

Numerous nefarious forces
Are behind the protests across the US

Iran is making drone weapons
Being used in the Middle East and Ukraine
Their factories are outside of Iran

FINANCE

Private equity is constipated.
They’re struggling to find liquidity events
They’re putting leverage upon leverage
LPs want GPs to put up more money

Norway has a $1.6T “savings account”
They want nothing to do with private equity

Regulators seize and sell Republic First
Wait, wait, wait, this was a non-event???

REAL ESTATE

Seriously underwater mortgages jump
Here comes the “soft landing.”

Wall Street abandons Wall Street
Financial barons and banks on the move.

Affordability crisis holding back home sales
Will the dam eventually break?

TECHNOLOGY

Apple’s new iPad ad
Is not going over well at all

The US could dominate chip-making
The age of hyper-global competition is here.

“I blame Facebook for January 6”
Aaron Sorkin says their algorithm fueled it.
Facebook is now the zombie internet
TikTok is wiring Gen Z brains

THE CHAT ON AI

Apple throws down the gauntlet
Let the AI chip war begin!

How you can use AI
Join or die (we hope not literally), right?

You can now talk to the dead
A good thing? What are the consequences?

OUR GOOD FRIEND, FAILURE

Canadian province learns its lesson.
And re-criminalizes public drug use

Walmart shuts down health care initiative
Even this goliath couldn’t find a solution.
Oracle also struggles with their initiative

Florida banned phones in schools
More schools and states are following them

THE NEXT NORMAL

College kids’ top concerns
Have nothing to do with war

Need surgery?
You may have to pay for it upfront

Ivy League grads?
No thanks, say more employers

THE WAR ON CARBON

Estimated $9T needed for energy transition.
And who is going to pay for that?

UK’s High Court is not climate friendly.
It declares UK’s net-zero policies are illegal

Rising clean energy costs
Are starting to irritate voters

THE ENERGY TRANSITION

Creating a geothermal boom
Requires O&G expertise

A company is preaching nuclear revival
Are Washington, greens and voters listening?

Renewables can’t keep up with AI demand.
And then there’s the air conditioning boom

THE EV DREAM

Global governments increase EV taxes
One more impediment to EV sales.

BP consider buying Tesla’s charging biz
Good luck with that!
Wait, wait, Elon makes new commitment

“A damn hard thing to do”
Tesla co-founder on EV battery recycling.

THE CHINA SYNDROME

China’s exports grow in April
Have they found new non-Western customers?
Exports to the West have dropped

US revokes export licenses to Huawei
How will China react to this policy?

Biden wants inquiry into China’s shipbuilding
Which could help Japan and South Korea.
US can’t compete in shipbuilding

THE WASHING-TONE

Biden prepares tariffs on China EVs
How will they react?

TikTok sues US government
A ban would violate freedom of speech.

US EV makers get reprieve on Chinese materials
They’d have been DOA without it.

THE ELECTION DISTRACTION

Trump presents VP prospect to donors
It’s an Apprentice bake-off!
He has many choices

Think Trump’s a misogynist?
Child’s play compared to RFK, Jr.

MAKING A BETTER YOU

The ultimate productivity hack?
Just saying “no”

TMI and the internet killed your attention span?
Here’s how to get it back

Need a pep talk to perk you up?
Here’s how to do it yourself

HOW ABOUT A BREAK

Each country’s most common surname
A few Smiths out there, ya think?

Afraid of the apocalypse?
Get yourself a superyacht submarine

When dogs became our best friend
Not that long ago, on a human time scale.

PLANNING A VACATION?

The best hotel breakfast
In every capital city in the world.

Skip Europe’s summer crowds.
And try out these groovy spots

Four magical places in Italy
In a country full of magical places.

MUSIC BOX

Know about Radio Garden?
Listen to any radio station in the world.
How about a little Russian pop music?
Or listen to music curated by David Byrne

CASTING AROUND THE PODS

Change the stories you tell yourself
Shane Parrish interviews performance psychologist, Dr. Jim Loehr.

VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

Let It Be trailer.
Fully restored film of the Beatles.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes trailer.
Humans deserve their fate, right?

Poolman trailer.
Chris Pine does it all.

FROM THE HEADHUNTER’S KITCHEN

The best way to cook asparagus
Yummy yum yum.

Everything you wanted to know
About tomatoes!

A smoky negroni
Substitute mezcal for gin.

THE RANDOMS

Here’s my beef with imitation meat. If you want to eat vegetables, eat vegetables. They are tasty and nutritious. If you want to eat meat, eat meat. It can be tasty and nutritious. But we don’t need vegetable meat. That seems like a waste of time and money. And deceptive branding.

And here’s my beef with “clean energy.” There is no production without waste. None. All production requires inputs, and not 100% of inputs end up as finished products. There is always waste, so there is no true “clean energy.”

There’s a simple production-waste analogy here: You can only survive by eating, but you can’t survive without pooping.

Is Starbucks’s recent poor earnings release an economic indicator that our consumption-dominated economy has reached its limit? Looks like pandemic savings are now all spent.

It has been interesting to see how many Met Gala-related articles and links have been included in the news media I’ve read since Monday. What exactly is the fascination with this annual event? Won’t all the coverage further inflame anti-elite sentiment?

The more free stuff you hand out, the more freeloaders you create. Yes, no, or is it more nuanced than that?

Let’s not forget that if the Fed cuts rates dramatically sometime soon, it would be because the country is in a real recession. This would mean sales and profits would be coming down for many companies in many industries. And of course jobs will be lost.

Have you ever considered that the United States really doesn’t start wars?

Are we destined to be slaves to technology? How often in the course of a day are you on it? Including television?

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Just a Pound a Year
May 3, 2024

The Keynesian Trap
April 26, 2024