On this blog there are posts about economics and finance, which falls under ‘lifestyle and investing’ but from a reactionary-realist perspective. The idea of reactionary realism is to be cognizant of reality without engaging in too much, yet participating at the same time, but still holding out for something better, within reason. One neither pushes nor pulls. One could liken it to stoicism, fatalism, or determinism – but it doesn’t have to be painful, because pain is only inflicted when one resists, because the equal and opposite and opposing force pushes back. Reactionary realism is descriptive (such as explaining economic trends)- hence ‘realism’, and keeps romanticism and idealization to a minimum. Whereas Communists may envision a ‘Worker State’, and some on the at-right envision a ‘White State’, realists tend to avoid such idealizations as they are either unlikely, impractical, or unrealistic. The realist is concerned with the present – what can be done now, and how to maximize the present situation once one knows the rules and attains ‘understanding’. For example, one can believe that certain cultural aspects America are dysfunctional, but also profit from these underlying social and cultural trends.
Activism: noisy and visible but ineffective because it plays by the rules created by the opposition. Tends to also subscribe to ‘great man’ theory.
Total pacifism: to disengage and unplug completely, to literally do nothing.
Subversive pacifism: shifting the national dialogue by subversion, by planting seeds of doubt, that maybe democracy is the problem, not the solution. The alt-right is an example of this in helping to get Trump elected by using ‘memetic-warfare’.
4th option: understanding how the economy works (realism aspect), maximizing the present situation to his or her advantage (pragmatism), yet at the time acknowledging there are problems, in addition to engaging in subversive pacifism.
Realism means acknowledging the world, as it is, not as you want it to be. You have pundits like Peter Schiff railing about the economy being doomed, year after year to no avail, but that’s not realism: it’s dogma or wishful thinking, or just another form of activism. Activism is like pounding your fist into a cement wall repeatedly, expecting it to yield, only to have nothing to show for your efforts but a broken hand.
It’s more fruitful for one to focus their priorities, first and foremost, on their ‘inner circle’ (oneself, family), followed by a second circle which encloses friends and community, and lastly, the most outer circle that encloses whatever is going on in world beyond one’s immediate control. But many have their priorities backwards by putting external events in the center circle and pushing more important stuff to the outer circles. Many bemoan ‘globalization’, yet we engage in it everyday by focusing our attention on global events and news out of our control. This may sound like objectivism, and although there are important global issues with a lot at stake, peace of mind comes, literally, from having a piece of something, because if you don’t carve it out yourself and get that ‘piece’, no one else will. Happiness and fulfillment comes from ownership of one’s own labor and ingenuity as manifested by something (tangible or not) that one can claim their ‘own’.
One thing that is interesting about the alt-right is how ‘global’ it is. It’s like a giant international community that spans from Russia, Europe, and America, consisting of people of varying economies, ages, and nationalities conversing online about Trump, immigration, Brexit, and the European Union. Obama wooed Germany and the East and West coasts of America, but the rest of the world likes Trump. The fat-left, such as BLM, however, is more provincial and homogeneous and focuses on community-driven activism.
Despite the campaign rhetoric, it’s likely both legal and illegal immigration will rise under Trump…trying to slow, let alone reverse, immigration is a massive undertaking. Large cap consumer staples companies (immigrants, as do natives, buy toilet paper, toothpaste, and cigarettes) benefit the most from immigration. These huge companies realize top-line growth from the consumer spending from this influx of foreign consumers, despite the burden of having more immigrants being passed on to bond holders and taxpayers in the form of more debt for entitlement spending. So even if immigration is a net-negative for the US treasury due to all the entitlement spending, it’s pure gravy for large US consumer stocks like Proctor and Gamble, McDonald’s, Disney, and Kellogg, who get more customers and see their stock prices, dividend yields, and stock buybacks surge. But because of America’s reserve currency status and the insatiable demand for low-yielding US debt, taxes don’t have to rise to fund this spending, which further helps stock prices and boosts GDP growth. Buying consumer staples stocks is one way to profit from the inevitability of more immigration and related deficit spending. Even if there is slightly more inflation, taxes still won’t go up. Trump is planing a massive tax cut, on top of other spending…but the US dollar is surging, contrary to Peter Schiff who said that more deficits would cause the dollar to crash an gold to surge (gold has crashed since Trump was elected).
Policy makers are hell-bent on inflating the economy and asset prices… Fiscal conservatism is dead (not that it ever really existed). Sovereignty means currency creation. In Bernanke’s own words, “The US government has a technology, called a printing press, that allows it to produce as many dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”
A second example is profiting from techno-commercialism (the ‘second cathedral’) by buying and holding tech stocks like Facebook, Palo Alto Networks, Google, and Amazon. And also, buying real estate in certain regions (like Bay Area) that benefit from high-IQ immigration and techno-commercialism.