With the exception of Hillary and Trump’s sweep of Super Tuesday, not much going on. Hillary is the most ‘establishment’ candidate, which should bode well for stocks, but I still prefer Trump. Some in ‘NRx-sphere’ probably own stocks and other investments, but advocate some form of ‘reset’, not realizing or ignoring the fact that total economic collapse or reset would be detrimental of those investment, or pretty everything we take for granted – internet access, peaceful neighborhoods, even electricity and running water. It would entail a major disruption for long-term change. Trump, should he win, may be in for a rude wakening that Congress is not like the boardroom of The Apprentice, where decisions can be made on a whim, although he probably knows this. The odds of meaningful reform, regrettably, are slim, by design of the tripartite system of government. In the end, it probably won’t matter as much as the media attention would have one believe.
Trump’s success, despite never holding political office and spending very little money on campaigning, disabuses the belief that money can buy elections. It can’t. Jeb spent $85 million to get people to like him, and failed. Romney also had a likability problem.
So far, some $10-million has been spent on advertising for Donald Trump, compared with $32 million for Hillary Clinton, $49 million for Marco Rubio, and almost $85 million for Jeb Bush, according to data from Ad Age. Bush dropped out of the Republican contest earlier this month after trailing badly.
I have always found the meta-narrative to be more interesting than the message or narrative itself. Consider this tweet about Benoît B. Mandelbrot which went massively viral, getting almost 1k ‘re-tweets’:
Little known fact: Benoît B. Mandelbrot's middle name is Benoît B. Mandelbrot
— ¥ung $chnuri (@thewholebakery) February 22, 2016
The joke is that his middle name is self-repeating, like the fractals he is known for. That is the narrative or the message.
A meta-narrative is why was this tweet so viral? What does its viralness say about the state of America, the economy, and society? The explanation, according to this blog, is that we’re in a ‘smartist era‘ since 2008, and especially since 2013, where intellect and science is more valued than ever, and this is related to the post-2013 SJW backlash and the rise of ‘nerd culture‘. Culture is emulating economics, where nerds are more valued in terms of higher wages, in terms approbation (the tweet going viral) and appropriation (The Big Bang Theory show, Instagram culture, etc). Nerds create value though merit and tellent; SJWs, on the other hand, seek to persecute nerds for nor being inclusive enough to other genders or races, or for not sufficiency spreading their wealth. Rising stock prices and rising home prices are rewarding nerds for the economic value they create, and now society, in general, is too. The viralness also seems to debunk the belief that America is ‘dumbing down‘, as the joke requires an understanding of fractals, a concept that until recently was considered esoteric. If Twitter and the internet existed in 1985 instead of 2015, I don’t think such a tweet would have gone viral. Meta narratives are subjective, so yours may differ from mine, and perhaps a narrative doesn’t exist. Notice how the meta-narrative is much longer and perhaps more interesting and thought-provoking.