Review of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life

Below is my review of ScottAdams' How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life as submitted to the editor and appeared in the December 2015 issue of the Sturbridge Times Magazine.

Worked for Him

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life

By Scott Adams

Penguin Group, 2013

Hardcover, 231 pages

ISBN-13: 978-1591846918

ISBN: 10-1591846919

List: $27.95 Amazon: $17.10

Book review by Richard Morchoe

If you don't know who Scott Adams is, you may have heard of Dilbert. Dilbert is the non-hero of the comic strip that bears that name. It may or may not be today's most popular strip, but it's hard to think of another as well known since Gary Larson stopped doing The Far Side.

Dilbert chronicles a bunch of cynical cubicle slaves as they deal with corporate America. Adams, drawing on his life in that milieu has become hugely successful. How he got there is the subject of his book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life.

A book with “How to” in the title sounds like a self-help tome. Adams claims it is not. On Page 180 he writes, “This is a good time to remind you that nothing in this book should be seen as advice. It's never a good idea to take advice from cartoonists, and that's a hundred times more important if the topic is health related. I don't know how many people have died from following the health advice of cartoonists, but the number probably isn't zero.”

One might guess the lawyers told him to put that in as he makes a heck of a lot of suggestions and if someone passed away after acting on one, the author could be spending more than a little of his fortune on legal proceedings.

His speculation that at least one person has shuffled off the mortal coil due to following the guidance of cartoonists is dubious. Certainly, more folks have left us because of the advice of the medical establishment. Are carbs okay this week?

Though Adams’ comic strip has a cynical tone, How to Fail is nothing like that. There is a lot of self-deprecation that one would expect from the author of Dilbert. He knows he is not a great artist, but is proud of being an accomplished cartoonist.

As part of his advice to readers, he tells us we should not have goals. The author writes,, “To put it bluntly, goals are for losers.” This seems to go against the reigning success culture. Adams reasons that, “If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you realize you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction. Your options are to feel empty and useless, perhaps enjoying the spoils of your success until they bore you, or set new goals and reenter the cycle of permanent presuccess [sic] failure.”

Instead of goals, Adams believes in systems. He came to that conclusion sitting next to a businessman on a flight to California, when he was succeeding in the “goal” of escaping snowy upstate New York. The fellow told him his “system was to continually look for better options.” This meant he started searching for a new job as soon as he began one.

Dilbert’s creator more or less followed his seatmate's advice over the next several years, in the process no doubt garnering fodder for the comic. He recounts failing at every position yet moving up a rung each time. Eventually, he was told he could go no higher, but not because his incompetence had been discerned. Rather, they were no longer promoting Caucasian ineptness. They were now affirmatively advancing groups that had not been represented in high management. After all, it’s not like we cannot find equal inability among people of other races.

It is worth noting that the two large organizations he mentions most were bureaucracies with many positions that were little more than sinecures. One of them, Pacific Bell, no longer exists, having been swallowed up with much of the busywork being eliminated. The other, Crocker National was also taken over with deadweight being shed. It is unlikely the author could have pulled off what he did at a high tech startup.

Was his experience with continuously moving up from job to job a system or sequential goals? He should get the benefit of the doubt on that one, and it leads us to the subject of “affirmations” that he addresses.

According to Adams, “Affirmations are simply the practice of repeating to yourself what you want to achieve while imagining the outcome you want.” As he explained it, it’s not as new agey as it sounds. He used this form to great effect, “I Scott Adams, will be a famous cartoonist.” Of course that sounds like a goal and your man is no loser.

There is a lot more to How to Fail than systems versus goals and affirmations. Much of it may or may not be great career or life advice. Scott Adams is a good writer with a great sense of humor, but we already knew that from Dilbert. If you get it in your stocking, enjoy it. Don’t mourn if you don’t. The verdict is similar to Samuel Johnson on the Giant’s Causeway, “Worth seeing, but not worth going to see.”

Straight Outta Spencer

Below is my column from the October 2015 issue of the Sturbridge Times Magazine as submitted.

It's not the largest fair in the world. It's not even biggest in Worcester County. It is, however, sizable in our neck of the woods and it is ours.

The Spencer Fair has to be the most un-hip place in the region. I love it. True, I'm not the country's foremost fan of Demolition Derby, but it's nice to know that there are people who have no problem banging into each other in a beat up old heap.

The plaintive sounds of Country-Western are heard from the loudspeakers on the main stage. Actually, the music is inescapable. With no chance of convincing management to book The Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, I've long resigned myself to enjoying it. The rumors that my toes tap to some of the tunes are baseless.

Then there is the food. If you are part of Weight Watchers, Paleo, a vegan or kosher, there is something here for you not to like and much to scorn. That's okay, there's more for us who have thrown caution to the wind, at least for the duration.

Pork in most of its forms is available, if not avoidable. After that sausage sandwich, if one cannot find pulled pork, that is underachieving. Cheese fries were one of the first vendors to catch my eye. Normal french fries were also available, though the grease content was probably no less.

Had your minimum daily requirement of fried dough? Did you step it up a bit and get the fried oreo this year? There are strict rules for food safety and a board of health permit is required. One is tempted to think such requirements are superfluous given the nature of the fare.

Though known to give in to temptation after a not overly long struggle, I do tend to like to spend my money at more community based organizations like the David Prouty High School hot dog stand.

Despite all the social changes that have taken place in our country, some are still so retrograde that they judge a young man by the size of the stuffed animal he can win for his love interest at the games of chance. Plus ça change!

None of the rides are scary and appeal mostly to children.

The vendors are many and varied. If mass produced garish tee shirts are how you express individuality, you may find fulfillment.

The Spencer Fair is not just food and the hawking of wares. In truth, agriculture is the soul of the institution. It began in the 19^th Century with a local farmer displaying crops across his dining room table. That humble origin led to this year's 127^th edition.

There may not be a dining room, but vegetables are all over tables in the exhibition hall The tradition continues with displays competing for the blue ribbon. Almost anything that can be grown in Worcester County is here, from tiny veggies to giant pumpkins. I love to see these behemoths, but it's hard to understand the appeal. You can't eat them and they will soon be almost their own compost pile. I guess it's that we love big. As Josef Stalin said, “Quantity has a quality all its own.”

There is, in the center of the hall a glass bee hive that is a safe way to look at the little critters without getting stung. People hover around the exhibit all day trying to figure out which one is the queen.

Along part of the wall is the 4H table. It is refreshing to see young people out and about speaking enthusiastically about their projects and not obsessed with smart phones.

At one end of the building, life is emerging. First a beak cracks a shell and then with effort a wet, feathered little bird breaks out. It is the perennial favorite chick incubator.

Leaving the hall, we're not done with farm stuff. Integral to the fair is the cow barn. These are purebred animals that have been lovingly raised by the owners and are being shown off in competition. Inevitably, one of the ladies gives birth at her stall to a calf that will soon take its firsts steps. Doubtless, it will be to the gushing of the visitors.

There are tents with amazingly colored chickens and ducks and other fowl. Rabbits as well. Some animals are athletes as oxen and horses compete in feats of strength.

This is Labor Day Weekend at the Spencer Fair. There are larger such events, but they are far from here. This is a cozy, local affair. Would the world notice if it disappeared. Probably not, but something would be lost.

Where I grew up, in the next town there was the homey, little Weymouth Fair. It was part of the civic fabric and was well loved, then it was gone. That town is just an indistinguishable part of the Boston suburban sprawl.

The Spencer Fair reminds me I am a refugee here.

The Law and the Profits

Below is my column from the August 2015 issue of the Sturbridge Times Magazine.

Copyright law protects artists from having their work used for free. It is an understandable safeguard for creative people. It is not, however, supposed to last forever. Eventually, music or literature and other works pass into what is known as the Public Domain and anyone can use or copy them.

Unfortunately, Mickey Mouse disagreed with that. Minnie probably did as well. Their empire, the huge corporation known as The Walt Disney Company, wanted to keep Mick, Min and other properties of the eponymous founder Walt, from passing into the public domain.

In 1998, with others, Disney pushed to get rights extended according to the copyright office circular from 50 years to the “life of the author plus 70 years and for works of corporate authorship to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever endpoint is earlier.” Bill Clinton signed what is known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act into law.

Winnie the Pooh et al are safe within the good old Disney stable as well as many other characters.

Well you say so what? How do we as American people suffer because a corporation gets to keep properties they have arguably done good things with?

What the copyright extension displays is the American system of crony capitalism. Disney is a huge entity, but it is not the biggest player in the American economy, yet Mickey and some other corporations easily gamed the system.

One hopes no one is naive enough to believe the citizenry rose up to demand that their elected representatives save cartoon characters from the vicissitudes of the free market. We can safely assume that no campaign funds were harmed as our solons served the national interest.

Crony Capitalism is hardly limited to the frivolous aspects of American culture. It transpires that the same legislature that handed over intellectual property policy is about to give away far more to powerful interests that dwarf the might of Disney.

Congress recently debated a bill without disclosing what was in it. The Trans Pacific Partnership or TPP is a vast proposal covering many aspects of trade, from digital communications to agricultural policy. It is Crony Capitalism raised to a power.

It's difficult to criticize because it's a secret to all but a few and they're not talking because they can't. Politico's Michael Wessel, as a cleared advisor, has got to see it, but can't say much. He notes, “The government has created a perfect Catch 22: The law prohibits us from talking about the specifics of what we’ve seen, allowing the president to criticize us for not being specific.”

As mentioned above, this is a bill encompassing many areas of the economy. Like most, some aspects interest me more than others. As an organic gardener, I have always avoided GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) seed. We do our best not to eat food grown from GMO sources. You may think me some goofy granola and that may be true. Still, people should have the right to know what they are eating.

In America, support has been growing for the labeling of GMO foods. Some states have laws to that effect and more are likely to. The trade agreement could short-circuit that, giving authority to international bodies. This is hardly surprising as the chief agricultural negotiator for the US is the former Monsanto lobbyist, Islam Siddique. Monsanto is the chief purveyor of GMO seed in this country.

Now, even if GMO seeds are not harmful in and of themselves, why is there such a struggle to keep them from being labeled? Should not we great unwashed at least have the right to our informed folly?

Being an average man, I do my best to be informed, but when it comes to science, there is only so much the layperson can know. It comes down to who do you trust. That's what we do in elections. From the results of most presidential contests, we tend to disagree within a few percentage points. In 2008 Obama was elected with a healthy 53% to 46%. Good, but not a coronation. He made a campaign promise in 2007 to require the labeling of genetically modified foods. Like presidents going back to the beginning of the Republic, he did not keep his word and is now full on for TPP.

Clearly, the 600 corporate advisors who have input into the agreement are having their way with the country's economy. The citizenry will not be consulted. The mere change of chief executive will mean little. Bush would have done the same thing and Clinton pushed NAFTA.

Maybe Bernie Sanders or Jim Webb would be different, but they are not going to get elected.

We have referred the question to our official think tank, The Long Hill Institute for the Study of Political Theater. We tasked them to find a reform to obviate the power of the few in economic matters. Alas, they could come up with nothing. As they opined before in this publication, there is no philosophers stone of government. They did note, the longer a nation lasts, more is centralized in the hands of a few. Their final conclusion, everything eventually reduces to its absurd.

Maybe it's just my paranoia, but it is impossible for me to disagree with Lily Tomlin, “No matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep up.”

Review of Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

The sinking of the Lusitania is still controversial a century later.  Below is my review as submitted to the Sturbridge Times Magazine for the August, 2015 issue.

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

By Erik Larson

Crown, 2015

Hardcover, 448 pages

ISBN-10: 030

ISBN-13: 978-0307408868

List: $28.00 Amazon: $15.40

Book review by Richard Morchoe

Just over a hundred years ago a great ship sank off the coast of Ireland during a brutal war. In and of itself, that should not have been a major historical event. Many vessels would be sunk during that conflict, yet the torpedoing of RMS Lusitania generated the most controversy and is so even today.

There are many reasons for that, maybe the biggest one is wrong. If you went to school in this country in the 50s or 60s, it was easy to come away with the impression that the sinking of the ocean liner was the casus belli that led our country to fight Germany in the First World War. As a history nerd, I knew there were others, but the timeline had escaped my awareness.

Setting things straight for me was journalist Erik Larson in his book, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania. According to the author, “I always had the impression, shared I suspect by many, that the sinking immediately drove President Woodrow Wilson to declare war on Germany, when in fact America did not enter World War I for another two years-half the span of the entire war.”

That's a nice bit of information for those of us with historical myopia, but it is hardly the whole book or even the most important aspect. I had not read anything by Erik Larson, and though that does not make one's life an empty desert, I have been missing out. An author of several books, the man knows how to spin a yarn.

I have a personal reason for reading Dead Wake. Much of my family comes from near where the sinking took place. The Lusitania went down just off the Old Head of Kinsale, a peninsula jutting out into the sea in Southern Ireland. Some of my relatives still farm in the area.

Ireland is an old country and it is not the biggest event to have happened in the region. Kinsale has suffered invasions and massacres and battles. The town itself celebrates its Spanish connection far more than the Lusitania. That said, the demise of the Cunard Liner is not forgotten.

As I was reading the book, it seemed Mr. Larson displayed a tad of Anglophilia. Nothing wrong with that. England is the mommy country, from whom we get some useful ideas such as trial by jury and habeas corpus.

The author referred to the harbor officially called Cobh as Queenstown, the name given it by the occupying British. It seemed he was favoring the Empire's cause.

Except, that is probably more your reviewer's paranoia. Later in the book he would note some possible skullduggery by the Admiralty.

On Page 183 he gives an account of the failure of to provide support for the liner as it approached Ireland. There are lapses and incompetencies in wartime and that may have been all that it was. Or it may have been a bit more sinister, as leaving in the lurch a ship that carried not only passengers, but valuable military cargo.

Larson notes that in a letter Churchill had sent to the head of the Board of Trade, hoping for shipping along the coasts, he wrote, “For our part we want the traffic-the more the better; and if it gets in some trouble, better still.” Was Winston hoping for a disaster?

The captain, William Thomas Turner was born to go to sea. He knew his trade and did his best to sail the ship safely and was at his post until nothing else could be done. If anyone was not to blame, it was him. No matter, Churchill relentlessly tried to pin the blame on him.

World War II may have been his finest hour, but World War I, when you add in Gallipoli, was not a great four years for Winston.

Larson's book is not all about the politics and military policy. He takes you from before the ship sails, to the boarding to cast off and on to the ocean all the way to the fatal encounter with the German submarine. The author goes with you on the sub, U-20 to feel the primitive conditions of what was high tech back then.

Shipboard life is not scanted and it is almost as if we are traveling with them. Passenger Gertrude Adams wrote of it, “There were so many on ship that it really was like living in a town. One saw fresh people every day & never knew who they were.”

There were many interesting voyagers, not the least Theodate Pope and her platonic traveling companion, Edwin Friend. They were both leading lights in American Spiritualism. Pope would survive. Her friend was not so lucky and she would have nightmares of searching for him. She never found him but her spiritualist set claimed to have been visited by him on occasion.

Larson's bio says he is a journalist and not a historian. Dead Wake is an entertaining read, but a student of history would have no reason to scorn it.

Unsanity, the malady of the millennium is spreading and you and I are victims

Below is my column as delivered to the editors of the Sturbridge Times Magazine for the April, 2015 issue

Call me crazy, or something

by Richard Morchoe

There is a vast population of high functioning people who harbor ideas that seem valid, but are delusional. They are everywhere, including the highest levels of government and business. This class are our friends and relatives, and sadly, you and I need only look in the mirror to meet them.

The folks under discussion are not people who need to be cared for. Most can rise in the morning, competently dress and go to a business or place of employment and spend the day doing useful work. Many attain success in their chosen field.

What is the horrible malady victimizing our population? It is not insanity. The afflicted need not be restrained from doing harm to themselves or others. At large, they are not a threat to public order. Indeed there is no description of the condition in the DSM-5(Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5^th Edition, it is used to diagnose and classify mental disorders).

As pervasive as it is, there is almost no discussion of it anywhere. The only thing to be done was to engage the resources of our official think tank, The Long Hill Institute for the Study of Heretofore Unrecognized Psychological Conditions (LHIftSoHUPC for short).

A wonderful aspect of the LHIftSoHUPC is that the shoot from the hip methodology means there are never interminable hours of research. A name for the condition and a definition of terms were arrived at almost instantaneously.

Thus we have Unsanity, that is, a condition where an individual believes feelings are thoughts, facts or arguments.

Your columnist is himself a victim. I firmly hold that ingesting huge quantities of Stonyfield Creme Caramel Ice Cream is healthy because it's organic. Even worse, I trust and act on the advertisement that says “Guinness is good for you” because they wouldn't let them say that if it weren't true.

The cognitive aberrations of a scribbler at a regional magazine are of no import in the great world. However, when people of position pontificate wildly, it should give us pause.

Marie Harf is deputy spokesperson at State. In that position she has the unenviable job of defending administration foreign policy. In a well-reported exchange with Chris Matthews, Ms. Harf suggested; “we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs.”

So that's all it takes to win the War on Terror, a jobs program. Forget that the guy known as Jihadi John, who beheads the hostages, is a highly employable tech grad. Also put aside when suicide bombers blow themselves up they are yelling “Allahu Akbar” and not “if only I had a job at Goldman Sachs or flipping burgers or working as a spokesflack at Foggy Bottom.”

Marie, and one might guess a lot of Americans, might find it hard to grasp that not everyone in the world just wants wage slavery. They would be well advised to read George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf. Orwell, a man who was not unsane, noted that Hitler said, “"I offer you struggle, danger and death," and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.” The lovely life of happy self-actualization the West offers is not a universal aspiration. There is no lack of people who find it empty.

Then again, The Allies were able to disabuse Germany of the notion by killing one heck of a lot of them over five years.

Ms. Harf accused her critics of not being able to understand “too nuanced an argument.” that would seem to be a new way of saying “I was taken out of context” except that she said it with not a little confidence. On Long Hill, we agree the war is not going to be won by killing, but neither is the universal jobs idea a winner. If after almost a decade and a half, all we seem to get is more war, maybe the game is not worth it. That's no more an unsane conclusion than any other.

Despite the fact that we have savaged conservatives such as Ann Coulter, Howie Carr and Mitt Romney in the pages of this magazine, there is the view extant that we are running a militia up on Long Hill. Thus, we feel it incumbent on us to search to starboard for unsanity. Fortunately, our country is a target rich environment across the board.

The Capo di Tutti Capi of conservative talk is a prime example of the phenomenon. Rush Limbaugh rose to prominence in the early 90s when shilling for Gulf War I. He has always been a self-proclaimed champion of liberty. His show is one long paean to freedom.

Until it is time to hide under the bed in fear. According to Mr. Freedom, in light of the Snowden revelations, “Our civil liberties are worthless if we are dead! If you are dead and pushing up daisies, if you're sucking dirt inside a casket, do you know what your civil liberties are worth? Zilch, zero, nada.”* True enough as nothing matters at that point other than how you lived your life. The LHIftSoHUPC can only render a diagnosis of Grand Mal Unsanity.

The LHIftSoHUPC can do little to help the high and mighty with the condition no matter how pervasive it is among the elite. We are here for the citizenry of our region even if the fee structure has not been set and we are a bit fuzzy on treatment. However, if a client is not satisfied, we offer a complimentary dish of ice cream or pint of stout. Your choice.

*From No Place to Hide, by Glenn Greenwald reviewed in the Jul,y 2014 Sturbridge Times Magazine.

Education may not be what it used to be, but whatever it is, it's got to change-Kevin Carey's points in the right direction

The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere

By Kevin Carey

Riverhead Books, 2015

Hardcover, 288 pages

ISBN-10: 1594632057

ISBN-13: 978-1594632051

List: $27.95 Amazon: $19.45

Originally published in the Sturbridge Times Magazine.

Book review by Richard Morchoe

`EVERYBODY has won, and all must have prizes.'

So proclaimed the Dodo after the caucus race in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. That would seem to be the ethos behind our nation's attitude toward post-secondary schooling. There would be a place for everyone to attain an education and a ticket to a middle-class life.

On the surface, it would seem to be working. After The Second World War enrollment in colleges and universities continually increased such that today a third of the population have bachelor's degrees as opposed to ten percent in 1960. By 2005 a college grad made 80% more per hour than someone with a high school diploma, whereas in 1977 it was 40%.

Not all is sweetness and light. In The End of College, Kevin Carey puts contemporary higher education under the microscope and finds that we have not entered academic nirvana, but there is hope. It's just not in the current system.

According to Carey, “Americans have long been told that our colleges and universities are the best in the world. It turns out that when it comes to college student learning, we are decidedly mediocre.”

As evidence, he cites a 2013 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development study “that compared the literacy, numeracy, and problem solving skills of adults in different countries. Fully 38 percent of American college graduates failed to meet at least the third level on a five-level assessment of numeracy that involves solving problems with math and performing “basic analysis of data and statistics.” Only 19 percent met the forth level, compared to the average of 25 percent in other industrialized nations.”

Why is this so? According to the author, schools demand little from their charges. In 1961 full time college students devoted 40 hours a week to class and study. In 2003, it was down to 27 hours with 20% reporting less than five hours outside of class. To the pupils credit, they have been able to get higher marks with less work. Grade inflation is such that the median at Harvard is A minus and what college does not follow Crimson's lead?

Despite high grades and light work, a lot of the kids still can't keep it together. Fewer than two thirds graduate in four years. They may not have a degree, but they can amass debt like the young man or woman who does finish. The average liability is $30,000. Added together, it has blown by credit card debt.

If you are searching for a word for this system, you could do worse than dysfunctional. Can it change? Carey is optimistic for many reasons including money.

On Page 130 Carey recounts his time at the office of Learn Capital. Charts were displayed in circles that gave the total markets of four sectors. They were Enterprise software, $0.3 trillion, eCommerce, $0.8 trillion, Media & Entertainment, $1.6 trillion. Last, in the largest circle is Education, $4.6 trillion. Ed is the only sector that has not gone digital. Who would not salivate at the size of that market.

So what form will the revolution take? According to the author, “The University of Everywhere” is already happening. The most common form is called a Massive Online Open Course or MOOC. There are famous ones such as Khan Academy and Coursera. Will they succeed? What is necessary is for employers to accept completion as a worthy credential?

As an entry into the MOOC world, MIT and Harvard have all their courses online for anyone to take. The author enrolled in Course 7.00x: Introduction to Biology-The Secret of Life, a mandatory course for all MIT freshman. It is taught by Eric Lander who helmed the Human Genome Project. Clearly, this was not going to be a gut course.

Mr. Carey did not get a diploma for his effort, but did receive verification that he had successfully completed the course at the most prestigious research university in the world. Not bad for a man who has a political science degree awarded in 1992.

Now will the world accept MOOC credentials? That is the big question.

The End of College included a wide ranging treatment of what education is. Interestingly, at least to this reviewer, Carey, discusses Cardinal Newman. The prelate's series of lectures on education were made into the book, The Idea of a University.

According to Carey, “True liberal education,” Newman believed, “was not a matter of merely accumulating knowledge in a specific subject. The most important goal was to understand how all the different aspects of the world are connected.”

At my Papist college, The Idea of a University was required reading the summer before freshman year. I got little out of it other than the knowledge that I did not belong anywhere near a serious educational institution. My focus, when actually making some effort, was on my major. My guess is that for most of my contemporaries it was narrower. A good career was the goal.

In truth, if every college and university disappeared from the developed world, that would not stop someone from getting an education. As long as libraries were still extant, and the resources on the internet had not evaporated, the intelligent and serious scholars would be able to educate themselves. The most important quality necessary would be the burning desire.

We should be honest and admit that thirst for an education, in the sense Newman meant it, rarely exists. Even so, most people desire some learning either out of a genuine curiosity or for career entry and advancement. It is difficult to say if Carey's University of Everywhere is inevitable. Its desirability is not arguable. 

The Future Lies Ahead and Peter Thiel Wants Us To Go There, Review of Zero to One

Below is my review of Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future as submitted to the Sturbridge Times Magazine for the April 2015 issue.

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

Peter Thiel with Blake Masters

Crown Business, 2014

Hardcover, 195 pages

ISBN-10: 0804139296

ISBN-13: 978-0804139298

List: $27.00 Amazon: $16.20

By Richard Morchoe

In this country, competition is enshrined as almost a sacrament. It is loved so much that when it does not work, there is the obsession to create the “level playing field.” There is no one to say a good word for the opposite condition, monopoly.

Well, the heretic Peter Thiel has come along to sing its praises. Monopoly has a bad name, connected with robber barons and purchasers of influence. That is not what Thiel is talking about.

Rather, the author is about creating. That is, the going from Zero to One, or making something where before there was nothing. Zero to one; Notes On Startups, Or How To Build The Future is just that, a book about building the future that Thiel wrote from notes taken by his student, Blake Masters.

Peter Thiel should have been the last man to write the book. His existence had been that of a winner in American competitive life until it wasn’t. Thiel had been top of his class in just about any school he attended.

When you are a star at a major American university such as Stanford the next move is a top law school, again Stanford. He was shortlisted for a possible clerkship by not just one, but two supreme court justices. That’s a position that marks a future at the top of the American legal system.

Thiel got lucky in his quest. He didn’t get the job.

Instead, he would coalesce with some friends, many from Stanford. The team would build PayPal and it would make them all wealthy.

As the author would reflect, had he clerked, “I would probably have spent my entire career taking deposition or drafting other people’s business deals instead of creating anything new. It’s hard to say how much would be different, but the opportunity costs were enormous. All Rhodes Scholars had a great future in their past.”

His point is well taken. We don't want a supreme court of judicial dullards, but should not our best and brightest be innovating the future instead of regulating the present?

Just how important is this? China and India have burgeoning economies with large and rising middle classes. They aspire to a lifestyle similar to ours. There is, however, a problem. Billions of people means that if it is done only using the tools we have today, the result will be an environmental catastrophe. Innovation is imperative.

Is that happening? The author makes it clear, “The smartphones that distract us from our surroundings also distract us from the fact that our surroundings are strangely old: only computers and communications have improved dramatically since midcentury.”

This is in contrast to the expectations of the 1950s where people looked forward to, “a four-day workweek, energy too cheap to meter, and vacations on the moon.”

There is much going on, but how much is important? True, there are some high profile monopolies out there that are not exploiting the masses. Facebook is one. Is that something that has advanced civilization? Google has saved untold hours in research as anyone who had to go to the library in the stone age about a decade or so ago remembers. How important is that?

Though he makes the case that our tech age may not live up to the hype, he also notes, it better start, “Today our challenge is to both imagine and create the new technologies that can make the 21^st century more peaceful and prosperous than the 20^th.” Yes, and we need hurry, the current century is already even less peaceful that the bloody 20^th.

Despite the doom and gloom, he does get to writing about building a startup. His book is informative on how to go about it and the culture inherent in such enterprises. Be forewarned, if you are not a genius already, your idea may not automatically get venture capital funding despite your fidelity to the ideas expressed in Zero to One.

So what does the the budding monopolist need to succeed. The first great advantage Thiel suggests is Proprietary Technology. Who can argue that? For example, Google's computer code for search is sort of like Coke's recipe. Unless you can better it, as they say in Gotham, fuggedaboutit.

Network Effects. Facebook and LinkedIn have it. If your peers are on the network, you are probably too.

A startup should also be able to achieve Economies of Scale. You really can't do too much in a service business, but for a Twitter getting to 250 million users in no time, scale is baked into the design.

According to Thiel, “creating a strong brand is a powerful way to create a monopoly.” As a Branding success, he cites Apple. He really doesn't say how to get there, but gives Yahoo as an example of what isn't working.

The final section in the chapter on building a startup discusses the advantage of being the last mover. One might think being the first mover is most important. Remember though, Yahoo was the first mover in search and the big player for a while. Google came along and displaced them and has never been elsewhere but at the top. This is Thiel's point, “to make the last great development in a specific market and enjoy years of monopoly profits.”

So that's all you need to become a tech star. Assemble your team and get to work.  

Obviously, there is more to it. Still, Thiel's book is a good overview of the process.

Zero to One is not really a how to tome, though there might be a young genius who could read the book, quit MIT and come up with the next big thing.  Thiel's book is a wide ranging discussion of the startup culture, the economy and the political and social environment.  It is a great and important read, even though the author is a bit suspect as he didn't drop out of school as did the more successful examples, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Larry Ellison.

Review of Henry Kissinger's World Order from the Sturbride Times Magazine of March 2015

World Order

Henry Kissinger

Penguin Press HC, 2014

Hardcover, 432 pages

ISBN-10: 1594206147

ISBN-13: 978-1594206146

List: $36.00 Amazon: $21.60

By Richard Morchoe

From the 1970s there was a joke that went as follows; Four men are passengers in a plane; a hippie, an old priest, Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger. Suddenly the pilot announces, “The plane is going down and the co-pilot and I are bailing out. There are three parachutes for passengers. Good luck.”

Gerald Ford takes one and says as he jumps, “As president, I am entitled to a chute.”

Kissinger grabs another and with Teutonic intonation states as he exits, “I am der smartest person in der vurld, so dis ist mein.”

The priest says to the hippie, “I am an old man and have lived a long life. I am ready to meet my maker. You take the third parachute.”

The hippie replies, “Not to worry, padre. The smartest man in the world just bailed out with my knapsack.”

Henry Kissinger did not evoke neutral emotions. He was either reviled or admired. He served under presidents Nixon and Ford, first as National Security adviser and then as Secretary of State. Few holders of those officers ever seemed as dominant from the rapprochement with China to the Paris negotiations ending the Vietnam War.

Kissinger was a departure from previous Secretaries of State. The office up until his appointment had been the preserve of members of the Eastern Establishment. We had never had an immigrant, let alone a refugee hold the position. The Kissinger family had to flee Germany due to National Socialist persecution of Jews.

He saw service in and after World War II. Among other duties, while only a private, the young soldier was placed in charge of a city. On leaving the military, Kissinger attended Harvard, eventually earning a doctorate.

After teaching at his alma mater he went on to government service. Leaving State, he would found Kissinger and Associates along with another policy insider, Brent Scowcroft. It is a prosperous and influential enterprise. Few turn down a phone call from Henry.

Kissinger could have written an interesting autobiography. World Order is none of that. The author was wise not to use the word “New” in the title. It is a sober record of our nation’s interaction with other countries. In many ways it is similar to Angelo Codevilla’s To Make and Keep Peace Among Ourselves and with All Nations, reviewed in this magazine’s October 2014 issue. There is however a difference in emphasis as evidenced by the titles.

The book is a valuable resource as regards diplomatic history. We in the West have been under the Westphalian system that arose out of the peace conferences that ended the Thirty Years’ War in the 1600s. The system is based on the respect each state had for each other’s sovereignty and the balance of power. Kissinger’s explanation of that regime and how it is and is not working in the contemporary world is excellent. That said, the book is not without problems.

The whole of Chapter 4 discusses Iran. It is an important topic as our dealings with Persia go back not to the embassy takeover, but to the early postwar period. This the author does not address, though he does give a fair gloss of the history of that ancient land other than that.

He gives credit to the Iranians’ subtlety in pursuing foreign relations. Kissinger is concerned that these world class negotiators are gaming the international system. Through the talks over their nuclear program, he contends they continue progress toward a weapon of mass destruction.

His polemic is countered by The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). On December 19th of last year, as reported by Reuters, they have stated Iran is keeping to its agreements and not enriching uranium to fissile level. That does not mean Kissinger is wrong, but his tone is that what he is saying is uncontested fact.

We should not want a nuclear armed Iran, but there are two other middle-eastern states in the nuclear club. One, Pakistan, is arguably far more unstable than Iran. How much more sleep do we have to lose?

The section dealing with the Iraq and Afghan entanglements begins on Page 317 with; “After an anguishing discussion of the "lessons of Vietnam," equally intense dilemmas recapitulated themselves three decades later with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Both conflicts had their origins in a breakdown of international order.  For America, both ended in withdrawal.” It would seem that Kissinger is not aware that such an admission is not in any sense evidence that America can do the job of managing a world order.

On Page 322 he suggests that if the major powers can’t guarantee Afghan neutrality as they did Belgium in the Nineteenth Century, that country “is likely to drag the world back into its perennial warfare.” His writing does not make the case. We got along well ignoring the place until the Russians invaded and then we had to meddle. If we had minded our business, the USSR would probably have still imploded and, most certainly, The Twin Towers would not have fallen.

Yes, Afghanistan may become a mess, not that it is paradise now, but it only becomes our mess if we let it. Leaving and forgetting it would be a better plan. Ignorance may not be bliss, but in this case, it could be good strategy.

The tone of the book is all too much, we have to do things, because we have to. He does a good job of laying out the situation, but does not provide a compelling reason for intervention.

When Kissinger was the dominant foreign policy player, his most important task was to extricate the country from Vietnam. It would have been nice if we could have achieved “Peace with honor” as Nixon put it, but the big thing was leaving. We were as LBJ put it, hunkering “down like a jackass in a hailstorm.” We couldn’t stay forever and knew we had to go.

Kissinger accomplished the mission and, yes the South fell. All the predictions of the end of the world for us, however, did not come to pass.

Maybe that’s the lesson about World Order that needed learning.