Chapter Thirteen:  The Bromas

Upon reaching Villa Rica there was a welcome surprise: a ship had arrived from Cuba with a detachment of seventy soldiers, nine horses, and a goodly supply of arms, commanded by Cortez’s friend, Francisco “Pulido” de Saucedo. His nickname of Pulido – Dandy – came from his handsomeness and immaculate appearance. “I and my men have come to place ourselves at your command and seek our fortune with you!” he grandly declared to Cortez.

All rejoiced at the reinforcements, but when Dandy sat down with Cortez in private, the news was not so good. “Governor Diego Velasquez’s procuradore – representative – in Spain, Friar Benito Martin, has persuaded the Court in Seville to grant him a license for exploring this territory, with the profits going to him,” was the message. “Only one-tenth of any gold found goes to the Crown, not the Royal Fifth. You, of course, and those loyal to you, will get nothing.”

“My old enemy once again,” mused Cortez. He called in Alonzo Puertocarrero and his closest officers, had Dandy repeat the news, then said, “Gentlemen, the only solution is to petition the King directly. Here is what I suggest we do…”

I don't know about you, but I have been especially glad of my gas-fired central heating and hot water in the past few frigid weeks.

Gas really is rather special: it provides us here in Britain with 84 per cent of our domestic heat, 27 per cent of our electricity, much of the feedstock for our synthetic consumer products, and pretty well all of the nitrogen fertilizer that has fed the world and largely banished famine.

Although we import half of it, beneath Lancashire and Yorkshire, in the Bowland shale, lies one of the richest gas resources ever discovered, just 10 per cent of which would be enough to provide nearly 50 years of British needs.

The technology to get it out involves using water and sand to make cracks that are a millimeter wide in rocks that are a mile and a half down. A month's work leads to 25 years of gas flow from a quiet box of tricks that can be hidden behind a hedge.

No need to festoon the hills with permanent concrete bases for 400ft towers of steel trying to suck a sparse trickle of energy out of the wind on a cold, calm day.

Shale gas extraction is a process that has proved very safe and clean in the United States. It has had virtually no impact on groundwater, earthquakes or surface pollution anywhere. These are exaggerated myths constantly repeated by the wealthy multinational pressure groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, by wealthy fashion designers and their nimby friends in gin-and-jag country, and by Vladimir Putin and other Russians with an interest in expensive gas.

Yes, the world is a mess -- but there is a long-run solution.

Most countries, including those with the biggest economies, are plagued with slow growth and rising, unsustainable debt burdens. The slow growth is in large part a result of excessively large government sectors -- with taxes, regulations and spending far beyond the optimal.

And the rise in debt increases the pressure for more taxes, which slows growth even further and thus fuels the demand for even more government spending to take care of the growing numbers of those "left behind" (because of the lack of growth). This is an economic death spiral.

Citizens in many countries, including the United States, feel they have lost control of their own governments -- because they have.

They no longer think they are masters of their destinies. Large centralized government, by its nature, becomes uncaring at best, and brutal and oppressive at worst. The movement for secession in Scotland was a cry to regain control.

There are secession moments all through Europe, as well as the rest of the world. A few examples:

No, this isn't a rant about Joe Biden's intellect. In fact, if not for the nerve-wracking elections coming up next week, I wouldn't be making a political allusion at all. But I do want you to notice, right now, how you feel when you think about the political situation.

If you're feeling anxious, and anticipating a great relief if things go our way, that is of course reasonable and logical, given the stakes.

But the feeling sense - the sensation in your body of stress and anxiety when you feel the urge to check the polls, or linger too long surfing the web for hopeful news stories; coupled with the anticipation of relief or reward when you find some good news, and a great compulsion to go toward that reward - is your rat brain at work.

Here's how you can be in control of your rat brain, rather than it being in control of you.

The difference was made gin-clear by a recent editorial in the International Herald Tribune, wholly owned by the New York Times, sneeringly entitled The Nanny State?

The difference is this:  A bank robber doesn't claim he has a moral right to steal your money.  A bank robber doesn't claim his thievery makes him the moral superior over his victims.

Liberals do - which makes them far more immoral than common criminals, thugs and thieves. 

According to the IHT, "The United States has long had one of the most meager tax takes in the industrial world [at least they call it ‘take,' as in ‘theft'].  America's social spending [i.e., welfare programs] is almost the stingiest among industrial nations."

Such meager and stingy theft is condemned as a "moral outrage," a contemptibly "tightfisted" approach to "public needs."

It is liberal thievery that is the moral outrage - and we have a Congress in Washington run by such thieves because too few conservatives have the courage to denounce the criminality.

Ten or fifteen years ago, when you looked at the cars on the road, how many Hyundais did you see? How many Hyundais do you see now, driven by buyers who wanted a "good enough" car for a reasonable price? 

Back in my April 4/14 Half-Full Report, I referred to a nascent "Hyundaization" (hun-dye-zay-shun) trend in the global defense market.  Even now, few people have noticed this.

Hyundaization has been masked by spending from high-end customers who only want top-end gear, and by global fire sales of used Western equipment. As an example of those fire sales, many of the Jordanian F-16s bombing ISIS right now recently belonged to the Dutch and Belgian air forces.

After a decade of those sales, however, there isn't much second-hand equipment left to sell. That's opening the door to new buys from new sources. A combination of technology trends, industrial policies, and a multi-polar global shift will give this trend staying power.

This is a sea change on multiple levels.  "Hyundaization" is going to have profound diplomatic, military, and industrial consequences.  Let's talk about them.

Hong Kong.  Why is Hong Kong succeeding while New York City is receding?

They are both world-class cities with about the same per-capita income and great natural harbors. New York is about 15 percent larger in population, while Hong Kong is about one-third larger in area (but unbuildable because of the steep terrain). Both have large immigrant populations who are seeking better lives.

Last week, I explained how much of Hong Kong's success was a result of it having the freest economy in the world, with low levels of government spending, low tax rates, a minimum of government regulation and the rule of law. There is more.

Hong Kong, like Singapore, South Korea, Chile and Switzerland are aspirational societies, rather than societies consumed with envy, like France. Work, saving and investment are not punished in aspirational societies, and there tend to be less social conflict and a higher level of civility.

(It was U.S. venture capitalist Terry Anker who first used the term "aspirational society" to describe Hong Kong during our meetings in this glorious city this past week. It is a more inclusive term than "opportunity society" that Newt Gingrich and Jack Kemp frequently used to describe their vision for the United States.)

The United States used to be an aspirational society, but has increasingly become an envious society.