The Price of Liberty

July 7, 2025

Good morning! It is a valuable feature of our country that we mark its birth by celebrating not a triumph of force, but the statement of an idea.  (Menand) To declare something doesn’t make it so… you have to follow-up with action and resolve. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”  (Jefferson, Phillips, Etc., et al.)

• For the quarter just ended, it was smart to have been long and optimistic in platinum and lean hogs — less so invested in coffee and sugar.
  • (Does anyone invest in the fat hogs any more?!)
  • Can you imagine the hogs in the pen being divided into lean and fat?  The emotional and financial trauma…
• This is very Northern Hemisphere-centric, but…
  • … would it surprise you to learn we’ve already experienced the 35 lightest days of the year?  Summer, we hardly knew ye.
• How do you determine what book to read next?
  • Fascinating, isn’t it?  There are thousands of them — tens of thousands of new books each year.
  • I just finished looking at still yet another List of Recommended Books… it was 91 titles long.
  • No one can possibly keep up with the lists, let alone some of the books on the lists; what to do?!
  • I need an agentic ChatBot to do my reading for me, maybe.  (That notwithstanding, please move Harari’s Nexus to the VERY top of your list!)
• Why am I doing this?!
  • It might be the most important question of all — both macro and micro… WHY am I doing this?!
  • When you know the answer(s), the rest of your decisions and actions will almost always be good ones.
• Are we free yet?
  • Net interest on the national debt has more than quadrupled in the last ten years — and it’s projected to grow to perhaps quintuple.
  • From about $200 billion a year to more than $800 billion — ballooning to more than $1 trillion soon.  Just the interest.
  • Could you manage that exponential explosion if it were your mortgage — or your credit card?
• Do we need one more story about Papa Hemingway?
  • We apparently do, especially if it is as well-researched and well-written as Hemingway in Pamplona published in the most recent edition of The Smithsonian.  Wow!
  • Or, if you don’t care for Hemingway, read about the amazing dry stone wallers — or that Big Easy delicacy, blackened Red Fish… oh, so good!
• “Some of the gravest dangers posed by artificial intelligence do not result from the internal dynamics of a single human society.
  • Rather, they arise from dynamics involving many societies, which might lead to new arms races, new wars, and new imperial expansions.
  • Computers are not yet powerful enough to completely escape our control or destroy human civilization by themselves.
  • As long as humanity stands united, we can build institutions that will control artificial intelligence and will identify and correct algorithmic errors.
  • Unfortunately, humanity has never been united…”  (Harari)
• India and greater China predict the most dramatic impact, while others, North America included, anticipate less disruption.
  • Surveyed executives increasingly point to changes to trade policy and relationships as a disruptive force they expect to affect the world economy… and their companies.  (Smit)
• Did your team make a good decision — or just reach a faux consensus?
  • Virtual meetings, side chats, and erroneous assumptions about multi-tasking are red flags… (Clampitt, Etc.)
  • Effective meeting leaders balance three crucial roles…
    1. Effective leaders craft agendas, regulate the flow of conversations, and influence decision-making
    2. Leaders share relevant information, express viewpoints and query others…
    3. Effective leaders observe interactions among meeting participants to spot dysfunction and to detect inflection points in the discussion.  (Ibid.)
• When we think of courage, most people picture something big and bold.
  • But, in leadership, courage is often much smaller and less noticeable.
  • Having the difficult conversation even when you don’t feel like it;
  • Making a decisive decision when there are multiple options;
  • Doing what’s right even when it’s not convenient or popular
  • Every act of courage starts with uncertainty… when you act anyway, you encourage others to do the same.  (Eades)