Pro Commerce

One Man Is Now What Matters

You should know this name by now: Robby Starbuck.

One person with the power of the modern social media, the visual media, and the right idea can now have new political power never before imagined.

Robby Starbuck, understands America’s core values, primarily because his parents escaped from Cuba.  He realized that the ‘woke movement’ to replace the business value of merit with ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ ‘DEI’ is a very unAmerican idea.  

Merit is a core value of America that has slowly surfaced over the 250 years of our history.  Merit has been at war with America's union values of seniority and equality. The triumph of merit over union values emerged at the end of the 1950s as the modern world of commerce triumphed over the domestic hereditary elite (see many earlier blogs). 

Robby saw the situation. He realized that many corporate Leviathans were suffocating their employees with DEI in house re-education programs; corporations whose customers abhor the woke ideas of DEI.

Robby, with a Hollywood background in film and a list of over 70 music videos, has made Internet videos showing the DEI programs at Tractor Supply, John Deere, Harley-Davidson, Jack Daniel's and put these videos on social media where they were picked up and viewed in the millions. Each of the companies promptly publicly announced the end of their DEI programs.  My favorite result were two videos, one showing an empty Harley-Davidson repair station at the greatest motorcycle rally in Sturgis, S.D. and another with a motorcyclist shooting his Harley to death.

The true power of one man with the right idea, the video graphic skills, and modern social media, is that giant Lowe’s and behemoth Ford both backed down and ended their DEI with just the threat that Robby was making a video of their compulsory DEI programs. That is the incredible power of one man.

It just tickles my fancy that the greatest farce in American media, the New York Times says Robby’s “Attacks aren’t working” while the Wall Street Journal calls him a “One man power house destroying DEI.”

Envy of the Rich is the Core of the American Left

I have to tell you that I neither have envy for the rich, including the really rich, nor do I think they have political power.   The core thinking of the Left is the idea that the distance between the rich and poor is unjust.  

I have personally never had that view.  Early on it was for one reason; later in my life I added another reason.

The first reason I don’t envy the rich is that I made choices in my life to make me as free and powerful as any human.  So I never had any reason to envy the rich or the very rich.  I became a simple liver, meaning I learned to live on the minimum expense, so that I could provide for all my desires with little effort.  I am also an American surrounded by boundless abundance.

I had salaried jobs until I was 30 but I was always my own boss and used my time to accomplish whatever were my own goals and fantasies.  I can see that someone who thinks of earning money for stability and market rewards can envy those who appear to have no worries about stability and market rewards, nea ‘the rich.’ A fulltime job can be the shackles that create envy. An IRA, pension or a mortgage can create envy of the ‘rich.’

I had that stability and access to nearly all market rewards with simple living. I even wrote a book called Simple Living; Investments for Old Age for those who worry about stability in later life.

I have one child and one grandchild who have adopted my views of life and gather unto themselves all the skills and attributes that make them free and functional in the world. That includes having many friends, because your friends are your true wealth.

Has it worked?  Absolutely. 

I have traveled the world, lived in Japan and Israel when I wanted to, known hundreds, maybe thousands of important and influential people, accomplished major world-changing feats including creating the first worldwide currency, Mastercard, and woke up every day free to fulfill every wish and desire and be wildly joyous.  Never envying anyone.

The second discovery: political power does not come from being rich. Not at all. I learned this from being in politics for much of my life.  Many rich people try to buy political influence.  Nearly all fail.  Many have run for political office spending vast fortunes and gotten nowhere.  The only people who wield political power and political influence are those who deeply know politics.  Having money is irrelevant; I am serious.  For money objectives there are monied counter-objectives.  Knowing and understanding how politics works is the ultimate tool to influence politics. Willie Brown, who was poor as a young man and is a simple liver as an old man, has molded political power in California and nationally at a level few others have ever achieved or conceived.   Willie used money but it was not his own money.

Bill Gates’ global foundation is a farce.  It has accomplished nothing in any domain with Croesus levels of spending.  I know because I traveled the world examining Foreign Do Good Investments and found the ratio of good projects to harmful projects to be 1 to 30.  Free market practices did orders of magnitude more good than aid grants. And a fraction of the harm.

Summary

Envy of the rich comes from two sources.  People who don’t know how to live free with the abundance around them.  The fallacious belief that wealth is somehow connected to power. Political power is political understanding.

One caveat.  I would love to have my own private jet for travel. There is a little envy about that.  I’ve been a private pilot since my early 20's so I know that the time involved in flying any plane is great and requires a paid pilot. I now pay for business class and fly on the commercial 30-50 seat planes when I can.