My Plot for a Science Fiction Movie…
And, Like Most Good Science Fiction Movies, It Will Probably Come True!

I’ve been saying this for several years, knowing how implausible it sounds.

I’m talking about my observation that several of the largest social media platforms (and to a lesser extent Google) appear to be evolving into powerful digital nation-states with their own citizens, their own laws, their own penal systems, their own educational and communication systems, and their own forms of taxation.

And now it looks like members of the political classes have finally figured out what’s happening and are taking action to stop it.

I said the expansion of their power was inevitable because these digital nation-states will be providing their digital citizens with more and more of what they really want from life – comfort, entertainment, social engagement, and affirmation. The largest of them would therefore become increasingly rich through their voluntary taxation schemes (subscriptions, fees, etc.). They would also become more formidable than physical nations in the sense that they will become, by using their algorithms as they already do, more influential in the news and ideas their citizens are exposed to.

When I look at the digital landscape today, it seems clear that Amazon, Apple, X, and Google (I feel like I missed one. Did I?) are already in this position.

I also said that when members of the political classes that now control physical nations realize how much they are competing with these rising digital nation-states for money and power, they will attack and destroy them through legal means or appropriate them (in form or in substance) and thus maintain their dominance.

The Chinese were the first to recognize the potential threat and established their own state-controlled social media and internet search companies. The Russians and some of the larger Islamic states came next, exerting the one asset they have that the digital nation-states lack: physical force. And now you can see it happening in the US, in most European countries, and even in South and Central America. (Look at what Brazil did to X last week.)

If these big countries are successful at taking over the emerging digital nation-states, they will be in a position to gradually absorb most of the smaller countries of the world. They won’t have to physically conquer them. They will merely have to infiltrate them with their own digital platforms.

This will be welcomed by the members of the political classes that dream about a single world government. But I don’t see that happening any time soon because of the still very deeply established and active Cold War industry and because of some fundamental differences in cultural values that will be difficult to dissolve.

What I think we will end up with is five or six mega-countries that would break down as follows: the United States of America (with Canada and dozens of other countries), the United States of Europe (sort of like the European Union), the United States of China (with dozens of other countries), the United States of Russia (with dozens of other countries), and the United States of Islam, with one possible addition: Japan.

Speaking of digital nation-states having their own cultures, here’s a glimpse of what Google’s will include.

Just Got Back from a Great Family Vacation on Grand Cayman Island… 

I’m back from a week in Grand Cayman with the immediate family: K, our three sons, their spouses, and six grandkids (two each). Happy to be home.

Not that I did not enjoy my time in the blistering heat of that island of sand about an hour’s flight from Miami, just southwest of Cuba and northwest of Jamaica.

Grand Cayman is a prototypical beautiful Caribbean getaway, with soft white sand beaches and crystal-clear blue and green water.

I remember it from the 1980s…

Seven Mile Beach on Grand Cayman Island, circa 1984 

Back then, the population was about 40,000 people and the largest hotel was the Holiday Inn, which had 80 rooms. I wrote a sales letter then promoting an investment conference on the island that my boss wanted to host. I think the conference fee was $700, and we were aiming at getting 100 people to show up. When, looking at the sales report a week later, we realized that we had 700 sign-ups, we had to break the conference into two, one after the other, and we had to find accommodations for all those people. We filled every little hotel and motel, and even put some guests in private homes. It was an insane crash-course introduction to the investment conference business, which is as much about the comfort and amusement of the attendees as it is about the quality of information and advice they are receiving.

I could write a book about all the frights and surprises and misadventures we lived through. But by working 20 hours a day for 15 days straight, our little crew of six people managed to pull it off, with both the attendees and the speakers giving us great reviews on our post-conference questionnaire. A great relief to us all.

My boss chose Grand Cayman because it was known as an international banking center and a “tax haven,” two things I knew nothing about at the time, and still maintain a high level of ignorance about, despite spending the intervening years publishing lots of economic and financial content.

Back then, the island had a population of about 40,000 and 400 banks and trust companies. Today, it has a population of almost 80,000 and 600 banks and trust companies. If my mental arithmetic is right, that is one bank or trust company for about every 130 residents.

So, it’s still very much an international banking center, although it no longer serves as a tax haven because of US banking laws and regulations initiated about ten years after we held our events there. The changes were made, I’ve read, to put an end to the money laundering and tax dodging that was systemic to the Caribbean/Miami cocaine industry that exploded in the mid 1980s.

But I might have to give myself a bit of credit for those restrictions since the advertisement I wrote to attract investors to our conference mentioned that they could “write off” the cost as a business expense while they learned how to “take advantage of legal tax reduction schemes.”

That was 100% true. But I presume it did not read well with the IRS and certain Congress people as I was told that it was introduced into the Congressional Record as part of a campaign that later disallowed individual investors from deducting investment conference expenses. (Sorry, guys.)

As the banks, the trust companies, and the population grew, so did tourism. Again, I’d like to give myself some credit for this since our conference was the largest-ever two-week incursion of tourism that had ever happened to Grand Cayman. Today, banking is still its largest industry, but is followed very closely by tourism, as you can see from the current photo of Seven Mile Beach below.

Seven Mile Beach 2024 

Nowadays, there are daily Miami/Grand Cayman flights, which are primarily filled with US and Canadian citizens coming to enjoy the many natural attractions that the island always had but were known only to the locals in the ‘80s because the visitors then were staying at the Holiday Inn and having meetings with bankers and trust experts in Georgetown, the capital city.

Here is where we stayed – the Ritz Carlton, which actually sits on top of the old Holiday Inn.

And here is what Georgetown looks like now – a bit busier and more colorful than it was in the 1980s.

There’s a lot to enjoy in Grand Cayman, including swimming with stingrays, visiting the underground “Crystal Caves,” walking the Mastic Trail, and diving the wreck of the USS Kittiwake (an artificial reef teeming with marine wildlife).

But, as I said, I’m happy to be back.

What Matters Most (and Least) in Winning Fights… 

I can’t claim to be an expert, but I’ve learned some things about martial arts and fighters. I’ve taken lessons from and trained with many high-level amateurs and pros since I began practicing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu 27 years ago. I’ve watched, as many fans have, countless fights. But also, because of a close association I’ve had with American Top Team, one of the largest and most successful martial arts teams, I’ve sat in the corner of dozens of fights and been in hotel rooms where fighters were being given last-minute counseling on strategy.

This is what I have learned.

Most fighters win because of skill – i.e., when their combination of skills in any particular fight is dominant over the combination of skills of their opponent.

And of all the skills it takes to win, the greatest one is fighting intelligence: the ability to recognize the strengths of one’s opponent and adjust one’s fighting strategy accordingly.

Next in importance is endurance (or gas). At the highest levels of competition, the level of endurance needed to win is extreme. Endurance is not a natural gift. It can be achieved only by extreme training.

Next is tenacity (or heart), which can be improved through practice and coaching but is mostly inherent in the psychology of the fighter before he first steps into the ring.

The least important factors in winning fights are the two that impress amateur fans the most: muscularity and ferociousness.

A massive, well-built body is undeniably impressive. But as anyone who has studied the fighting game for years knows all too well, you cannot judge a fighter’s actual power or strength in the ring by his physique when he weighs in. And as every experienced fighter knows, ferociousness, which is, at best, a style meant to intimidate one’s opponent, derives from mental weakness. You may think that a great fighter like Mike Tyson belies that contention. But notwithstanding how ferocious he looks when he fights, he wins because of his extraordinary skill and his intelligence and his tenacity.

Finally, there’s this: Among the fighters, like Tyson, that make it to the top, there are some that rise even higher. You can see what I mean here by looking at the face of the winner after he’s achieved the victory he ferociously claimed.

Speaking of Fighting… 
This Is Blatant Stupidity Born of Evil 

I’m writing this before I’ve had the chance to see how Big Media responds to that female Olympic boxer being so quickly beaten into tears by a biological man that the Olympic Committee deemed to be a female.

That something like this was allowed to happen has nothing to do with transphobia. Nor is it a “non-issue” because it is focused on a very small percentage of the population. On the contrary, it is a deeply entrenched, fast-spreading, and extremely destructive intellectual contagion whose consequences reach far beyond post-modern structuralism, intersectionality, critical race theory, and gender fluidity doctrines.

It was never about any of those supremely and transparently stupid ideas. In my opinion, it always was, and still is, about indoctrinating society’s wealthiest, most powerful, and most influential people into a cult of thinking that contradicts everything good and progressive that has occurred in human history since the 18th century.

Megyn Kelly, Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, and countless others are correct in calling it what it is – unadulterated evil masquerading as compassion.

Click here and here and here.

What’s Going to Happen? A New Prediction… 

Since I wrote about the election last week, I have changed my mind about the COPs’ strategy – which, if I’m right, is even more clever than I’d been giving them credit for. So I’ve changed my prediction about how the election will play out.

Let’s begin with this: As I expected, Biden “decided” that he would not be running against Trump in November. I thought it would happen in the last two months of 2023 to give the COPs plenty of time to build a credible campaign for Biden’s replacement. And I believed the replacement would be Gavin Newsom with a Black woman (Michelle Obama, if they could get her) as VP.

But that’s not what happened.

Biden didn’t announce his decision at the end of 2023. Instead, we were treated to another several months of watching our president’s accelerating physical and mental decline, while Big Media and everyone around him kept telling us he was just fine and would continue to be fine for another four years.

Then suddenly, after what seemed to be a perfectly normal (for Biden) cringeworthy debate with Trump, the COPs, Hollywood, and a surging number of key Democratic leaders began to publicly question the abilities they had been so strongly defending just days and weeks earlier.

And after doggedly insisting that he would not resign, Biden apparently woke up one day and decided that the best thing for America would be for him to step aside at this eleventh hour and endorse Kamala Harris for president. Which made her – in an entirely un-Democratic move – the de facto Democratic candidate!

By having Biden wait that long to step aside, and then by having dozens of the most influential liberals in the country speak up in favor of Harris, the COPs had ingeniously converted the Democratic Convention into an endorsement party, eliminating the very likely possibility that had Biden’s announcement come months sooner, her chances for victory at the convention would have been virtually nil.

So, this is where my new theory and prediction come in.

The COPs knew that Biden wasn’t going to win if he ran in November. And they probably assumed he would step aside early, as I had predicted. When he didn’t, it was too late for Newsom. Too late even for Michelle Obama.

But there was one possible way to change the game: Schedule a debate with Trump early on, earlier than one has ever taken place, to make it clear to the country what they already knew – that Biden was not fit to serve. Then use that (perhaps with the promise of a little help in making all those Hunter-related problems go away) to get him to agree to step aside and go down in history as a loveable and loyal American.

Now there’s one more thing that needs to happen. And this is my new prediction. Sometime in the next month or so, Biden will have another health crisis and then regretfully resign from his duties as president.

It will be a heart-warming announcement. And the very next day, the presumptive candidate for president will become the actual president.

Nobody will complain. Maybe not even the Trump camp, because they will expect him to eat Harris up in debates and rallies and so on. But he won’t get the chance. Because the COPs will keep her in the basement until the election. She will make a handful of scripted statements, but she will not be allowed to face a live audience or go against Trump ad hoc.

And if Harris can resist the urge to initiate any significant political campaigns in the next 90 days… if she can stay calm and speak very little and very carefully… if she can resist the temptation to cackle and boogie too much… what might happen is that millions of Americans that currently don’t like her (or fear her) will begin to think, “Actually, she’s not that bad. And it would be cool to have our first Black/ Asian/ Female president!”

I’m Not Gloating, but… 

You heard it here first (and again and again). For more than a year, I’ve been predicting that Biden would drop out of the 2024 presidential race in order to allow someone with a better chance of defeating Trump to take over. I predicted that it would happen sometime between Thanksgiving of 2023 and the new year to give his replacement time to build momentum – but despite increasing pressure, he refused to do it.

It’s already past my deadline to post today’s issue, so I won’t say anything more right now about Biden’s decision to step down. But tomorrow, I will tell you why I thought it was inevitable so long ago, and what I think is going to happen next.

Worth Quoting

“Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.” – Sydney J. Harris

One Final Thought on Japan? Hardly! 

Today, I want to dig into one of a half-dozen thoughts that have stuck with me since coming back from this trip. Thoughts that I’m pretty sure will lend shape to Wealth Culture, the book I’m writing about why some countries and cultures are indisputably much better than others at achieving certain goals.

So, picture this…

I’m in Japan, and it’s 11:00 at night. I’m on my way somewhere, on foot, approaching an intersection completely devoid of moving vehicles. And nearly devoid of people, except for one middle-aged Japanese businessman (I can see that he wears a blue suit), stopped ahead of me at the red light, waiting to cross this narrow, noiseless, utterly unoccupied two-lane road.

He knows, as I do after being in this city for only a few days, that the traffic lights don’t change quickly. If they stay red for a full minute before turning green, you are lucky. Most stay red for what seems like an eternity.

What I want to do, as I near this patient man, is walk quickly past him to cross the street and continue on my journey. But as the distance between us shortens, my resolve disintegrates. When I finally arrive at the corner, I stop and stand next to him. And the two of us stay there like programmed automatons for the next 90 seconds.

I can think of a few plausible explanations for his behavior – much having to do with the respect for order and compliance that is so much a part of Japanese culture. But how can I explain my decision to stop and honor the electronic signal? Never, in the US, would I NOT just jaywalk to the other side.

Before I give you my not-yet-baked theory, I should admit that this very same situation happened to me once before, years ago, late at night, at an entirely deserted crossroad. But that was in Bonn, Germany. And that time, I did hesitate for a moment at the red light, standing next to the only other person visible in that part of the city. But several seconds later, I came to my senses and jaywalked on my way.

I’ve been thinking about why I ignored the red light in Germany and respected it in Japan. The superficial circumstances were the same. But there was a difference. And that difference speaks volumes about Japanese culture, and why I think it is the best and possibly the most enduring national culture that exists today.

“Made in Japan” 

After I finished with my business meetings and presentations late Monday, K had us on the train to Takayama, the first of several additional destinations (Hakone, Kyoto, and Naoshima) we have been visiting since then. I’ve been to Kyoto before, but never to Takayama, Hakone, or Naoshima, all of which have lots to offer in terms of natural beauty, world-class hotels and ryokans (traditional inns), art and history museums, gourmet restaurants, friendly food stalls, and more Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples than you could imagine.

We are in Naoshima as I write this, a lush little island in the Seto Sea that is heavily populated with fantastically serene and sophisticated sculpture gardens and museums of contemporary art.

I have to say this about Japan (and I know, I said it before): The Japanese may not be inventors, but when some other country creates something – anything from an idea to a technique to a style – the Japanese “appropriate” it and bring it to a new and better level.

So much of the art, the architecture, the crafts, and the decor in Japan is undeniably more subtle and sophisticated than the originals. And when it comes to anything trendy – from pop music to street art to teen fashion – the Japanese add a self-conscious note of irony to it that makes it less self-important and more fun.

I’m writing from Benesse House on Naoshima. It’s actually much more than a hotel, because it contains three separate museums, including one devoted to Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photography. I’ve liked his work when I’ve seen it in US museums, but to see so much of it curated and hung so tastefully here… I am feeling like I often do when I get to see a large collection of an artist’s ouvre. I feel like I really understand why he is considered great.

If you’ve never seen Sugimoto’s work, most of it is less like photography than reductionist paintings. There are some pieces that are strongly reminiscent of Mark Rothko. (Maybe even more intense!)

And others that are muted black and gray landscapes that remind me of Robert Kipniss, a favorite of mine who’s not well enough recognized.

This afternoon, we visited another nearby museum, the Lee Ufan Museum, a collaboration between Ufan, a sculptor that works mostly in steel and natural stone, and Tadao Ando, the architect who created this set of buildings, corridors, gardens, and rooms with views that is reminiscent of the Guggenheim Museum in LA, but smaller and much more affecting (and with better views).

Okay, I’ll stop now.

Well, just one more thing: Everything about Japanese architecture, public and private, interior decor and landscape design, furniture, lighting, doors and windows, bathtubs, showers, and even toilets is simply more ingeniously and more thoughtfully made than it is in the US.

The US has contributed many more inventions and novelties to the world, including artistic, cultural, and amusement concepts – but when you embed yourself in Japan, even a little, as we’ve been doing for nearly a month now, you can see how far from perfect American-made is.

I Did It! 

On Saturday, I gave my presentation on “the seven natural laws of wealth building” to an audience of about 1,000 plus another 700 watching the live stream. I won’t grade my performance. Everyone I spoke to later was highly complimentary, but in my experience the Japanese are always complimentary, so I won’t present that as evidentiary.

What I can tell you is that the way my Japanese partners and the hotel staff treated me was absurdly flattering. Throughout the day, I was escorted by at least a half-dozen people who took me through hidden hallways and back staircases and into various “green rooms” and then eventually onto the various stages and platforms I was speaking from – all done, apparently, to “protect me” from my “fans.”

I’m not kidding.

After my three-hour keynote speech, I spent another two hours doing interviews, and then two full hours with 120 individual ticket holders who had paid some crazy additional sum of money to have their photos taken with me and Sean (who runs the business my family has with the Japanese). And after that, there was a cocktail party, where Sean and I separately (each with our own simultaneous translator) visited 11 or 12 tables of about six to eight people each and were given seven minutes to answer their questions before a handler dragged us and our translators to another table.

The next day was devoted to 20 of the 120 who had paid $5,000 each to spend the day with us and listen to our ideas about business, entrepreneurship, and wealth-building. They all had questions, and I had been asked to spend 20 minutes on answering each one. At 20 people times 20 minutes, it took about seven hours.

It was exhausting but energizing, because almost all of the 20 were successful or promising business owners and professionals and the questions were good. They not only asked about business, investing, retirement, and estate planning (which I had expected), but also about American politics, geopolitics, macroeconomics, currencies, cryptocurrencies, real estate investing, art collecting, personal productivity, physical fitness, sleeping habits, child rearing… and I can’t remember what else.

The next day (Monday for me, Sunday for you), I spent another six hours with a different group of people – 100 members of a private wealth education club I had started 14 years ago in the USA, which was now in its second year in Japan. That was an entirely different experience because the crowd was considerably younger and their interests were more in the realm of entrepreneurship and business management.

The final two hours, which could have been a disaster, turned out to be the highlight of the three days, both for me and, I think, the 100 members of the club. My challenge was to answer all of their questions in the 120 minutes we had left after my presentation – which meant that even if each person limited their questioning to 30 seconds, I would have only 30 seconds to respond.

Well, they did, for the most part, limit their questioning to 30 seconds or less, and I was able to answer them in an average of 30 seconds. Which was, as surprising as it may sound, completely fun and exciting.

After one final dinner with my partner, his family, and Miki, my ever-present and super-considerate translator, I was back to the hotel at 10:30 and asleep by 10:45.

That’s the quick recap. There’s a whole lot of other things that happened and lots of interesting thoughts I’ve had about Japan, its culture, and how Americans can profit from it. I’ll tell you more about all that in the coming weeks.

The Japanese Do It Again! 

We were in Osaka for a few days, where we were filming some interviews and meeting with the senior executives of the company that publishes my books and essays. Later this week, I’ll be sending you more of my general observations about Japan. But before I do, I wanted to tell you one amazing thing that I discovered about this city.

Tokyo is, as I said, a great city – great for denizens and tourists in a dozen fun and practical ways. Osaka is not as large, with less to offer tourists, but it is apparently a great place to raise a family.

K and I discovered this while having dinner with SM, my primary partner in Japan, and his wife KM. They have two small children and one on the way. And they are thinking about moving to Osaka.

They mentioned all the benefits of making such a move, including the cost of housing, the cost of living, the opportunity to live abroad for several years, and the fact that Osaka is kid friendly. In an otherwise business-oriented metropolis, millions of Osaka’s residents are young parents. To accommodate them, there are innumerable little parks and amusements for children all over the city. The food markets are replete with kid food from baby formula to pop tarts. Pediatricians and OB-GYNs are as common as iPhone repairmen, and there are child care centers – very reasonably priced – on nearly every residential block.

But the craziest thing is this: Those child care centers are open 24/7.

Let me repeat that: 24/7. Apparently, if you want, you can drop off your kid on a Tuesday morning and pick him/her up Thursday after work!

Once again, the Japanese have taken a Western invention and improved it!

Giving Speeches and Other Frightening Experiences 

I’ve read that, next to dying, most people fear public speaking more than anything else.

I get that. I know what it is like to stand in front of an audience of several hundred people who are waiting to see if you are about to tell them something that is worth an hour or two of their time.

Having given dozens of speeches in my career, I can attest to the growing anxiety one feels as the day of performance draws near. It’s similar to how I feel before a Jiu Jitsu competition, where I face glory or embarrassment in front of onlookers who, I’ve convinced myself, are there not to see any of the other dozens of competitors, but just little old me.

My Jiu Jitsu friends that have competed hundreds of times over many years tell me that the anxiety lessens over time. And I am happy to report that my anxiety about public speaking has likewise diminished over the last 40 years.

In about a week, in Tokyo, I’ll be speaking to the largest group I’ve ever faced: 2,000 Japanese people that have paid money to hear me speak about business, entrepreneurship, and wealth building.

As my confidence in speaking grew over the years and my anxiety ebbed, I adopted the practice of doing very little preparation – just spending an hour or two thinking about what I was going to say, putting down a few notes on an index card, and ad-libbing the actual speech.

But this time I will be in front of 2,000 people and I’ll be speaking for three hours and – to make matters worse – I was asked to prepare written notes on my presentation to help the simultaneous translators do their jobs well. And so I spent many hours and wrote thousands of words and even prepared 56 slides to illustrate the points I intended to make – something I’d never done before.

Yes, I am feeling anxious right now, and I’m sure that anxiety will build in the next five or six days. But I’m sure it won’t get as bad as the anxiety I was feeling leading up to the presentation I made earlier today (I’m writing this on Saturday evening) at the Cornell Art Museum right here in Delray Beach. The subject: Central American Modernism, the book that Suzanne Snider, my partner, and I spent eight years researching and writing.

When I started writing books, I developed a fear about public speaking that I had not confronted before – the fear that I would appear at some random bookstore to talk about one of my books and find myself in a room of 50 or 60 chairs on which sat only five or six people.

That fear was so great that in my contract with John Wiley, which published many of my bestselling books, I had myself exempted from the obligation to face that sort of humiliation.

But there I was this morning, heading from my car to the museum, heart pounding, prepared to be mortified. And sure enough, when I climbed to the museum’s second floor and peeked into the room where Suzanne and I were going to speak, there were about 50 neatly arranged little white chairs on which about a half-dozen people were sitting.

I almost turned around and walked away. But I stayed. And minute by minute, people began strolling in and taking seats. By speaking time, to my utter delight, it was standing room only. And afterwards, for a good half-hour, Suzanne and I were both surrounded by people who wanted to chat about what we had said. And the comments were kind.

That put me in a good and confident mood for the rest of the afternoon. But it’s 8:15 in the evening now, and K and I are waking at 5:30 tomorrow morning to catch our planes to Japan. And already I’m feeling that slowly percolating dread that I thought I had completely subdued many years ago.

Wish me luck.

It Feels Like the Garden of Eden 

I’m neck deep into finishing three separate presentations I’ll be delivering in Tokyo next week. Two of them account for three hours of speaking to 2,000 paid attendees. The third one is a presentation to 20 people that have paid $5,000 apiece to ask me questions.

I’m feeling a lot of pressure to deliver. What makes this especially challenging is that, in order to prepare the translators, I have to basically write out the presentations almost verbatim and get it to them a week before the event… which is NOW!

Needless to say, this morning, when I was told that a new video I had commissioned for Paradise Palms had been completed, my stress levels were sky-high. It is a short but dramatic tour of the gardens, set to music. I watched it and it calmed my nerves for a while.

Which is to say, I like the way it came out. Click here and let me know what you think.

(Make sure you hit the start arrow to activate the sound.)