A compelling future driven by the cost of major economic inputs falling to zero.
——Marvin Zonis

A struggle for influence within Iranian politics has recently intensified. So-called “hard-liners” who seek to preserve the “revolutionary” character of Iran and its rule by the Supreme Leader and his clerical allies have been able to win control of Iran’s Parliament. Simultaneously, their ally — The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps — has been spreading its influence to other institutions in the system. Massive efforts are being made for the hard-liners and the IRGC to control the outcome of the next presidential elections in May 2021 and the eventual succession to a new Supreme Leader. Their efforts are risky because until now, competition within the system allowed a safety valve for widespread internal dissension.
——Marvin Zonis

By Marvin Zonis

Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. Porter, The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy, Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2020.

Run! Do not walk! Read this book now!

By Marvin Zonis

The belief systems that justify the ways things are and the way they ought to be – the “Veil of Legitimacy” – are increasingly failing to convince more and more Americans and are more and more under attack. The result is the possibility of an opening to substantial change in this country. This is a “pre-revolutionary” moment.

By Marvin Zonis

Bill Gates recently told me (and millions of other subscribers to his www.gatesnotes.com) that he would recommend Bob Iger’s book, The Ride of a Lifetime, “whether they’re looking for business insights or just want a good read…” But, Bill Gates continued, “It’s still the case that the best business book I have ever read is Business Adventures, a little-known collection of articles by a reporter named John Brooks.”

By Marvin Zonis

Joseph A. Morris (mdlrusk@aol.com) reminds us that Adam Smith was born on this day in 1723. Morris restates perhaps the most famous (and, I find, thrilling) lines from Smith’s The Wealth of Nations:

I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind.

I have received notes from certain readers acknowledging that many charges against China for its handling of the Covid-19 are false, as Roach and Shan have argued in my most recent mailing. But some of these same readers have suggested that China needs to be held to account for allowing international flights from Wuhan to continue after January 23, when the government shut down internal flights. Below is a message I have received suggesting the baselessness of that charge.
—— Marvin Zonis

By Marvin Zonis

Sigmund Freud used the concept of overdetermination to mean that a single emotion or event could be caused by more than one factor. Certainly, overdetermination applies to the shocking and appalling events of the last few days in the United States.

At least five “causes” have combined to produce these days of rage.

The attempt to hold China responsible for its failure to alert the WHO of the novel new Corona virus requires ignoring the evidence that it did. The attempt to hold China culpable for punishing an early whistleblower also turns out to be false. The attempt to blame China for not shutting down Wuhan once the virus appeared ignores the fact that it took the U.S. twice as long to do so once the virus appeared in the U.S. In fact, the entire blame China game is a desperate attempt by the administration to escape its own culpability to prevent the deaths off now more than 100,000 Americans — about the same number of total U.S. deaths in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Afghan War and the Iraqi War, combined.
——Marvin Zonis

The U.S. editor for the "Financial Times” writes a devastating critique of the President’s Covid-19 performance.
——Marvin Zonis