Waiting on Coming UAF Offensive, US Economy Still King, Slavery in Libya Continues to Persist, Management Consultants as Apparatchiks, Forgotten Pygmies of East Africa
Thank you. Truly an interesting read or set of reads as I sit here, watching my son's soccer game, passive aggressively loathing my wife, and waiting for my fishing trip this afternoon.
Very fair summation of Ukraine, given the mile-high problem, but I see a lot of Ukraine supporters making much hay over the Wagner situation. No idea what will happen.
There's also a nice symmetry in this week's roundup - management consultants, the UN and its various organs, and of course the EU are salivating over the chance to, er, synergize and implement best practices in Ukraine (read: bleed it dry.) Then again, there is a large appetite in Ukraine, at least in western Ukraine, to join the 'European family'. Certainly it has its good points. But I wonder how easy the adjustment will be in a country with a huge gender imbalance, a sclerotic economy, and an ingrained tradition of corruption. All I know is that none of it had to be this way, and thr failure of Minsk 2 is one of the saddest and most frustrating events of this century.
Americans, the most miserable and anxious people on earth, hate themselves and each other: GDP Threatened!
Humans of the spreadsheet variety can only see dollars and cents, they are like people who know a family that never stops fighting but thinks it can't be so bad because the dad makes money.
If Americans can't rally around simple common-sense solutions like escorting every McKinsey consultant to the guillotine, we really are doomed as a nation.
I think the leaks on Ukraine's weakness and the mainstream acceptance of it are accurate. The drone strike in Moscow is evidence that Ukraine knows they need to swing big because even if they don't get their target, baiting Russia into a rash over-escalation could trigger a new level of NATO response. Very long shot scenarios though
Major potential turning point in the economic and geopolitical aspect of the war: the Turkish elections. Erdogan has the incumbency advantage and is clearly fine with going gloves off but this will be his toughest battle, against an opponent with clear western backing. Turkey going fully towards the other side potentially changes a lot of calculus for Russia. Also not sure how it would impact migrants to Europe. Erdogan strategically weaponized them when convenient. Does the new guy invite them to merely walk through all the time? What happens with Syria? Very fascinating election overall
In tech, there has been a big revelation that a lot of six figure jobs handed out to Zoomer WOC were in fact fake. The entire point was for individual departments to build out larger and larger teams as evidence that they were doing well, and this probably got those managers promoted, but many of the people hired did nothing but attend meetings all day. This was able to persist for a while due to the low interest rate environment tech abused throughout the 2010s, but that bubble burst (and funny enough I believe Elon helped burst it) and it looks like more and more tech companies are clearing out these positions. All this is to say hopefully McKinsey suffers the same fate
May 6, 2023·edited May 6, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
As somebody rather firmly on the Ukrainian side, I find the focus on the counteroffensive from the numerous propagandists obnoxious and irrelevant. I don't think it's that bad for Ukraine as the quoted passages make it to be; Russia has its own issues. But overall, I do agree that time is on Russia's side and that it's incredibly hard to actually win against a vastly superior force when you don't have the material means to do it. Ukraine does have nationalistic fervor on its side though, to counter Russia's sheer numbers. Russia likely lost more people, but it has the human resources to keep throwing men at it.
Personally I fail to see how Ukraine can score some sort of win unless it manages to incite a revolution of sorts inside Russia. We give Ukraine weapons, but they are not nearly enough. And we have no wartime economy anywhere in the West to mass produce shells and what Ukraine actually needs - massive amounts of artillery and long(er) range missiles in obscene quantities to be able to hit Russian supplies and training camps reliably.
If they really start a counteroffensive, it will likely be super bloody and akin to smashing head against a wall. They might take some territory if all goes well, but then what? Russia will launch its own and on and on it goes. Unless Russia's leadership is dealt with, Ukraine is stuck. And maybe the same is true for Russia, unless it deals with Western-friendly Ukraine leadership, it's also stuck, not even having full control of its claimed territories, not even able to take one small city after 9 months of hell-on-Earth warfare, relying on Wagner PMC to throw people at Ukrainians until something changes.
It is true that the US in decline stories sound a lot like Chicken Little. The US also has two extreme advantages over every other country in the world - net positive immigration and the financial markets. The US has the most valuable and innovative companies in the world. But just saying that the US GDP is the largest and the US spends a shit ton of money isn't that meaningful.
1) GDP numbers are not a great metric of an economy. Yes, we don't have anything better right now, but the US spends $4 trillion, or almost 20% on healthcare. What do we get from that? Not much. This country is sicker than others. So services GDP doesn't mean that much. If our GDP is all social media telling people to take obesity drugs, is that a net value to a country? I doubt it.
2) The productive power of the US economy is weaker than 1950 and 1990. Assuming history isn't all propaganda, we all know about how amazing US manufacturing was in 1941 to 1945. The arsenal of democracy - producing a ship a day, tanks by the 1000s a month - etc. The US did amazing things. Now, we can't even produce enough artillery shells. What is the $800 bn in defense spending going for? Our technology (which is vastly more expensive than any other country) doesn't seem to do well in the field. Russia can jam the HIMARs. We can't seem to build anti air defenses.
US multinationals have spent decades making their supply chains global to lower costs and raise stock prices. A great example of that is McDonnell Douglas (run by accountants) versus Boeing (run by risk taking engineers.) The two merged and the accountants won. Now Boeing seems unable to build the next gen plane because it is so complicated. They have hundreds, maybe thousands, of contractors. This is not helpful if it comes down to a real war.
3) I am not a Krugman fan by any stretch but I do think he has a point about inequality. When people don't believe they can get ahead, they stop working. Countries are a lot stronger when they are united in pursuit of a vision or ideal. Being divided means a lot more fighting over stupid things, and over a pie that may not be growing. Why can't the US meet enrollment targets for the military? Nobody wants to fight for this government. If kids care more about LGBT issues than actually learning, I can't imagine that won't be a problem. The US is supposed to be more than a few oligarchs and a sea of serfs. That describes Europe.
I think the US has plenty of problems. That doesn't mean China and Russia don't have serious issues. But why are Chinese PhDs returning back to China? That is not a good sign for a country built on immigration. Have you seen the guys actually writing code on Wall Street and Silicon Valley? They are not woke activists. Why are banks in the US failing? Why are other countries telling us to screw off? That is not a sign of great strength. We can't back up our words, and we are making promises that are dubious.
Again, I am not saying the US isn't the most powerful country in the world. I think if we focused on what matters, (human capital, shoring up our finances, better outcomes for kids), we can fix our problems. But the UK in 1910 thought they were the greatest of all time. Every empire should be concerned about internal problems. (which are far more important than perceived threats - well, unless your enemy is Genghis Khan.)
People hire consultants to help justify what they already want to do, yes, but they also hire them to hear what their competitors are doing and copy “best practices” for the industry (ie the same strategies/processes someone else has implemented)
My experience in consulting taught me early on exactly what Locklin says. Management consultants' role is to justify to execs whatever it is they want to do. When things go wrong, the execs can say, ok, maybe it wasn't the best choice, but the geniuses McKinsey (or whoever) told us it was the right thing to do.
May 6, 2023·edited May 6, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
This was a great piece. I read section about the US Economy and then it hit me, America is so wealthy that it can afford to do dumb shit. All the woke stuff, belligerent foreign policy, pouring millions into shitty education, etc.. If America weren't wealthy it wouldn't be able to do any of this and have to face reality. Hoppe said liberal countries are often more warmongering than authoritarian countries, which seems contradictory at first but the fact is liberal countries produce enough wealth to wage wars. It's like irl, if you were restricted financially you would pay for only the necessary things, if you aren't you can be as frivolous as you want. The fact that America is going further with all this woke stuff is proof that the elites don't have much too lose.
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Thank you. Truly an interesting read or set of reads as I sit here, watching my son's soccer game, passive aggressively loathing my wife, and waiting for my fishing trip this afternoon.
Very fair summation of Ukraine, given the mile-high problem, but I see a lot of Ukraine supporters making much hay over the Wagner situation. No idea what will happen.
There's also a nice symmetry in this week's roundup - management consultants, the UN and its various organs, and of course the EU are salivating over the chance to, er, synergize and implement best practices in Ukraine (read: bleed it dry.) Then again, there is a large appetite in Ukraine, at least in western Ukraine, to join the 'European family'. Certainly it has its good points. But I wonder how easy the adjustment will be in a country with a huge gender imbalance, a sclerotic economy, and an ingrained tradition of corruption. All I know is that none of it had to be this way, and thr failure of Minsk 2 is one of the saddest and most frustrating events of this century.
Thanks v much for the locklin piece on management consulting. Great stuff
THE ECONOMIST 2025:
Americans, the most miserable and anxious people on earth, hate themselves and each other: GDP Threatened!
Humans of the spreadsheet variety can only see dollars and cents, they are like people who know a family that never stops fighting but thinks it can't be so bad because the dad makes money.
If Americans can't rally around simple common-sense solutions like escorting every McKinsey consultant to the guillotine, we really are doomed as a nation.
I think the leaks on Ukraine's weakness and the mainstream acceptance of it are accurate. The drone strike in Moscow is evidence that Ukraine knows they need to swing big because even if they don't get their target, baiting Russia into a rash over-escalation could trigger a new level of NATO response. Very long shot scenarios though
Major potential turning point in the economic and geopolitical aspect of the war: the Turkish elections. Erdogan has the incumbency advantage and is clearly fine with going gloves off but this will be his toughest battle, against an opponent with clear western backing. Turkey going fully towards the other side potentially changes a lot of calculus for Russia. Also not sure how it would impact migrants to Europe. Erdogan strategically weaponized them when convenient. Does the new guy invite them to merely walk through all the time? What happens with Syria? Very fascinating election overall
In tech, there has been a big revelation that a lot of six figure jobs handed out to Zoomer WOC were in fact fake. The entire point was for individual departments to build out larger and larger teams as evidence that they were doing well, and this probably got those managers promoted, but many of the people hired did nothing but attend meetings all day. This was able to persist for a while due to the low interest rate environment tech abused throughout the 2010s, but that bubble burst (and funny enough I believe Elon helped burst it) and it looks like more and more tech companies are clearing out these positions. All this is to say hopefully McKinsey suffers the same fate
What was the old Pravda trick? Read the news, learn the lies, then make an educated guess to the truth?
I’m not sure how good I am at that yet, but your comments on Ukraine feel like a glass of water in the desert.
The sooner the war ends the better.
As somebody rather firmly on the Ukrainian side, I find the focus on the counteroffensive from the numerous propagandists obnoxious and irrelevant. I don't think it's that bad for Ukraine as the quoted passages make it to be; Russia has its own issues. But overall, I do agree that time is on Russia's side and that it's incredibly hard to actually win against a vastly superior force when you don't have the material means to do it. Ukraine does have nationalistic fervor on its side though, to counter Russia's sheer numbers. Russia likely lost more people, but it has the human resources to keep throwing men at it.
Personally I fail to see how Ukraine can score some sort of win unless it manages to incite a revolution of sorts inside Russia. We give Ukraine weapons, but they are not nearly enough. And we have no wartime economy anywhere in the West to mass produce shells and what Ukraine actually needs - massive amounts of artillery and long(er) range missiles in obscene quantities to be able to hit Russian supplies and training camps reliably.
If they really start a counteroffensive, it will likely be super bloody and akin to smashing head against a wall. They might take some territory if all goes well, but then what? Russia will launch its own and on and on it goes. Unless Russia's leadership is dealt with, Ukraine is stuck. And maybe the same is true for Russia, unless it deals with Western-friendly Ukraine leadership, it's also stuck, not even having full control of its claimed territories, not even able to take one small city after 9 months of hell-on-Earth warfare, relying on Wagner PMC to throw people at Ukrainians until something changes.
Complete mess.
I'm surprised at the dismissal of Michigan, a school with no lack of ambitious students, from the management class
Scott is freaking hilarious!
It is true that the US in decline stories sound a lot like Chicken Little. The US also has two extreme advantages over every other country in the world - net positive immigration and the financial markets. The US has the most valuable and innovative companies in the world. But just saying that the US GDP is the largest and the US spends a shit ton of money isn't that meaningful.
1) GDP numbers are not a great metric of an economy. Yes, we don't have anything better right now, but the US spends $4 trillion, or almost 20% on healthcare. What do we get from that? Not much. This country is sicker than others. So services GDP doesn't mean that much. If our GDP is all social media telling people to take obesity drugs, is that a net value to a country? I doubt it.
2) The productive power of the US economy is weaker than 1950 and 1990. Assuming history isn't all propaganda, we all know about how amazing US manufacturing was in 1941 to 1945. The arsenal of democracy - producing a ship a day, tanks by the 1000s a month - etc. The US did amazing things. Now, we can't even produce enough artillery shells. What is the $800 bn in defense spending going for? Our technology (which is vastly more expensive than any other country) doesn't seem to do well in the field. Russia can jam the HIMARs. We can't seem to build anti air defenses.
US multinationals have spent decades making their supply chains global to lower costs and raise stock prices. A great example of that is McDonnell Douglas (run by accountants) versus Boeing (run by risk taking engineers.) The two merged and the accountants won. Now Boeing seems unable to build the next gen plane because it is so complicated. They have hundreds, maybe thousands, of contractors. This is not helpful if it comes down to a real war.
3) I am not a Krugman fan by any stretch but I do think he has a point about inequality. When people don't believe they can get ahead, they stop working. Countries are a lot stronger when they are united in pursuit of a vision or ideal. Being divided means a lot more fighting over stupid things, and over a pie that may not be growing. Why can't the US meet enrollment targets for the military? Nobody wants to fight for this government. If kids care more about LGBT issues than actually learning, I can't imagine that won't be a problem. The US is supposed to be more than a few oligarchs and a sea of serfs. That describes Europe.
I think the US has plenty of problems. That doesn't mean China and Russia don't have serious issues. But why are Chinese PhDs returning back to China? That is not a good sign for a country built on immigration. Have you seen the guys actually writing code on Wall Street and Silicon Valley? They are not woke activists. Why are banks in the US failing? Why are other countries telling us to screw off? That is not a sign of great strength. We can't back up our words, and we are making promises that are dubious.
Again, I am not saying the US isn't the most powerful country in the world. I think if we focused on what matters, (human capital, shoring up our finances, better outcomes for kids), we can fix our problems. But the UK in 1910 thought they were the greatest of all time. Every empire should be concerned about internal problems. (which are far more important than perceived threats - well, unless your enemy is Genghis Khan.)
Love the Libya and mgmt consulting takes.
People hire consultants to help justify what they already want to do, yes, but they also hire them to hear what their competitors are doing and copy “best practices” for the industry (ie the same strategies/processes someone else has implemented)
My experience in consulting taught me early on exactly what Locklin says. Management consultants' role is to justify to execs whatever it is they want to do. When things go wrong, the execs can say, ok, maybe it wasn't the best choice, but the geniuses McKinsey (or whoever) told us it was the right thing to do.
This was a great piece. I read section about the US Economy and then it hit me, America is so wealthy that it can afford to do dumb shit. All the woke stuff, belligerent foreign policy, pouring millions into shitty education, etc.. If America weren't wealthy it wouldn't be able to do any of this and have to face reality. Hoppe said liberal countries are often more warmongering than authoritarian countries, which seems contradictory at first but the fact is liberal countries produce enough wealth to wage wars. It's like irl, if you were restricted financially you would pay for only the necessary things, if you aren't you can be as frivolous as you want. The fact that America is going further with all this woke stuff is proof that the elites don't have much too lose.
UKR demise! to Libya demise! to Management Consultant non-demise! to exterminated Pygmies! what a combo.
in hear gear --> high gear
[I think this is what you mean - or head gear?]
beginning to ramp down
--> beginning to tamp down
[one ramps up and tamps down...two completely different metaphors...]
economic security for its citizens --> economic security for their citizens
there is no desire in helping --> there is no desire to help
[Or did you mean this? I dont think so but perhaps?:
While helping [it/them] to get better, some in Europe do so in a way that is apathetic, languid, impassive...]