Following the Major Trends

I am currently analysing my investment portfolio. I try to work out which way the wind is blowing and what are the unstoppable trends that are getting into place. Then, and only then, I decide what to invest in and where to live.

One trend is obvious and has been for the past generation, I mean, of course, the move to digital.

I am a musician, and used to front my own pop band way back. For ten years we made music and had an amazing time at the record company’s expense. Actually, we ultimately paid for all that, but what a great time we had. But that means I noticed the way things changed over the years, especially as I and my cousin used to go to auction sales and buy up ancient gramophones, with records, going right back to the days when records were shaped like jam bottles with brightly coloured surfaces.

There was a marked change with the arrival of CDs. Digitalisation had come to the music biz. But wait. Next came downloads. Now that really did change the whole business. From there onwards between the musical instrument and the headphones there was nothing physical. That was not just a game changer in the music business, but a major change in the way the whole world discovered it could function.

Certain things dont change. We need food, and food is physical, and it has to grow, be looked after, and somehow got to market. But the growth of the digital world was clearly going to be a money maker. I duly invested, and I have done very well over the last decade.

I’m still looking in that direction, but one thing has also become frighteningly clear over the past few years, and that is the average person’s view of their place in the world, and their priorities.

Even as little as a few hundred years ago one of the easiest ways of surviving was to go out and rob someone else. On a larger scale a country could subdue a less developed neighbour and steal their resources. It made perfect sense at the time. But things started to change as the British Empire grew. What was that phrase we learned in school: Trade followed the flag. And a new concept was born. Those who invested in it became unbelievably rich. Trade made a lot more sense than war. War cost money, and it cost lives, and it rarely made anybody richer. In fact, increasingly war made nations poorer.

Just look at a few modern examples where the US government is destroying the USA. We are told the war in Afghanistan cost three trillion dollars. That’s insane. What could that money have achieved if used within the country’s borders? And what did the war achieve? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Look at today’s debacles. From the first real moves to overrun Ukraine back in 2008, to the regime change in 2014, the charade of the Minsk Agreement, and today’s fiasco, what has the US government achieved? By trying to attack Russia, and at a cost of probably north of five trillion dollars, one country has been decimated at no profit at all to the USA.

And the proxy war in West Asia against Iran is looking as though it will cost much the same. Has anybody looked at the pictures coming out of Tel Aviv or Haifa? Those cities look nothing like they did when I lived there. Israel is being reduced to rubble. A large part of the population were a lot happier when they got on with their neighbours. None of them are happy today, and what has been achieved? Iran could wipe out the whole of Israel over the course of a weekend.

Ukraine was intended as the first step to carve up Russia, Iran is another way in, but with the bonus of it destroying China’s access to West Asia’s oil and gas, and putting a major spoke into the belt and road initiative.

What’s happening here?

The US government is trying to destroy international trade to make the rest of the world poor again. What do you think all the tariffs are about?

I happen to think that is a retrogressive step which will fail. Most of us on the planet want peace. War with Russia? No. Trade with Russia. That way we all enjoy the profits of trade. With war, we pay for something and probably get our homes destroyed as a result.

What this all means for me is that I need to leave what is called the Collective West as I firmly believe the political retards leading those countries are facing the wrong way and I want no part of it. Sanctions and wars as a policy is a return to the middle ages and a life that is nasty brutish and short. Not for me. I’m moving East. That way I can invest in countries going forward, not those going backwards. And I want to live a happy life, certainly not a depressing one where the news is always bad.

There are clearly two opposite trends in the world, one going forward towards more trade and peace, with the other heading backwards into war, and theft of commodities, and I life that will be nasty brutish and short all over again.

I’m choosing the new model.