The emergence of 69-year-old talk show host Larry Elder as the leading candidate to depose California’s Gavin Newsom is both odd and significant. Elder is no one’s idea of a politician, and when he called me for advice at the start of his run, I was perplexed. I thought Larry had it all — the nest egg, nice house, successful career.
President Joe Biden has nominated Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti as ambassador to India. Assuming the Senate confirms him, Garcetti, who would leave office early (his second term ends in December 2022), might find India familiar in certain respects. Like Mumbai or Delhi, Los Angeles now has massive homeless encampments throughout the city, even increasingly in posh neighborhoods like Brentwood and throughout the middle-class strongholds of the San Fernando Valley. Late last week, as Garcetti prepared to leave town, homeless advocates, angered by a city ordinance against indiscriminate camping on city streets, vandalized Getty House, the mayor’s official residence.
By: Jane Wells
On: Wells Street
One of the funny things about being human is that no matter how successful we are, we always end up doing something stupid. I prove this point hourly. The hope is that over time we learn from our mistakes and don’t repeat them.
But who am I kidding?
So let’s get to it! Here’s a summary of dumb moves from Wall Street to Main Street to Tokyo. Read more
These are times, to paraphrase Thomas Paine, that try the souls of American optimists. A strain of insane ideologies, from QAnon to critical race theory, is running through our societies like a virus, infecting everything from political life and media to the schoolroom. Unable to unite even in the face of COVID-19, the country seems to be losing the post-pandemic struggle with China while American society becomes ever more feudalized into separate, and permanently unequal, classes.
By: Here Comes Everybody Podcast
On: The Solo Project
“The great thing about this migration is the ability for reinvention. And the ability for reinvention is directly tied to innovation and entrepreneurship.”
Kotkin has written about every conceivable form of entrepreneurship. He is, in fact, a career soloist himself.
These days, it seems that everyone — and in particular soloists — are moving somewhere.
In this episode, Kotkin tells us exactly where we’re going — and why. Tap the play button below to listen.
Read more
By: John Anderson
On: John Anderson Direct
In this Direct interview, Joel Kotkin joins John to discuss some of the key theses of Joel’s widely-praised recent book, ‘The Coming of Neo-Feudalism’.
Joel shines the spotlight on the Western progressive elite or, as he terms them, the ‘new clerisy’, who sideline and silence anyone who speak or, increasingly, think against the orthodoxy. He paints a worrying comparison between this status quo, the Chinese experience of authoritarianism and the medieval feudalism known to Europe for hundreds of years.
What happens in California matters well beyond its borders. The Golden State’s cultural and technological influence on America, and the world, now could provide the nation’s next political template.
What California is creating can be best described as oligarchic socialism, a form of collectivism that combines hierarchy with “equity,” regulation with oligopoly, and progressive intentions with feudal results. Read more
Immigration has always been a hot button issue in America, and our generation is no different. Most recently, controls on immigration have been portrayed as racist and repressive by the open-borders Left and too expansive by the increasingly nativist Right.
By: Rod Arquette
On: The Rod Arquette Show Daily Rundown
Joel Kotkin joins the Rod Arquette show for a conversation about his recent piece about how the pandemic will change the workplace in America.
How Work Will Permanently Change After the Pandemic
Winners and Losers: The Global Economy After COVID
In explaining his shift away from Maoist economics, Deng Xiao Ping, chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, described his market-oriented changes as “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Today, American businesses, as well as the media and academic establishments that serve them, increasingly embrace what can best be described as “Chinese capitalism with American characteristics.”
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Gage Skidmore, used here under CC 2.0 License