01/31/11 Baltimore, Maryland – Now here’s something interesting. Every year, Foreign Policy magazine produces a list of the Top 100 Global Thinkers in the World. We picked up the list…looking for our own name.
But wait…
The key is that these are “global” thinkers. They’re not just thinkers, in other words, they are people who are thinking about how people on the other side of the planet should conduct their business.
We were suspicious even before we looked at the list. “Foreign Policy”? We’re against it. Why should we worry about things that don’t concern us?
“Well… You can’t put your head in the sand,” you might reply. “You have to be concerned, because things that happen overseas do affect you.”
Yes, that is true. They affect us. But so does the price of whiskey, the traffic on the Beltway, and the weather. None of them is worth thinking about. We can do nothing about them. And it would be indecent for us to try.
Imagine if we took an interest in the whiskey distiller’s business. What could we do? Try to force him to lower his prices? Try to show him how to operate more efficiently – as if we could know? Set up a buyers’ cartel to negotiate for lower prices? At best, we’d be wasting our time. At worse, we might succeed! Then, whiskey producers would be responding not to market forces…but to meddlers’ forces. What a mess that would be!
Meddling with things close at hand is bad enough. Meddling with things far away is worse. Remember our Daily Reckoning dictum: ignorance increases by the square of the distance. The farther you get away the harder it is to tell what is going on. The details disappear. All you can make out are the rough outlines. Shadows…reflections…silhouettes… In the darkness, you step on every rake and fall into every hole.
The next thing you know, you are calling for “reforms” in countries you’ve never even visited…setting the price of China’s money…and invading Iraq.
But let’s look at who Foreign Policy magazine thinks are the 100 Top Global Thinkers.
Uh oh. In the first and second place are Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. Hmmm… They’re smart guys. But what makes them “thinkers”? What have they been thinking about? And what are their thoughts on the subject?
FP says they are there, not for their contributions to the wealth of mankind, but for their philanthropic activities. Wait a minute. What’s philanthropy got to do with thinking?
Okay… We’re stumped on that one… So, who’s the number 3 thinker? Barack Obama! Hold on… This is getting silly. Have you ever heard Barack Obama come up with an original thought? Or any kind of thought worthy of the word? No. That’s not his thing. He’s a politician. Politicians are not thinkers. They may be doers…but they’re not thinkers. Obama gives us plenty of empty expressions and hollow words – “change you can believe in”…“hope”… “winning the future” – but real thoughts? Original ideas? Nope.
Generally, politicians are not thinkers. Occasionally, you get a politician who pretends to be a thinker – such as Princeton University chief Woodrow Wilson. But he almost invariably turns out to be a jackass and a fool.
There must be exceptions – Marcus Aurelius and Thomas Jefferson come to mind. But they seem ill-suited to the political profession and probably should have eschewed public office in the first place.
So let’s keep moving. There must be someone on this list who is a real thinker.
Let’s look back at last year…let’s see…who was FP’s top thinker?
Ben Bernanke!
Well, that does it for us. What’s the matter with these people? Can’t they tell the different between tired hacks with worn-out, crackpot ideas…and real thinkers?
The Foreign Policy editors should do some real thinking of their own. Then, maybe they’d mind their own business.
Regards,
Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning
Bill Bonner
Since founding Agora Inc. in 1979, Bill Bonner has found success and garnered camaraderie in numerous communities and industries. A man of many talents, his entrepreneurial savvy, unique writings, philanthropic undertakings, and preservationist activities have all been recognized and awarded by some of America's most respected authorities. Along with Addison Wiggin, his friend and colleague, Bill has written two New York Times best-selling books, Financial Reckoning Day and Empire of Debt. Both works have been critically acclaimed internationally. With political journalist Lila Rajiva, he wrote his third New York Times best-selling book, Mobs, Messiahs and Markets, which offers concrete advice on how to avoid the public spectacle of modern finance. Since 1999, Bill has been a daily contributor and the driving force behind The Daily Reckoning. Dice Have No Memory: Big Bets & Bad Economics from Paris to the Pampas, the newest book from Bill Bonner, is the definitive compendium of Bill’s daily reckonings from more than a decade: 1999-2010.
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well, it was “for’n policy mag.”
better wash your hands!
funny, tho! t.y.
…on february the second, the american president barack will peep his head out from the front door of his whitehouse, looking over the political landscape past washington’s monument and over the horizon to egypt…will he see his evil twin shadow, president mu’barak still in power, if so…then…there’ll be six more weeks of cold hard dictatorship over there…
I print, therefore, I think. I print a lot, and I think a lot. Is it time for my nap…..?
One name… Kim Kardashian
I agree with Bill, People should mind their own business more often.
I propose we start off with a National Mind-Your-Own Business Day.
On that one day we can all try to:
mind our own business about parents who choose to (horrors) put their kids in daycare.
about people who choose abortion
about smokers, about over-eaters
about people on the highway who drive faster (you know, maniacs) or slower (you know, morons)than we would wish.
About other people’s choices of hair style, clothing, tatoos and body piercings and sexual habits.
And a 100 other things that we concern ourselves with daily that really are none of our business.
Let’s try it for at least one day per year!
P.S.
Warren Buffett IS one of the greatest thinkers of our times, but surely not because of his philanthropy. How about because he knows how to quickly turn $1 into $2, then $4, then $8… Now THAT is worth thinking about!!
Well written – thanks for a good laugh!!!
totally humorous.
This magazine must be printed on toilet paper.
i like the “sq. of the dist.” idea.
well, i thought that must be why he travels so much.
then, i found myself wondering if you glow in the dark.
Bill is just too funny! Jackasses and fools who need to mind their own business. Now that is a great idea. We all know what happens to good ideas. Pols ignore them while the jackasses and fools laugh at them. At least until others are successful with them and then the JA’s and fools copy them and act as if they thought of it first.
Every idiot on T.V. has become an expert on Egypt. Hell, Glenn Beck can actually find it on a map. That, to me, at least makes him 1% smarter than these other “experts”. Everyone in the media is an expert on everything these days. I’m no expert, but I can recognize an ignorant fool when I hear, or see one.
Too bad the folks at FP can’t see this. Or can they? I believe their list of “thinkers” is more a whose who in the elites who know how to run our lives better than we do. However, they could be just a group of con artists who want to maintain power.
But what do I know?
Jackasses and fools minding their own business. Now their is a great thought. Great ideas are never going to be popular. Afterall, people today reject good ideas if they are not their own. What will get you popularity today is to hitch your wagon to the meddlers and do-gooders. Even though their good deeds are not so good for the masses. It is good for the elites who can live a lavish life-style so they can think of more ways to meddle.
We can see the results of their meddling in Tunisia, Egypt and other mid-east countries happening now. It may spread even right up to their doorstep at some point. Who can tell right?
Minding ones own business. Now thats an old one, but a goody.
Meddling is good for power and greed. Those in the business of peddling ideas and coming up with new ways for us to live as they see best will never leave us alone. Afterall, it is for our own good.
We are starting to see the fruits of their labor in the middle east. Let’s hope this is not “coming to a theater near you” anytime soon.
Bill, if you want to make the list you have to “think” like them. Your too smart for that.
Those like you who are good thinkers would serve only to strip them of their power and privilege. You and I both know they can’t let that happen.
This article reminds me of Lamar Hunt. He had a different idea as to how professional football should be ran. Laughed at, ridiculed and mocked. He stood firm, took on the power brokers and, in the end, he won.
The article misses the whole point of “global thinker”. Translated into ordinary English it’s the equivalent of Globalist Flunky – which is not the same thing as a real thinker. Gloabalist thinkerrs think of ways to make the whole world “as one with the New World Order (rich white guys) on top of things…