How Authoritarianism Is Impacting the Future of Investing

Yahoo News! ^ | Wed, March 30, 2022 | Jonathan Russo

[nickcarraway]

It is hard to read or listen to an article on the Ukrainian invasion without it beginning with the lines: “The world as we knew it is over.” Tanks rolling through the streets of a European-style city, nuclear saber-rattling, as well as disruptions of everything from energy to wheat, make the headline plausible. The recent gathering in Europe of western NATO allies was epoch-making.

Not to take the focus off the horror of the Ukrainian struggle for survival or turn away from the slaughter of civilians and the plight of the refugees, however, it might be useful to understand how the Western world of commerce, markets and investing failed to see what was obscured but visible through the windshield—and now is glaringly obvious in the rear-view mirror.

From my perspective, that would be the rise of one-man rule authoritarianism and its game-changing impact on the global economy.

[Bishop_Malachi]

“Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have shown us how wrong this was. It turns out that ideological, nationalistic, historical and personal motivating forces have superseded commerce-driven ones. This is beyond disturbing; it is mind shattering, because it means American investors continue to fund their own demise.”

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You can read this one portion from the article and realize everything that is wrong with ideologies that are too materialistic (whether they be capitalism or communism). They see humanity as basically a shallow, self-absorbed mass of consumers, who can never get enough new, better stuff to satisfy them. The thought that humanity DOES NOT often behave in this way is what they find “disturbing” and “mind-shattering”. This is what happens when the Battle Cry of Freedom becomes synonymous with an economic philosophy and nothing more. Now look where the US is at in the 21st-century...a nation that has to buyoff huge swaths of its population with exorbitant money-printing and characterized by a degenerate, hyper-sexualized culture that can’t even confidently define what it is to be a man or woman.