Tag: Risk

Trump is Pardoning Pete Rose: Rewarding risk takers in our society is part of Making America Great Again

Making America Great Again is about more than President Trump waving a magic wand and suddenly making everything better.  It’s about an attitude and how Americans should feel about themselves that matters most, and breaking this terrible spell given to the world through the administrative state through woke policy making.  To that point, there has been a very silent killer lurking in the background of all our lives that has been looming over the fine line between success and failure, and that is the management of risk and rewards in a society and understanding how important those things are to a healthy culture.  So, for me, especially living in Cincinnati, I was not surprised by President Trump’s statements about Pete Rose and how he planned to pardon him ahead of the 2025 baseball season.  Pete Rose died in the fall of 2024, just ahead of the Trump election, ending a long battle with Major League Baseball, who had banned him for life for breaking a few laws the commissioners thought were important.  Rose had been caught betting on baseball games and had some tax problems with the IRS. The combination of those things effectively pushed out of the game the most popular player, and certainly one of the best, the hit king, out of the MLB and out of the Hall of Fame.  But the problem is, if Rose wasn’t in the Hall of Fame, then who should be?  Over the last forty years, it has been argued that banning Rose from the Hall of Fame of baseball cheapened it for everyone because if the best players weren’t there, why even have it?  Of course, there is more to the story, which is why Trump is getting involved.

Pete Rose isn’t the only sports figure to have something like this happen to them.  One of my favorite all time coaches for the NFL was Jon Gruden, who was kicked out of the NFL because some leaked emails about him talking disparagingly about the commissioner and other people got out to the public and with the new woke rules that administrative minded people everywhere thought would protect them from critical analysis, the NFL and my favorite football team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers took Gruden down off the Ring of Honor at Raymond James Stadium and the world was looking pretty grim.  Only this past week, at the start of March 2025, did the Buccaneers start to rethink things and put Gruden’s name back up.  I personally like the Glazers; they run a good football organization.  You can find head coaches and position coaches all over the NFL who got their start in Tampa Bay because they have a winning culture.  But they have been anti-Trump and pro-Joe Biden much like the Murdoch family at Fox News has been, and they thought they understood where the world was going when they jumped all over the commissioner’s desires to remove Gruden from the NFL as punishment for violating unsaid woke rules limiting free speech dramatically.  The same traits that made Jon Gruden a great coach, full of risk-taking and passion, were also the same kind of thing that was harming him off the football field among polite society where the incompetent were protected from critical judgments by unsaid rules of conduct that protected Roger Goodell from opposing opinions.  Gruden had called the commissioner a homosexual reference, and Goodell didn’t like it, so he used woke rules to punish the Superbowl-winning coach, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers followed like cowardly sheep, licking the boots of a corrupt shepherd. 

This is nearly identical to what happened to Pete Rose, the hit king of MLB Baseball.  It takes a unique mindset to be a great player like Rose, to take the kind of risks he did to stand in front of a crowd and hit a ball the pitcher is trying to keep you from making contact with.  Or stealing a base under pressure to score a run and diving into third base headfirst, as Pete Rose did, often obtaining the nickname, Charlie Hustle.  Pete Rose was rewarded for his risk-taking antics in sports, which is how people with such personalities are usually rewarded.  Fans love people like that in sports. It’s one of the best parts of cheering on a sports franchise because most audience members don’t have the guts to take big risks like we see in sports themselves.  So they enjoy watching sports heroes do it.  In the MLB, Pete Rose was getting old and was a manager of several teams, and he was fading, and it was hard for him not to be a player all the time.  So he transferred that energy into gambling, and he bet on himself when he did place bets.  It was a way for him to keep his player instincts alive and be an aggressive manager of his teams.  But that set up a revenge tour for the jealous administrators who had been watching Rose for years and looking for an opportunity to knock him down to size once his name was no longer filling the stands with fans.  So they used an early version of the woke rules to destroy Rose and throw away the key as a message to other players about who the King of Baseball was.

It was a mystery to many why commissioners like Bart Giamatti, Fay Vincent, Bud Selig, and Rob Manfred were so against Pete Rose when other players did far worse over their careers.  It all comes down to capitalism essentially and the goals of an administrative state to use Marxism to limit competitive enterprise.  Pete Rose had all the hot women, fame, and fortune and was celebrated wherever he went.  And administrators like the old and crusty Bart Giamatti could write and enforce rules to show that he has power over such characters which to his mind might bleed off some of that power and influence and get people to lick his boots the way many in a position like his hope for.  They hate people like Pete Rose and Jon Gruden, and I would even put Warren Sapp in there for good measure because of their risk-taking attitudes, which administrators like those mentioned commissioners don’t have.  How do you get the hot chicks to like you if you are afraid of risk?  Show them you have power over the people they like more, so that they’ll like you.  Administrative types adhere to rules to hide their timid natures and their lack of personal courage from the world.  So, they used the rules to destroy Pete Rose because they were jealous of him.  That is one prominent example of why regulations made by an administrative state have been, and are, so dangerous to society, even if we are talking about sports.  That same attitude could be said to be holding back significant industries in America right now, and Trump sees it from the front of the train.  And one way to break that spell is to reward Rose, even if he isn’t around anymore to see it.  Because the world sees it, we want to reward our risk takers in American society.  Even if it is just a baseball game, or stealing a base for just one game of the season that took a lot of guts and pain to attempt, risk takers are the key to Making America Great Again and taking away the power of the administrative state that might regulate them out of existence is a key part to our future success.  And now that times are changing, because we have another big risk taker in the White House that understands these things, worthless administrators who are timid of personal risk are losing power, and people who are good at risk, even addicted to it, are regaining respect.  This is the key to the future of our nation and a great sign of many good things to come.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Speed and Risk Make Things Better: The nightmare of the By-Pass 4 interchanges

There is a silent evil that works in the world that I had to explain to a few smart people this past week, which deserves to be heard by everyone.  One of the great examples of this evil is a road I have driven on for many decades, the By-Pass 4 interchange in Butler County, Ohio, one of the largest arteries for industrial traffic in a very productive county.  It used to be that I could drive 100 mph down that road all the time, and it was never a problem.  But these days, there are too many lights at every intersection to get up any speed before you have to slow down again, which is, of course, by design.  Over the years, to answer all the upset families who lost people to car crashes, not to mention the complaints of the insurance industry who had to make payouts on all the minor fender bender claims, the answer to this overly managed world is to lower the speed limit, put up more stop signs and traffic lights to frustrate high-speed travel in the name of safety.  But safety has a cost all its own, and productivity usually gets sacrificed.  If you can’t drive 100 mph, you will arrive at your destination much later, and among the world’s bureaucrats, there is almost a delightful glee when they tell you that something is going to take time because “it’s better safe than sorry.”  But to my eyes, the question must always be asked, “Is it?”  I would argue, and do all the time, that things were much better when we could drive 100 mph down By-Pass 4.  Sure, there were occasional crashes and deaths as a result.  But drivers were noticeably better; they had to be. Whenever you dumb down a human population with over-processing, you tend to inspire them to think less, and high-speed driving makes people think more, and they are better people as a result.

The solution to the By-Pass 4 complaints by the central planners who tend to get involved in these political problems of traffic management was to slow everyone down to where it’s faster to ride a bicycle and to take as much risk out of the process to make it so that accidents rarely happened.  This might be fine if the goal is to remove automobile accidents in your culture.  But if productivity is the goal, and speed is associated with that objective, then the By-Pass 4 exchanges along its path are devastating, which I point out in my video.  Without question, a World Economic Forum or United Nations statistician could show that such an arrangement will save lives and property value by eliminating crashes, but ultimately, the safest thing anybody could do if they didn’t want to have a collision is never to leave their house, and that looks to be the intention behind the traffic pattern design of Butler County.  Without question, everyone had good intentions, but the result of all this activity has produced slow roads that greatly limit personal freedom and make driving a real pain in the neck.  It takes a long time to get anywhere because political problems have always been solved over time by addressing complaints of every crash with more traffic lights, speed limits, and stop signs.  In the case of By-Pass 4, presenting traffic in such a way that a driver-side door never faces oncoming traffic to eliminate crashes that statistically occurred often when traffic had to engage each other at 90-degree angles and human decisions had to be made for everyone’s preservation.  By taking that decision-making process out of human hands, we must now ask whether we are all better off.  Is a safe society better than a risky society if the result is dumber humans? 

Of course, this is about more than traffic, and you can find this same mentality in almost every industry, particularly manufacturing.  Whenever there is an employee accident or an engineering challenge, the trend of the college-trained European worshipper is to put up the stopsticks and slow down a process to make a safer world.  But is it a better world, and I would argue it’s not?  Safer does not make something better.  That may be one value, but it’s certainly not the entire value.  As I always say from my favorite sport, Fast Draw, you have to manage speed and accuracy with the amount of risk your skill level allows.  If people are forced to improve their skills rather than pandering down to their weaknesses, often the result will be much better because the process of thinking makes it so that you get a better human being in the process, rather than playing to those weaknesses so that anybody can do anything.  That is the trend in our highly regulatory environment filled with government bureaucrats.  Their answer to everything is to slow things down so they can get their slow-minded, feeble minds wrapped around the problem.  Once you accept that strategy, your entire society is filled with timid people who lose the skill to manage risk because their lives depend on it.  Instead, they only need to know how to follow the rules and follow the guy in front of them as designed by some centralized planner. 

The result is that you might have fewer accidents, and you may fix the problem of quality escapes in whatever business you might be operating.  But like the traffic patterns, the safest thing you can do is to do nothing, and all too often, that is what we get out of society.  We get things slow, but at least we live to get them.  But the process of getting it kills us.  Because we may be alive physically, but our minds are dying because we stop challenging ourselves.  Such is the case in Butler County, Ohio; due to hundreds and thousands of traffic accidents and residential complaints, there are now traffic lights at almost every intersection where people travel.  And it’s tough to get from one place to another.  Not because the roads are bad.  They are pretty good.  But because there is too much starting and stopping, you can never get a good flow from your commute.  That is because the political solution to traffic problems was to hire pin-headed European-oriented Marxists to solve a uniquely American problem. You embrace risk and manage it for personal fulfillment, resulting in productive output.  Not that safety isn’t necessary, but it doesn’t take priority over productive enterprise, whether it’s getting to your destination 4-6 minutes faster or achieving a higher sales objective in your company.  Managing risk is the way to improve output.  Slowing everything down only panders to people’s weaknesses and, as a result, makes your society much less dynamic.  Everyone might live in the end, but is that the goal of life?  If everyone is just a brain-dead slug, is that better than a society where you could drive 100 mph to rock and roll music with the window down and vastly enjoy the experience because you don’t have to stop?  I’ve seen it both ways, and I can say from experience that driving 100 mph is far better.  Speed is better most of the time.  Among the skilled, accuracy can also be achieved.  But when you pander to society down to the weaknesses of the participants, then you get a lot more of it, and the satisfaction of an enterprise diminishes incredibly, such as we see every day at the By-Pass 4 interchanges created by monsters of Marxism and their bureaucratic plots of doom.  It’s good to live a little dangerously; it makes you a better and much happier person.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Senate Control Stolen in the Middle of a Saturday Night: The battle is about information control and who decides its quality

You can never allow a centralized authority to control what information is. And clearly, the goal has been to use this China model of information control decided upon by some administrative state who would determine what information is and that would then become the standard for reality. Our concern is playing out in the election of 2022, as it was during the election of 2020, and the global push to control the message around Covid.   But then again, we’ve seen this behavior at the local level in the school district I live in, where those who represent the administrative state have insisted that they control reality by defining what information is. When bad behavior was questioned by the public of those in charge of the school, the action against the public was almost identical to what we are seeing nationally and internationally from what have conveniently been called globalists. Maybe it’s not surprising since most people get their education from the same controlled sources so that they would think alike shouldn’t be such an abnormality. But the insistence on altering reality with collective belief to support some mass agreement that decides whether information is relevant or not is bizarre. In the case of the local school issue, many who have come under attack by that trending insistence of information control and giving control entirely to the authority figures to decide what information is or isn’t had to be reminded of the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 270 (1964) case. Information is merit-based, and good information or bad information is decided by the quality of the information, not who controls the definition of it. Which is undoubtedly applicable to the FBI, the Biden administration, or the Desecrators of Davos who insist that the greatest threat to the world is climate change, as it’s clear that what really matters is who controls the votes in the world and by what means. 

Overnight during the first weekend after the election of 2022, where Republicans had been trending ahead for control of the Senate, it was announced by the Fox News desk that Catherine Cortez Mastro would keep control of the Senate, beating Adam Laxalt in Nevada. With the election taking over a week to process and the obvious vote counting slowing down to a drip, drip, the obvious strategy was to wear everyone out, announce the results over the weekend while everyone was sleeping and retain power in at least one of the houses of Congress in America who represent the needs of the Desecrators of Davos. There will be a runoff in Georgia to determine a seat, and there is still lots of smoke in the Alaska race that has obviously been built to control how information is processed and distributed to the public to show control when it clearly doesn’t represent what voters wanted. It’s the same kind of situation as we just witnessed in the elections in Brazil with Bolsonaro. The good news is that we are not talking about the obvious, we have watched people we formally trusted, such as Leader Mitch McConnell, the Fox News Team, and even the Associated Press let us down for some goals that were not specifically American in their value. But it’s like Trump has said all along, it’s not the voter that matters as much as the people who count the votes. And in controlling that information, people who don’t deserve to be in power have been able to retain it. Was there a Red Wave in the 2022 elections? Well, yes. More than 6 million more Republican voters voted for Congress members, so they were energized to give input into their government and the management of the information it uses to govern our country. Then the reason that reality didn’t translate to more flipping of seats to acquire power is the evidence that shows information of massive voter irregularities that show the wrong people are representing our country in government. But to hide that from the public, the authority figures, just like the local school system functioning from the same value systems, insist that they determine what information and value it has to the public. Anybody who doesn’t follow their narrative is a domestic terrorist. Essentially, the China model. 

But what is to be done about this? Well, just as in the Sullivan case utilized above, we do have a constitutional means to deal with this very problem before everyone goes for the Second Amendment to attack the problem of blatant election fraud to keep the powers of government that have been selling America out, in the position to decide what the definitions of information are so that they can then control mass society even in bizarre ways that leave people shaking their heads in disgust. I would offer that the pressure of competing information to dispute falsehoods is the best way to solve all these problems. Free speech is the immeasurable remedy to all this blatant corruption. The reason that corruption exists at all is that we have trusted the sources of information too much over time, empowering these corrupt malcontents and letting them think they would get away with all this information manipulation. The forces in power decide what is true or not authentic based on their power needs. Not on what reality decides. That has been wondrously obvious with the local issue I mentioned, and there are good lessons to learn from it that certainly apply to the mess at the national and international levels. The bad guys are in a fight to claim the definition of what information is, and they insist through force on altering your opinions of everything to enforce it in ways that serve them. So to fix that problem, we must attack them there. 

The way to defeat bad information is with good information, and the plan for many years now has been to gain control of the means of distributing that information, whether it was corporate media, the record industry, print media, the Associated Press, or whatever people trusted as information. The belief was that if those sources could be captured and controlled, then control over America’s mass population could occur. The vile manipulators who wanted to take America down from within thought they’d have an easy time of it if only they could shut people up and control the definitions of good information from bad information. But information is what it is, good or bad; it is merit that decides its quality. And when information is competitive, people can then decide through free will what its value to society is. Without good information to fight bad information, the FBI could then decide what reality is and enforce it in society accordingly. That is why the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 270 (1964) case was so important. It is relevant for local problems, but it’s just as relevant for national and international issues as well. Reality is decided by the most truthful information as determined in the battlefield of ideas. And in the wake of the very good elections of 2022, we can clearly see what good and bad information is. There will be lots of talk about election fraud that will be correct. The corrupt behavior was on full display for all to see because there was freedom of information to pass judgment on the behavior, whereas other places in the world do not have such an ability.   People in other countries might grumble at the local grocery about their corrupt governments. But in America, we can do so, and the authorities are not allowed to come and arrest us and put us in jail over it. Or destroy us in the courts. They have certainly tried to give us that impression. But they have not been successful. They may have stolen the 2022 election and held power cosmetically. But we learned a lot in the process, and that information will be infinitely more valuable. And a better future is on the horizon because of it. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Trump Swings For The Fences: The Kemp win in Georgia only means the President can afford to take chances

I always thought that the David Purdue race for governor in Georgia would be an uphill battle. Trump’s endorsement has a lot of power, and his record is outstanding. Still, it would be a stretch in Georgia to beat the incumbent Brian Kemp for many of the same reasons it was going to be hard to beat the establishment RINO Mike DeWine in Ohio. It’s hard to beat an incumbent for one because they have the power of the office to run from. And it takes a real organized effort to knock someone off the top of the mountain, and David Purdue didn’t have that. Trump’s endorsement was a revenge pick, more than a practical one, and down the stretch, the money didn’t line up with the passion. If Trump didn’t have a personal vendetta against Kemp, he likely wouldn’t have put his name behind Purdue. David Purdue never was able to define his campaign as anything other than fighting election fraud, and voters in Georgia were obviously looking for something to vote for, not against. There’s a lot of funny business regarding elections in Georgia. Still, as I said leading up to the primary election, the establishment types were betting everything they had on Georgia, so it would be tough to do anything there. In many ways, I would point to this circumstance and remind everyone not to take anything for granted when it comes to the general elections in the fall. The SWAMP is not going to go quietly in the night. They have everything to lose and will fight to keep it; whether it’s money, cheating, lying, stealing, whatever they have to do, they will do it. And it will take more than what David Purdue put forth in Georgia to beat them. 

https://truthsocial.com/users/realDonaldTrump/statuses/108362568823326243

The media was all too happy to underline the loss of Trump’s endorsement. They ignored all the other wins he has had, which was to be expected. The Never Trumper types are hoping this means that the Trump brand is damaged forever and that they might be able to put up Mike Pence, someone from the Trump administration but isn’t Trump. To me, it’s obviously wishful thinking. David Purdue was never for what Trump is and always acted as a person drug into the race to challenge Kemp rather than someone who was passionate about winning. So the Trump endorsement has its limits. Trump can afford to swing for the fences, and he does. That has given him more home runs than not, so the essence of the Kemp win isn’t so much a strikeout but rather the affordability that Trump has to take risks on candidates that might not otherwise have a chance. Obviously, voters liked Kemp in Georgia and needed more to take a turn from him. They needed more than election fraud to drive their passions.

Yet there is a more sinister tone to the haughty banter after the Kemp win, the hope by the media and Never Trumper types that election fraud was not something that voters cared about. Purdue made it a one-issue race, and after the primary election, it’s clear that voters wanted more than that. Election fraud is hard for people to admit to, like acknowledging that a loved one is an alcoholic or that a spouse is cheating on you. Mainstreamers want to believe that they can vote and that it will be counted honestly so they can return to their lives without worrying about it. So there is a natural reluctance to put the thought out of their heads. While most believe there was election fraud in the 2020 election, they don’t want to live with the knowledge that it will require them to do something more severe, like scrutinizing those who count the votes. They want to believe that Brian Kemp is a good person because to admit otherwise will require work on their part that they aren’t willing to commit to. People are prone to ignore an injustice if it means they can live in peace. And obviously, there are many in the Beltway culture, Mike Pence included, who are counting on that timidity to allow them to stay relevant in the political world. It should be remembered that Trump picked Pence to be his Vice President because he wanted to drive a wedge into the Never Trumpers, to begin with, to put one in his administration. Trump did that with a lot of people because he thought the strength of his personality could convert them over to justice. I would say that, for the most part, Trump significantly improved the conditions around him. Still, he was never going to be able to use his sizeable positive personality to change the behavior of those who insist on keeping their minds below the line. 

The hatred for Trump is to hate the concept of Making America Great Again. Instead, the Never Trumpers, including Mike Pence, believe more in the survival of institutions rather than in reshaping them for positive outcomes. So it wasn’t a loss for Trump that David Purdue never could get that message across. If it had been Trump running, the priorities would have been different during the campaign. Trump would have been “for” things rather than just stating that he would fight election fraud, which few people want to admit is a problem, especially those who have committed it to preserve institutional power. MAGA is powerful as a movement, but you can’t use it as a golf ball driver when you really need a short putt. You might still be able to make the shot, but it’s not the best tool to use. In truth, Georgia, in the decertification process, isn’t needed. There is plenty of criminal conduct already proven in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, with governors who will get behind the decertification movement. Georgia was the last refuge of the Never Trumpers, and we learned a lot by watching them in this primary race.

In many ways, watching all the anti-Trump forces spike the football over the Kemp win is like a football game where the losing team has been down 60 to 0, and they get a field goal at the end of the game. The crowd cheers because there is something to be happy about, but they will still lose the game. The disappointment for the MAGA voters is that they wanted the shutout. They wanted as much of a perfect record for Trump as possible. But, Trump is willing to take chances. He does not play it safe. And as a result, sometimes there will be misses. Trump has playing golf seven holes in one, and you get that by hitting the ball hard and trying to skip all the little putts that get you to the green by hitting over the obstacles or through them. Sometimes that means that the ball will go into the rough. But if you play it safe, as many people do, you won’t get those holes in one. So by force of personality, Trump has an excellent win ratio. He can afford a David Purdue here and there, and all it means to the political world is that the Trump brand is so strong that he can take risks others can’t afford to. It doesn’t mean that the Never Trumpers will start winning, and MAGA is on the decline. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Importance of Freedom: Why Joe Biden and other progressives are so dangerous to a productive life

Freedom is the Most Important Thing

Yeah, the video for this article is a bit dark, it was early in the morning, and it was raining heavily at times.  But it was my open window to do that kind of thing, so I made the best of it.  Yet, I have been hoping for these kinds of topics in many ways because I’ve been thinking about them for a very long time.  So much so that the issues of my latest book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, is all about them.  If Joe Biden had not come along, many of these topics might have stayed in obscurity because the need to flesh them out into the open would have never occurred.  But in this case, when Joe Biden continues to rail against “freedom” and suggest that “safety” is our primary concern, he is proving a point I have long been making.  And for that, I am grateful.  So no matter how much rain and lack of light there was, I couldn’t wait to get my thoughts out on the matter to clarify some things that many of us feel but never can quite articulate.  I would say that it’s probably one of the most important things we learn as human beings, that delicate balance between safety and risk and how few people learn to manage that balance throughout a long life.  But for those who do economic activity flourishes, precisely this trait that all the philosophers from previous centuries never quite figured out.  But the American experiment brought them forth, and we can see them most obviously in the creation of amusement parks. 

As human beings, we have a natural lust for risk, and as intelligent creatures, we also want to control risk.  So we created roller coasters which are simulated dangers that we can pretty much assure ourselves will be completely safe.  We want to feel the threat of a roller coaster, but we don’t want to die while experiencing it.  I would call that in my book the management of human needs.  All good management considers those needs in humans and specifies a work culture to their full utilization.  A workforce that feels it can risk thoughts and ideas without the danger of losing their job is critical to innovation.  Cultures that have too many rules and regulations hinder this and create an oppressive, unsatisfactory work experience.  This is the case in every business and is undoubtedly the problem of every government.  We had a very risk-obsessed administration in Trump, which many of us liked because it turned on the gears to a productive economy; people felt safe to take risks and do what it takes to move and create money.  Now we have a very safety-oriented administration with too many rules and regulations that stifle creativity and work ambition, slowing the economy down predictably.

In my book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, I obsess over why people do work, which goes well beyond the financial rewards.  People work, but not just because they want to pay their rent or car payment.  For people who understand good management, people want more from their work than just financial payment.  This is often the great mystery of a good football team with many players equally strong and as fast as other players.  But a good coach and organization have figured out a way to align all those minds toward the joy of a victory.  Good management helps share the victory with every team member, which is the essence of what leadership is all about.  Good leadership is one of the least understood elements of all philosophy and the various political elements that have formed over the entire span of the human race.  Yet, in America, by removing all the previous static cultures of oppressive government, whether, from the church or some king, we discovered a lot about humans, which erupted into the most explosive economy in the world during the shortest period. 

The Biden administration desires to return to the safety and security of big government-driven by monarchs and emperors.  Most left-leaning people are the type of people who are averse to risk and seek security and protection by some form of organization or government.  It’s not an accident that people who work for large corporations tend to vote for Democrats because the corporate culture is often stifling to creativity and innovation, trading risk for security.  All the poor little children who grow up with panicky parents teaching them to be afraid of lightning, rain and make their kids wear bicycle helmets just for riding down the sidewalk are, without knowing it, killing their children’s ability to think for themselves and live a life of embracing risk without destroying their lives.  A life without risk is a life that is essentially dead, and that is what we see out of the Biden economy.  Those most uncomfortable with risk are now in charge and imposing a boring life of too much regulation and caution on the rest of society.  Covid rules have only hindered that trend more by even taking away the illusion of some danger in life.  That could be compared to going to an amusement park to find all the roller coasters closed, but that you could stand in line for them.  People wouldn’t choose to do that if there was no reward for standing in line, leaving the amusement park losing a lot of money in attendance.  If people don’t believe their work will give them something tangible, some level of satisfaction, they are less inclined to participate.  They might go through the motions to get their paycheck, but they will do no more if they don’t feel connected to risk and victory.

I argue in The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business that many people will do just about anything for the mere opportunity to gain treasure and a taste of victory.  That trait propelled our economy into the greatness we have achieved so far, so it is not surprising that the moment that risk is taken away from our society and safety is over-emphasized, declines in productivity would be evident to all.  Economic stagnation happens when the thrill of doing work is lost, and a job becomes a means to paying for one’s obligations in life. It’s the freedom to choose risk over safety that all humans crave, but few ever realize the key to their happiness.  A happy society finds a balance between safety and risk.  Yet when safety is used to stifle risk, then bad things happen.  This is why all socialist and communist countries have failed and will always fail.  Organizations, whether they are companies, or governments fail to understand that leadership is best when they organize a team toward risk to realize rewards.  But when leadership is ignored, and safety is over-emphasized, the result is collective paralysis.  Then it cannot be a surprise when economic activity moves into a dormant state, with shipping containers sitting around waiting to be unloaded, people not participating in the workforce, and everything else slows down in a supply chain.  When work is burdened with too much safety and regulation, people check out and put their minds where there are fewer limits on them.  And that is a natural reaction in all human beings.  Some people are comfortable with risk; some can’t handle it at all.  But it is along these lines, not in politics, that all people find themselves either happy or unhappy with the conditions of their world.   Therefore, what matters most in the world is that people have the freedom to pick their fate because the world as a whole depends on the results of the few risk-takers who propel all society forward into innovation and goodness.

Rich Hoffman

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CEOs Deserve to Make a Lot of Money: Average workers don’t own equally the risk it takes to run a business–Karl Marx never figured that out

It’s the same old communist push from progressives in the United States, politicians like Sherrod Brown from Ohio and Elizabeth Warren, the loser we know so well as the Indian claiming “Pocahontas.”  We’re talking about their positions on CEOs, that they make too much money, many times more than the average worker.  Whenever you hear some loser like them saying, “CEOs make 400 times more than the average worker, and that something needs to be done about it, what you are hearing is a know-nothing loser who has the economic maturity of a cat spaced out on catnip.  I address this issue in some detail in the supplied video but let me spell it out briefly.  CEOs make a lot of money because it is they who shoulder the risk for all the workers.  There is nothing wrong with being an average worker, but there is also a lot of safety in earning a living.  CEOs have no such comfort.  It is they who make a company successful or not, and it is they who own the risk for possible failure, of whether there is a job to even punch a time clock to.  There is no such thing as shared ownership of workers and creating a business, any business.  Such thoughts that they are in any way come directly from the works of Karl Marx and are picked up by loser politicians like Sherrod Brown and exploited purely for political purposes by the ignorant and purposely malicious. 

CEOs are great for society

Cliffhanger the Overmanwarrior


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Starship 15 Lands: Risk is the key to all things in life

I felt great pride and was delighted to see that SpaceX managed to land their Serial Number 15 at their Boca Chica facility in Texas this past week.  It was quite a week, on May 4th, “Star Wars Day,” SpaceX launched successfully more of their Starlink satellites only to have the Falcon rocket land on a small platform in the Atlantic Ocean, right on the X painted on the surface.  Then the next day, with all the public scrutiny hoping for failure toward the Starship program in general, SpaceX took a big-time chance on a cloudy day to launch Serial Number 15.  A failure would have been a big hit on an otherwise triumphant week for the company, and nobody blamed them.  Most companies wouldn’t have taken that risk, but that is why SpaceX is so good.  They are highly competent, they are constantly striving for tomorrow, and they aren’t afraid of risk.  Much of that comes from Elon Musk, a guy who works 80 to 100 hours a week, showing in his products—and his employees.  Even with his pot-smoking incident on that radio show a few years ago, he has won me over because he has guts; he has a great imagination. He has injected into his companies great youthful ambition.  He loves what he does, work is not a nuisance to him, and we are all benefiting as a result.  So, when that Starship Serial Number 15 nailed their landing on a Wednesday afternoon in May, as four astronauts had just splashed down from the International Space Station on Sunday in the middle of the night, then they had the Falcon rocket launch and triumphant return on Tuesday. The Starship launch on Wednesday, I was more elated not just at all the successes but in the bold ambition of it all. 

Maybe even more than all that, though, during the previous week, Elon Musk warned enthusiastically that once these Starships start going to Mars and the Moon, that there would be accidents, that people would die as a result of the various adventures that are yet to unfold.  That was an important thing to do especially given the target on the back of himself and his companies.  The media parasites are looking for any slight stumble to cripple Musk in perpetual court battles. Yet, Elon has managed to stay in front of that ankle-biter mentality with some focused warnings that indicate danger and even death is not the worst thing in the world.  Then I might add, which is implied in Musk’s position, which he could never afford to endorse, that stagnation and yielding to crippling governments are far worse than death.  When Musk said that the Moon missions and going out to Mars would be volunteers who would know what they were getting themselves into before climbing on a Starship to head into space, it is fair and should be understood.  The media representing the government’s control of society through fears of safety is far more dangerous than a stagnant society. That is a conversation we need to be having.  Its time.

All the great leaps of the human race involve risk.  Most great things that we do in life involve risk.  Even asking someone out on a date requires risk; the fear of rejection can be paralyzing.  In this age of online dating and matchmaking, even that is being taken away from us as human beings, the thrill of facing down risk and enjoying the fruits of the rewards when you hit it big is the primary driver of human behavior.  We can blame the government for overstepping its bounds in assuming that averting risk is their direct way of measuring the value of government.  From their point of view, sure, it seems logical.  Make it so people never die and protect them from everything, and the government thinks they can justify their existence.  But the payment for that incursion is that our society stagnates dramatically.  A safe world is a boring world.  Now we’ve managed to simulate danger in our society with amusement parks, zip lines all over the place, MMA sporting events.  We understand the need for risk and threat that is a part of all our lives.  But there is nothing like real risk in a rickety airplane that we built at the start of the Age of Aviation or NASCAR drivers who risk a great deal every weekend on national television.  NASCAR is a lot safer than it used to be.  Drivers can crash at over 200 MPH all the time and now walk away.  That is because the trail of tragedy that led to that safety record did have many people who died, specifically drivers like Dale Earnhardt.  Now, who thinks the old “Intimidator” would take back his life to avert that risk?  It’s only the weak people who are timid in the world who believe in such a way that they would put safety over risk.  Risk is what drives the world forward and makes everything better.

Back in the day, every space launch from NASA would be broadcast on live television.  People understood the risk, and they wanted to watch the space race.  But when NASA did have an accident here and there, the federal government would lockdown on the safety aspects and kill the momentum of innovation needed to advance us into the stars.  SpaceX was barely covered with all the mentioned activities just over this past week because people have become used to the excellent safety record that SpaceX has.  But there will be accidents; people will get hurt.  People will die eventually.  Yet that doesn’t mean we should stop doing anything risky.  People die every day in car accidents, and we do not stop driving cars.  We deal with the risk because we value the benefits.  Now the government would love to get rid of cars and put us all on public transit where they can manage the risk by going 20 MPH and stopping at all railroad crossings.  But that is boring and not good for our lives.  It might be good for the government to measure things, but it’s not suitable for the species of the human race.  We need risk, we need danger, and we need adventure.  We must push ourselves in challenging ways, and we must strive to succeed even if the blood of failure has been spilled on us.        

Anyway, a big congratulations to SpaceX for such a fantastic week; significant risks were taken. Still, the hard work and thousands of important decisions that went into these programs certainly paid off, even if most people don’t understand the relevance.  They will eventually.  Watching Starship 15 stick that landing was a marvelous thing to see.  The door to the future was kicked open, and I liked the glimpse of what I saw on the other side.  It was breathtaking to watch. It’s been a long time since I was that happy to see someone else accomplish something, but that’s what I felt for the entire SpaceX team.  And Elon Musk, a billionaire who has never lost his way, sets the example of what hard work looks like by often sleeping on a couch in the middle of the shop floor of his companies because he doesn’t even have an office.  The result shows in all these successes, and I am proud to be in a culture that shares space with him.  I share with him the same work hours, and there is no way to cheat the system.  And it’s good to see other people working hard and always finding the positives no matter how challenging the problems are. 

Cliffhanger the Overmanwarrior


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