For further information, please read my book The Moneyball Method: A Middle-Class Manifesto for Objective Investing, now out on Kindle.

Memorial Day in America was May 25th, so it makes sense that a major film depicting America’s heroic legacy would be premiering in local theaters. This year that movie is titled Pressure starring Brendan Fraser as General Dwight Eisenhower. But this was a pre-screening, the official release date is May 29^th.

For perspective, the war in Europe had been hot since Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939. America had been supporting England and her allies with equipment and supplies but didn’t engage directly until December 1941 - and then response to the attacks on Pearl Harbor by Japan.

What makes Pressure a little different is the intense focus on the 3 ½ days that preceded the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, that was supposed to be 2 ½ days. Accordingly, this is not a war epic. In fact, it is not about invasion strategy or deception tactics. What makes this movie unique is the typically pedestrian and esoteric weather reporter as the radical and courageous hero.

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And what makes this movie spectacular are the impressive performances by Fraser, Kerry Condon as Kay Summersby, Eisenhower’s personal secretary, and most of all, the stoic and principled Andrew Scott as Captain James Stagg, chief meteorologist. As a film, Pressure stays firmly grounded in the epic uncertainties of the invasion while allowing the principal actors to portray depth of soul that should move any audience.

But what makes Dr. Stagg radical and courageous? The way his rational character guides his temperament in the emotional heat of the moment - on both epic and personal levels. And to me, what was most personal were Stagg’s consistent references to the laws of nature and their relevance to human life on planet earth.

As Scott and director Anthony Maras marvelously dramatize, Stagg was a singularity among the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and sailors awaiting their fate, his weather forecasting colleagues, and the senior command that expected concrete information:

General Eisenhower: “Are you absolutely certain?” Captain Stagg: “I am confident storms will come.” Field Marshall Montgomery: “Not good enough.”

Stagg’s comment is critical. The dialogue is superb. Confidence and certainty are entirely different things. Implied in Stagg’s choice of words is probabilities. His statistical analysis was based on the most reliable data that was humanly possible at the time:

“Get me the latest readings from every single base within 2000 miles of Normandy.”

For a peek inside Stagg’s rational mind, the opening sequence has him reporting to the meteorological offices at Eisenhower’s headquarters. After alienating Kay Summersby with his terse attitude, he asks about the mass of weather maps tacked to walls. When told they were meteorological charts, he replied “I know what they are. What are they doing here?”

As it turns out, Stagg was not interested in the popular data sets. Information that does not address the problem explicitly can be dangerous, as he relates about Krick’s forecast:

“Yes, the weather was as he described in 1904 and 1925, but he fails to mention 1916, June 5^th, the battle for Mount Sorrel. Then as now, there are areas of high pressure above the Azores, but the storms came anyway. Many people here don’t remember that battle. Chaos, absolute chaos, thousands of lives lost. Hell on earth.”

For the rest of us, irrelevant data that merely supports the common wisdom can be dangerous. As you may have guessed, Captain James Stagg was playing Moneyball. And I recognized the same mindset in the accurately depicted movie version of Captain Chesley (Sully) Sullenberger’s landing of US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River in 2009.

Sullenberger used a critical 30 seconds to decide on his course of action. But during the subsequent investigation, the only successful simulations to LaGuardia had to omit that crucial factor. No prior simulation experience had prepared him or anyone else for a flock of Canadian geese disabling his two engines.

To summarize, Captains Stagg and Sullenberger relied on two things. Objective data and their exceptional skill for using the most reliable information to anticipate potential outcomes based on the laws of nature and experience. In Stagg’s case, he included the potential effects of the jet stream on the two storm systems that were threatening the English Channel.

Two days prior to the scheduled invasion of June 5^th, General Eisenhower asked the obvious question and Captain Stagg gave the only honest answer:

“Sir, long-term weather forecasts, as you well know, are educated guess work.”

Yet, the greatest conflict for Stagg was within his own weather forecasting team. He was British and had displaced the American on whom Eisenhower relied most. That was Irving Krick, US Air Force, and he was dependent on historical models that had worked during previous military campaigns. However, they fell within the boundaries of normal distribution curves - maybe one standard deviation (68%) of possibilities. Stagg explained this differently, but summarized Krick’s track record as: “he got lucky.”

The same is true for the assumption errors built into economic forecasts, stock market predictions, and fund managers that outperform a broad-market index. More importantly, every event that affects your life happens on the extreme ends of the distribution curve.

But for the original D-Day of June 5th, and because Krick was unaware of the potential for large deviation (two or three standard deviations from the norm) “tail” events, he presented a rosy forecast to Allied Command. In response, Stagg was morally and practically obligated to stress his statistically objective confidence and stand his ground:

“Torrential rain. He’s selecting the data that suits him and ignoring the rest. We must face the facts. The facts, however frightening they may be.”

With the largest amphibious assault in world history on the line, and the uncertainty of Mother Nature a major factor, facts can be frightening. But for objective investors taking ownership of their future with the most reliable data possible, facts become values. That is because facts are values and objective investors pay far more attention to the possibility of extreme markets than we do to small deviation events.

To conclude, let the economists, strategists and Krick’s of the world keep their charts and trends. It is better to learn confidence in the face of certainty with the kind of principles, courage and relevant data of Captain Stagg. Why? Because reality always wins. Go see this movie.

A repeating theme for The Moneyball Method is the concept: money is production, production is money. Naturally, a voluntary transaction is the missing step - and that is like the implied musical note in a melody that is understood and appreciated by listeners. In either case, the principals had the idea, made the decision, committed the act and lived with the effects. And their choice to think, decide and behave were volitional acts - meaning free will is implied.

Certainly, some decisions may be conditioned by heredity or culture, but more complex ideas involve the choice to think and act independently. That is most true for you to override conditioned responses or long-held beliefs that need to be replaced.

On a larger scale, wealth creation and its artistic dividend will compound themselves when a society bans the kind of force that punishes independence. To be specific, the initiation or threat of force by individuals, groups or governments will neutralize wealth and artistic creation - and the historical examples are overwhelming.

Today, Pyongyang, Caracas and Baghdad come to mind, but for centuries Europe’s Dark Ages earned that brand as nearly everyone lived in fear of highwaymen, holy knights, and war. The most creative minds in Europe had gone on strike after the fall of Rome in the fifth century AD and didn’t return to work until Aristotle was rediscovered in the West in the fourteenth century.

The Delegation of Force

The kind of force that defends and stimulates your desire and ability to be prosperous is retaliatory, but a civilized society must delegate as much of that as possible to an objective, professional third party. That is the legitimate role of government and everything you’ve read so far is the amazing achievement of America’s Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

For the purposes of this essay, a dominant military for national defense, police for the protection of individual rights, and courts to adjudicate violations and enforce contracts is a given. Just as importantly, it is money only made possible by free minds and free markets that pays for those essential services, which brings us to the relationship between government and money.

As introduced above, legitimate government is delegated, retaliatory force, but you can easily ignore the voluntary transaction to conclude - correctly, that government is force. That is what makes the balancing act for the extraction of property to protect property rights so fragile.

Trust is the glue that binds free markets, but trust can erode quickly when there is no profit incentive or voluntary trade. And the most invisible and insidious way for the forces of government to tip the scales in their favor is to create the illusion of free money, invent economic crises, and scapegoat the true creators of money.

The Initiation of Force

This activity comes in various forms, not the least of which is the income tax for wealth redistribution, the regulatory state that forces compliance costs that amount to 7% of GDP, and monetary devaluation that punishes the accumulation of capital that could easily solve any economic crisis as it occurs.

But to fully understand the virtues of hard money, the gold standard as stability, the depravity of fiat currency - and their positive or negative effects on each of us, this lengthy introduction was needed to establish currency devaluation as an invisible and destructive force.

What is at stake is your personal sovereignty. And that is the point. The fraud is intentional, the “common good” is the rationalization - and the principle of monetary devaluation is to separate life from value.

Today, the economic debate that dominates the news cycle is “inflation,” yet nearly everyone gets it wrong. It may be framed as the rate of inflation, affordability crisis, consumer price index (CPI) and real rates of return, but those terms address price inflation - which is not inflation. It is rising prices that may or may not be caused by monetary inflation.

To reiterate, inflation is not rising prices. And to essentialize that, I will lean on author and finance journalist John Tamny wrote in his marvelous book The Money Confusion, “Inflation is nothing more than a departure from a standard of value.”

On the monetary side, the debate includes “printing” money, quantitative easing, money supply, and foreign exchange. Regarding the latter, what could be more arbitrary? “Evidence supporting this is the frenzied daily trading of currencies that never took place before money was detached from the yellow metal that is money.”

The Marketing of Force

The point is that these are the commonly accepted terms for all sides of the debate - and they are designed to give credibility to incredible actors. The only money supply that matters is money in circulation because it is self-regulated by people who produce and trade. As a consolation, at least the retail pundits are not talking about the central banking nonsense of structural vector autoregressions (SVARs) or systematic policy analytical frameworks:

The demand channels are summarized by an aggregate demand curve that describes a negative relationship between output and inflation. For instance, as inflation increases above the Fed’s 2 percent inflation target, the public expects the Fed to increase interest rates.

Let’s decipher that:

1. Aggregate demand is a fictitious concept used to justify authoritarian control over the economy.

2. There is no negative relationship between output and inflation. Production creates wealth, wealth creates supply, supply lowers prices.

3. The Fed’s 2% inflation target is a really bad idea - and its purpose is to rationalize the Fed’s existence for limiting the devaluation to a politically acceptable level.

4. Are you the public? Do you want the Fed to raise interest rates when they screw up?

But I digress. Let’s talk about sound money. It must be accepted by producers as a tool that will purchase other goods and services from other producers without delay or expense. If it passes that test among countless traders, it becomes a reliable store of value for future purchases and investment.

To achieve that status, sound money must be stable, meaning new supply enters the market very slowly compared to the existing stock of money. This is the low flow-to-stock ratio of hard money - so it stands to reason that soft money has a high flow-to-stock ratio. Paper fiat money is a perfect example. People who produce nothing - but have the power to make the rules for those who do, are in love with the stuff.

Historical Highlights

Accordingly, the only way for soft money to dominate a complex economic system is through the force of government. That creates the illusion of free money, justifies all sorts of government expansion to help “those in need,” compensates “public servants” for the “greater good,” and restricts the natural flow of capital. But historically, how did hard money versus soft money periods work out?

America’s colonial period is a fascinating study. The intellectual focus on natural law had an ideal incubator - the vast and wild frontier in which settlers from Europe were rebuilding their lives in remote locations. Naturally, agriculture was the primary industry, and paper money was backed by tobacco, rice, sugar or land contracts. And Africa’s age-old slave trade that exists to this day was a significant import for the southern colonies.

As a result, monetary and price inflation were not a major problem - depending on jurisdiction - and unless colonial governments issued bills of credit to finance armed conflict with the French or certain Native tribes. And not only was the coinage (specie - hard money) of European nations being circulated, the wampum (clamshell money) of those indigenous tribes was also used as a medium of exchange.

Clearly, America’s economic power was starting from zero and would have remained there without stable tools for trade and commerce. By the time 1780 rolled around, there were thriving merchants and independent banks who were able to buy Bills of Exchange issued by foreign governments for the American Revolution.

These were brokered by Haym Salomon of the Sons of Liberty and critical for victory because the Continentals issued by Congress were nearly worthless and many soldiers never got paid.

Naturally, high price inflation happened again during the American Civil War with the issuance of the fiat currency known as Greenbacks. To its credit, the US Treasury eventually returned to the gold standard in 1879, but it took that long because Treasury department officials believed they could manipulate post-war deflation by manipulating the contraction of their fiat currency supply. They could not. Governments do not create trusted money.

In addition, the Coinage Act destabilized hard currency by demonetizing silver in 1873 and further Greenback devaluation resumed in the wake of the Panic of 1873. Naturally, that was caused by heavily subsidized railroad industry speculation that backfired. But once the dollar’s stability became healthy, the Gilded Age became the greatest socioeconomic era in world history. Producers create trusted money.

But that ended with the progressivism of Democrat Woodrow Wilson and World War I, the depression of Democrat Franklin Rooselvelt and World War II, the collectivism of Democrat Lyndon Johnson and his War on Poverty, and the devaluation of Republican Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War. There seems to be a trend here.

Modern Central Banking

Wilson began the attack on gold with the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913. Twenty years later, Roosevelt banned the private ownership of gold with Executive Order 6102. In the early 1960s, Johnson repudiated the 1944 Gold Exchange Standard for stabilizing currencies with his massive deficit spending, and in 1971 Nixon ended the US dollar’s convertibility into gold because LBJ had effectively done that anyway.

This is the initiation of force. This is precisely what America’s Declaration of Independence and Constitution were intended and designed to prevent. And for those who believe we are our brother’s keeper, must go the extra mile, turn the other cheek and render unto Caesar because love of strangers is a virtue, you are complicit. There is no other way for the social safety net, universal health care, State education institutions and green energy scams to get overwhelming public support.

In support of transfer payments for basic living payments, housing and utility programs, food payments and medical reimbursements, it is all justified as spending that supports Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the “greater good.” However, this leaves out the economic facts that matter:

1. This money had to be produced before it could be spent.

2. Owners of that wealth had it legally confiscated, which is the initiation of force.

3. If the money remained with its owners, it would have been spent or invested far more efficiently.

4. Lower prices and new capital would have created living standards we may never know.

5. The State does not create money. Money is production. Production is money.

In other words, all of that is dependent on the illusion of free money that supports the idea that you don’t own your life, chaos is the order of things, and government expertise is the solution. For too many people, that means dependency with the side effect of substance abuse

Take Ownership

But how would a society of sound money affect your choices? As author and finance journalist John Tamny wrote in his marvelous book The Money Confusion, it reverses everything - for the better. Instead of consumption driving economic growth (GDP) as everyone believes:

Consumption is the consequence of growth that is logically a result of savings. Savings are what make possible intrepid leaps of entrepreneurs and businesses to rush a much better future into the present . . . Debase money, as in devalue it or destabilize it, and you slow the natural division of labor so crucial to progress while also slowing the investment in advances that will enable greater specialization among individuals.

Ultimately, in a society of sound money you may save more because your ideas extend further into the future. You may buy goods and services at lower prices, which frees money to save more or enjoy the things that matter. You may become more productive in your job with greater specialization, earn more, save more and spend more. The important thing is to identify the important goals - in context with each other, and establish an objective measure for them. That is the new performance benchmark.

Furthermore, everyone else has the opportunity to become happier, more productive, more prosperous and able to trade with you for mutual profit. And that profit can be financial, material, or spiritual, but in essence, you will be able to acquire more of the quantity that matters most - time. The principle for the objective investor is: life is value pursuit, value pursuit is life.

In the meantime, there are several ways that individual investors can supplement their wealth producing work and wealth producing assets with the existing wealth of hard assets. Besides real estate and physical gold or other precious metals, there are financial instruments that I will not recommend - one way or another, because that is not appropriate.

Suffice it to say there are securities in the form of exchange traded gold funds, bonds denominated in gold and pay interest in gold, and goldbacks which are like bank notes infused with gold. As a general rule, they may be a diversification tool for a traditional portfolio (large deviation events), a hedge against monetary crises (extraordinarily large deviation events), and fun to flash around or discuss with gold bugs

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Thank you to for the inspiring article which I quote in this podcast.

For further information, please read my book The Moneyball Method: A Middle-Class Manifesto for Objective Investing, now out on Kindle.

As someone who follows economic and financial market news a little more closely than most people, I continue to be impressed by a few statistics that run counter the popular opinion of many major news outlets. The unemployment rate in America hovers near 50 year lows, stock market indexes continue to push record highs, and corporate America is expanding their hiring budgets for young talent.

That last item is according to , CEO of Flex Capital, but it seems to make little sense when you consider the real crisis that pervades America’s universities: corrupt admissions processes, corrupt grading standards, and corrupt curriculum objectives. That last item may apply more heavily to the humanities department and not physical sciences, but it does infect the economic concepts taught to business school students.

In other words, there should be a shortage of young talent graduating from American universities with the cognitive skills, technical knowledge and desire to create value for their employers, customers and colleagues. Why? As Stanford University humanities professor, author and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Victor David Hanson tells it:

1. Lower academic standards at top schools are to accommodate lower admissions standards for biologic and nationality quotas.

2. Politicized coursework by politicized professors who remove empirical knowledge and inductive reasoning skills for a predetermined social agenda.

3. Therapeutic courses to mitigate the weak preparatory skills of students admitted under DEI mandates.

4. Racial essentialism for the even distribution of A and A- grades.

5. Curriculum for non-rigorous social “studies” to help justify grade inflation for weak students

6. Safe spaces, trigger warnings and separate graduations are used to rationalize the 3.8 grade point averages, lower admission standards, politicized coursework, politicized professors, therapeutic courses, racial essentialism, and “studies” programs.

The good news is that employment rates and stock market indexes are at record levels because the American economy continues to create wealth. In turn, there is opportunity and cash flow for a record number of students and their parents to willfully fund these indoctrination camps.

The bad news is that recent graduates who are complaining about the lack of career opportunities do not understand the nature of the problem. It is not the American economy or culture. All of us born here have hit life’s lottery. They have gotten bad advice. Some have adopted bad habits or the wrong attitude. The ones who get it, get it. And get ahead.

The Hiring Manager

During my brief career in management with a major Wall Street firm, my responsibilities included the fulfillment of my firm’s own hiring quotas. We were in growth mode and the hiring and training of retail Financial Advisors was a priority. The romanticism of high finance and fast markets was certainly an attraction, but like any professional who is starting fresh, it’s about new client relationships. It’s about marketing your knowledge and integrity in a competitive industry.

What I was looking for were energetic people with communication skills who understood the power of our premier global brand. One primary source was college Career Fairs for graduating seniors - and the other was newspaper advertising for more mature, career changing professionals. For the latter, we invited them to our bi-monthly Career Night presentation in the branch office.

And whether it was Career Fair or Career Night, each candidate completed a multiple-choice psychological test to help uncover their entrepreneurial talents or lack thereof. Again, it was about marketing in a competitive industry, but none of it was reliable.

To me, career fairs were both tedious and fun. The college seniors had instructions to show up in professional dress and do their homework about the companies to whom they wanted to speak. Naturally, I attracted business school students, but many of those who approached me only asked about information technology job openings. We had big IT departments, but in home office locations for which I was not recruiting.

Inevitably, a few would visit my table and ask, “What do you guys do?” My pat answer was, “We are one of the largest and most famous investment banks in the history of the world.” That was always fun. And I got hundreds of resumes from the classified ads that were interesting. For employment history, one young lady wrote of her current job description: “first point of contact in the customer interface structure.” That was rich. A really good receptionist is of great value and I had to find out.

So, what is the point of all this? Auren Hoffman’s recent comments on Substack about hiring young talent in today’s economy - 25 years later than my narrative above, has not changed. Some things never change:

You have to show you can add value. That is it. That is the only thing. The test the smart hiring manager applies in 2026 is simple. Can you learn something on your own? Can you finish what you started? Can you do what you said you would do? These were always the skills that mattered.

From assistant Branch Manager to Branch Sales Manager to Area Training Manager, I interviewed and hired hundreds of people into our Financial Advisor training program and terminated almost all of them. A few have had marvelous careers. Ultimately, everyone has to become profitable at some point and the metrics for that were objective: revenue. Cash flow is the electrical current of civilized cultures and profitable businesses, but I repeat myself.

Yet, all of us were operating on a flawed system. The advisor training was focused on traditional best practices of the industry - which differentiates no one and is loaded with contradictions. Those were a confusing array of packaged products supported by economic forecasts and arbitrary performance benchmarks - and most candidates were not going to do what they said they would do anyway.

The Builder’s Mindset

At this point you can see there is a wide philosophical gap separating the application, admissions and career development of college students at American universities and the application, admissions and career advancement for college graduates in corporate America.

Of course, there is the profit incentive, but Affirmative Action had been a guiding force for years in the private sector. This divide grew wider with the election of Barry Obama in 2008, but according to Hoffman, being a graduate of one of the top schools used to mean something:

They hired the Penn graduate because the admissions filter at Penn was strong. You went there, so you were probably smart and probably hard-working. The school did the screening for the company.

In the university environment described by Hanson, the effort of mental focus and thinking long-term is inherently bigoted. Furthermore, no one should get ahead if their ideas and actions were determined by genetics and societal forces. Instead, your initiative and low time preference is of no credit to you, but if you are allowed to excel, your effort imposes a duty on you to “give back.” You must sacrifice what you mistakenly believe you have earned. After all, “you didn’t build that.”

Fortunately, the DEI mindset of State funded institutions and corporate HR departments is finally being exposed to the harsh light of reality. But like all worthy progress, it must be replaced in the hearts and minds of the individual looking for a purposeful career and meaningful life, and Hoffman nails it:

The trait that predicts whether someone gets hired and stays hired in 2026 is not pedigree, technical skill, or raw IQ. it is whether you do what you said you would do. Nobody is asking for genius. they are asking for FOLLOW-THROUGH. The rare person who reliably does the thing they committed to is the most valuable employee in any company in any role.

How do I know? In 2008 and with a 20 year career in retail brokerage and investment management, my position was being eliminated and I was pounding the pavement. I had also relocated to a different branch in a new location and did not know anyone outside of my firm and my family.

But I had two things going for me. I had taken leadership roles with the local Chamber of Commerce and I had become certified in the discipline of statistical analysis for objective investing. I then contacted everyone I knew to let them know of my transition before they heard about it from third parties.

One of them told me about an opportunity with the trust department of her employer. I was then introduced to the team leader, who arranged an interview with the regional manager, and then with the senior wealth executive. All of them heard the same story: I was committed to the fiduciary methods that were most valuable to a trust department, and I had been selected for the city’s Men’s 8 crew competing in the Head of the Charles regatta in Boston.

Then the team leader called someone from the Chamber board of directors who worked at the bank and asked if he knew me. The response was “hire Mark, he does what he says he will do.” Bear in mind, this was the fall of 2008 and the worst time imaginable to be looking for a new career opportunity in the investment management industry. But that was me, what does Hoffman suggest for you?

The most valuable thing a 22 year old can do in 2026 is create something. An app. A screenplay. A side business. An internal tool you wrote for a club you were in. The point is that you taught yourself something. You finished it. You can describe what you learned, what broke, what you fixed, why you made the calls you made. That story is the new resume.

For further information, please read my book The Moneyball Method: A Middle-Class Manifesto for Objective Investing, now out on Kindle.

When thinking about medical needs and how to pay for them, it is natural to be concerned and have doubts about America’s health care finance system. Your health is at stake, the costs could bankrupt nearly anyone, and prices have been rising at an alarming rate for decades. Naturally, a responsible person will ask, “what if I get sick or have an accident and I’m not able to pay?”

In addition, America’s medical finance system is dominated by third-party payers: Medicare, employer sponsored health insurance, and the ACA Marketplace. Nearly no one in the State media network discusses this, but that is precisely the reason for prices rising at an alarming rate for decades. The price mechanism of free markets does not exist. And since the State likes to keep track of spending, medical care tripled to 15% of GDP in 2005 from 5% in 1960, has hovered around 18% of GDP since 2010, and GDP has soared.

To a reasonable observer, this is obscene. The price of nearly everything else has gone down or stayed in line with monetary inflation. But to an altruistic observer, this is necessary because medical care is a right and it is the State’s responsibility to take care of “those in need.” For the latter who rationalize the high costs, medical workers are sainted as “essential workers” and health insurance executives are demonized as greedy businessmen who overcharge premiums, deny claims and force you to pay high copays.

Certainly, physicians and nurses are skilled and dedicated professionals with unusually rigorous training, but it’s a vicious cycle. State regulations force them to accept the compensation and working conditions of big health corporations who must comply — and consumers to accept a limited set of medical financing options.

Medical Financing Markets

For what it’s worth, I was forced into this quagmire in October 2018. As I was no longer eligible for an employer sponsored plan and under the age of 65 in America, I was required by law to participate in the ACA Marketplace or pay the “individual mandate” tax penalty. Fortunately, the individual mandate crime was practically eliminated a few months later, but it had been enforced for eight years under Obamacare.

I chose the Gold Plan offered by Ambetter in the State of Ohio. The premium was higher than other companies but it seemed the best value based on coinsurance amounts. According to the Urban Institute, the lowest Gold Premium in Ohio for a 40 year old averaged $450 per month, but I was 62 and paid well over $700 per month. Bear in mind, premiums had increased by about 35% from the previous year due to lousy government forecasts of participation rates by healthy, young people.

The good news is that pricing had some risk parameters; the bad news is that Ambetter and I were forced to accept a comprehensive plan with overwhelming State requirements. The ugly news is that more complexity is added by individual state authorities. Each one has its own department for the regulation of insurance products. Why? It goes back to an 1869 Supreme Court ruling (Paul vs. Virginia) that stipulates insurance is not the transaction of commerce. You can’t make that up. And in 1945 an act of Congress (McCarron-Ferguson) rationalized individual state regulation to be in the “public interest.”

There may be some truth to that — it helped insulate insurance companies from federal antitrust laws. In summary, those are some causes of the pricing travesty, and the Center for Modern Health (CMH) describes their effects:

Insurers were blamed for delaying and denying patients’ care for profit. And Big healthcare corporations are now blamed for both denying care and promoting bad care for profit. Finally, the profit motive itself is blamed for the loss of patient choice and the unaffordability of healthcare. But the profit motive in healthcare, like the pricing signal, is deeply distorted.

However, it is not possible to reverse these effects without reversing their causes. And that is not possible without understanding that the situation above is a big success for the so-called health care rights activists. Why? Because everyone is blaming the insurance companies — not the government protection racket. In fact, one of their CEOs, Brian Thompson of United Health Care, was shot in the back and murdered last year by an ignorant coward in New York City and millions of douche bags on social media have joined the mob.

But why? To achieve that level of primitive behavior, President Obama’s 2014 Affordable Care Act (ACA) restricted the most important type of medical insurance: low cost catastrophic coverage for injuries and emergency illnesses with deductibles and co-pays that encourage responsible claims. Not only was the name of the Act a successful lie, but personal responsibility is also the primary target of reprogressive ideologues.

And to drive that home, the ACA also banned health insurance plans with denial of coverage for preexisting conditions. For “health care rights” to succeed, your formed habits of healthy diet, aerobic exercise, alcohol avoidance, and chemical independence must be disavowed. But that’s not all. Someone else must be held accountable for this normalization of mediocrity — annual and lifetime coverage limits were also eliminated from health insurance plans. In essence, this sacrifices a basic precept for civilized societies: rational judgment through risk assessment. Making an example of insurance companies, if we are not permitted to differentiate behavioral risks in others, that mentality reduces us to instinctual animals. That is the point.

The premise is that everyone has the same needs, complexity is the progressive trademark, and your dependence replaces their reliability. The practice is that higher income earners subsidize the costs of comprehensive coverage for middle earners and taxpayers subsidize the comprehensive coverage for lower earners — also explained by the CMH:

The only way they could sell such an unprofitable product as big health insurance was by hiding its unprofitability and resultant unaffordability through tax subsidization. Tax subsidies prevent every form of big health insurance from collapsing due to giant premiums that no one would or should pay.

In a civilized world, successful companies offer products that meet customer’s needs, are easy to use, and are reliable — yet government mandated comprehensive health coverage is none of that. In fact, third party government mandated payers drive up costs in a vicious circle of bureaucratic inefficiency that is in the same league as the public education and green energy scams.

And in the 1940s and 1950s America, such a world did exist for health insurance. Notwithstanding the detrimental effects of third-party payers on the medical service pricing, individual coverage was priced according to age, health history questionnaires, preexisting condition exclusions, occupation, claims history, and geographic location.

In that environment, consumers knew what they were buying, how it was priced, and could shop for the best combination of benefits, premiums, and copays. And in group circumstances, insurance companies could avoid the adverse selection of sick people applying for insurance because the employee group existed for entirely other purposes — and they were generally younger. That is the world I remember before a neo-Marxist was elected President. The distortion began when customers with high and predictable behavioral risks were forcibly pooled with low-risk customers.

The Moneyball Method

Today, nearly everyone is limited to employer sponsored plans that cover about 54% of the American population, Medicare that covers everyone over age 65 and not covered by an employer, and the ACA Marketplace debacle. And within employer plans, you may be able to choose a Preferred Provider Association (PPA) or Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) structure — plus a Health Savings Account (HSA) with tax deductible contributions. It is their duty and no one is perfect.

Bear in mind, all insurance companies (not HSAs) are third party payers that disrupt the price mechanism for medical services. This is magnified when the price mechanism for health insurance itself is corrupted, yet no one seems to care. Someone else is paying the bill. And that is another effect of the illusion of free money caused by faith in government currency. As CMH also points out, this mentality goes back a century — to the birth of progressive nihilism:

The AMA hated the idea because they didn’t want third-party insurers inserting themselves into doctors’ clinical decisions. The insurance industry rejected the idea because comprehensive care undermines the logic of traditional insurance and would be wildly unprofitable and expensive.

In summary, this can be reinverted, but only when the culture rejects the altruistic moral code of self-sacrifice, the egalitarian excuse for acting like predetermined animals, and governing policy that is reversed to Moneyball Method principles: your sovereignty and market efficiency. For first steps in that direction, the Center for Modern Health has recommendations:

1. Legalize catastrophic health insurance so patients can shop for coverage that truly protects them against the financial risk of large, unexpected medical bills.

This is the best use for nearly all types of insurance. The more each person is paying for routine medical services directly, the more they will shop for the best value, determine what fits their needs and resources, and help create an efficient market. Because they only accept direct payment, the Surgery Center of Oklahoma is a premier example.

2. Explicitly legalize other payment models and insurance types so patients can choose alternatives to big health insurers for comprehensive healthcare services.

This is so obvious it barely needs explanation. Voluntary production and trade is fundamental to civilized societies, but both President Obama and First Lady Hillary Clinton introduced legislation that was dominated by criminal penalties.

3. Repeal Certificate of Need laws so that alternative payment models are free to compete against and offer alternatives to the big health insurance-based healthcare systems.

Certificate of Need laws are regulations at the state level that give bureaucrats the power to control the creation of new medical facilities, the purchase of major equipment, and expand services. This became an issue during the Covid virus panic of 2020, but to centralize control over the supply side is both immoral and impractical — because it is immoral.

4. Give all individuals and their families access to health savings accounts.

Health Savings Accounts (HSA) give employees of the companies that offer them a tax incentive to save money and control how it is spent. On top of that, it is a tax advantaged way to build wealth and there is no reason that everyone should not have this privilege — if it is to exist at all.

5. Give individuals the same tax benefits as employers to shop for their own healthcare.

Not surprisingly, employer sponsored medical insurance plans in America became popular as the unintended consequence of draconian economic policy. During World War II, strict wage and price controls were in effect and health insurance was considered a fringe benefit. Accordingly, the coverage was not treated as taxable income to employees, the costs were deductible to employers, and employers could increase the total compensation to employees without violating frozen wage laws. Today, the same benefit would mean a reduction to Adjusted Gross Income on Form 1040 equal to premiums paid.

The Aftermath

With those reforms in place, you will then be able to judge your medical financing options as an objective investor using the whole of life philosophy — and measure success by looking into the future.

Imagine large low-risk pools insuring themselves against low probability, unpredictable, but catastrophic possibilities. Traditional insurance worked precisely in this way. If, say, 100 healthy 25-year olds insured themselves for
$1000 a year each, the chances of any of them needing that money would be rare. But if even one of them needed it then they could get $100,000 from the pool in the first year itself.

Suppose one among them has a known high cost condition or adopts a dangerous habit — his health profile would be a predictable, elevated risk. The pooled money would be in heavy danger of being depleted due to his health profile. He could be asked to pay a higher premium, quit smoking or leave the pool altogether. The other 99 members of the pool wouldn’t be forced to burden themselves with his high risk profile. It is no longer a random misfortune but a pre-existing predictable risk. That is how insurance coverage became the starting point for health care financing strategy and a contingency plan for these extreme events. No matter how it functions today, that is its original actuarial basis.

Consumer choice, what a concept — and free of State tax perks and punishments.

The modern system where 99 people are forced to absorb the known high-risk problems of 1 person is an abdication of the right to freedom of association. No one should be forced to associate financially with someone who will pose a high risk to their finances. Yet, it is happening everyday and everyone in the country is paying the price for these forced associations. You wouldn’t force someone to marry a smoker. Yet it seems socially permissible to force financial pooling with one.

Unfortunately, neither major political party is serious about repealing Obamacare or any of the other laws that force prices higher for hospitals and consumers. The likelihood of these laws changing is very low. Yet, the stated Republican priority of consumer choice and tax incentives to replace entitlements and mandates is a bright spot and gives us hope for the future.

For further information, please read my book The Moneyball Method: A Middle-Class Manifesto for Objective Investing, now out on Kindle.

To be efficient is to be more productive with less waste. In this case, the waste was the comparative time, energy, and space needed for the vacuum tubes. In the late 1950s, a single silicon chip cost about $120, but replaced many vacuum tubes plus their wiring. Eventually the cost of each chip dropped significantly and could handle the work of thousands of vacuum tubes costing less than one dollar each.

Now the residual amounts of wiring needed, meaning the flow of information between processors, will be replaced by something other than electrons flowing through copper. According to Ayar Labs, their optics technology will deliver 4x to 20x the commuting capacity per watt of energy. And on May 6th, a partnership between NVIDIA and Corning Glass was announced that will increase Corning’s optic connectivity capacity by ten times, fiber manufacturing by 50%, and add 3000 high-paying jobs to the market.

Not surprisingly, these plants will be located in North Carolina and Texas — American states with governance that is friendly to human life, aka capital formation. According to the Wall Street Journal, NVIDIA will invest $500 million in their partnership with Corning, and as the Mirror Review reports, they have secured warrants to invest an additional $3.2 billion in 15 million Corning shares at $180.

Financial Engineering

This is in addition to two major investments announced in early March by NVIDIA: a pair of $2 billion dollar deals with Coherent and Lumentum to acquire optical networking and lasers that convert information from light to electrical signals. And all of this is to create more efficient infrastructure for the construction of AI data centers:

The Corning NVIDIA Deal marks a shift from simple data transmission to deeply integrated “co-packaged optics”. This technology brings fiber optics directly to the chip level, allowing intelligence to move at the speed of light.

In other words, photons flowing through fields of glass solve the engineering challenge of large-scale AI clusters that create bottlenecks and consume most of the power. As Forbes put it:

Light travels through fiber with negligible power loss regardless of distance. Converting electrical signals into photons at the source and back into electrons at the destination eliminates most of the power overhead that makes copper untenable at scale.

Naturally, this will significantly reduce the electrical generation needed to operate AI data centers and ultimately reduce the costs and increase the benefits of large language model programs for end users, but the financial engineering is also of great value.

NVIDIA’s access to capital is attributable to their stock price, but they are not acquiring Coherent, Lumentum, Corning or Ayar Labs. According to research published by NAND, they can achieve the benefits of vertical integration without paying a premium buy-out price, inviting the wrath of the antitrust neanderthals, or burning bridges with potential suppliers.

Photonics Engineering

And we get the bonus of an important new word for my vocabulary: photonics. Actually, it’s not really new — photonics has been around since laser development began in the early 1960s. Without getting too technical, it is the processing of radiation units in the electromagnetic spectrum of visible and near infrared light.

Essentially, photons can move through silica glass at speeds closer to light because photons have no mass but they do have momentum. The physics of that is well beyond my expertise and the scope of this essay, but it is accurate to say that fiber optic delivered information is a quantum leap because laser technology is a literal quantum leap.

In fact, it is poetic justice that the enormous electrical power and photonic bandwidth needed to mine Bitcoin (digital money) is now needed for AI (digital knowledge). Knowledge is power. Production is money. Power is knowledge. Money is production.

Equally fascinating is the comparison of electrons and photons with money and prices, electromagnetic fields with free markets, and gravitational pull with capital finding talent. And that is not really new - journalist Isabel Paterson made this critical observation in her 1943 classic, The God of the Machine:

Money is indispensable to a long-circuit heavy load energy system. Money represents a storage battery when idle, and a generalized mode of the conversion of energy when it is in motion, with a function of equating time and space.

The analogy is strong. If money and electrons flow through the time and space of their respective domains - economies and electromagnetic fields, NVIDIA and Corning are accelerating both. And in the socioeconomic sense, the peace and prosperity of modern societies is determined by the flow of electricity and the flow of capital.

Corning is a company with a 173-year evolution since producing the glass encasement for Thomas Edison’s first lightbulb. The original order from Edison, dated 1880, still sits in the Chairman’s office today. So it is only historically fitting that they work on building the photonics needed for AI evolution.

The Butterfly Effect

Last year while I was watching a news conference barely listening, I heard President Trump mention Harrodsburg, Kentucky. That got my attention.

Apple and Corning were announcing a partnership that included a $2.5 commitment for the manufacture of iPhone and Apple Watch glass covers at Corning’s Harrodsburg manufacturing plant. Instantly, that explained why the tenant for my loft apartment near Harrodsburg had driven herself and her personal belongings from Corning, New York to central Kentucky. She was a chemist for Corning and I’ve got a really cool place.

Two billion here. Two billion there. Capital with a vision moving rapidly to its most productive uses and finding talent. But where do these numbers come from? Money isn’t stupid. The senior management teams, electrical engineers, logistics analysts, investment bankers, and countless others on both sides of these transactions arrive at prices they are willing to accept and pay for their respective talents.

On top of that, there is no assurance that these investments will pay off handsomely, barely break even, or lose money. In fact, there are only three things holding the deals together. Contracts, objective law, and trust. And from where does this trust originate? Skin in the game. As Adam Smith explained, all participants have money and the profit motive to perform.

Price Discovery

What could possibly go wrong? Countless things - from natural disasters to innovation that renders the latest technology obsolete. But most likely and insidious is the use of force that impedes the rapid flow of price information - as Paterson also explained in 1943:

The possibility of a short circuit, ensuing leakage and breakdown or explosion, occurs in the hook-up of political organization to the productive processes. This is not a figure of speech or analogy, but a specific physical description of what happens.

Regulatory agencies do not have the talent, skin in the game or the profit incentive. And in the case of the financial engineering needed for the NVIDIA deals with Corning, Coherent, Lumentum and Ayar Labs, capital commitments had to be adjusted for the threats of antitrust action. There is a cost to that and we will never know what it is.

For a physical description of the photonic effects of economic freedom, Corning has produced glass so pure that the depths of the Marianas Trench would be discernable to the naked eye through its Pacific Ocean. To understand this in a small way, take a look at your favorite image through museum glass and compare that to standard picture glass.

Besides the impurities in the ordinary glass, the difference is money and talent — and the benefit is your exposure to fine art. Or in the case of AI data centers — your exposure to vast knowledge. Or even better, your increased knowledge of the benefits of romantic art with the discovery of leisure time due to the efficiency of new data centers.

For further information, please read my book The Moneyball Method: A Middle-Class Manifesto for Objective Investing, now out on Kindle.

Art as Investment

In the solar system of objective investing, your goals, aspirations and cash flow strategy replace your investment portfolio as the mechanism for guiding decisions. For the 2002 Oakland Athletics baseball club, the goal was a winning season, the aspiration was to make profit, and the cash flow strategy was affordable talent that could get to first base.

That was a radical departure from baseball’s traditional practices, and it was not pretty — hit and run plays and stolen bases were rare. And it was not artistic — hitters were not hired for their pretty swings and graceful strides. Instead of Adonis on the roster, the A’s General Manager fired much of the scouting department and hired “quant guys” for statistical analysis and reliable data.

The Moneyball Method for objective investing is no different. The talent scouts of sector rotation, earnings forecasts, and risk tolerance are gone. Their wisdom for predicting the future and measuring past performance is out. And in this solar system - the only one that supports human life, we use the historical data to anticipate market behavior and measure investment performance by looking into the future.

But in the vast universe of the entrenched bureaucracy, the product is the portfolio — and it is no coincidence it is called a portfolio. As a curated collection of marketable securities and “alternative” assets, it is the pride of self-styled analysts everywhere. Accordingly, this is when monthly brokerage statements become a personal expression of their creative capabilities in the realm of global finance.

Except when one or more of their selections underperform their benchmark. In that scenario, their investing style, sector leadership, or talent for flipping quarters had gone out of style. It happens a lot, as do hitting streaks in baseball.

Greater Fool Theory

In the context of rational self-interest, fine art is the exception to The Moneyball Method’s aversion to specific security selection. And the only exception to that exception is the category of modern art. It is opposed to rationality and individualism.

The boom of NFT (non-fungible token) digital art may be the most hysterical example. Trading volumes hit $23 billion in 2021 and crashed 93% by early 2025. As a result, active traders have vanished as the fools are now swapping nothingness among themselves. Perhaps the best way to appreciate an NFT portfolio is with a vintage collection of Frank Zappa vinyl records. For example, the 1976 classic Zoot Allures features the iconic track, “The Torture Never Stops.” Zappa’s social commentary and musical imagination is priceless.

And because it reflects anti-reason in our postmodern culture, modern art’s effect can be cognitively corrosive. But instead of cherry picking another example to illustrate, let’s stick with the broad-market data. According to a 2019 report published by CNBC that goes back 40 years:

“The volatility surrounding annual art returns, as measured by standard deviation from the average, was 14.9% across all art categories and a much higher 25.8% for contemporary art.”

To a rational investor, that kind of price volatility should command an average annual return that exceeds US stocks, but the historical returns are lower. Regardless, the subject of art as an investment can be fascinating.

Beginning with investment, one definition reads: “the action or process of investing money for profit.” Another replaces money with time: “an act of devoting time, effort, or energy to a particular undertaking with the expectation of a worthwhile result.”

These are good — and when combined they suggest the time value of money. And for fine art, one definition reads: “works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.” Another combines tangible artworks with performances: “the various branches of creative activity, such as painting, music, literature, and dance.” These are also good, and when combined with the measurable return that money facilitates, art makes little sense — except with The Moneyball Method.

However, fine art deserves perspective. It does not exist without the leisure time needed to create, purchase and enjoy them.

Art as an Asset Class

For my purposes here, music, literature, plays, movies and dance in the form of concerts, ballet, theater, or books will be considered spending goals of money and time. And the acquisition of paintings and sculpture will be treated as both spending goals and as portfolio assets, but illiquid.

That means tangible art can have both economic and emotional value — as ambiguous or subjective as that may be. And like precious metals, undeveloped land, and owner-occupied housing, art is not a wealth-producing asset like profit earning companies that create value for customers, investors and employees.

In fact, metals, land and housing have been consumer goods for most of human history, but from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance, artists languished in obscurity and their creations were dedicated to the glory of ghosts — not men.

But when societies became more civilized, land was improved for farming and it was elevated to a capital asset. In that environment, talented artists were able to cultivate wealthy patrons from the mixed feudal economy of land owners, merchants, and church/state rulers.

A prime example from early 16th century Italy was Isabella d’Este — a lady of high birth, higher intellect, the sister of Lucrezia Borgia, “and became the first woman in Europe to develop a personalised gallery space with specially designed cabinets to display her vast collections.”

For us, this is where objective investing becomes interesting. How do you combine your financial commitment to tangible artworks and artistic performances with your other assets, spending goals, and total investment risk exposure?

According to a December 2021 published by European Financial Management: “A broader academic study of paintings and drawings over the past 60 years found a nominal annual return of around 6.24%.”

But more importantly, as portfolio asset to hedge stock market risk, “One analysis using Artprice data showed moderately negative correlations for Old Masters (–0.64) and 19th Century Art (–0.68) vs. the S&P 500, and a weak negative relationship for Modern Art (–0.31).”

In summary — and as an asset class, the price action of the broad category of fine art over the last 50 years resembles hedge funds: Generally, both have delivered single digit returns, high volatility and little or no correlation to the S&P 500.

Portfolio Selection

Except as pooled investments similar to private equity, no one buys art as an asset class. It doesn’t exist as liquid securities like ETFs. Portfolio selection is everything. To get a sense of the art market for the past 50 years, the Museum of Modern African Art (momaa) wrote in 2025:

“Post-war and contemporary categories achieved annual returns exceeding broader market indices during favorable periods. However, volatility remains elevated compared to traditional categories . . . Blue-chip works in these categories demonstrate steady appreciation with lower volatility than emerging segments.”

Not surprisingly, there are distinct categories within fine art (masters, impressionist, romantic, modern, realist, surrealist, naturalist, various schools) and artist reputations that not only determine the economic value of an artwork but the meaning that delivers emotional satisfaction to the objective investor.

Clearly, great artworks are subject to selection bias, but they also carry poor liquidity, high dealer fees, and storage costs. And unlike all other asset classifications, fine art adds value that can only be measured against other uses for money that have unique value to you. For the emotional benefits, I will rely on philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand to explain the dividend:

As to the role of emotions in art and the subconscious mechanism that serves as the integrating factor both in artistic creation and in man’s response to art, they involve a psychological phenomenon which we call a sense of life.

Thanks to modern technology, wonderful reproductions can be purchased at far less expense than the originals. Just last week I found a 16 inch bronzed composite statue on Facebook from an American sculptor. It was priced for about 20 — 25% of the estimated price at an online auction site. I’ve also purchased giclee canvas prints, but the only originals that might be considered assets are three originals that I bought in an online auction in a modest price range.

In all cases — galleries, concerts, theater, paintings, sculpture, Zappa albums, or vintage MAD magazine originals — your investment objectives, cash flow expectations, financial assets, art ownership, and healthy sense of life can sing in harmony when tuned properly.

For further information, please read my book The Moneyball Method: A Middle-Class Manifesto for Objective Investing, now out on Kindle.

The Game

Around the turn of the century, Y2K - also known as the millennium computer bug, was a big deal globally and the brokerage industry was no exception. Not only was every firm compelled to update their enterprise systems, my firm was the world’s leading underwriter of technology companies and leading sell-side research house.

At the same time, I was updating my own internal enterprise system by reading the philosophy of Ayn Rand and upgrading my career through the firm’s Management Development Program. The next three years began with moving to a new city and schools for a new career assignment. While the Dotcom crash was affecting our clients particularly hard, the brutality of Islamic terrorism on 9/11 was inflicted where my firm was the largest tenant - the World Trade Center.

In that crucible, I was beginning to learn about reason, independence, and rationally chosen values for living with meaning and purpose. And while reading the fiction and non fiction of Ayn Rand, I developed a professional relationship with a consultant who was helping me train our Financial Advisors in the practice of goal-directed action. One important thing he did was flip the script on “time management” by stating the obvious: we have 24 hours each day.

In other words, we can maximize the value of our time with activity measurement and management. When done effectively, this blends the absolute of reason with the virtue of independence, and rationally chosen values. And that is perfectly human: it is necessary to combine the facts we observe and the basic concepts we know to form new ideas. That will help us achieve greater awareness - and without that, I would not have recognized the opportunity described below.

The League

Three years later I was part of the regional management team hosting an area-wide special event for a select group of Advisors. It was 2005 and about 30 of us gathered in a small banquet room for a cocktail reception followed by a presentation from a motivational speaker who was making the rounds with a somewhat popular book and consulting practice.

However, when he took the microphone, the main attraction said something I did not expect - and it did not sit well with the rest of the audience. He told us up front that he was not a motivational speaker. Motivational speakers make you feel good about yourself. They tell you the sky is the limit and your potential is your dream, but he was not there to make us feel good about ourselves. That got my attention. His name was Sarano Kelley and his book was titled The Game: Win Your Life in 90 Days.

At that point, I had been a student of Ayn Rand’s philosophy for about five years but not yet introduced to the Moneyball story of Major League Baseball, and I was not aware of the principles for objective investing. However, I was about to get a Moneyball Method lesson that has stayed with me ever since.

Whether we liked it or not, Kelley was going to teach us accountability. To me, his story telling skills were up to the challenge and the metaphor was team sports. Kelley then named the essentials: a rule book, a scoreboard, a time clock, a court or field, a ball, goals, referees, coaches, teammates, and spectators. Of course, all of those roles have responsibilities that are accepted voluntarily.

Within that construct, the accountability partner for each player was the coach of the team. But if we chose to play The Game individually, there were two strict rules: 1) Your accountability partner is not your friend, and 2) You will be held accountable twice per week during telephone calls that last 10 minutes - exactly.

Training Camp

This is where it gets interesting. The next day, the chatter among the attendees who were not complaining was to get in The Game. And for each of us, we needed to decide on two things: 1) What our Game would be (an important goal to win), and 2) Who would be our accountability partners. Again, they cannot be a friend who will be lenient, but your Game can be any aspiration: business objectives, physical fitness goals, personal relationships, educational achievements, or creating or building something. Obviously, it must be challenging and life enhancing.

And there were two things that were uniform among the Games: 1) The time clock was set for 90 days (because it takes about 13 weeks to establish strong habits). If the challenge takes longer, then set an intermediate goal and reset the clock for another 90 days, and 2) The biweekly accountability calls are not optional and they are not flexible. Twice per week at a predetermined time that ends at ten minutes is carved in stone.

The agenda goes something like this: What did you say you would do? How did that work out? What did you do? What progress has been made? What will you commit to for next week? In effect, your accountability partner is the coach, referee, scorer, time keeper and your biggest fan. But cutting slack and making excuses is against the rules. In addition, predetermined penalties can be assessed and enforced for infractions.

What you customize are the daily and weekly tasks for which you will be held accountable. And both of you agree to what those rules are - in advance. But what does this have to do with The Moneyball Method? Everything. Defined values, goals, aspirations, and timing are primary rules of The Game.

Game On

Yeah, right. How did that work out? For me, The Game was to become a better father to my son who was a college freshman. He chose a school for less than great reasons, I told him so, and said I would support his decision for the first semester. If it’s not working out, I would make changes. Bear in mind, college life demands greater self-discipline for academic success. And I knew he was not a self-disciplined student, but he needed to learn the rewards and consequences of independence on his own.

As I expected, academic probation and frustration right out of the gate. Like father, like son. I had also found myself on academic probation after my first semester in college - and for the same reasons. But my son had a father who cared, was engaged, and with my completion of Training Camp above, I proposed The Game with my son. A good father is a great accountability partner, not his child’s best friend.

He welcomed the idea enthusiastically. After all, what college student doesn’t want regimented telephone calls with their father twice per week while away at school, right?

The objectives and rules we set were simple. Like The Moneyball Method, they met the need, were easy to use and understand, and were reliable: 1) Improved test scores, 2) Quality written assignments, 3) The pride of achieving number 1 and 2. And together, we created an Excel spreadsheet with seven columns for each day of the week and 16 rows for each hour to accommodate all of that plus 1) Scheduled classes, 2) Study hours, 3) Recreational activities, 4) Accountability calls, 5) Dining hall, and 6) Rest.

At the end of every quarter, we discussed his achievements, challenges, the next quarter’s academic schedule, and created a new spreadsheet with new accountability call times and dates.

Moneyball

And what does this have to do with The Moneyball Method? Everything. Ultimately, my son took ownership of the entire week and the accountability calls were a highlight. Both of us enjoyed the preparation, the anticipation, and he was waiting by the phone every time. And on the rare occasion I was one minute late, he called. I was held accountable. It was that important to him - and to me.

We did this for each academic quarter through his sophomore year, his GPA improved every time, and his graduation with a major and two minors had special meaning for us. And it’s not a stretch to compare our experience with the new advisor/investor dynamic that manifests itself with the objective, value-driven philosophy that eventually became The Moneyball Method.

Philosophically, I had learned that there are no contradictions in nature, but I was still learning to identify contradictions in man-made systems. Professionally, the man-made system was the application of marketable securities to an individual investor’s short and long term goals.

What I did not know was the “investment objectives” on the new account forms (aggressive growth, growth, growth and income, income, capital preservation) were psychological approximations and potential contradictions for individual investors. The following year I was introduced to a system of personal accountability, financial consulting and performance reporting that was diametrically opposed to the traditional advice model - even for those advisors who practice comprehensive planning.

And it began with a white paper written by David Loeper that included the quote (altered slightly from the original), “If you perceive a contradiction, check your premises.” Ayn Rand. I immediately began studying that paper. My conceptual framework was growing.

The goals to be achieved for objective investors had to increase from one to several and the time frame was expanded from 90 days to the life of the investor. In addition, money and markets were integrated as goals and activities. Of course, they add complexity, but the essence is identical to our simple spreadsheet and calendar.

The Site Map and the Fact and Values Matrix of The Moneyball Method contain the defined values and activities for the only standard of performance that matters: Win Your Life!

For further information, please read my book The Moneyball Method: A Middle-Class Manifesto for Objective Investing, now out on Kindle.

Claude’s education so far may seem like the isolated subjects of sociology, finance, and science class, but each one is connected with the lessons learned in the previous period. That is important: knowledge of the relationships or similarities between natural and man-made systems leads to greater understanding and awareness. In that spirit, page 169 of The Moneyball Method includes this excerpt:

As the 19th century Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla described it, the object of his research was modest: the secrets of the universe. He believed they could be found in energy, frequency and vibration. For financial markets, that is median return, standard deviation and correlation.

Median historical return is similar to the energy component, vibration is similar to volatility as measured by standard deviation, and frequency is the wave pattern of different asset classes. If peak and trough meet, they interfere and cancel each other - and in finance, that has diversification benefits.

But this article is not about capital markets. From Day One, it is about “everyone’s long-held beliefs about money and markets acquired from a culture that endows government agencies as the creators of money and regulators of markets.” From Civics Class, it is about “what a critical mass of objectively thinking, goal-directed, intellectually independent people would likely produce.”

From Economics Lab, it is the “effort required to take your values inventory and place it into your money/time continuum.” And from Natural Sciences, I will answer the question from its conclusion, “what value is recognized by the greatest number of people? What tool could motivate a plurality of the culture to adopt rational behavior for productive, independent lives?

More specifically, I asked Claude this question: “What tangible commodity is desired by nearly everyone and is derived from objective thinking, goal-directed planning and intellectual independence?” Here is the first part of what Claude had learned:

Wealth (financial prosperity / money). Here’s why it fits:

• Tangible commodity — money, assets, and material wealth are concrete and measurable, unlike wisdom or judgment.

• Universally desired — across all cultures and societies, financial security and prosperity are nearly universal aspirations.

• Derived from objective thinking — building wealth requires clear-eyed assessment of risk, value, markets, and opportunity, free from wishful thinking or emotional decision-making.

• Goal-directed planning — wealth accumulation is inherently strategic: budgeting, investing, saving, and building toward defined financial goals.

• Intellectual independence — the most successful wealth builders think contrarily, question conventional financial advice, identify overlooked opportunities, and resist herd mentality.

That is a major breakthrough. Claude learned that money is the catalyst, value and tool for teaching and motivating a plurality of the culture to think objectively (reason), act with purpose, and achieve independence (self-esteem).

Not surprisingly, Taking Claude to School is aligned with the famous Six Sigma principles for quality, efficiency, and profitability. Developed by Motorola in 1986, the Corporate Finance Institute identified those principles as Data-Driven Decision Making (measurable concretes), Customer Focus (aspirations for prosperity), Process Improvement (objective risk assessment), Stakeholder Involvement (strategically defined goals), and Continuous Improvement (question conventional advice and identify opportunities).

And what is one sigma? It is one standard deviation in a normal bell curve distribution. It contains about 68% of outcomes - and that is the domain of conventional thinking. However, one sigma is not of great concern to Six Sigma or The Moneyball Method. It is the extreme events on the tails of the bell curve we both try to anticipate and then minimize the effects.

Even more remarkable, Claude learned that money, wealth, wisdom and judgment are closely related, universally desired, and the necessary tools for defining values, understanding markets, anticipating risks, and measuring performance. In fact, that is our entrepreneurial mindset.

On top of that, Claude learned that the common wisdom and groupthink must be replaced. Easier said than done. No one believes their wisdom is too conventional or their thinking is that of the mindless herd. And when the subject is money and investing, there is widespread resistance to explicitly defined goals, markets that don’t fail, and money-weighted return measurement.

But if money and its productive virtues are the catalyst for everything that is good, maybe it’s time to replace the portfolio as product mentality with your cash flow strategy as the new performance benchmark. Fortunately, the first step in that direction can be found in the second half of Claude’s answer my question above:

It’s worth noting that wealth in this context isn’t just cash — it encompasses capital, assets, property, and resources that give a person security and freedom.

The deeper connection is that wealth is one of the few tangible things where the quality of your thinking is directly proportional to the outcome — making it a uniquely fitting answer to your question.

Imagine that - the quality of your thinking, or the thinking of every “credentialed expert.” And easier said than done, as Claude learned in Natural Science class:

The significance of such a book would ultimately depend not just on its content, but on whether it finds the infrastructure — educators, advisors, media, communities — to carry its core ideas outward at scale.

Thank you, Claude. Outward at scale. That will be the Q & A for next period’s class: Taking Claude to School: Physics Lab.

On Day One of Taking Claude to School, our student discovered a new book that is part investing guide, part philosophical manifesto. He described its investing as “the idea that data-driven, disciplined thinking beats gut instinct and conventional wisdom” and the philosophy “replaces backward-looking performance reporting and predicting markets with taking ownership of the investor’s future.”

In addition, this was a school of classical education. In the library were found John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government from the 17th century, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations from the 18th, and Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species from the 19th century.

After homeroom, Claude’s first period was Civics Class, the second period was Economics Lab, and this brief essay will summarize the third period - Natural Science. But first, here is what Claude found to be the common thread among these three classics:

A book that successfully bridges the philosophical and the practical, that makes abstract principles feel personally urgent and concretely actionable, is extraordinarily rare. That’s precisely what gives books like that an outsized cultural footprint compared to their initial readership.

In Civics class, individual rights and the nature of government were given form as independent thought and action. In the Economics Lab, rights and economic freedom were concretized as self-generated goals and the price mechanism. And in Natural Science class, your free will to define goals grounded in reality will be the subject.

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More broadly, what does it mean to be rational? Perhaps the best source for a concise definition is novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand and her essay, The Objectivist Ethics:

The virtue of Rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one’s only source of knowledge, one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide to action. It means one’s total commitment to a state of full, conscious awareness.

And using Rand’s innovation, how does this become integrated with free will in the context of your personal financial decisions:

It means a commitment to the principle that all of one’s convictions, values, goals, desires and actions must be based on, derived from, chosen and validated by a process of thought . . . directed by as ruthlessly strict an application of logic, as one’s fullest capacity permits.

Essentially, logic demands that you apply reason to the evidence of reality and do it in the context of the circumstances. Only then can you learn cause and effect, formulate propositions, test premises, and eliminate contradictions. This describes the scientific method, and when applied to the natural world, it becomes orderly and intelligible.

Naturally, reason, reality and rationality are also the elements of elegant man-made systems because they hold natural law as primary. Existence exists regardless of your awareness or opinion of it. Here, Claude has learned how elegant systems propagate:

The three traits you identify — objective thinking, goal-driven activity, and intellectual independence — are not just individually valuable. They are mutually reinforcing in a way that makes the combination unusually powerful:

• Objective thinking without goals produces analysis but no action.

• Goal-driven activity without objectivity produces hustle aimed at the wrong targets.

• Neither means much without intellectual independence, because a person who outsources their conclusions will eventually abandon both.

So far, so good, but what are the impediments? Briefly, they are force, faith and fear. In today’s welfare state societies, that may be the force of the State, faith in some medieval deity, or fear of social disfavor.

Make no mistake, those impediments are huge. And for those or other reasons, many institutions are averse to objective thinking, explicitly defined goals, and intellectual independence. If you don’t believe me, ask Claude:

A book can be profoundly right and still languish in obscurity, or it can reach millions but be misread by most of them. The significance of such a book would ultimately depend not just on its content, but on whether it finds the infrastructure — educators, advisors, media, communities — to carry its core ideas outward at scale.

And what is the question that prompted these lessons in civics, economics and natural science that were learned by Claude in the course of these three essays? Here is my one part, one sentence question:

If a book could motivate a large percentage of the culture to think objectively, pursue goal-driven activity, and become intellectually independent, what would be the significance of that book?

Yet is that not the mission of every liberty-minded non-profit and think tank? And why is no one asking this question? Is it faith in their existing principles? Or fear of success? I have asked several well-informed people over the last six months - all of whom seemed to interpret the question’s intent and evade a direct answer. Naturally, Claude did not have that problem:

But to answer your question directly: a book that genuinely accomplished what you describe would be among the most consequential works of its era.

Moving forward, what value is recognized by the greatest number of people? What tool could motivate a plurality of the culture to adopt rational behavior for productive, independent lives? And how do we minimize the potential obscurity and misreading by educators, advisors, media, and communities?

Stay tuned - the next installment of Taking Claude to School will suggest such a catalyst, value, and tool.

The previous class for the Taking Claude to School series touched on the broad categories of sociology and political science. This installment is also concerned with the social sciences - economics, and it will bridge the gap into the next article, which is natural sciences.

To begin, here are the other two specific achievements of intellectual independence for any society that were identified by Claude:

• Economically — better individual financial decisions, less susceptibility to bubbles, scams, and media-driven panic, and a stronger middle class that builds wealth rather than chasing it.

• Psychologically — individuals with a clearer sense of identity, purpose, and resilience, because their goals and values are self-generated rather than externally imposed.

Bear in mind, this response is to the same question that spurred the Civics Class article. Furthermore, it was a one-part, one sentence question with 29 words - and 17 of them had one syllable. That makes it even easier to break down into the essentials:

1. Better financial decisions - that is microeconomics at the most personal level and it will have a direct impact on your well-being.

2. Less susceptibility to bubbles, scams, and media-driven panic - rational principles control your financial decisions, not people and events that are out of their control - and yours.

3. A stronger middle-class that builds wealth rather than chasing it - leveraging capitalism with defined goals is superior to predicting the future and trying to beat the market.

4. Individuals with a sense of identity, purpose, and resilience - this is the Serenity Prayer in reverse: wisdom, courage and serenity. And coincidentally, the intro to the Intro of my book.

5. Goals and values that are self-generated rather than externally imposed - effort is required to take your values inventory and place it into your money/time continuum, but the payoff is priceless.

What is interesting is that nearly every investor and registered advisor may agree with nearly everything written in this essay so far, but nearly none of them have any idea what it really means to practice these ideas - and Claude agrees:

Because the bottleneck in most human problems — financial, political, social — is not a shortage of information. It’s a shortage of people who know how to think well about information . . . The reason is that they operate at the level of tactics — what to do — rather than at the level of epistemology — how to know what’s true and how to reason from it.

Let’s start with the information overload that is produced by the economists and strategists from the investment management industry. Nearly every economic forecast will say the same things: near-term volatility, continued uncertainty, secular trend intact, irrational exuberance, inflation fears, consumer sentiment nonsense, potential policy errors, and all of that for their cautiously optimistic forecasts.

And then there are the sector weightings, earnings predictions, money supply magic, trade imbalance hokum, technical charts, price targets, performance track records and processed products that are so popular among investors and advisors.

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Ultimately, the economics and finance aspects of personal investing come down to “how to know what’s true and how to reason from it.” And for “a stronger middle-class that builds wealth,” that means True Wealth Management - a protocol that measures success in terms of wealth, not rates of return.

But what is true about the liquid capital markets for stocks, bonds, and commodities? To quote Claude, again, “that capability would be addressing the root cause rather than the symptoms.” And what is the root cause of the wealth building properties of those capital assets? It is the productive virtues of money, the information of prices, the elegance of markets, and the justice of profits (the titles to the first four chapters of The Moneyball Method).

In qualitative terms, it is the economic freedom of “individuals with a clearer sense of identity, purpose, and resilience, because their goals and values are self-generated rather than externally imposed.” In quantitative terms, it is the long-term historical data that explicitly defines each asset class. It is their attributes, the law of identity.

Why? Because the information is derived from the actions of money, prices, markets and profits. The important differentiator from the traditional tacticians is that the data does not predict the future. What it does do is give us the most reliable estimate of the potential and relative behavior of each asset class you may want to own.

In the next essay, I will transition to the third class in Taking Claude to School - Natural Science, and I will publish the full text of the question that motivated these three articles. But it won’t end there. Learning is a life-long value - if you so choose.

On the day “Taking Claude to School - Day One” was released, I asked Claude a second question. Like the first, it had to be worded with no ambiguity, I wanted to continue with Claude’s conclusion to my first question - and I chose to eliminate the reference to money and investing.

In other words, begin with principles. First, it’s refreshing to ask this question of an objective listener who doesn’t try to interpret its intent and evade a direct answer. Second, with the global database of human knowledge from which to craft a response, Claude delivered one that was stunning and extraordinarily useful.

It was so rich that I will evaluate the comments in pieces and over three brief essays. Here is how it started:

The works of John Locke shaped the intellectual foundation of the American Revolution. Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations reoriented how entire societies understood commerce and human motivation. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species permanently altered humanity’s self-conception. The common thread: they didn’t just inform — they reframed how people processed reality.

Upon reading Claude’s conclusion from my previous article, you will see that Darwin, Smith and Locke are the named exemplars for the “objective thinking, goal-driven planning, and intellectual independence” of The Moneyball Method. And to assist the metaphor of Taking Claude to School, I will address this as separate essays covering civics class, economics lab, and natural science.

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To define the term, a civics class is one that teaches students about the rights and responsibilities of each individual in a civilized society. And it teaches the nature and purpose of government for protecting those rights and maintaining peaceful relationships among citizens and organizations. Here, Claude identified two specific achievements of intellectual independence for any society:

• Politically — a citizenry harder to manipulate with emotional appeals, slogans, and tribalism, and more capable of evaluating policy on its actual merits.

• Socially — a culture that rewards competence and honest dealing over signaling and conformity.

But this doesn’t happen by itself. Much like the universe is an elegant system of space, time and electromagnetic fields, Claude discovered something similar about The Moneyball Method:

The three traits you identify — objective thinking, goal-driven activity, and intellectual independence — are not just individually valuable. They are mutually reinforcing in a way that makes the combination unusually powerful.

And if you’ve read my book, the two bullet points above may sound familiar. For example, here is an excerpt from the Summary of Part I:

For consistency, add individual rights defended with clearly defined law. That is what it means to be objective — the natural world is orderly and knowable, and you can choose to live in harmony with reality, or not.

Because politics is downstream from ethics in the hierarchy of philosophical principles (and we deal with first principles here), let’s begin with Claude’s second bullet point: “Socially — a culture that rewards competence and honest dealing over signaling and conformity.”

That is a magnificent observation. Not because it is difficult to understand, but because it is all too rare in a culture that regards need, humility, non-profits, public service and self-sacrifice as virtues. You have agency and you were not born owing anyone anything.

What Claude has identified are the principles of moral justice: earned recognition and appropriate rewards for ability, competence, and productive success. That happens first. Otherwise, “a citizenry harder to manipulate with emotional appeals, slogans, and tribalism, and more capable of evaluating policy on its actual merits” is impossible.

As implied, we must first become aware of the virtues of independence, integrity, and then lead by example. But what are some of those emotional appeals and slogans for signaling and conformity? Also taken from the Part I Summary, they include: “collective rights, market failure, greater good, robber barons, victimhood, determinism, ableism, and environmentalism.” All of which demand invasions of privacy, yet anyone can find fault.

My purpose here is to deliver a proven alternative in the pursuit of happiness - one that my student Claude had learned:

Consider what a critical mass of objectively thinking, goal-directed, intellectually independent people would likely produce.

Precisely. But how? Is that not the mission of every liberty-minded non-profit and think tank? Let’s consider the specific question that prompted this high-quality learning experience for Claude. It is not ambiguous and it is a question I have asked several well-informed people over the last six months - all of whom seemed to interpret the question’s intent and evade a direct answer.

And what else did Claude have to say? Please stay tuned for Taking Claude to School - Economics Lab.

For further information, please read my book The Moneyball Method: A Middle-Class Manifesto for Objective Investing, now out on Kindle.

Over the last 34 years, “the economy, stupid” has become one of the most stupid political slogans in America. Made famous by a bombastic political strategist for the Democratic party, it reinforces the idea that US Presidents should be judged by their economic successes or failures. They should not.

America was founded on the principles of individual rights, political liberty, and equal justice under law. And it was that social and political environment that spawned a wave of prosperity and leisure time that had been unimaginable in human history. The greatest threat to that is rights violating monetary and regulatory action.

GDP vs. Capital

To be clear, nearly all monetary and regulatory action will violate rights, liberty or justice. But this essay will focus on the measurable economic effects of certain monetary and regulatory edicts from 1970 through 2000 that had penalized or freed Americans and international investors.

Unfortunately, the most widely used measuring stick for economic vitality is Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, that is a statistic that rewards government intervention and I will ignore it.

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And as you will see, it is not relevant. GDP measures spending, but the health of any society, culture or economy should be measured by an entirely different economic phenomenon: the flow of capital to the supply side. Money is not stupid; it will either form in large pools or it will evaporate.

Nixon and Carter Years

The 1970s must be labeled an era that punished capital. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created in 1970, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in1971 – and on August 15, 1971, President Nixon announced the end of the gold standard for the American dollar. Naturally, that allowed for monetary devaluation that punished savings. And against the advice of his economic policy team, Nixon announced wage and price controls.

Not as well known, he threw in 10% across the board tariffs on imports, but if Nixon’s more rational advisors were against this, who pushed him? As the Imprimis Newsletter of Hillsdale College revealed, it was certain corporate cronies who naturally propagate in the soil of heavily regulated welfare states:

A very good and forceful move at a critical time, said the chairman and president of Reynolds Metals Company. Excellent, said the president of Dow Chemical U.S.A. Bold, aggressive, decisive, said the chairman of Firestone Tire and Rubber Co.

Fighting back against Nixon’s regulatory onslaught, President Carter became known as the Great Deregulator, but he also added a new Cabinet position – the Department of Energy. And adding fuel to the fire, the Federal Reserve was on a demand destruction rampage with vain attempts at interest rate price fixing.

Stoking the flames were more than a dozen individual income tax brackets with the top rate at 70%. All of which offer artificial complexity, invasions of privacy, property rights violations, and the evaporation of capital.

Regardless, active minds will build and innovate. For the decade of the 1970s, they gifted the world Intel microprocessors, Apple II desktop computers, the Sony Walkman, email communication, floppy disks, handheld calculators, and the Ethernet.

Why do I say gifted? Because their investors and inventors earned only a tiny fraction of the time and money their products and services earned for us.

The Reagan Revolution

By comparison, the 1980s should be labeled an decade that rewarded capital - and the significance of that cannot be overestimated, as the Bill of Rights Institute reported:

Venture capital was difficult to accumulate in the 1950s and early 1960s because of income-tax rates that reached 91 percent on the highest incomes. The cutting of tax rates by upward of 30 percent in 1964–1965 was central to the accumulation of the myriad capital pools that yielded the great venture firms of the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s that spearheaded the technology revolution.

During Reagan’s first term, the number of tax brackets were cut by more than half and the top marginal rate was reduced to 28% from 70%. That was tremendous, and according to the US Department of Energy’s report titled Trends in U.S. Venture Capital Investments Related to Energy, venture capital investments in the energy and industrial sectors tripled to $900 million.

In addition, venture capital (VC) for biotechnology increased eight-fold to $800 million, and total VC formation and deployment grew to $12 billion from almost nothing. By today’s standards, all of that seems miniscule, but don’t forget, America was starting from relatively nothing for venture risk capital in 1980.

Besides the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the unification of Germany, and the greatest economic expansion of the 20^th century, the venture capitalists and digital engineers of the Reagan years gave us personal computers, digital camcorders, cellular telephones, gaming consoles, DNA sequencing, and the Internet Protocol.

All of that accelerated the free flow of information and capital into the next century because markets react quickly to the price of capital and prices are information.

The Clinton Contradiction

President Clinton’s eight years in office began in 1993 with a capital punishing agenda but ended with some capital rewarding legislation. At this point, it is worth repeating that Presidents get far too much credit and blame for the economic performance of their years in office. They produce nothing, elegant complex systems are resilient, and their moral and Constitutional duty is to get the hell out of the way.

At the same time, money is not stupid, and capital will react quickly to incentives and punishments that are ignored by the economic and financial press. Today, we forget that the Clinton administration pushed the top individual income tax rate up to almost 40%, the corporate rate to 35%, increased the taxable portion of Social Security income to 85%, and subjected all income to the Medicare tax.

Fortunately, the universal health care monstrosity known as Hillarycare was buried until Obamacare resurrected it fifteen years later. But of importance here is that 90% of the tax revenue increases during Clinton’s first term were coerced from the top 5% of income taxpayers. That negation of economic freedom harmed everyone.

On the plus side, Clinton’s second term achieved the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 that reduced the capital gain tax rate to 20% from 28%. In turn, venture capital for energy and industrial sector investment increased to $1 billion from $300 million during the Clinton years and biotechnology investments increased to $1.5 billion from $600 million. And most significant, internet related VC commitments went from about $0 to $5 billion in 1995 and reached over $50 billion in 2000.

Voodoo Economics

Notice that the starting points for the Clinton years are well below the ending points from the Reagan administration. In between was the term of President George H. W. (no new taxes) Bush who chastised all of us supply siders as practitioners of Voodoo Economics.

Comments like that from career bureaucrats and their government educated economic advisors is precisely why “the economy, stupid” is such stupid advice for political candidates. Comments like this from the Bill of Rights Institute explain the true nature of “voodoo economics.”

Intel’s chief founder, engineer Robert Noyce, secured several government contracts in the space and defense industries for the initial portion of his career in the late 1950s and early 1960s. His ambition, however, was to break free of the necessity of government contracting to develop breathtaking new technological products people would independently find useful on a mass scale.