Politics

I recently read an op-ed piece in the New York Times, entitled "The Grinds". These are the kind of Lunatics like me, who wind up not doing what eveyone else did. At some time, just being a kid, they discovered that there is indeed a caste system here in the United States, and they also managed to figure out early on that they ranked pretty low in the scheme of things.
And exactly as the article says, a lot of these guys went on to become successful hedge fund traders. These guys were always loners, and they had to be smart enough to develop their own opinions on things, and to take some kind of action based on these opinions, often running completely contrary to what eveyone else is thinking.
In other words, they would take steps contrary to the herd. The herd was being controlled by the Schmoozers, which is another thing entirely.
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In order to run contrary to the opinions of the herd, you are required to be absolutely fearless.
You see an opportunity, study it carefully, and if you perceive the risk to be far less than the potential reward, you act upon your belief. This takes some guts.
Naturally, everyone around you will consider you to be a Lunatic. You have to learn to ignore this.
Often everyone around you will have a shared opinion about something that is dead wrong. You showed up early with your contrary opinion, and found a way to make some money doing it. Meanwhile, everyone else is getting turned into woolly mittens.
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Being a successful trader also requires you to be humble. You must learn to quickly attend to your mistakes in order to mitigate damages to the Portfolio. Someone who never admits to making a mistake is a liar, because you will make mistakes as a trader. We all do. The name of the game is to stay in the game. This is how you build Wealth.
Developing your own opinions is fine; just don't get married to them.
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So we have a few of these "Grinds" bouncing around out there.
They are all Lunatics. Who cares about them, anyway? Nobody, really.
Most everyone else out there belongs to this huge herd of Sheep.
They're just doing and thinking what everyone else is doing and thinking.
Governments and Social Institutions absolutely love the Sheep.
The Sheep are easily controlled. For the most part, the Sheep just want things to stay just about the same. They start to complain when things actually begin to get worse.
Governments and Social Institutions pay attention to this. Governments and Social Instutions then try to figure out ways to keep the Sheep from becoming miserable.
Governments and Social Institutions don't want things to change all that much either, in spite of what the Schmoozers are telling you on TV. The thing that Governments and Social Institutions all want to do is to avoid losing their power. Power is the only thing that really matters to them.
It's the way of the World.
Mr. Charming.