A Collection of Quotes

Travel done right forces you to understand politics, which leads to a better understanding of economics and society. Having experienced 50-plus countries, I'm publishing quotes that may help you arrive at your own understanding of the world. 

"In a world where deficits don't matter, a post-factual society cannot be far behind." -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat 

To say mass-produced art isn't truly art seems problematic, like arguing a tree falling in the forest and heard by all shouldn't make a sound. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat 

The fundamental problem with creating jobs in first-world countries--as long as other countries are able to produce similar goods or services--is that capital is mobile while labor is not. Still, trade deficits don't help, and since countries have competing goals, true cooperation is difficult. Though we are all linked, only minimal rather than optimal cooperation appears necessary to maintain the existing [global] system. -- Matthew Rafat (2012) 

Many people blame religion for America's problems rather than the tax exemption. Remember: any advantage tends to multiply, especially if based on fiat. A fiat-based advantage isn't a "plus one"--it's a "plus two" because the exemption/advantage harms the competitiveness of opposition groups and outsiders at the same time it promotes certain interests. To summarize, some fiat-based advantages primarily encourage conformity rather than their intended goals. Economic models and theory don't account for this hidden "plus one," a severe deficiency. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat

If Inspector A has 10 successful investigations while Inspector B has 2, then the government may easily defend any off-the-job behavior of Inspector A if challenged, including social media postings. However, in a world without individual metrics, Inspector B prevails because the touchstone in hiring becomes non-controversy rather than merit. Voters have sensed a decline in accountability and have opted for political incorrectness because the alternative--control through manipulating social norms--is unacceptable to most thinking people. -- Matthew Rafat (2016) 

Rising prices for essential items like healthcare, education, and housing, if disconnected from wage increases or if requiring decades-long debt, change society by elevating not God, not love, not relationships, not honor, not honesty, but money above all things. This phenomenon does not mean essential items should be given for "free." Rather, it means a society will decline and fracture if it cannot use government spending and education to promote sustainable, long term objectives and truly diverse consumer choices while preventing the degradation of the individual. -- Matthew Rafat (2017)

A truly diverse and open society need not trumpet its accomplishments in law, print, or fact; the day-to-day absence of racial and religious fear speaks for itself. Even perfectly safe waters may tremble and diverge, but no one on them seeks to leave. For these passengers, siren songs of exclusion and envy, whether shrill or pleasant, hold little attraction. The passengers know better than to be distracted from the hard work of ensuring the boat's continued passage, not just for themselves, but for all deserving the journey. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2018) 

The West's argument has been that safety in an age of mobile, technologically-advanced weapons requires security to be the world's primary policy objective rather than economics or cohesiveness. Were it possible to satisfy a security-first approach in a cost-effective manner, the West might have succeeded; however, we are seeing that a unilateral approach does not work because cooperation and communication are necessary for true safety, not continuous technological advancements. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2018) 

In the hierarchy of Constitutional rights, do Americans realize if there's no true right to privacy, guns will be useless against a technologically-advanced surveillance state that lacks tolerance for differing political opinions? -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat, on the Second Amendment (2018)

Countries with unchecked military spending are bound to fail; were perpetual victory even possible, creativity and following orders rarely overlap. Meanwhile, secrecy and integrity are unusual bedfellows, as are transparency and the business of murder. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2018) 

As of 2018, the United States has lost the war on poverty; the war on drugs; and the war on illegal immigration. Along the way, it won the war on privacy. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat 

Many Christians who've joined the cult of positivity forget the most pleasant sounds and words in the Bible came from the snake. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2018) 

A government that can tax by force begins with a competitive disadvantage against the private sector; a government that taxes without the presumption of integrity will automatically injury-default to competitors. -- Matthew Rafat (2018)

"As long as police unions interfere with the removal of dishonorable officers, no minority will ever trust the government. A country that allows advanced technology in the hands of even a single unaccountable employee has signaled it prefers its own advancement over justice or mercy. Complicating matters further is the outsourcing of both surveillance and law enforcement to private firms. Regardless of its form, however, even a single drop of corruption has the effect of blood on apparel--the rest of the piece might be perfectly clean, but no one will wear it if other options exist." -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2018) 

Bravery in uniform favoring conformity imposed by strength destroys culture, leads to occupation or genocide, and makes us all cowards. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2019) 

Understanding American racism is simple: when more than a century of segregation plus economic fragmentation encouraged by vested interests overlaps with visible racial characteristics, differences are seen as less than benign. -- Matthew Rafat (2019) 

Modern Western politics is in its current miserable state because everyone from Diego Rivera to the Workington Man has realized Western liberal values were mere covers for theft and supplanting of local institutions abroad rather than a sincere attempt to bring Enlightenment to all. -- Matthew Rafat (2019, after Britain's general election)

If we're being honest, America's obituary will read that soldiers in WWII died to make Germany and Japan great; in Vietnam to make China and Singapore great; and in Iraq to make Iran and Saudi Arabia better. -- Matthew Rafat (2020) 

You spend youth trying to parse everything into smaller bits to better understand them, and to cut each piece of cake as thinly as possible to imagine infinite sweetness. But as you become older, you understand the key isn't the atoms but the whole, and your thoughts, once complicated and profound, become simple and earthbound. -- Matthew Rafat (2020) 

I am a cynic because I understand human nature, and I am an optimist because I understand children. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020) 

First rule of governance: the lower the population and the smaller the land mass, the easier it is to govern. Second rule of governance: the more diverse the population and the larger the land mass, the harder it is to govern. Third rule of governance: the less diverse the population and the smaller the land mass, the harder it is to retain talent, to foster creativity, and to accept and learn from challenges. Fourth rule of governance: a politician's task is finding the right balance between the first, second, and third rules--and being able and ready to change the formula when needed. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020) 

Centralized entities that influence local legal structures and international commerce create the same problems assumed about "double citizenship"; yet, voters are more swayed by individuals with divided loyalties than entities able to homogenize entire cultures. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020) 

People who complain political parties are the same should re-evaluate their analytical model. After all, if most people are fundamentally similar, why wouldn't their representatives follow? Unless, of course, they have subconsciously swallowed the seeds of every empire's destruction: an ahistorical emphasis on exceptionalism, which plants Hydrangea Hubris. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020) 

Standardization in the analog world can always be complementary due to inherent physical restrictions; however, standardizing in the digital realm leads to self-destruction because of the absence of theoretical limits within an inherently vulnerable foundation. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020) 

All of humanity's problems can, in one form or another, be traced back to short-term thinking and visual dependence. --  Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020) 

Like it or not, much of what we believe is not organic or original; instead, our beliefs often generate in opposition to the past, a person, or an ideology. Choose your enemies wisely, for they will be your greatest inspiration. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020) 

Too many national flags in a developed country indicate a declining empire, where people have accepted military propaganda in lieu of substance; meanwhile, in a developing country, a surfeit of national memorabilia means people prefer the past to the present and perhaps even the future. In the former, historians have failed; in the latter, economists have failed. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020)

One of economics' most difficult truths is that not everything valuable can be commercially viable. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020) 

The United States increasingly stands for debt, destruction, delusion, demagoguery, divorce, deficits, and death. Without discussion, diversity, de-escalation, democracy, and self-doubt, the status quo will continue. -- Matthew Rafat (2020) 

When people ask "What good is a writer?" tell them this: only the writer can defeat the invisible barriers and borders that inevitably separate residents in their hometowns from each other, regardless of distance; and only the writer can minimize spaces between ourselves revealing the next step towards a common humanity. Absent the sincere writer and the competent journalist, things fall apart, the center cannot hold, and the rough edges sharpen into knives of our own neglect. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020) 

The United States in 2020 has spent so much time studying the art of capturing attention, it has yet to reach the part about substance or context. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020) 

Catholicism has made a mockery of democracy by employing nepotism in all areas of government, especially American police departments.  The result is a tragedy rendering religion the handmaiden of zero-sum political movements both at home and abroad. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020) 

One reason America is so resistant to change is that minorities have been its loudest critics. When minorities are the most vociferous about domestic problems, it means they and the majority have failed. This is counterintuitive only until you realize the majority is required for political and thus meaningful change. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020) 

It is no coincidence all falling empires devolve into distraction. When problems become entrenched, politicians can sacrifice and compromise, or they can borrow to maintain the status quo. Stagflation is the latter; success is the former. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020)

A country that peddles propaganda is admitting it can no longer solve problems. If propaganda is the marriage of efficacy and pablum, then whether a country chooses the tactics of George Orwell's scapegoating or Aldous Huxley's unjustified optimism matters less than if breakaway political movements can divorce without bankruptcy or murder. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020)

The world would be a saner place if we called advertising and recruiting budgets by their true name: propaganda. But then whither military adventurism and the perception of political choice? -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020) 

The only verifiable religious phenomenon I've witnessed is the Holy Trinity of Stupidity: white, American-born, and Catholic. I suppose it is that way everywhere the majority uses politics as a jobs program and minorities as visual props. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020) 

Mainstream American Christianity lacks cultural structure and binds adherents through entertainment and showmanship. The result is a collection of storytellers able to weave tales any which way except a direction favoring genuinely shared experience. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020) 

Debt-based democracy is an oxymoron. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2021) 

A government more dependent on debt than taxes is incapable of neutral oversight regarding consumer-facing financial institutions. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2021)

The dirty secret of 20th and 21st century large-scale Western democracy is not only that it requires segregation, but that it promotes it in all forms--at least if diversity is a component. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2021)

Most people, especially lawyers, misunderstand the purpose of laws, which is to promote integrity, accountability, and priorities. After a certain threshold, however, laws become useless because they weigh down, rather than advance, compliance. Since no one knows the magic number where procedure trumps utility, laws tend to multiply until a backlash occurs, dividing the citizenry. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2021) 

The difference between Congress and Parliament is that an American politician need not be wise or intelligent to succeed, whereas a British politician need not be wise. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2021) 

When you start to see politics not as a battle between good and evil but the sustainable and the unsustainable, you are on the right path. -- Matthew Rafat (2021)

A society under tax-driven governance requires politicians to listen to individuals, some more than others; a society under debt-driven governance requires politicians to listen to bankers more than everyone. -- Matthew Rafat (2021) 

Government's role is simple yet complex: creating fairer alternatives to the mafia at reasonable and comparable costs. -- Matthew Rafat (2021) 

Instead of Communism and capitalism, think of the 20th century as the first period of an experiment involving different levels of private ownership and debt within changing levels of demographics and available land. -- Matthew Rafat (2021) 

Competition between debt-fueled, decentralized systems led by lawyers and financial institutions against post-colonial, centralized systems led by executives and technocrats will characterize the first half of the 21st century. In theory, the former should be less corrupt; in practice, the latter has been more successful because of efficiency gains arising from a single technological standard. -- Matthew Rafat (2021) 

Working class revolutions often occur when elites--including teachers and lawyers--co-opt protections meant for physically-demanding jobs. Physical danger and tangible output impose palpable limits. In their absence, some professions are more likely than others to devolve into extremism. Progressives would do well to remember out-of-touch mine workers do not exist. -- Matthew Rafat (2021)

If Americans aren't careful, a billion Chinese and a billion Muslims are going to rewrite American history--just by telling the truth. -- Matthew Rafat (2021)

Most people who admire Martin Luther King, Jr. and Joe Louis fail to realize they would not have been possible without Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. Inspiration requires inspiration, and our heroes are often reflections of others in reverse. -- Matthew Rafat (2021)

"Trying to empathize with a minority group by spending a short time in their shoes or clothing is a misguided effort. First, the temporary nature of the exercise defeats the purpose. Second, the inability to magically gain the entire background of the minority you seek to emulate also functions as an a priori defeat. Minorities are just like you: individuals different in their own ways. To gain empathy for minorities in general, you must become one genuinely and travel outside your comfort zone, where you do not speak the language or know the culture or religion. To gain empathy for a particular group, you must spend time with a member of that group for at least 21 consecutive days. Then you shall learn though we are all individually different, in the end, we all share the same basic similarities with the environment into which we are placed." -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat 

Wisdom is weaving together facts and context while being inclusive. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2021) 

A significant problem in the 20th and 21st centuries was the military's unchecked spending, which supported its marketing. The business of killing ought to be distinct from the business of selling things, lest people become things as business becomes inhuman. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2021)

Segregation has been favored throughout history because we tend to be more at ease with persons who look or dress like us, thus signaling similar codes of conduct. More diversity equals more complexity, and under Western governance, more laws, more dishonest lawyers, and more unequal enforcement are inevitable. As long as the overall economy is growing, complexity can be tolerated by majorities as well as minorities; however, once the economy slows, simplicity becomes the calling card of every reformer, whether benign or malevolent. Western civilization thrived from 1511 to 2001 because its military prowess allowed debt to be issued during the best of times and forgiven during the worst of times, a cycle that papered over severe deficiencies. In 2021, Americans who desire a simple society will one day realize they should have pursued a sustainable one. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2021) 

Inefficiency and corruption are so pernicious, they inspire reverence towards anyone promising a fix. In nonfunctional societies, a dictator always appears reasonable. --  Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2021) 

Citing cultural exports to argue one country's success over another may mean nothing more than this: the side claiming creativity has become the world's entertainer while others do more substantive work in the shadows. Moreover, an absence of cultural exports may result from licensing and import restrictions rather than a dearth of talent. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2022)

Humanity's greatest problem is not technology, but institutional integrity, then institutional longevity. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2022) 

If supra-national technology companies have perfected surveillance, is competent oversight feasible without allowing governments the ability to participate? If not, should we accept diminished privacy as a cost of progress and shift attention to improving both private and public sector integrity? -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2022)  

A philosopher is a puzzlemaster always working with incomplete pieces, and always aware failure is guaranteed. Yet, if s/he does not do the work, time will expand the board until it is futile to bother trying. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2022)

Every border control debate is fundamentally about immigration, and disagreements about immigration arise when one side refuses to accept the costs as well as the benefits of globalization. --  Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2022)

A good legislator maintains standards while promoting inclusivity. Stated another way, successful societies grow without forsaking their principles. — Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2022)

A journalist must avoid ego and hatred. Both vices block empathy, then understanding all points of view. Until linguistic translations are seamless and historical facts uniform, a journalist's job is to tell stories with context, opening doors to the truth. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2022) 

Being the best sociopolitical writer when everyone is soaked in social media is like being the best horseman at a Ford Motor Car factory: the disadvantages are obvious, and the advantages few. Perhaps only the most curious will care, but the analog writer need not accept a digital medium. He or she may wait for technology to revert to conduit status rather than kingmaker and feel secure knowing that well-cared for horses are more beloved by their owners than mass-produced cars. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2022) 

Political speechwriters have wider reach than sociopolitical writers, but I cannot identify a single authentic and admirable politician in my adult lifetime, so I am content with limited returns. Good writers, like good people, eschew inauthenticity, and I always wonder how many writers have not yet been discovered because they are part-misanthrope and therefore more accepting of their loneliness. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2022) 

After antagonizing 1 billion Muslims (Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, etc.), the United States decided to malign 1 billion Chinese--understanding neither but remaining overconfident. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2022) 

The problem with sanctions is that they are laws, and every law has a loophole. -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2022) 

Why do conservatives who associate legal or illegal drug sales with corrupt police departments suddenly suffer blindness when analyzing connections between militaries and oil and gas? -- Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2023) 

The GOP will win the 2024 American presidential election because it is now embarrassing to be liberal, outrageous to be conservative, and cowardly to be moderate. When choosing between stupid, crazy, and feckless, logical voters prefer crazy. — Matthew Mehdi Rafat (March 2023)