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WORK TITLE: How to Spot the Next Starbucks, Whole Foods, Walmart, or McDonald’s Before Its Shares Explode
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://marktier.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY: Hong Kong
NATIONALITY: Australian
RESEARCHER NOTES:
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| HEADING: | Tier, Mark |
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PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Received degree from Australian National University; University of California, Los Angeles, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Businessman and author.
AWARDS:Prometheus Award, Libertarian Future Society, for Visions of Liberty and Give Me Liberty.
WRITINGS
World Money Analyst, founding editor. New York Journal of Commerce, Hong Kong correspondent.
Also contributor to periodicals, including Quadrant, Australian Stock Exchange Journal, South China Morning Post, Business Traveller, Liberty, Reason, The Australian, and Time.
SIDELIGHTS
Mark Tier has predominantly made his living within the business world. He is both an investor and a writer, with the majority of his written works focusing on his economic and political leanings. He is affiliated with World Money Analyst, a newsletter Tier personally created and for which he formerly served as an editor. His writing can also be found in such publications as Quadrant, Reason, South China Morning Post, Time, and several other journals. He was also previously affiliated with the New York Journal of Commerce, for which he served as Hong Kong correspondent. Tier also resides in Hong Kong.
Give Me Liberty and Visions of Liberty
Give Me Liberty is a bit different from the majority of Tier’s works. Specifically, it is an anthology of science-fiction pieces edited by Tier with the help of Martin Harry Greenberg. It (along with its sequel book, Visions of Liberty) gained recognition in the form of the Prometheus Award, given by the Libertarian Future Society. Each of the stories in the book is a science fiction work written from a libertarian perspective, some of which promote this philosophy more subtly than others. The book features such authors as Stephen Baxter and Ken MacLeod, and many of the writings were penned during the 1960s. Each of the stories uses their libertarian slant to explore how society would change in a more futuristic setting through a different lens from what is typically featured in science-fiction works. The overall theme for each story contained in the book is peace being threatened by aggressive governments. One of the stories involves a society that relies on bartering to make ends meet. When a strict alien government arrives to put order into this society, however, the alien members discover the bartering society offers far more appeal. Another story focuses on a weapon of mass destruction that anyone can build and acquire. Other stories featured within the book offer citizens great power that allows them to build a more equal society. In an issue of Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Robert K.J. Killheffer remarked: “Give Me Liberty offers an excellent assemblage of some rarely reprinted material that deserves to be better remembered.” He added: “Give Me Liberty is full of genuinely thought-provoking sf in the classic mode, doing what we badly need sf to do–challenging assumptions and exploring radical ideas, taking nothing for granted, daring to dream.”
Visions of Liberty continues the trend featured in Give Me Liberty. However, the themes of its stories differ in that instead of dealing with times of peace marred by sudden oppression, the political systems in the stories have simply malfunctioned beyond repair. Some of the authors included in this particular anthology are Lloyd Biggle Jr. and James P. Hogan. In Biggle’s work, a detective is tasked with tracking down a killer. However, he soon learns that the killer is a victim of harsh circumstances, having been forced out of society due to his inability to support himself there. With no other resources to turn to, he is forced to go feral and feels there is no other source of hope or assistance for him out there in the world. Hogan’s story follows a society that has completely shifted its economic system from being capitalistic to being more generous and based on bartering goods and services. Kliatt contributor Sherry Hoy wrote: “This collection offers a thinking person’s choice in science fiction: good fun, but also nourishing food for thought.”
The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett & George Soros
The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett & George Soros: Harness the Investment Genius of the World’s Richest Investors is more of a return to form for Tier. The book serves as a self-help guide for those interested in becoming better investors, drawing inspiration from the investment decisions of George Soros and Warren Buffett. Tier uses their strategies to try to encourage readers to follow a similar mind-set and path, which he argues will lead them to greater wealth. He establishes that both of these men adopted similar frames of mind that allowed them to better envision and create a path to wealth, and he tightens their ideas into a list of twenty-three points for readers to follow. Some of the suggestions featured within the book include focusing on and learning about investment as much as you can each day, maintaining one’s patience, and evading any chance of risk whenever possible.
In addition to providing readers advice on how to invest, Tier also offers warnings on what not to do with one’s investment money. Management Today reviewer Alastair Ross Goobey said: “The 23 Winning Habits will certainly help the average investor.”
Trust Your Enemies
Trust Your Enemies: A Political Thriller is another of Tier’s explorations of fiction through a libertarian lens. The novel focuses on Karla, Derek, and Alison, a trio of individuals who become entangled with the government in different ways. Karla works as a journalist with lofty goals. She is actually romantically involved with Derek, who is serving out a prison sentence after committing murder and was previously also involved in the journalism field. Karla has since become determined to pen the ultimate government exposé. Alison, on the other hand, works for the government directly, serving as the Deputy Prime Minister’s advisor. Each of these characters become entangled with the others as the plot winds forward and the government’s darker dealings come to light.
On the Journal of Peace, Prosperity and Freedom website, Marc Lerner wrote: “In conclusion, Mark Tier’s novel is a standout amongst libertarian novels, and is particularly notable for gently nudging the reader in the right direction rather than bludgeoning them, as many others do.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kliatt, January, 2005, Sherry Hoy, review of Visions of Liberty, p. 24.
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January, 2004, Robert K.J. Killheffer, review of Give Me Liberty, p. 29.
Management Today, February 7, 2006, Alastair Ross Goobey, “Books: You too can get rich slowly and steadily,” review of The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett and George Soros, p. 32.
ONLINE
csinvesting, http://csinvesting.org/ (February 27, 2012), Anthony Wile, “Investing ‘Guru’ Mark Tier’s Interview,” author interview; (June 19, 2012), Mark Tier, “The Power of Habit and Investing.”
Journal of Peace, Prosperity and Freedom, http://jppfaustralia.weebly.com/ (April 11, 2013), Marc Lerner, review of Trust Your Enemies: A Political Thriller.
Mark Tier Website, https://marktier.com (May 2, 2018), author profile.
MD Magazine, http://www.mdmag.com/ (September 16, 2008), Monica Buonincontri, review of Becoming Rich: The Wealth-Building Secrets of the World’s Master Investors Buffett, Icahn, and Soros.
Thought Matters, http://thoughtmatters.co/ (September 12, 2017), excerpt from How to Spot the Next Starbucks, Whole Foods, Walmart, or McDonald’s BEFORE Its Shares Explode.
About Mark Tier
Mark Tier is an Australian writer and businessman who is based in Hong Kong “partly because paying taxes is against my religion.”
Founder of the investment newsletter World Money Analyst, which he published and edited until 1991, he is also the author of Understanding Inflation, which became a bestseller in Australia in 1974, and The Nature of Market Cycles.
In 1984 he wrote How To Get A Second Passport which sold tens of thousands of copies around the world — and was shamelessly plagiarized in Greece, the Philippines, the UK and Canada.
He was Hong Kong correspondent for the New York Journal of Commerce in the late ’70s, a columnist for The Australian Stock Exchange Journal and Business Traveller, and his articles on investing and other themes have appeared in Reason magazine,Time, The Australian, Liberty, The South China Morning Post, Quadrant, and elsewhere.
He is also co-editor (with Martin H. Greenberg) of two collections of science fiction stories: Give Me Liberty and Visions of Liberty (both published by Baen Books).
These two anthologies won a Prometheus Award from the Libertarian Future Society, and were later issued in one volume titled: Freedom!
Since 1991, in addition to helping start five new (and highly successful) investment publications, he has been a marketing consultant and acted as a counsellor. A graduate in economics from the Australian National University, he began a PhD program in economics at UCLA. He is also a Master Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming.
His application of psychology to money and investing resulted in The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett & George Soros, published in 2004. He identified the 23 mental habits that Warren Buffett, George Soros, and all other successful investors and commodity traders all practice religiously.
To date, The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett & George Soros has been published in 14 editions in 9 different languages, and sold over 300,000 copies world-wide.
His most recent books are When God Speaks for Himself: The Words of God You’ll Never Hear in Church or Sunday School, Trust Your Enemies, a political thriller; a story of power and corruption, love and betrayal — and moral redemption, and soon to be published: Ayn Rand’s 5 Surprisingly Simple Rules for Judging Politicians. Read this, and you’ll never be fooled by a politician again.
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Give Me Liberty
Robert K.J. Killheffer
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. 106.1 (Jan. 2004): p29+. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2004 Spilogale, Inc. http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/
Full Text:
edited by Martin Harry Greenberg and Mark Tier, Baen, 2003, $7.99.
SINCE THE events of September 11, 2001, the words "freedom" and "liberty" have been tossed around as often land with as much thought) as baseballs in the spring. The terrorists, we're told, attacked us because they hate "freedom." Lee Greenwood sings of America as a place where "at least I know I'm free" a half-dozen times a day on all the country stations. Freedom becomes one of those words that loses its meaning through overuse. Meanwhile the Attorney General proposes to safeguard our liberty by curtailing it, citizens lose their jobs for exercising freedom in their speech, and we've sent our military abroad to impose our style of free society on other nations-- by force.
But what does this have to do with sf? Most people--those who don't read sf, and even some of those who do--think of it as escapist fluff, a literature that offers refuge from the problems of the outside world. But if you ask me, the best sf grapples with real-world issues as gamely as any other fiction, and not just on subjects of science and technology (where it outdoes any competitor). With its roots in the utopian fantasies of the early modern era, through the future- warnovels of the nineteenth century, and down through the mess of the twentieth to our own day, sf has provided the best fictional tools for exploring matters of political and social philosophy. And sf's visions of the future have had a lot to say specifically on the subject of liberty, its proper limits (if any), and the social systems most conducive to its practice.
George Orwell's 1984 may be the single most influential work of political fiction ever, and it's no accident that Orwell--not a genre writer, though deeply influenced by the work of H. G. Wells-- adopted the mode of science fiction for his cautionarily prophetic book. He could never have conjured the notions of Big Brother and double-think in such chilling fashion within the confines of a conventional mimetic novel. Prophets speak of the future, and the language of the future is sf.
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(Plume has just published a handsome new edition of 1984 for the centennial of Orwell's birth. Pick it up and see how potent it remains, even two decades after the passing of its fateful date.)
Orwell's novel essentially codified the dystopic view of the political future in sf. After 1984, the repressive totalitarian state became a staple of sf, almost a cliche (though in genre sf, rebellious individuals more often manage to topple or at least escape the evil government). But the Orwellian nightmare-scenario is a warning, not a recommendation. It keeps our guard up against erosions of liberty, but it doesn't offer suggestions on how to increase the measure of freedom in our lives.
Ayn Rand's two sf novels, Anthem (1938) and The Fountainhead (1957), were not quite so influential, but they, along with Robert A. Heinlein's work (most notably The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress [1966]), helped refine sf's healthy skepticism about authority into something more powerful and prescriptive: libertarianism, a political philosophy which favors a minimal (or even nonexistent) government and a society based on unrestrained competition, in which voluntarily entered contracts are the foundation of all human interactions. Libertarianism is sometimes thought of as rightwing anarchism, due to its uncompromising dedication to free-enterprise economics.
Libertarianism has never dominated sf, but it has been a loud and consistent presence from the days of John W. Campbell onward, particularly in the person of Heinlein and his literary heirs. It's one of the longest-running and most insistent political themes in the field. Today, a small group of sf writers (led by L. Neil Smith) identify themselves explicitly as libertarian writers, and their fiction is often stiff with lengthy philosophical rant and cartoonishly simplistic scenarios in which incompetent bureaucrats get their deserved comeuppance. A few writers (notably Ken MacLeod and Vernor Vinge) present libertarian philosophy with greater subtlety and complexity--MacLeod's work is perhaps the most interesting overtly political sf being written today--but for the most part, libertarian attitudes simmer in the background of contemporary sf as an unexamined and dogmatic preference for private enterprise over state-sponsored programs. In Stephen Baxter's Manifold sequence, for example, and in John Varley's latest novel, Red Thunder, we're subjected to the tired fantasy of a single, amazingly capable entrepreneur doing what the government can't (or won't)--get us back into space--using only his ornery determination and personal fortune (plus, in Varley's case, the help of some plucky kids). The unlikelihood of these scenarios (no matter how accurate their science), and the refusal to acknowledge that, so far, it has only been government programs that have ever gotten us into space, give this old Heinleinian libertarianism a strained and desperate feel.
This is the sort of thing I expected to find when I opened Give Me Liberty, an anthology of stories dedicated to the premise of "doing away with government entirely." But I was surprised and pleased to discover that the stories gathered here--mostly from the fifties and sixties--reveal a distinctly different ethic from that in today's libertarian sf. There's no idolization of super- competant entrepreneurs to be found, and not much faith in capitalist economics either. In fact, some of these stories would warm any die-hard liberal's heart.
The book opens with Lloyd Biggle's "Monument" [1961), the story of an idyllic, low-tech indigenous society under threat of colonization and exploitation by an expanding high-tech
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civilization, and how the indigenes save themselves and their way of life from colonial ruin. Liberty is preserved--the liberty of the natives, anyway--but the forces that imperil freedom here are big business and private enterprise, not a rapacious or repressive government. Biggle's clear denunciations of unfettered development--and even of the profit motive itself--come almost as a shock. And Biggle's aborigines succeed not by eschewing government, but by using one of government's most controversial powers: taxation. It's a solution that would drive a devoted libertarian mad, but it's exactly the sort of approach that liberal campaigners for social justice might adopt.
Most of the stories in Give Me Liberty do not actually advocate the elimination of government as the path to greater freedom. Instead they focus on levelling the playing field. They identify inequalities of power as the engine of oppression and in classic sf fashion they imagine a variety of gadgets to remedy the situation.
In "Gadget vs. Trend" (1962), Christopher Anvil proposes a "stasis device," a cheap and easy-to- use gizmo that renders whatever it's attached to virtually invulnerable and immovable. It gives citizens the power to resist government policies (and anything else) they don't like. "Historical Note" by Murray Leinster (1951) offers the personal flying machine as the answer. Armies dissolve, borders cannot hold, and no one can oppress anyone else when the victim can simply fly away. Leinster doesn't examine the complexities of his idea any more than Anvil does, and it's obvious neither gadget would ever produce the social effects the authors foresee, but these stories are not meant as serious proposals. They're fantasies, daydreams of how nice it would be if technology could simply sweep away all our problems.
The equalizing device in Frank Herbert's "Committee of the Whole" (1965) is a superpowerful laser gun that can be built out of stuff you might find lying around the house, or down at your neighborhood hardware store. (One of the prerequisites of these devices is that they're easily obtained by everyone--otherwise they would hardly be leveling the field.) With the secret of these guns out, the whole world will find itself in a state of mutually assured destruction writ small-- down to the level of the individual person. Again, the plausibility of the device and its effects isn't the point--Herbert is presenting a political notion dressed up as a story. What's most striking here is the ideal proclaimed by the gun's inventor as he announces his discovery: He hopes that, under the threat of mutual extermination, "we might reach an understanding out of ultimate necessity--that each of us must cooperate in maintaining the dignity of all."
These stories propose a radical equalization in society, and the result (they hope) would be a culture of cooperation, not competition, with the aim of ensuring "the dignity of all." It is an anti- government vision insofar as the authors reject government as the means of achieving their reformed societies, but the foundation of them all--equalization of power--has far more in common with New Deal progressivism than with Rand's Objectivism.
Two of the stories in Give Me Liberty tackle the problem of imagining how societies might actually function without government. Vernor Vinge's "The Ungoverned" (1985) is by far the most recent story in the book, so it's no surprise that its vision and sensibility are much closer to current libertarian principles. Vinge's story takes place in the world of his novels The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime. The U.S. has subdivided into a variety of smaller states and regions,
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including the "ungoverned" lands--much of the middle of the continent--where no formal government exists at all. Here all the functions of society take shape in voluntary contracts. Folks in Manhattan, Kansas can contract with Al's Protection Racket for basic police and security services, and with Midwest Jurisprudence or Justice, Inc. for legal coverage. Some go without contracts at all, and rely on their own resources (which usually take the form of massive arsenals). It all runs pretty smoothly, until the Republic of New Mexico--which has retained a representative democratic government much like our own--decides to invade the ungoverned lands. Without a government there's no army, just the private police operations who have contracted to provide protection, and the larger companies they have recontracted with for backup. It looks like the New Mexicans will just walk in and take over, but of course it's not that easy.
Eric Frank Russell presents a very different kind of ungoverned society in "And Then There Were None" (1951). On this distant colony planet, the people live by a kind of barter, in which the "seller" of a good or service plants an obligation (an "ob") on the "buyer." The ob can be repaid ("killed") directly, or through exchange with third, fourth, or fifth parties, until the circle closes with the original seller getting something he or she needs. Without money, it's hard for anyone to become wealthy (there's only so much you can do with a pile of unkilled obs), and citizens can only own what they actually use (no landlords, no franchisers, no real estate magnates), so there is very little economic inequality. There is no government, no police force, no law. Even the repayment of obs is optional--but of course one won't get far, once word spreads that obs won't be honored.
The arrival of an ambassador on a battleship from the expanding human Empire would appear to spell the end of this governmentless lifestyle, but as in the case of the New Mexican invasion, it's much harder than the ambassador thinks to bring these Gands (as they call themselves) into the fold. Instead, the ship starts losing crew, as they find the local conditions more appealing than life in the stiffly bureaucratic and economically stratified Empire.
Unlike in Vinge's story, there is no reliance on force among the Gands--even in resistance to the Imperial emissaries. The Gands instead have "the mightiest weapon ever thought up"--nonviolent disobedience. They call themselves Gands after Gandhi. Their planetary slogan is "Freedom--I Won't," and they exercise that power of refusal to flummox and annoy and eventually chase the Imperial dignitaries away, leaving hundreds of former crewmen and soldiers to their chosen life of Gandian liberty.
Russell's story has a jaunty humor and a supremely subversive message that makes it the most enjoyable and inspiring story in the book. But it's not quite possible to believe fully in either his or Vinge's governmentless society. They both admit (Russell explicitly) that their schemes could only work in relatively small communities, in which everyone knew everyone else and reputations for cheating could spread quickly. And even then they depend upon a rosier view of human nature than a study of history would tend to support--it's easy to imagine how either system could be corrupted by individuals or (especially) groups who didn't play by the rules. Most importantly, neither story addresses the crucial issue of the weak, the sick, the old, and the handicapped--the Achilles heel of every libertarian vision. What can these contract or obligation- based societies do with citizens who cannot generate as much as they need--who can never kill
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all the obs they would run up?
Libertarians too often resort to social Darwinism to dismiss the problem--the strong survive, the weak don't, c'est la vie--but neither Vinge nor Russell, to their credit, cops out that way. They just ignore the matter. We never see anyone old or disabled in either story, so we get no sense of how such citizens fare. And this leaves the freedom of these societies tasting a little thin. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt noted in his famous "Four Freedoms" speech, true individual freedom cannot be had without two key components: freedom from want, and freedom from fear. The gadget stories, with their emphasis on radical equality, seem to have something of this notion in mind, but none of the stories here manage to depict a credible society that would ensure such complete freedom to all its citizens.
Give Me Liberty offers an excellent assemblage of some rarely reprinted material that deserves to be better remembered. The editors might have balanced the book with a couple of stories from more recent years--maybe something from Paul McAuley, or Bruce Sterling, or Greg Egan, whose novel, Schild's Ladder, was nominated for the Libertarian Futurist Society's Prometheus Award for 2003--but I can't think of any story from the past decade that addresses the issues of political freedom as directly as the selections here. Give Me Liberty is full of genuinely thought- provoking sf in the classic mode, doing what we badly need sf to do--challenging assumptions and exploring radical ideas, taking nothing for granted, daring to dream. And it provides something equally valuable. It reminds us of the shared roots of the liberal and libertarian traditions, which have over time become almost antithetical. Through these stories we can see that devotees of freedom once recognized that all forms of coercion ultimately proceed from imbalances of power--economic, physical, emotional--and that the path to greater liberty lies through decreasing inequalities as much as possible. The difference then lay only in methods: liberal progressives saw government as a tool for achieving the goal, and libertarians saw government as one of the barriers to it. Over the second half of the twentieth century, libertarianism has abandoned the notion that liberty is intimately connected to mutual, cooperative, power-balanced relationships, while liberal ism has seemingly forgotten that the goal is to increase individual freedom, not introduce a steady stream of new rules. The pleasure in Give Me Liberty lies in recognizing and celebrating the grand dream of true liberty upon which these two traditions are founded. The cause of freedom would be best served if liberals and libertarians could bridge their rift, and bring all lovers of liberty together again in common cause.
Killheffer, Robert K.J.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Killheffer, Robert K.J. "Give Me Liberty." The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan.
2004, p. 29+. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A111503516 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=f3acfc80. Accessed 13 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A111503516
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Tier, Mark & Greenberg, Martin H.,
eds. Visions of liberty
Sherry Hoy
Kliatt.
39.1 (Jan. 2005): p24. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2005 Kliatt http://hometown.aol.com/kliatt/
Full Text:
TIER, Mark & GREENBERG, Martin H., eds. Visions of liberty. (Companion volume to Give Me Liberty.) Baen. 293p. c2004. 07434-8838-5. $6.99. JSA
In the first volume of stories, Give Me Liberty, authoritarian outsiders invade peaceful free human societies. All the stories in this volume are set in societies without governments that work. Although all nine stories are above average, the best is saved for last: James P. Hogan's "The Colonizing of Tharle." Tharle disappeared from Earth's records for over 100 years. The officials sent to reestablish Earth's claims discover a society where everything is bartered, but the basic tenet everyone follows is to "take less, give more."
Also noteworthy is Lloyd Biggle Jr.'s "The Unnullified World." A Galactic Bureau Investigation Officer is sent to Llayless, a mining planet, to investigate a murder. Following the murderer's trail, he discovers that since the crime the man has not been able to keep a job or get along with coworkers; and he has had myriad unexplained "accidents." In fact, the man has had such a tough time that he is currently out in the wild, living off the land, too scared to try to leave the planet and also cognizant that there is nowhere on the planet he can ever live a normal life. This collection offers a thinking person's choice in science fiction: good fun, but also nourishing food for thought. Sherry Hoy, Media Spec., Tuscarora J.H.S., Mifflintown, PA
J--Recommended for junior high school students. The contents are of particular interest to young adolescents and their teachers.
S--Recommended for senior high school students.
A--Recommended for advanced students and adults. This code will help librarians and teachers working in high schools where there are honors and advanced placement students. This also will help extend KLIATT's usefulness in public libraries.
Hoy, Sherry
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Hoy, Sherry. "Tier, Mark & Greenberg, Martin H., eds. Visions of liberty." Kliatt, Jan. 2005, p.
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24. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A127194395 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=536faae9. Accessed 13 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A127194395
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Books: You too can get rich slowly
and steadily
Alastair Ross Goobey
Management Today.
(Feb. 7, 2006): p32. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2006 Haymarket Media Group http://www.haymarket.com/home.aspx
Full Text:
The author's investment gods may fit awkwardly into his template, but it's a helpful one, reports Alastair Ross Goobey.
Mark Tier is an Australian living in Hong Kong. His career has included periods as a gold newsletter writer and a journalist. He has also taken courses in psychology. In this book he lists 23 attributes of two great investors, Warren Buffett and George Soros. This is not so much a 'how to get rich quick' as a 'how to get rich slowly and steadily' book.
Tier's 23 attributes include many that seem screamingly obvious, such as 'Learn from your mistakes' (no. 15). On the other hand, there are habits that are not as widely accepted: 'Diversification is for the birds' (no. 5), for instance.
He then tries to match the working methods of the two investors with these badges of good investment. Since the ways in which Buffett and Soros invest are so different, there are some areas where this simply does not work. Habit no. 18 is 'Know how to delegate'. Buffett has found this relatively easy, delegating the operation of his businesses to people he trusts, leaving him free to allocate Berkshire Hathaway's capital. For Soros, it has been much more difficult - he sees his skill as being the person with the critical macroeconomic insights that drive his funds.
Buffett believes 'investment is fun', which falls in with precept no. 20: 'It's not about the money'. Soros is quoted as saying: 'If you're having fun, you're probably not making any money.' What started as a good idea for a book has had to stretch a point to make the claim that the two men follow the same fundamental rules.
Nevertheless, the rules themselves offer sensible advice. Principal among these are Winning Habits nos. 1 and 2: 'Preservation of capital is the No. 1 priority' and 'Passionately avoid risk'. It has always struck me that few investors understand these. We are in a period where absolute returns have become a priority, following 20 years of a bull market where relative returns were the only measure.
Although preservation of capital and avoidance of risk can be achieved by holding cash, this would not give the returns achieved by Buffett or Soros. Tier is pointing out that the best
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investors find opportunities where the risk/reward ratio is clearly tilted in the investor's favour.
I have always believed that if the downside is protected or limited, the upside will take care of itself. We should look for 'high probability events'. These don't occur often, so it's right to hold cash sometimes and not feel you have to make an investment decision every day, or even every week (Habit no. 10, 'Have infinite patience').
The 23 Winning Habits make sense overall, but underlying the book is a rather sad obsession. One of the habits is 'Focus on after-tax return' (no. 6). Tier lives in Hong Kong principally because it is a low-tax domicile. The tail obviously wags the dog in this man's life. I would decide first where I want to live, and try to tailor my investment policy to the tax environment in which I settled, rather than the other way round.
Many of the people I know who chose tax exile do not have great depth, and so may not miss the joys of living in a world-class city with its enriching environment. That enrichment is surely as valuable as clocking up another million or two in the bank.
As to living and breathing investment 24 hours a day (no. 22), most professional investors will have some sympathy with this; we know that investment thoughts come at all times and in all places. However, the story of Buffett excusing himself from watching his friends' slides of a trip to Egypt so that he could read another annual report suggests that there are limits to this in simple politeness.
The 23 Winning Habits will certainly help the average investor. Developing a coherent and consistent approach to investment, from which you are not diverted by the current fad, will provide better long-term returns. I only regret that there is no mention of the only piece of investment advice that I ever give in speeches: buy low, sell high, not the other way round.
The greatest losses that private investors make are those where, fearful of having missed the most recent investment boat, they finally jump on just as it hits an iceberg. Conversely, many investors capitulate at the bottom of bear markets. Who was an active bear in March 2000, or a bull of any sort in March 2003? Modesty forbids.
The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett and George Soros
Mark Tier
Kogan Page pounds 14.99
To order, visit www.mtmagazine.co.uk
By Alastair Ross Goobey, chairs Hermes Focus Asset Management
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Goobey, Alastair Ross. "Books: You too can get rich slowly and steadily." Management Today, 7
Feb. 2006, p. 32. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A141740809 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=917b2eb7. Accessed 13 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A141740809
9 of 9 3/12/18, 11:36 PM
The Power of Habit and Investing
Posted on June 19, 2012 | Leave a comment
I am was a serious chocaholic. After robbing a candy store, I tried to gobble down the evidence as the cops closed in. How was I ever going to stop my fixation on dark, rich, creamy chocolate and replace my bad habits with healthier ones?
“Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” –Warren Buffett
To learn more about habits:http://charlesduhigg.com/
An excellent 3.5 minute video on the power of habits: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6p3lG9EDXw&feature=related
The author’s words: What sparked your interest in habits? I first became interested in the science of habits eight years ago, as a newspaper reporter in Baghdad, when I heard about an army major conducting an experiment in a small town named Kufa.
The major had analyzed videotapes of riots and had found that violence was often preceded by a crowd of Iraqis gathering in a plaza and, over the course of hours, growing in size. Food vendors would show up, as well as spectators. Then, someone would throw a rock or a bottle.
When the major met with Kufa’s mayor, he made an odd request: Could they keep food vendors out of the plazas? Sure, the mayor said. A few weeks later, a small crowd gathered near the Great Mosque of Kufa. It grew in size. Some people started chanting angry slogans. At dusk, the crowd started getting restless and hungry. People looked for the kebab sellers normally filling the plaza, but there were none to be found. The spectators left. The chanters became dispirited. By 8 p.m., everyone was gone.
I asked the major how he had figured out that removing food vendors would change peoples’ behavior.
The U.S. military, he told me, is one of the biggest habit-formation experiments in history. “Understanding habits is the most important thing I’ve learned in the army,” he said. By the time I got back to the U.S., I was hooked on the topic.
How have your own habits changed as a result of writing this book? Since starting work on this book, I’ve lost about 30 pounds, I run every other morning (I’m training for the NY Marathon later this year), and I’m much more productive. And the reason why is because I’ve learned to diagnose my habits, and how to change them.
Take, for instance, a bad habit I had of eating a cookie every afternoon. By learning how to analyze my habit, I figured out that the reason I walked to the cafeteria each day wasn’t because I was craving a chocolate chip cookie. It was because I was craving socialization, the company of talking to my colleagues while munching. That was the habit’s real reward. And the cue for my behavior – the trigger that caused me to automatically stand up and wander to the cafeteria, was a certain time of day.
So, I reconstructed the habit: now, at about 3:30 each day, I absentmindedly stand up from my desk, look around for someone to talk with, and then gossip for about 10 minutes. I don’t even think about it at this point. It’s automatic. It’s a habit. I haven’t had a cookie in six months.
What was the most surprising use of habits that you uncovered? The most surprising thing I’ve learned is how companies use the science of habit formation to study – and influence – what we buy.
Take, for example, Target, the giant retailer. Target collects all kinds of data on every shopper it can, including whether you’re married and have kids, which part of town you live in, how much money you earn, if you’ve moved recently, the websites you visit. And with that information, it tries to diagnose each consumer’s unique, individual habits.
Why? Because Target knows that there are these certain moments when our habits become flexible. When we buy a new house, for instance, or get married or have a baby, our shopping habits are in flux. A well-timed coupon or advertisement can convince us to buy in a whole new way. But figuring out when someone is buying a house or getting married or having a baby is tough. And if you send the advertisement after the wedding or the baby arrives, it’s usually too late.
So Target studies our habits to see if they can predict major life events. And the company is very, very successful. Oftentimes, they know what is going on in someone’s life better than that person’s parents.
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I recommend reading The Power of Habit : Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg: http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Habit-What-Business/dp/1400069289/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1340109798&sr=8-1&keywords=the+power+of+habit
The Mental Habits for Investing
Obviously we seek to learn from other great investors, but how to incorporate their habits as part of our own?
The power of mental habits for investing: http://marktier.com/Excerpts/chap01-01.php
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Tagged Buffett, chocolate, habit formation, Health, Mark Tier, mental-health, Power of Habit
Trust your enemies: a political thriller
4/11/2013
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MARC LERNER
Libertarian novels tend to fall into two categories, one good and one bad. Either they are complex, thought-provoking treatises – typified by Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged[1] - or they are reference-laden stories where every line of conversation is predictable to anyone who has read anything libertarian, and will likely only serve to annoy anyone who hasn’t.[2] Mark Tier’s novel, Trust Your Enemies, successfully smashes this dichotomy and establishes a third kind; a novel driven primarily through plot, that gets its message across not through long speeches and introspective discussion, but through a gripping progression of events, where the philosophy emerges naturally as a consequence of what happens. Leonard Peikoff has written that “…after she had completed Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand occasionally said that she wanted to write a pure adventure story without any deep philosophical theme”.[3] She never did, but Mark Tier may well have written what it would have been.
The story revolves around three protagonists: Alison McGuire, a chief political advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister, Derek Olsson, a freight and newspaper magnate currently in jail for a drug murder and Karla Preston, a recalcitrant journalist (and Olsson’s current girlfriend) seemingly hell-bent on exposing every politician’s lie in existence.
The novel’s plot twists and weaves, with the first part providing the reader with unsolved drug murders, corrupt politicians, blackmail, religious extremists, dubiously-motivated foreign interventions, mysteriously helpful computer nerds and ex-KGB agents. The dizzying time-shifting plot fully justifies the novel’s length; at over 750 pages, it might at be considered too serious an investment for a thriller, but not a word is wasted. Some distance in, lengthy reminisces about Olsson’s painful childhood may make the reader wonder if Tier isn’t perhaps being too generous with the complex character development... until they turn the page and realizes that no, they just weren’t smart enough to see the relevance. Without giving it away, all that can be said about the ending is that it doesn’t disappoint, with Tier even managing to include a dash of distinctly Rothbardian optimism.
Whilst there is some overt philosophical discussion in the novel, the libertarian message is most brilliantly spread not through dialogue but through the characters’ purposeful actions. Instead of dwelling in depth, for example, on a discussion of the libertarian position on drug use, Tier simply makes one of the main characters get involved in the trade. The character’s entrepreneurial nature makes the choice so obvious, so natural, that a mainstream reader, perhaps uninterested and disdainful of intellectual pursuits, will temporarily fail to notice that what is being done can, in real life, earn one lengthy jail sentences and death penalties. When the realization does come about (likely again through a twist in the novel’s plot), a serious rethink of the issue will be the likely result; whereas had the theme been introduced with a simple conversation, it would likely have resulted in the reader deciding to pick up a Tom Clancy instead. In another example of avoiding the all-too-obvious and painstakingly overt discussion, a side narrative relating to an insider trading and illegitimate mining permits case steers entirely clear of any philosophical dialogue, leaving the reader to figure out the complexities for themselves, a maneuver Tier employs repeatedly and to great effect.
Where the novel does become explicitly philosophical, furthermore, the discussion is almost always in conversation form, and always integrated within the framework of the story itself. For example, when Karla is trying to organize a meeting with Alison’s boss, and is explaining why she prefers to pay for her own expenses:
“‘Without their consent’?” Alison said heatedly. “This is a democracy, after all.”
“So it is,” Karla sighed. “But if taxation were truly voluntary, do you think enough money would be collected to pay your salary? We can talk about it some other time if you want to. In any case, I won’t be coming to Canberra just to talk to your boss. So I’ll pay my own way, okay?”
Strange woman, Alison thought as she put down the phone and turned back to skimming the newspapers (p. 288).
What is most impressive here is how natural the dialogue is and how it fits so easily in the conversation – entirely unlike a philosophical treatise.
Moreover, the novel avoids leaning upon John Galt-style perfect characters. Olsson, perhaps the hero of the story (although it isn’t easy to tell with so many candidates), makes many mistakes along the way, only at the end seriously embracing a well-rounded ideological commitment to libertarianism (which goes unnamed as such, except once when used by a detractor pejoratively). This decision ensures that a reader will not simply be bombarded with what appears to be idealistic propaganda, but rather is taken on a journey alongside imperfect individuals that can be easily empathized with as they develop.
In conclusion, Mark Tier’s novel is a standout amongst libertarian novels, and is particularly notable for gently nudging the reader in the right direction rather than bludgeoning them, as many others do. As far as can be determined, it is Australia’s first libertarian novel, and one of which we should be proud.
NOTES
[1] Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged, Signet, New York, 1957.
[2] For example:
“Identity,” said the guard, pointing the Taser directly at Harper.
““A is A,”” Mr, Harper replied, evidently bored with the procedure.
J.N. Schulman, Alongside Night, Crown Publishers, New York, 1979, p.100.
[3] L. Peikoff (ed), The Early Ayn Rand, Revised Edition: A Selection from her Unpublished Fiction, Signet, New York, 2005.
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Reading Room: Becoming Rich: The Wealth-Building Secrets of the World's Master Investors
SEPTEMBER 16, 2008
Monica Buonincontri
Want to become rich like financial VIPs Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn, and George Soros? Most people who say "yes" may assume that these successful investors possess some type of gene that the rest of us are not lucky enough to have in our DNA. Not so, according to Mark Tier, author of Becoming Rich: The Wealth-Building Secrets of the World's Master Investors Buffett, Icahn, and Soros (St. Martin's Press; 2005). He asserts that these masters, as well as others like them, share a number of key mental habits and strategies that anyone, including the typical physician-investor, can learn. Despite the different ways in which each of them have accumulated their wealth—Buffett is a value investor, Icahn is a corporate raider, and Soros is a hedge funder—Tier reveals the 23 mental habits that they share. He also identifies the seven deadly investment sins that the "master investors" avoid, including trying to predict the market and finding someone who can. The run-of-the-mill investor can adopt these practices as their own by taking an inventory of past investment successes and failures, determining investment standards, and deciding how to match investments with these criteria. In case you're wondering if it works, Tier adopted these habits 6 years ago and now lives solely from the returns on his investments.
How to Spot the Next Starbucks, Whole Foods, Walmart, or McDonald’s BEFORE Its Shares Explode
by Mark Tier
September 12, 2017
Chapter 4: How John Mackey’s Vision Saved Whole Foods from Drowning
On Sunday, 24 May 1981, Austin, Texas, was hit by a severe flood: the first, and at that time only, Whole Foods store was eight feet underwater.
Overnight, the company went from being profitable, loved by its customers and employees alike, to $400,000 in the red.
There was no insurance, no off-site inventory, no backup of any kind. Would the business survive?
At the time, the obvious answer was “No.”
The day after the flood was the Memorial Day holiday. Management and team members were despondent. As Whole Foods’ founder, John Mackey, relates the story in his book Conscious Capitalism, it was “the end of a dream” and “the end of the best job we ever had.”
As they began to see what they could salvage, an amazing thing happened:
“Dozens of our customers and neighbors started showing up at the store . . . bringing buckets and mops and whatever else they thought might be useful. They said to us, in effect, ‘Come on, guys; let’s get to work. Let’s clean it up and get this place back on its feet.’”
Such customer reactions lifted the spirits of the entire Whole Foods team, founders and employees alike. It’s hard to imagine many other businesses so inspiring their customers.
That’s just the beginning of this Whole Foods story. In addition to the customers who rallied around:
Employees worked to clean up the store without pay. Of course, they would draw pay when Whole Foods was back on its feet—but would that ever happen? At the time, no one could know for sure.
Suppliers extended credit “because they cared about our business and trusted us to reopen and repay them.”
Whole Foods’ shareholders came up with additional investments— and the company’s banks even loaned the company more money!
To understand the magnitude of Mackey’s achievement, imagine for a moment that your business was eight feet and $400,000 underwater.
Would your employees rally around? Would your neighbors and customers show up to help clean up the mess?
Even if they did, what’s likely to happen if you go down to your bank, red- inked balance sheet in hand, and ask your “friendly” banker to lend you more money? Which response would you expect:
“Sure, here’s another four hundred thousand dollars on top of what you already owe us, plus a line of credit to tide you over.”
Uncontrollable laughter—and the moment you’ve walked out the door, the lawyers are called in to initiate bankruptcy proceedings so the bank can grab whatever leftovers it can ahead of your other creditors.
Then you call your suppliers and ask them to replace, on credit, the ruined stock that you still haven’t paid for. The most likely result: a race between your bankers and your suppliers to see who’ll be first in line at the bankruptcy court.
Whole Foods’ suppliers and banks both chose the first option.
Why?
The “Counterculture Capitalist”
John Mackey fully embraced the counterculture movement of the sixties and seventies, studying ecology and Eastern philosophy, embracing yoga and meditation, becoming a vegetarian, topped off with a beard and long hair. He be- came involved in the food co-op movement, agreeing with their motto: “food for people, not for profit.” But he soon discovered that co-ops were dominated by internal politics, the “most politically active members” focusing more on “which companies to boycott” than on serving their customers. He concluded he could do better and “became an entrepreneur to prove it.”
Immediately he was transformed in the eyes of his former associates into another “evil, exploiting businessmen” and came under fire for charging too-high prices and paying too-low wages.
Yet Mackey persevered, discovering that business is the opposite of the counterculture myth of venality and greed: that a business can only succeed with the voluntary cooperation of everyone it deals with—customers, employees, investors, and suppliers.
John Mackey’s Vision: A Business Based on Love and Caring
Just one thing changed in Mackey’s transition from co-ops to a for-profit corporation: his preferred method of executing his vision. He saw for-profit as a better way to create an organization that truly cares for everyone it deals with—customers, employees, suppliers, and investors—and fulfill his (and the co-ops’) counterculture mission of persuading people to adopt a healthier lifestyle by eating “whole foods.”
Underlying Mackey’s vision is the insight that all businesses—indeed, all organizations—depend upon relationships.
The nature of those relationships, both within the company and without, determines the nature and culture of the company, the employee and the customer experience, and ultimately the health of the business, profit being just one mea- sure of that health.
Whole Foods’ bankers and other suppliers, like its employees and customers, cared about the business because Mackey and his associates cared about them. They were partners in Whole Foods—not because of any equity or legal claim, but due to the nature of their relationship with the people at Whole Foods.
So when Whole Foods was eight feet underwater, its bankers and suppliers were ready to listen. What’s more, they wanted to be able to help—in the same way that you would wish to help a friend in trouble.
That doesn’t mean they opened their checkbooks the moment Mackey walked in the door. But they did want to hear what Mackey had to say and were willing, if not eager, to be persuaded. As Mackey could demonstrate that—despite the red ink—the flood was a onetime event unrelated to the underlying health of the company, they pitched in.
From this experience Mackey concluded, “What more proof did we need that stakeholders matter, that they embody the heart, soul, and lifeblood of an enterprise?”
I doubt any other company founder has had his or her vision fully verified in such a dramatic manner.
The core of Mackey’s vision for Whole Foods is his belief that stakeholders matter.
Copyright © 2017 by Mark Tier
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MARK TIER is an Australian writer and businessman who has lived and worked in Hong Kong since 1977. He adopted the wealth-building secrets in The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett & George Soros, sold his business interests, and now lives solely from returns on his investments.
Authorhttp://thoughtmatters.co/2017/09/how-to-spot-next-starbucks-whole-foods/