Some forecasters predict that by 2100 most babies in the world will be in Africa. They foresee an ensuing “African Century.” Maybe so, but while traditional growth and power of nations have been based on the amount of available labor, it seems that this will change to the control and implementation of AI and related technology, and to controlled immigration policies.

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Episode 381 | January 30, 2025

Battleground States and Term Limits

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Alan Weiss PhD

Meet Your Host, Alan Weiss

Alan Weiss is one of those rare people who can say he is a consultant, speaker, and author and mean it.

His consulting firm, Summit Consulting Group, Inc., has attracted clients such as Merck, Hewlett-Packard, GE, Mercedes-Benz, State Street Corporation, Times Mirror Group, The Federal Reserve, The New York Times Corporation, Toyota, and over 500 other leading organizations. He has served on several boards of directors in various capacities.

His prolific publishing includes over 500 articles and 60 books, including his best-seller, Million Dollar Consulting (from McGraw-Hill) now in its 30th year and sixth edition. His newest is Your Legacy is Now: Life is not about a search for meaning but the creation of meaning (Routledge, 2021). His books have been on the curricula at Villanova, Temple University, and the Wharton School of Business, and have been translated into 15 languages.

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Show Notes

A “battleground state” in a US election is a state where either candidate might win depending on the appeal to voters and for whom the majority votes. This is the essence of democracy. Shouldn’t every state be a “battleground state”?

The same should apply to Congressional and Senate Seats. We have Senators serving longer than many European monarchs. Will people with that kind of sinecure ever vote term limits for themselves. Let me go out on a limb and say, “Never!”

The European monarchies were cast aside by democracies. We seem to be going in the opposite direction, with democracy subordinated to Senate monarchs.

You think I’m kidding? The late Robert Byrd served in the Senate for 51.5 years. The currently serving Chuck Grassley has been sitting there for 50 years.

Queen Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years, but the average tenure of a British monarch has been 25 years, and only 17 if you remove her unnaturally long reign. The French monarchs have averaged 20 years, but less if you remove the 72-year reign of Louis XIV.

Since 2018 polling, over 80% of Americans favor term limits in Congress. Sheldon Whitehouse, one of our Democratic Senators from Rhode Island for 24 years hollered long and hard for term limits on the Supreme Court, which was too conservative for him. He has never uttered a word about term limits for the Senate. He has also fought to end the filibuster and increase the size of the Supreme Court, but he’s mum on that now since his side lost the election! Were they good ideas, or was he just seeking more power?

I don’t think the founders left King George III to someday serve under King Sheldon I.

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Alan Weiss’s The Uncomfortable Truth® is a weekly broadcast from “The Rock Star of Consulting,” Alan Weiss, who holds forth with his best (and often most contrarian) ideas about society, culture, business, and personal growth. His 60+ books in 12 languages, and his travels to, and work in, 50 countries contribute to a fascinating and often belief-challenging 20 minutes that might just change your next 20 years.

Introduction to the show recorded by Connie Dieken

LISTEN TO PAST EPISODES

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Nothing stays still. Relative to the rest of the world, even something that’s not moving is changing.

It’s tempting to talk about not making fast enough progress.

But it’s far more useful to ask which direction we’re progressing.

Often, people will point to the velocity of the change they’re making without pausing to consider the direction of that change.

Strategy is the hard work we do before we do the rest of the hard work. Where to?

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Today, I eagerly anticipated the launch of NVIDIA‘s next-gen GPUs, the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080. These graphics cards promised to deliver groundbreaking performance, aimed at gamers like myself and professionals in fields like artificial intelligence and 3D rendering. The excitement in the tech community was palpable until NVIDIA dropped a bombshell that caught me off guard: they predicted potential stock shortages.

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