Although there has never been a formal definition of the work that advisers do, the worth of the job undertaken by these people when completed, is rated for the value it has added to an existing situation.
When an adviser repeatedly gives the kind of advice that
helps their client do well, he/she is sought after and showered with requests
for advice of all kinds. And there lies the problem.
It is that nobody can be an expert in everything, a
reality that a client who is desperate for answers, fails to appreciate, thus
insists on getting some kind of advice for which they pay top dollars. And this
proves to be enough of an incentive for the advisers to give guidance they know
will turn out to be at best partially useful.
While scenarios like the one above contribute to the
models which erode the level of confidence people have in expert advice, other
scenarios also play roles that diminish the value of such advice. As expected,
most of these would be related to greed and the desire to get rich quickly. Add
to this the role of charlatans who are bereft of any level of expertise, yet
give out advice in every field and charge enormous sums for them.
And then there is a category of advisers that should be
viewed as having a “double edged sword” kind of quality. One such adviser
recently wrote an article that came under the title: “What to do about China in
the next Congress,” and the subtitle: “The GOP must work
to end US investor funding of Chinese companies.” It was written by Robby
Stephany Saunders, and published on November 22, 2022 in The Washington Times.
Having served as senior adviser at State, the Senate and
the House of Representatives, and now serving as adviser at the Coalition for a
Prosperous America, Robby Saunders certainly has the credentials that give
weight to her advice. So the question that should preoccupy the people who
think about the big issues of he day, is this: What if Robby Saunders were
wrong? After all, she is human and fallible like the rest of us. Will there be
someone who’ll risk destroying their reputation by contradicting what she says?
The most likely answer to the above question is that
there will be no one willing to contradict her, even if they see that she is
clearly advising inadequate or false solutions. So then, what does that do to
the pool of advisers who are supposed to maintain the nation on the path of
ironclad security and high prosperity?
The answer is that to feel protected and secure in their
jobs, they copy from each other, thus develop a kind of groupthink that weakens
the system, and leaves the nation vulnerable security-wise as well as uncertain
economically. Not only do the stars of such grouping — Robby Saunders being an
example — tolerate such behavior, they encourage it because it protects them
too from the Young Turks who might decide at some point to challenge their
supremacy.
Are there signs that something to that effect, are
beginning to show in the Robby Saunders article? The answer is yes, there are
such signs. In fact, what follows is the condensed version of excerpts that
show how it is happening:
“Essentially, the GOP must
pursue a commonsense approach to China that includes elements of both
Reagan’s ‘peace through strength’ policy and the ‘America First’ goals of the
recent Trump administration. That starts with recognizing how normalized trade
with Beijing failed to produce the prosperity, democratic values and
open society in China that many free traders had promised. To counter
this, Congress must tackle Beijing’s access to US financial
markets, including passive investment products such as exchange-traded funds
(ETFs) and mutual funds. This is a key means by
which Beijing continually funnels billions of American investment
dollars to Chinese companies”.
What better way is there to start a group that thinks
alike in the belief they’ll all become as good as the combined wisdom of Ronald
Reagan and the daring-do of Donald Trump? But the question remains: What did
that wisdom and that daring-do accomplish? Well, you don’t have to go far to
find the answer to that question. Saunders herself has supplied it. Here it is:
“That starts with recognizing how normalized trade
with Beijing failed to produce the prosperity, democratic values and
open society in China that many free traders had promised”. It was
failure, she says.
What she is saying here, is that America’s approach to
rallying the world around it by democratizing the nations of the globe
politically and economically, has been a dismal failure. So then, what to do
now? Robby Saunders has the answer to that question. She says America must
reverse the conciliatory attitude toward China that the free traders had
advocated.
She concentrates her attention on what happens on Wall
Street. She points out that numerous Chinese companies trade on the American
stock exchanges, which allows Beijing to “continually funnel billions of
American investment dollars to Chinese companies.” And so, she calls on the
Congress to pass legislation instructing the FRTIB to remove Chinese firms from
at least the investments of federal workers, military families, veterans and
members of Congress.
But would that be a wise thing to do? The answer is no,
it would not be wise because it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of
how investment works, and what it accomplishes. The problem with the Saunders
view is that she confuses between two situations. First, there are the private
companies which may be large or small, and owned by an individual, a family or
a limited number of partners. Second, there are the publicly traded companies,
which are richly capitalized, and owned by a large number of investors.
What happened at the start of globalization, is that the
private companies were the ones to close up shop in America and restart in
China. There were even instances when wealthy individuals bought a publicly
traded company outright and took it private before moving it to China. Why is
that? Because were the company still public, the public outcry would have been
so loud, the move to China could not be done.
What this says, is that a domestic or foreign company
that’s traded publicly in America guarantees that millions of eyes are watching
it, making sure it is operating in the interest of America. For Robby Saunders
to be paranoid about it, is to harm the American interest believing it is
serving it.