Reject Self-Serving Power: Helping Others Be Successful and Finding Selflessness in Business, Politics, and Life

By James Michael Matthew

James Michael Matthew builds on his teachings from Prophecy before Vision to expand on the JM Prophecies Leadership Code, which is:

1. Prophecy must come before vision. Learn to see and alter the future.

2. Embrace leadership, which is all about helping others be successful.

3. Reject self-serving power as it always ends badly for everyone involved.

The author applies the Code to explain how JM Prophecies Corporation seeks to invert the global wealth inequality pyramid. You will learn about a variety of proactive projects and ideas designed to rebuild the United States of America.

You’ll find out how accumulating self-serving power to the detriment of others drives wealth inequality. Whether you work for a public institution, commercial organizations, or elsewhere, you’ll find strategies to help others as you find more meaning in your daily life.

Join the author as he shares contrarian thoughts and strategies to invert the global wealth inequality pyramid.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: May 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665722025

James Michael Matthew

James Michael Matthew is an award-winning author, financial executive, and industrialist with over forty years of experience. He is the founder and chairman of JM Prophecies Corporation. His Company’s business model includes building the climate change bridge, building the selfless economy and defeating the new Axis powers. He graduated from The Johns Hopkins University with a master’s in biotechnology enterprise and entrepreneurship, earned an MBA from Michigan State University, and a bachelor’s in accounting and auditing from the University of Illinois-Springfield. He completed postgraduate studies in law and sustainability and the future of sustainable business from the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, the University of Oxford. Mr. Matthew is a member of the National Society, Sons of the American Revolution.

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Copyright © 2022 James Michael Matthew.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Archway Publishing

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-6657-2203-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-2201-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-2202-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022908479

Archway Publishing rev. date: 05/05/2022

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 Self-Serving Power Strategies Fail in the End

Chapter 2 Family Feuds and Personal Conflicts

Chapter 3 Embrace Leadership and Reject Self-Serving Power

Chapter 4 Economic Policy for the Twenty-First Century

Chapter 5 Building an Intellectual Society

Chapter 6 The Reindustrialization of America

Chapter 7 Mobilizing a Dormant Workforce

Chapter 8 Ignore the Noise

Chapter 9 Doers, Not Talkers or Make Believers

Chapter 10 Ideas, Projects, and Businesses

Chapter 11 Build a Business around It

Chapter 12 Keeping Aging Populations Vibrant

Chapter 13 Big Ideas, Quests, and Journeys

Chapter 14 Integrating Western Hemisphere Economies

Chapter 15 Reversing Time on the US Debt Clock

Chapter 16 Why Are We Still Doing Business with China?

Chapter 17 Not Thomas Jefferson’s Media

Chapter 18 It’s Not about Race; It’s about Leadership

Chapter 19 Wealth Inequality, Second Edition

Chapter 20 The Age of Unprecedented Entrepreneurialism

Chapter 21 Serendipity Pools for Climate Change

Chapter 22 ESG Investing by Prophecy

Chapter 23 Case Studies: Helping Others Be Successful

Chapter 24 My Prophecies for the Twenty-First Century

Chapter 25 JM Prophecies Fifty-Five Rules for the Republic

Chapter 26 Prophecy Poker Update

Chapter 27 Finding Selflessness in Business, Politics, and Life

About the Author

Notes

Preview—Book 3

Preview—Book 4

Coming—Book 5

Coming—Book 6

Coming—Book 7

Coming—Book 8

Coming—Book 9

Coming—Book 10

Coming—Book 11

Coming—Book 12

Coming—Book 13

Coming—Book 14

Coming—Book 15

Coming—Book 16

Coming—Book 17

Coming—Book 18

Coming—Book 19

Coming—Book 20

Coming—Book 21

References

Also by James Michael Matthew

Prophecy before Vision

This book is

dedicated to all of our military veterans still

with us, active duty men and women all over the world,

and veterans guiding us from the Hall of Souls. You are

the very best of American society and history.

Always being the smartest person in the room through the ability

to see the future carries a great responsibility to help others.

—James Michael Matthew

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to acknowledge Pastor Gerald McPhillips as part of my overall acknowledgement and thanks to my wife’s and my ancestors. Pastor McPhillips gave the eulogy at my wife’s uncle John McMillian’s memorial service in the summer of 2021.

John was the last of our parents’ and their siblings’ generation. My father was the oldest, born in 1910. I am the youngest of a family of six children. John McMillian, my wife’s mother’s brother, was born in 1931, the youngest of an immediate family of six and the youngest overall of a generation of our twenty-three combined mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles and their respective spouses.

The memorial service was held at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois, the final resting place of President Abraham Lincoln. Gazing upon President Lincoln’s monument while listening to the bagpipes playing Flowers of the Forest and Scotland the Brave brought us all to tears. My mind flashed back to the banks of the Sangamon River behind our family farm and watching the waters flow down to New Salem near Springfield, where President Lincoln grew as a young man and first readied himself for his run to the Illinois General Assembly.

My wife’s mother and maternal side were all Scots. Her father was part Scotsman and part Frenchman. His last words to me were on a phone call in Paris when he said he would make a Frenchman out of me yet. He never got the chance. We received the call he had passed when we were riding on a train down the Swiss Alps.

His mother was a WWI war bride and ambulance driver in France. She trapped wild ducks and built a river-fed fish pool for food as they made it through the Great Depression living in an abandoned flatboat on the Mississippi River. My wife is still translating a treasure trove of family letters written in French thirty years later from Nazi-occupied France.

My mother, Virginia Davidson Matthew, was also a Scot from the Davidson Clan in the Highlands. I sometimes have grandiose plans of learning to play the bagpipes, wearing my first kilt, and honoring our combined heritage with my own squawking version of Scotland the Brave. My father’s side were all English. He jumped rides on the then-nearby freight train to travel back to see my mother from the family farm as they too held on and managed to keep it through the Great Depression. His Uncle Harry was a mule skinner. I barely remember his stories of seeing the country go from mule teams to landing on the moon.

I am a member of the Sons of the American Revolution on both sides. All our daughters are now members of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Our grandchildren will all become Daughters and Sons of the American Revolution.

As the sound of the pipes began to fade, it suddenly hit me that the generation of our parents had passed, and we were now their generation. We have assumed their place in history. I felt unworthy and began to wonder, how can we ever achieve what they achieved?

Then a calmness began to wash away my doubts as I listened to Pastor McPhillips. His words reinforced my thoughts for Book 2—so much so that I disclosed my family’s quest to him and asked if I could repeat his eulogy here. He agreed. I hope you will find his words as inspiring and reassuring as I did. I had already started Book 2, including deciding on the title, before we met.

Here are some excerpts from the eulogy delivered by Pastor McPhillips:

[Flowers of the Forest] is a very sacred song. I have read that most bagpipers will only play this song at funerals, memorial services, or in practice.

The Forest was a district comprising of Selkirkshire, also known as Ettrick Forest. This forest was known for its archers. The archers, the archers of Ettrick Forest, earned the epithet Flowers of the Forest from the Battle of Falkirk in 1298. They formed the bodyguard of King James IV. It was at the area known as Flodden, where their corpses were found surrounding their dead monarch. They fought to the end.

The song describes the grief of women and children at the loss of their young men.

The men that were known as Flowers of the Forest believed in something; they were committed to their cause … their king. They were willing to give their life for what they believed. One word I think can describe this: selfless.

From everything that I have been told about John, this one word describes him as well.

If John could send us a message today … I believe it would be … God is real … believe in Him, believe what he says. He has demonstrated His selflessness on our behalf; what are we going to do with it?"

INTRODUCTION

Reject Self-Serving Power is Book 2 in a series I am writing. It builds on the two main foundations of Book 1, Prophecy before Vision: learning to see and alter the future, and inverting the global wealth inequality pyramid. In the first three chapters of Book 2, we will explore why self-serving power strategies fail in the end and why the accumulation of self-serving power as a strategy always ends badly for all those involved.

We will also expand on the leadership principles in Book 1 to explain that leadership is all about helping others be successful. After reading the first three chapters combined with what you learned in Book 1, you will have successfully learned my JM Prophecies leadership code, which is as follows:

1. Prophecy must come before vision. Learn to see and alter the future.

2. Embrace leadership. Leadership is all about helping others be successful.

3. Reject self-serving power. The accumulation of self-serving power as a leadership strategy always ends badly for all those involved.

After Chapter 3, we will apply the JM Prophecies leadership code in continuing our quest to invert the global wealth inequality pyramid and eliminate the serfdoms of our times by exploring a variety of proactive projects and ideas designed to help rebuild the country.

Accumulating self-serving power to the detriment of others is a major reason the wealth inequality pyramid has existed for millennia, reaching its epidemic point today. As was the case with Book 1, the contents of Book 2 apply equally to public institutions, commercial organizations, and individuals in their personal lives. If you’ve read Book 1, you already know I am a believer in contrarian thought and strategies. I continue my contrarian ways here in offering more solutions to invert the global wealth inequality pyramid.

At the end of Book 2, I have listed my plans for my first twenty-one books, which lay out our family’s path forward to pursue our quests. These twenty-one books, plus perhaps more in the future, will take me at least ten years to pen and publish. The titles and content of my announced future books will undoubtedly change from what has been announced.

I have promised my wife that we will finally make time to travel the world, and I intend to make good on that promise. JM Prophecies will serve as our research lab. We all will benefit from the hindsight we will gain as we are able to share our real-time experiences with you regarding what worked and perhaps what did not work so well.

Such is the case with long-term planning. Plans evolve and change over time, as events yet to happen play out over time and things to come brew in serendipity pools. I do this so others can more easily decide whether or not to join us. Obviously, we cannot change thousands of years of human behavior alone. We must recruit partners, investors, and others who believe selflessness can and will triumph over self-serving power.

If we fail, we fail. But the journey will be glorious.

1

Self-Serving Power Strategies

Fail in the End

Power Corrupts

MANY AUTHORS HAVE researched and written about how the accumulation of power is generally positive in its early accumulation stages, but then that power, often if not always, corrupts the person or organization who accumulated it. It’s not for me to convince foreign dictators, political parties, public unions, lobbyists, contemporary media, CEOs, and individuals who use power accumulation to advance themselves and their organizations that their power will end badly. Instead, our time together here is best spent analyzing how self-serving power always ends badly, because it ultimately leads to mistakes, wrong decisions, and forcing bad ideas onto others.

The combined weight of these inevitable mistakes, wrong decisions, and bad ideas ultimately buries accumulated self-serving power in an age-old graveyard whose occupants can only be counted using Carl Sagan numbers. The graves are always dug far in advance but are filled with breathtaking swiftness when their time comes. If it is true, and I believe it is, that power strategies generally yield positive results in their early stages, then why are power strategies fatal to pursue over the long term? When do events begin to fall apart and head south?

The answer to the first questions is that even if they yield positive results in the beginning, power strategies should not be used because the people leading the power accumulation always ends up corrupted and obsessed with staying in power as their sole goal. The answer to the second question is that power strategies begin to fall apart when the people leading the power accumulation and/or their followers begin to make mistakes, make wrong decisions, and pursue bad ideas solely to stay in power and enrich themselves and those supporting them. At that point, it becomes obvious to those outside the power structure that the people have lost their way and are pursuing power only for their own personal advancement, wealth accumulation, and legacy.

People Want to Do Great Things, but …

I have observed that people generally want to do great things. This translates into ambition. If productive opportunities are available to a person with ambition, the results can be wonderful. Unfortunately, power-strategic individuals are prone to invent great things to pursue when these do not exist.

This happens most often when a great event in history has already occurred and followers become frustrated because they do not have that same level of opportunity. Trying to emulate Dr.