Rock the Casbah

The immortal words of The Clash’s forty-year-old hit are now ripping through Iran. A 5,700-year-old civilization—probably the world’s oldest—is going through the most massive discontinuity in its history. We will all be impacted.

Like regressives worldwide, the male theocracy that rules Iran wants to forcefully eliminate any value females can add to the Iranian economy and thus to its world position. Iran’s male theocrats demand that females adhere to the systems and processes of Mohammed’s time fourteen centuries ago. Iranians, they demand, must live in the seventh century, not the twenty-first like the rest of us. To make their case, the Mullahs murdered Mahsa Amini, driving their people into the streets.

It's just the numbers. Since we learned to mumble, we have driven the cost of information down and the velocity of information up. Where we are on the Information Cost-Velocity Curve determines all outcomes. From the Sumerian city-state to the first generation smartphone makers, if you fall off the ICVC, you die. If you stay ahead, like Apple and Walmart, you scale and prosper.

Trying to force a nation fourteen centuries back up the ICVC, using a religion as justification, is ritual suicide on a massive scale.

Layer onto this spectacular miscalculation the fact Iran has only survived fifty-seven centuries because it used its geographic position to trade and build prosperous businesses. Iran sits on a multi millennia-long crossroad between the markets of the Mediterranean, Central Asia, South Asia and the Orient. It lasted so long by endlessly exploiting its geographic position.

But, how can a seventh century country trade with twenty-first century countries on anything remotely resembling favorable terms? Especially with the twenty-first century countries moving ever-faster on the Information Cost-Velocity Curve into ever-newer and increasingly value-added markets where the future is being created. The answer is, of course, that it can’t.

The male theocrats are forcefully depriving Iranians of a future. And Iranians don’t like it.

Which leads to the big, big problem for the Ayatollahs: who is rocking the casbah? Women.

For the first time in history, women, not men, are leading a mass revolt and trying to close a 14-century development gap. Better still, men are joining them, especially the younger ones with futures that the Mullahs are trying to crush by foreclosing all Iran’s global market opportunities. They totally get what the women are saying: It’s the money stupid and we want our share. To get it we need the liberal, democratic order that supports growth and allows us to create the future. Forget this nuclear weapons nonsense. Give us market share!

The female-led insurrection in Iran makes it seismic for all of us. One of the biggest effects of the ICVC is that it frees women to infuse their powerful intellects into organizations of all types, adding value everywhere. If Iran can’t make its 14-century shift on the ICVC, freeing up females to power growth, and do it fast, the place is cooked. All 5,700 years of it. There will be no way back. Things on the ICVC, as Iran’s women recognize, are moving forward at exponential rates. The future, they can see, is almost of reach. Soon it will be out of sight.

Just look at Japan. By not getting women into management and by forcing them to conjugate their verbs in subordinate forms, all the once-great Japanese brands failed in global markets. The Nikkei now trades 31% below its December 1989 peak. That’s as if the Dow traded today at 1,870, not 30,000. Because Japan was the second largest economy in the world, this was easily the greatest wealth wipe out in history. Iranian women refuse to go there.

Worldwide, males are going nuts. From our January 6th Trumpistas and Texas Taliban to the Ayatollahs of Iran and The Communist Party at The Center of Everything (China in English), large numbers of males worldwide have failed their ICVC exam. They want a male-dominated world that the ICVC scrubbed long ago and are trying desperately to keep women out of anything that requires a decision. Or a thought.

By order of the Prophet We ban that boogie sound Degenerate the faithful With that crazy Casbah sound

But, as the song says, even though “Sharif don’t like it”, the people rise up.

Then the military turn against him.