I am blessed with decent health, a good job, and healthy children. I have had the opportunity to visit other countries. I have been part of shows that included the famous names of the 20th century and now. I grew up the nation's capital, so that I am familiar with the landmarks and history therein. And I live in the country much of the world would like to immigrate to.

How much of that is my doing? Hardly any; as for most of us, I had help and opportunities that were necessary for me to get to this place, and the health of my children and myself is mostly luck. If I had talent, it's true I had to work to realize it, but so many have the same material and put in the same hours yet fail to arrive.

No one is truly self-made. And most of those less fortunate than I, simply did not have the right teacher, or didn't know of an opening, or weren't called for an interview. In the wrong neighborhood, or with unhelpful parents, they don't know what they missed.

I saw a hobby shop in Shanghai selling models of the rocket that sent a Chinese astronaut into orbit. It was a reminder that we have company, and competition. China will be a world player for the foreseeable future.

But the rush toward money absent rules invites catastrophic blunders, tragedies of the commons. The political system has been cronyism, since Mao, as has the business sector. So pollution is endemic, shoddy construction invites earthquake tragedy, and the recent fire in the hypermodern Mandarin hotel was set by the TV company. CCTV acted with hubris by hiring a fireworks display inside the construction site, without city approval. The police were ignored, and the video cameras were recording the party. Oops.

The quotes in Todd Gitlin's piece, "Breathtaking Moments in the Annals of Wingnuttery", have me thinking about wealth and government.

I once visited an old keep in Ireland, called the Castle of Dysert O'Dea. It was one of many simple tower keeps, where you pulled up the ladder if a larger band of men showed up to take what was yours. The main room, near the top, had a throne of sorts, just a large chair for the chief, and a few weapons were mounted on the wall. Most impressive was a rusty longsword. No handle, just the tang, but one could imagine the missing wooden grip. Here is the point---it was nearly four feet long.

If one could swing that at will, who could get near? Such a man had power, and few contenders. He only had to fear a surprise attack. But those days of personal prowess yielded to archers, and eventually guns. Now it mattered who had the resources to make weapons and pay foot soldiers.

Bamboo scaffolding surrounds concrete highway ramps under construction, a man bicycles along the canal, and the skyscrapers of Shanghai are hard to see in the haze that blanketed most of China, as seen from the airplane from Hong Kong. It seemed to extend all the way up to our 5,000-ft. holding pattern, making the ground nearly invisible until we dropped to 500 feet. The sun was barely seen, making us think of London's killing fogs of coal smoke-aggravated inversion.

Still, it is hard to ignore the astonishing modernization China has achieved. Shanghai was the largest port in the world since 2005 in terms of total throughput, although second to Singapore for container traffic. Its name makes us think of the pejorative use, the fate of unwary drunks in other ports, impressed into low-grade seaman status. But that calls to mind the fact that trade has been a constant in history, associated with every civilization. Even the Anasazi of Chaco Canyon have been shown to have used cocoa, 12,000 years ago. They could only have acquired it in some kind of trade, likely through many intermediaries, from Central American sources.