HEROES OF COMMERCE an S.F. memorial in their honor

Initial list of honorees

A. P. Giannini founder of Bank of America and TransAmerica genius of personal loans.

Levi Straus founder and inventor of Levi's.

Mark Hopkins, Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington founders of the Union Pacific, Central Pacific and the Southern Pacific RR

Charles Crocker also a railroad founder and founded a bank.

Jane Lathrop co-created Stanford University with her husband Leland Stanford.

Milton Friedman leading American economist and champion of free market economics.

Charles Schwab pioneer of discount and online stock brokerage.

 Anthony Zellerbach founder of major paper industry

Warren Bechtel founded the global Bechtel corporation.

Mortimer Fleishhacker, investor 

Adolph Sutro engineer and inventor.

William R. Hearst founder of Hearst Newspaper chain.

Fritz Maytag founder of Anchor Steam Beer and modern micro-beer movement.

William Matson founder Matson Navigation.

Joe P. Williams creator of Visa

Rube Goldberg inventor of imaginary machines

Larry Ellison founder of Oracle corporation

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Bleak future

 Dubai is a truly beautiful city that will someday be the correct image of Blade Runner. 'Blade Runner” refers to an iconic 1982 film that describes a distopian version of Los Angeles.
Dubai will be a mostly deserted disintegrating city, lacking maintenance and people. Nothing much will be going on there in a few decades. An abandoned commercial desert.

Dubai is a planned city intended to be the Singapore of the Middle East. Built with astronomic amounts of money and a population of 1 million imported non-citizens.

Five news items should help you understand my forecast.

The first was a report that an Arab Emirate company was buying a large port near New York. The whole project was stopped promptly and in the process we saw the Arab stock exchanges deliberately crashed by New York and London dealers. The reason: the Arab world had joined the WTO but ignored all the rules and had nothing to export that could be punished under WTO rules. Thus, the Arab stock markets were deliberately crashed. 'Don't buy our critical industries.'

Two, we learned in the ensuing stories that Dubai still embargoes Israeli goods and didn't intent to stop the illegal behavior under WTO. They do what they want; international agreements mean nothing.

 Three, with the U.S. mortgage meltdown, the Arabs got stuck with plenty of bad paper and were directly bailed out by the Emirates. ( Not helped or supported, but 100% bailed out).

Four, the farce of accusing Israel of sending 27 agents to kill one Arab terrorist. The local police showed dozens of unidentifiable photos. Gross incompetence and anti-Israel stupidity.

Five, banning Blackberry emails.

What is significant about the Blackberry email action? Inside nearly every global corporation the Blackberry emails are the main source of communication. No Blackberry emails... no job. To be sent to Dubai without Blackberry email would be the same as being fired.

Only a minor problem with Dubai. It violates nearly every premise of pro commerce governance. Only tribal Arabs can be citizens, the top mucky muck selects only his family to run the city-state, no native Arabs love technology or innovation, Islamic finance is gross financial insanity, and Arabs always lie if necessary to save face.

 Dubai is a truly beautiful city that will someday be the correct image of Blade Runner. 'Blade Runner” refers to an iconic 1982 film that describes a distopian version of Los Angeles.
Dubai will be a mostly deserted disintegrating city, lacking maintenance and people. Nothing much will be going on there in a few decades. An abandoned commercial desert.

Dubai is a planned city intended to be the Singapore of the Middle East. Built with astronomic amounts of money and a population of 1 million imported non-citizens.

Five news items should help you understand my forecast.

The first was a report that an Arab Emirate company was buying a large port near New York. The whole project was stopped promptly and in the process we saw the Arab stock exchanges deliberately crashed by New York and London dealers. The reason: the Arab world had joined the WTO but ignored all the rules and had nothing to export that could be punished under WTO rules. Thus, the Arab stock markets were deliberately crashed. 'Don't buy our critical industries.'

Two, we learned in the ensuing stories that Dubai still embargoes Israeli goods and didn't intent to stop the illegal behavior under WTO. They do what they want; international agreements mean nothing.

 Three, with the U.S. mortgage meltdown, the Arabs got stuck with plenty of bad paper and were directly bailed out by the Emirates. ( Not helped or supported, but 100% bailed out).

Four, the farce of accusing Israel of sending 27 agents to kill one Arab terrorist. The local police showed dozens of unidentifiable photos. Gross incompetence and anti-Israel stupidity.

Five, banning Blackberry emails.

What is significant about the Blackberry email action? Inside nearly every global corporation the Blackberry emails are the main source of communication. No Blackberry emails... no job. To be sent to Dubai without Blackberry email would be the same as being fired.

Only a minor problem with Dubai. It violates nearly every premise of pro commerce governance. Only tribal Arabs can be citizens, the top mucky muck selects only his family to run the city-state, no native Arabs love technology or innovation, Islamic finance is gross financial insanity, and Arabs always lie if necessary to save face.

Sit down in front of a computer

Sitting down in front of a keyboard and a monitor is indeed a great accomplishment.

While it may be sissy and it may be bad for our health, the success in getting over 100 million Americans and many times more non-Americans to sit in front of a computer for more than 40 hours a week is an extraordinary achievement.

Less than sixty years ago, most workers worked standing up and they used their bodies to do much of their work (women in the home included). Slightly more than a century ago, a large proportion of the work force worked outdoors, many in farming and related food production.

In roughly a century, commerce has changed the way we physically work and increased our productivity to the point where one worker today produces what it took seven workers to produce 100 years ago. Seven times as much.  I'm glad the boring school system puts such a high priority on students sitting still in class with their mouths shut.

Still, the growth in productivity per capita would have been much greater if it had not been restrained by a terrible American banking system, unbelievable political ignorance, more than half a century with little foreign competition, Eurocentric immigration laws and an hereditary upper class with too much power.

Sitting down in front of a keyboard and a monitor is indeed a great accomplishment.

While it may be sissy and it may be bad for our health, the success in getting over 100 million Americans and many times more non-Americans to sit in front of a computer for more than 40 hours a week is an extraordinary achievement.

Less than sixty years ago, most workers worked standing up and they used their bodies to do much of their work (women in the home included). Slightly more than a century ago, a large proportion of the work force worked outdoors, many in farming and related food production.

In roughly a century, commerce has changed the way we physically work and increased our productivity to the point where one worker today produces what it took seven workers to produce 100 years ago. Seven times as much.  I'm glad the boring school system puts such a high priority on students sitting still in class with their mouths shut.

Still, the growth in productivity per capita would have been much greater if it had not been restrained by a terrible American banking system, unbelievable political ignorance, more than half a century with little foreign competition, Eurocentric immigration laws and an hereditary upper class with too much power.

Poverty and billionaires

I face a never ending barrage of attacks on commerce based on the thesis that commerce has created a world with a great disparity of wealth.

In an earlier blog I concluded from hard data that: "For any nation that has industrial commerce, every million people in the workforce will have a 34% chance of producing no billionaires, a 34% chance of producing one billionaire, 22% chance of having two billionaires, 8% chance of three billionaires and 4% chance of 4 or more billionaires."  This is a Poisson distribution.

For any country to have wealth, other than just oil production, which invariably goes to the ruling class, the country must be fairly large and have an active commercial workforce. 

Poverty is the consequence of a country that is too small and that doesn't have a commercial workforce.

Don't blame commerce. Face reality and live with it.

America and commerce are an accident

The combination of 50 separate states under one national Constitution is truly an accident that is great for commerce but could never have happened anywhere else or under any other circumstances.

We are an exceptional nation but entirely an accident.  Our Constitution is the only real constitution in the world.  It was self imposed at a time when the notion of a constitution to limit government was in vogue. That vogue passed away.  No other people ever chose to protect or entangle themselves with such a constitution. And a Bill of Rights.

Yet for us, the Constitution has created a text centered people, just like the Diaspora Jews.  The Jews had the text center of the Torah, the sacred words forever to be debated and reinterpreted.  For 2,000 years the Jews have been without a government, a disconnected but coherent people studying a sacred text from the past and living in the present under a wide range of circumstances always re-interpreting the sacred text. 

The same is true for Americans. Our sacred Constitution holds us together despite having a weak, and at times incompetent, central government, trying to cope with 13-50 separate state governments.

Our separate states slowly conferred power on the central government, but never very much.  To this day we have a weak central government compared to most other industrial governments.  Look at the 2008 financial crisis and the fact that we still have no rational plan to remedy that pathetic national incompetence. We probably never will remedy our incompetence.  Remember that the 1913 Federal Reserve didn't have teeth until the 1950s. It is still ineffective and completely failed our financial structure in 2008.

Had this American socio-political experiment occurred anywhere else, but safely sequestered across two large oceans, the neighboring countries would have taken advantage and swooped in for control.  This would have destroyed America many times as the states and the national government squabbled (1812, 1846, 1863, 1898, 1916, 1939, 1953, 1963, 1973).

Truly an accident but a fortuitous one for those of us who love commerce.

Simple living and consumerism

I am a simple liver and in addition to my main book on the subject, I have written quite a bit over 35 years.  But I don't proselytize. 

I occasionally get questioned about my patriotism and loyalty to commerce as a simple liver.  The logic behind the question is that commerce is driven by consumerism.  Not really true.

Commerce did not originate with consumerism, it originated from the realm of necessity. Industrial commerce grew strong and vital based on providing for necessity.  

Nevertheless, commerce in most of the world long ago out-supplied the realm of necessity and entered the realm of consumerism...satisfying whims and personal goals.

Commerce is currently driven by a large component of consumerism because satisfying customers is the driving force of commerce.  Buying products to enhance personal goals is consumerism.  

In my opinion, the nature of simple living is also the satisfaction of personal goals, it just requires much less in the way of physical objects.  Simple living is more focused on livelihood, friendship and individual authenticity.  Those elements can drive commerce just as well as physical objects.

The effect on GNP growth is not obvious.  If a median income simple liver takes four friends to a wonderful restaurant and hires a string quartet after dinner around a fireplace and conversation, the GNP effect is the same as buying and installing a hot tub.

Simple living is just as relevant to driving commerce as consumerism. Probably more so in the future.

I am a simple liver and in addition to my main book on the subject, I have written quite a bit over 35 years.  But I don't proselytize. 

I occasionally get questioned about my patriotism and loyalty to commerce as a simple liver.  The logic behind the question is that commerce is driven by consumerism.  Not really true.

Commerce did not originate with consumerism, it originated from the realm of necessity. Industrial commerce grew strong and vital based on providing for necessity.  

Nevertheless, commerce in most of the world long ago out-supplied the realm of necessity and entered the realm of consumerism...satisfying whims and personal goals.

Commerce is currently driven by a large component of consumerism because satisfying customers is the driving force of commerce.  Buying products to enhance personal goals is consumerism.  

In my opinion, the nature of simple living is also the satisfaction of personal goals, it just requires much less in the way of physical objects.  Simple living is more focused on livelihood, friendship and individual authenticity.  Those elements can drive commerce just as well as physical objects.

The effect on GNP growth is not obvious.  If a median income simple liver takes four friends to a wonderful restaurant and hires a string quartet after dinner around a fireplace and conversation, the GNP effect is the same as buying and installing a hot tub.

Simple living is just as relevant to driving commerce as consumerism. Probably more so in the future.

Capitalism is the wrong word

You don't see me using the word capitalism.  The reason is simple.  Capitalism has little or nothing to do with commerce.

Surprised?

Think about it.  Commerce is vigorous in publicly identified socialist countries like Sweden, India and Norway.  It is even vigorous in communist countries such as Vietnam and China.

Capitalism is associated with capital and private ownership.

Wrong about commerce. There are many kinds of commerce that do not have private ownership in the United States, ranging from non-profit businesses, to charities, foundations, coops and religious run businesses.

The Capitalist-Socialist-Communist distinction has only to do with form of government.  To talk about a Capitalist country is to talk about an imaginary entity.  There can be no rigor in such a concept because it doesn't exist.  Most countries have commerce, some encourage it (many are called socialist) some suppress it, but the encouragement and suppression has to do with the government form, tyranny, benign dictator, king, democracy, mixed.

In fact, the term capitalist, is a remnant of sloppy, hysterical, anti-commerce, 19th Century thinking that survives to this day. 

While we're looking at sloppy, hysterical, anti-commerce, 19th Century thinking, let's include the concept of imperialism.  The greatest imperial empire in the 20th Century was Communist Russia, which extended its imperialist grasp from East Germany to Mongolia, to Cuba, North Vietnam, the Congo and South Yemen. The largest, most extensive imperialist empire in history was communist.

Sources of economic expansion

I've advised two governments on how to increase commercial growth; Japan and Sweden.

In the case of Japan I focused on the need for a society to draw from a global market of talent. A dynamic economy needs creative immigration.  Japan could only do that by creating a base of operations in Hawaii. Japan, the long stretch of islands, has never been a comfortable place for immigrants. The Japanese government chose not to follow my recommendations, they were politically unfeasible, but several major companies did follow my advice and establish research facilities in Hawaii: Sony, Fujitsu, Mitsui, Matsushita, Epson and Uniden.  Creative foreigners working for Japanese companies are now comfortable living in Hawaii.

In Sweden my work was stunningly successful and my work directly created the major source of Swedish small business exports over two decades starting in 1981.  My approach was copied in France and Germany.  Germany copied my Swedish model and actually exported it back to the United States as part of the German Marshall Fund.

The Swedish model was based on the 1,000 businesses I worked with when I created the Briarpatch Network in the San Francisco Bay Area. The model had new and small businesses learn together cooperatively in a network to overcome the main hurdles of the first two years in business. The survival rate was stunning: 90% survived over five years.

I doubt that Israel could accept the advice I gave to Japan. Tel Aviv is great fun, but could not handle a large 100k non-Jewish global immigrant population.  At present Israeli's start major businesses in America to get the benefit of immigrant workers.  These businesses (400 on the U.S. stock markets) could become sources of Israeli growth with the right Israeli tax policies...that may someday happen.

I don't know how Israel would respond to the advice and training I gave Sweden.

The opposite of pro commerce

In an earlier blog I found a research paper done at Yale Law School that contrasted one group of outcomes in a survey as pro commerce and the other anti- group as egalitarian-communitarian.

While the distinction may have been valid in the particular study, to me the opposite of pro-commerce is not egalitarian or communitarian. One can have egalitarian values and feelings about a wide range of subjects and still be comfortable with the astronomic inequalities in wealth that are produced by commerce.

For example, one can feel that each of one's children and grandchildren should be treated as equally as possible and definitely believe that everyone is equally entitled to emergency health care, education, fire protection, access to travel, free speech, trial by jury, fair trial and much more and still be pro commerce.

Similarly with communitarian values.  One can feel intense comfort when surrounded by loving, caring committed friends and allies...even the same people over a lifetime, and still be pro commerce. A person can want to retire among longtime friends or sympathetic professional peers, one can be intensely involved with their sports team, community or specialized cohort and still be pro commerce.

To me, the anti-thesis of pro commerce is wishful thinking.  Wishful thinking is my polite term for ideology.  People who look at the world and believe it would be better with a revolution, with a return to some older society are doing wishful thinking.

Nothing in the history of human beings has created what commerce has created thus far.  Commerce has vastly extended our lifespan, reduced infant mortality and death at child birth, but more importantly it has create hundreds of thousands of jobs, occupations, professions and life paths to take advantage of the diversity of human beings.  Commerce is the first and only human institution to reward meritocracy as broadly as possible in the population. 

Commerce is bringing into existence the pragmatic messianic age.  To seek some other world is wishful thinking.