Pro Commerce

Jew Hate in America

I’ve lived with Jew hate for several parts of my life.

I was in an El Paso elementary school from 1946 to 1949.  The Mexican kids would follow me home from school and throw rocks at me whenever the Dominican traveling priests came to Juarez to denounce Jews.  Fortunately I was a fast runner.  

The Roman Catholic hatred of Jews abated when Pope John XXIII
called Vatican Council II.  The current Pope Francis has brought it back.

My closest friend in 1953-55 was David Stern, in Seattle, whose mother was national president of the American Jewish Committee. That AJC, at that time, was anti-Israel because the members wanted to assimilate and they believed Israel, as a Jewish state, would make assimilation difficult. My father, a reform rabbi, had been in Israel in the pre-State days helping on the Dead Sea scrolls and loved Israel.

I had no personal difficulty with Jew hate, other than the Mexicans, ever again.

I knew about the hereditary-class Jew hate, but it had no effect on me. It brushed up against me in 1967 when I became a bank officer and then the youngest Vice President in American banking at the Bank of California.  The Bank was the home of the hereditary class in 1960s banking but hadn’t always been because my paternal family were proud customers, and board members in the 1870’s to 1900. The bank expected me to join one of the elite private clubs in San Francisco.  The bank didn’t know that a Phillips could be a Jew. Jews were excluded from the top clubs until 1970.  Jews had been forced, sixty years earlier, to take over the Bohemian Club and start the Concordia Club.  I could have joined the University Club where I used the squash courts but never bothered to join.

All my life Spain has hated Jews, the same country that drove my patrilineal ancestors to Holland four hundred years ago, still hates Israel and prizes ham as its top meat.  Ireland has hated Jews and Israel.  The hatred of Jews began when Germany became a belligerent in 1938 and the Irish love the rantings of Hitler to this day. 

I dealt with Jew hate in the mid 1990’s when blacks at San Francisco State University were openly expressing it painting Jew hate murals and attacking Jews on the faculty.  Nearly all of whom left within five years.  Jew hate on campus has never abated.  Largely from blacks thanks to the Black Muslims.  Arabs have since found a home at S.F. State.

I haven’t had to deal with media Jew hate since I stopped reading the NewYork Times in the early 1970s.

A whole new self-hatred of Jews began in the late 1990s’ with the Anti-Defamation League when Lefty Jew hate was beginning and the ADL could only see the non-existent Jew hate in the politics of the Conservative leaders.  The ADL is a bastion of Jew hate to this day, along with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Real home grown American Jew hate exploded sometime in the late 2010’s.  My son calls it “Leftyism on Steroids.”  Which it is.

Spontaneous Commerce

When Airbnb was first started in San Francisco, I had three friends who immediately got into the business.

Does that mean anything to you?

One was a game developer, no surprise.  He bought three condos and rented them out. 

The second was a salaryman who bought five houses in New Orleans with the intention of moving there to rent them out.  

The third was a psychotherapist who rented out her city apartment for $5,000 a month and stayed at her country farmhouse.

The interesting thing about this event was that two of these emerging entrepreneurs were not the kind of person one expects to start a business.  It says to me that America is a land of millions of potential entrepreneurs who will start a business if they are given the slightest genuine opportunity. This is truly America. Commerce is deeply American.

The first and third were almost immediately put out of business by the rules San Francisco put in place to make Airbnb unworkable. The first soon moved to Los Angeles.  The second was soon put out of business by the city government of New Orleans that made Airbnb unworkable.

The CEO of Airbnb is Brian Chesky.  He and his founding partner were both graduates of the Rhode Island School of Design. Neither one had any idea of how politics works. Both immediately conceded to the laws and regulations that the San Francisco government put in place.  Terrible laws that destroyed two-thirds of all the operating BnB rentals in operation.  The anti-business regulations were copied everywhere Airbnb went. The same horrible regulations nearly destroyed similar vacation rental businesses that had been operating for decades, worldwide.

Three lessons from this: 

1. Americans are deeply disposed to starting businesses; no matter who they are. Its American.
2. Government with trivial and irrelevant regulations is the greatest destroyer of business on the planet.

Travis Kalanick, the founder and CEO of Uber, didn’t start his business until he got a Statewide license to run a limousine business which served as a short-term protection against the politically connected and ferocious taxi cab bastards.

    3.Political skills are vital to innovation in business.  Otherwise governments will destroy you.

One Man Is Now What Matters

You should know this name by now: Robby Starbuck.

One person with the power of the modern social media, the visual media, and the right idea can now have new political power never before imagined.

Robby Starbuck, understands America’s core values, primarily because his parents escaped from Cuba.  He realized that the ‘woke movement’ to replace the business value of merit with ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ ‘DEI’ is a very unAmerican idea.  

Merit is a core value of America that has slowly surfaced over the 250 years of our history.  Merit has been at war with America's union values of seniority and equality. The triumph of merit over union values emerged at the end of the 1950s as the modern world of commerce triumphed over the domestic hereditary elite (see many earlier blogs). 

Robby saw the situation. He realized that many corporate Leviathans were suffocating their employees with DEI in house re-education programs; corporations whose customers abhor the woke ideas of DEI.

Robby, with a Hollywood background in film and a list of over 70 music videos, has made Internet videos showing the DEI programs at Tractor Supply, John Deere, Harley-Davidson, Jack Daniel's and put these videos on social media where they were picked up and viewed in the millions. Each of the companies promptly publicly announced the end of their DEI programs.  My favorite result were two videos, one showing an empty Harley-Davidson repair station at the greatest motorcycle rally in Sturgis, S.D. and another with a motorcyclist shooting his Harley to death.

The true power of one man with the right idea, the video graphic skills, and modern social media, is that giant Lowe’s and behemoth Ford both backed down and ended their DEI with just the threat that Robby was making a video of their compulsory DEI programs. That is the incredible power of one man.

It just tickles my fancy that the greatest farce in American media, the New York Times says Robby’s “Attacks aren’t working” while the Wall Street Journal calls him a “One man power house destroying DEI.”

Envy of the Rich is the Core of the American Left

I have to tell you that I neither have envy for the rich, including the really rich, nor do I think they have political power.   The core thinking of the Left is the idea that the distance between the rich and poor is unjust.  

I have personally never had that view.  Early on it was for one reason; later in my life I added another reason.

The first reason I don’t envy the rich is that I made choices in my life to make me as free and powerful as any human.  So I never had any reason to envy the rich or the very rich.  I became a simple liver, meaning I learned to live on the minimum expense, so that I could provide for all my desires with little effort.  I am also an American surrounded by boundless abundance.

I had salaried jobs until I was 30 but I was always my own boss and used my time to accomplish whatever were my own goals and fantasies.  I can see that someone who thinks of earning money for stability and market rewards can envy those who appear to have no worries about stability and market rewards, nea ‘the rich.’ A fulltime job can be the shackles that create envy. An IRA, pension or a mortgage can create envy of the ‘rich.’

I had that stability and access to nearly all market rewards with simple living. I even wrote a book called Simple Living; Investments for Old Age for those who worry about stability in later life.

I have one child and one grandchild who have adopted my views of life and gather unto themselves all the skills and attributes that make them free and functional in the world. That includes having many friends, because your friends are your true wealth.

Has it worked?  Absolutely. 

I have traveled the world, lived in Japan and Israel when I wanted to, known hundreds, maybe thousands of important and influential people, accomplished major world-changing feats including creating the first worldwide currency, Mastercard, and woke up every day free to fulfill every wish and desire and be wildly joyous.  Never envying anyone.

The second discovery: political power does not come from being rich. Not at all. I learned this from being in politics for much of my life.  Many rich people try to buy political influence.  Nearly all fail.  Many have run for political office spending vast fortunes and gotten nowhere.  The only people who wield political power and political influence are those who deeply know politics.  Having money is irrelevant; I am serious.  For money objectives there are monied counter-objectives.  Knowing and understanding how politics works is the ultimate tool to influence politics. Willie Brown, who was poor as a young man and is a simple liver as an old man, has molded political power in California and nationally at a level few others have ever achieved or conceived.   Willie used money but it was not his own money.

Bill Gates’ global foundation is a farce.  It has accomplished nothing in any domain with Croesus levels of spending.  I know because I traveled the world examining Foreign Do Good Investments and found the ratio of good projects to harmful projects to be 1 to 30.  Free market practices did orders of magnitude more good than aid grants. And a fraction of the harm.

Summary

Envy of the rich comes from two sources.  People who don’t know how to live free with the abundance around them.  The fallacious belief that wealth is somehow connected to power. Political power is political understanding.

One caveat.  I would love to have my own private jet for travel. There is a little envy about that.  I’ve been a private pilot since my early 20's so I know that the time involved in flying any plane is great and requires a paid pilot. I now pay for business class and fly on the commercial 30-50 seat planes when I can.

Civil War Problem

I agree with many people that we have the right emotional conditions for a civil war.

Personally, there are many times in the past 5 years I would have gone out with a rifle and pistol to shoot the ‘woke’ media and government people.

Elon Musk and others are right; we have been ripe for a civil war for many years.

I didn’t go out and shoot people because I could never find the right person or place to shoot that would start the civil war.

The actual American Civil War had a geographic point of origin.

“The war began on April 12, 1861, when the Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina.” 

The public attitudes were geographically divided into many Northern and nearly all Southern states.  No such distinct geographic division exists today between the ‘woke’ and the anti-woke. Even the core of cities versus the rest of the nation is a poor division of ‘woke’ and anti-woke.

At one time I was tempted to call on my fellow patriots to meet at the newest federal government building on Mission St. in San Francisco and begin shooting anyone who went in or out.  But that would have killed many of my own compatriots.  It wouldn’t have worked.

The new civil war can not begin until most people on each side are geographically separated.

Who Can You Trust?

The Internet has changed our world in the most fundamental fashion.  We no longer have trust in any of the large cacophony of information that we receive. The most authoritative sources are widely distrusted.  My son calls this the ‘collapse of narrative.’

How can you trust anything when contradictory information is just a click away and virtually every institution has offered unreliable information at some recent moment?   You can’t.

I want to offer my own approach.  You have to have yours too.

First off, I trust no information I get.  I even doubt some of the things I see with my own eyes in the solid world around me.  What appears solid may not be; what appears safe may not be like trying to run across one side of a freeway with few cars on it.  I have no trust in any government source, or news media or professional association. Any argument by authority is almost always rejected; such as ‘scientists find,’ or ‘the Dental Association says.’

So how do I get a sense that any particular information is reliable? 

I trust some people because they either can-not make false statements or are leery of making statements that they are not certain of.  In the first group are nearly all Japanese, 120 million of them. They can obfuscate but they can not lie.

Who Can You Trust?

I trust data where I can see the original source, where it has not been modified, where I know the collection methodology and where I can do the calculations myself, such as the average, the variance and the sequence over time.  I have been a statistician since I taught it in university.

The same applies to all documents.  I learned at the U. of Chicago to always read the original document or to be leery if it is not available.

I trust some people who are public figures or writers if they have been totally reliable over long periods of time.

We have now reached the end of my trusted sources.  Sadly, it is a new world with a complete absence of authority, anywhere.  

Neither Wikipedia nor Google search is authoritative. In both I’ve seen pieces that were factually very wrong based on my personal experience.  In the case of Wikipedia I’ve corrected major errors and included reliable reference sources only to see my corrections disappear a day or two later.

In the New Revolution, Teach Commerce

The revolution in higher education is coming.  There will soon be several new and very high quality universities that will protect and appreciate Jews.  It will be important to teach the realities of commerce.

There is no such thing as ‘capitalism.’ There is only ‘commerce.’ ‘Capitalism’ is a term that comes from Karl Marx who had an erroneous theory of labor as the source of prices.  Simply, the cost of goods sold is equal to the labor input to the goods and services plus a payment for capital, plus whatever the ruling class can force on to the top of the cost.  That explains virtually nothing in commerce, which is why the labor theory of capital was never taught anywhere in economics.  It doesn’t explain rent, the prices of land nor anything else. The market prices of commodities vary continually as do the price of equities. No relation to labor.  

‘Commerce’ on the other hand is not a homogeneous entity.  It has three separate components. Trade, Clientry, and Industry.  

Trade is usually a single proprietor often with hired workers.  The trader buys goods and marks up the price for sale based on the various costs, the volume of sales expected and the amount of lending needed to make the sales happen, plus a markup to keep the business running over time. A flower shop or a small bakery are good examples.  The French and the Overseas Chinese are masters of ‘trade.’ There are flower shops and bakeries anywhere there are French.  There are stalls or storefronts with single categories of goods wherever there are Overseas Chinese.

Clientry is the form of commerce that is designed to provide goods or services for the lifetime of the buyer.  A barber or dentist are good examples.  The price of the good or service is based on the market price and the level of skill of the seller. Clientry is based on a lifetime of service as the horizon for pricing. Surprisingly banking is a clientric business, with the intention of the seller or lender to maintain a long-term relationship with the customer, but bankers seldom have the sense of devotion to the customer found among lawyers and architects.

Industry is the type of business designed to maximize economies of scale. It is found wherever multiple stores, or large capital investments are operating.  Every chain business is designed to benefit from economies of scale as are all the entities we call industry; railroads, steel companies, airlines and McDonald’s.

Commerce thrives in societies that value markets, societies that restrain the power of government, and societies that are open to individual initiative.  

Government bans are a great restraint on the nature and quality of business.  Government’s absolute bans on silver restoration, cleaning solvents, and metal plating are a tiny example of the tens of thousands of businesses that are foreclosed by unreasonable and disproportionate government restrictions.

Commerce is 98.3% cooperative. The very nature of commerce is that hundreds, thousands, and sometimes, millions of people cooperate with each other daily. They cooperate within businesses, between businesses as suppliers, and as renters, advisors and colleagues.  

Yet the popular image of competition is the paramount mode of thinking about business. Commerce is cooperation on the grandest scale known to humans.

Lastly, commerce thrives where diversity of opinion, diversity of experience, and diversity of values are allowed to work together.  Merit is the milieu for commerce that creates vigor and innovation.

Someday more people will understand commerce and the world will be a better place.

PEOPLES Temple and Jim Jones

Most people in the world don’t know that Jim Jones, of the famous ‘Drink the Kool-Aid’ and Guyana mass suicide of over 900 people, was a communist.

I knew Jim Jones, personally, and interacted with him over the years he was in San Francisco. I heard one or two of his sermons.  Jim Jones was a Marxist. He was 100% a Marxist and he preached 100% pure communism.  He had a visceral hatred of ‘capitalism’ and he made that clear in every sermon. He also channeled the beauty of communist equality and fairness of government support.

Jim Jones’ community heard him lecture every week about the evils of capitalism and the beauty of communism.  His congregation was communist.  And disproportionately older black women.

Now the big fact:  When Jones, Reverend Jones, decided to move his congregation out of the United States he wrote to people in the USSR (Russia) and the Soviet Embassy in Washington and requested asylum for his congregation and himself in the Soviet Union.  

They turned him down.

So then he chose the jungles of Guyana as the new model home for his congregation. He promised a communist paradise.

Jonestown should be remembered as one of the many communist failures.

Does America Always Lose the War?

We may have a very distorted view of our own history.  Do we always lose our wars?

Independence

Start with our War of Independence. Did we win? Britain gave up. Really France won. The Treaty of Paris 1783 makes it clear.  France as the winner was given Senegal and Tobago by Britain.  The Colonies agreed to leave the Crown but share access to the Mississippi with Britain and accepted convivial conditions of trade with Britain. The American Colonies didn’t WIN.  They got partial independence with their co-victor, France. 

How can you lose a war of independence? You can’t. France won and the colonies took advantage of it.

Twenty years later Britain reminded the Colonies that they gained independence but never defeated the British military.

1812

America lost the War of 1812 decisively. Total loss. Britain with only one war to fight won overwhelmingly. Britain destroyed whatever they wanted to destroy.

Civil War

Did the Union Army win the Civil War? In deed only --The Confederacy signed a peace treaty. Lincoln’s priority—shared by Grant—was “to bind up the nation’s wounds” and unite the country together again as a functioning democracy under the Constitution.  Lincoln’s plan for reconstruction of the South and help for the blacks didn’t get very far.  

Lincoln was assassinated days after the peace treaty, by a Confederate supporter. Vice President Andrew Jackson, a Democrat supporter of slavery, became president and did little to carry out the reconstruction plans.  

Reconstruction only began two years later when Grant became president.  The ostensible losing side, the Confederate states resisted Reconstruction and it was defeated within twelve years, totally. From 1877 forward, blacks lost their economic and political rights and the whites from the Confederacy regained nearly all their rights and power. 

Seventy years later blacks were still being lynched by the KKK, couldn’t buy homes in white neighborhoods and were rarely employed in white businesses. The Southern Wing of the Democrat Party by 1965 had been in power for thirty-five years.  

One hundred years after the end of the Civil War, there was no victory celebration. None. Because the Union didn’t win.

Spain

There were battles in the late 19th century with Spain but no real battles over the four months of active Cuban hostility.  The U.S. gained control of Cuba, Guam, and the Philippines by paying Spain $20 million.  Nothing resembling a victory occurred from a nearly non existent Spanish military. 

WWI

World War I saw America enter the War late, the American president demanded a peaceful settlement at the end of the war.  The war ended because of influenza. 

The influenza hurt the German side the most because the German soldiers had to ride in trains back to their homeland for food and treatment, while the French went home on weekends during the war.  The Germans agreed to the American proposed peace treaty, but the French and British dictated the actual terms without regard to the Americans.  President Wilson had many strokes as the Treaty of Versailles was being worked on and was unable to have any influence on the outcome.

WWII

World War II was an absolute military victory for the Allied troops.  But the final outcome was determined by the Yalta Conference in February 1945. By the previous Fall president Roosevelt was medically weak, could not stand and by April of 1945 he died.  At Yalta, the USSR designated the meeting place, and the USSR demanded control of all of Eastern Europe.  Roosevelt conceded and asked for democrat rule of the area the USSR controlled.  Didn’t happen. Berlin was divided in half and the USSR demanded that the Allied half be divided among France, Britain and the U.S.  The USSR also took all of Siberia and Mongolia in return for a promise to send troops to fight Japan.  The USSR never did help.

The American military victory in WWII led to the United Nations. A seventy year failure for the U.S. The United Nations are united 150 to 1 against the U.S. most of the time.

Korea

The war in Korea was a settlement with an armistice much to the favor of North Korea, which is still a belligerent.

Vietnam

The Vietnam War was militarily won by the U.S. and then completely abdicated by the U.S. Democrat Congress which refused to help the South Koreans as the U.S. promised in the peace treaty. U.S. lost entirely.

Iraq and Afghanistan

Iraq and Afghanistan.  Not much to say. The first Iraq war was a complete loss, Saddam Hussein remained in power. The second dragged on for more than twenty years with no end, no cessation of hostilities.  Afghanistan was another complete loss.

America often wins the major battles but loses the war. 

And now the losers of Afghanistan, the Biden Democrats, are advising Israel to lose its war against the Gazan terrorist government.

For the Record

When Republicans controlled the Presidency and Congress we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the end of the Civil War.

I tried to get the nation to celebrate the 100th and 150th anniversary of the Civil War and the 14th Amendment but nothing happened because Democrats controlled both the Presidency and Congress.  Sorry folks I contacted Black leaders (many of whom I knew personally) and the D.C. government; no response. 

Its a fact.

This image is the 50th Anniversary parade with veterans of both sides of the Civil War.