Pro Commerce

The eleven percent

Since the 1960s there has been a fairly steady percent of the population that drops out of high school...about 11%. Of course that percentage is higher among blacks and much higher among Hispanics.

My comment in this blog is that our whole society pays far more attention to that 11% of people who voluntarily drop out of high school, showing concern for them for their whole life, than we do to the 89% who don't.

We need that 11% to drive trucks, buses, wash dishes and do a dozen other available jobs that don't require much education. But we don't need to focus all our sympathy and political concerns on them.

What is amazing is the significant wealth that is now accumulating among the people who complete high school and the astounding wealth of those who complete college.

More than 400,000 American families earned over $1 million last year, (based on my projections of California Income Tax data from two years ago) and 1,500,000 American families earned over half a million dollars.

That is one hell of a lot of money walking around the streets. There are a million and a half ordinary Americans earning over half a million dollars. This explains the price of housing, for me, and the astounding sales of luxury goods.

Why can't we learn more about these prosperous people? Why can't there be more focus on the incredible personal wealth that this country creates for ordinary people?

 

Maybe unintended

I haven't seen the data but there appears to be an increase in the number of cases of Attention Deficit Disorder, asthma and allergies. (NIH data shows lower rates of each of these last two for people over 45 and even lower for people over 65.)

Could this be the unintended consequence of getting lead out of paint and gasoline, mercury out of everything and strapping children into car seats from the moment they are born? Maybe unintended.

Humor me. I'm just asking about unintended consequences.

Power and anti-Semitism

It has been obvious to me for more than thirty years that the main form of anti-Semitism outside of Islam is rooted in the wimpy Jew image (think Woody Allen).  Jews as weak and pathetic people make them perfect scapegoats.

Anti-Semitism has declined significantly in English speaking countries and much of Europe for thirty years because of the incredible strength of the Israeli Army.  That steady decline was reversed about ten years ago when Israel appeared weak in its negotiation with Adolph Arafat and non-Islamic anti-Semitism began to rise rapidly when the Intifada successfully killed Jews on buses and in coffee shops. The European Left was the first to jump on the new Jewish scapegoat.

Now the English and European anti-Semitism is rising at a rapid rate because Israel appears weak. Israel appears to have been successfully defeated by an Islamic military in Lebanon with missiles and ground fighting weapons.

Check out this report in the Jerusalem Post.  Anti-Semitism is rising so fast that Jews may have to be airlifted out of Venezuela, Belgium, Switzerland and the Ukraine. 

If you are a Lefty Jew, I hope this reality can sink into your brain.  Anti-Semitism is real, palpable and rising.  The U.N. is the most powerful and vast anti-Semitic institution in history.  The Left is the source of 90% of non-Islamic anti-Semitism.

Fame

In a discussion among a group of friends we considered the positive values and disadvantages of being famous.  Stewart Brand argued that fame generated an ease of entry into a world of influencial people and access that allowed many unique options for creating an interesting life.

It has been thirty five years since that discussion and I am now able to look at two of the disadvantages that we didn' t discuss at the time.

One is that fame can associate you with a failed enterprise, whether you totally supported it or not or whether you made other contributions. Example: Arthur Schlesinger Jr.  Schlesinger Jr. was a prominent historian, closely associated with the Kennedy clan and the New Deal.  The New Deal is the failed version of American socialism with high taxes, expansive government, labor unrest and economic feebleness. Not only did New Deal ideals fail and bring Schleshinger Jr. down, but the Kennedys have earned a reputation as philandering playboys. Not good for Schleshinger's reputation either.

Another negative is that fame can give you access to a social firmamentarium of people who think and talk alike and make sure that you are hip, current and 'with it' but no longer original, if you were original to start with.

Two strong arguments against fame, from my perspective.

Lefty brain

Reader Madelaine sent this image.  It is fun, accurate and fully coincides with my definition of Lefty Fundamentalist.  My only quibble is that these Lefty automatons have a brain register that automatically refers them to their core catechism and allows them to know what side of any issue to be on.  As new and difficult conflicts in the application of the catechism arise, they check with other Lefty friends and read Doonesbury for the correct pc stand. 

What to do in July?  Israel the powerful military force in the middle east had attacked the underdog, Hezbollah; automatic support for Hezbollah.  America backed Israel, automatic support for Hezbollah. However, Hezbollah uses civilian women and children as shields and supports terrorism and provoked the recent outbreak; too bad. Good reason for finding some muddling position until a clear position can be found.

Numbers and honesty

To be a reporter for the Wall Street Journal you have to be able to handle numbers. While the WSJ, on a few occasions, has misinterpreted numbers, the reporters are willing to present data in numeric form and are confident it won't scare away readers. Not the case with other journalists.

So what?  It is my contention, that self honesty goes along with personal comfort with numbers.  I think that comfort with numbers by WSJ reporters is the reason for the high quality, honesty and balanced reporting of the WSJ which is so superior to the rest of the press. 

There are honest people who are not good with numbers and there are frauds who are good with numbers. But looking at the three overlapping circles, honest people, people who are good with numbers and crooks, about 99% of the people who are in the good with numbers circle are in the honest circle and less than 3% of  the people in the crooks circle are in the good with numbers  circle.

(Blue is good with numbers, green is honest, red are crooks: Blue has 99% overlap with green, some green is not blue, red has no overlap with green but 3% overlap with blue.)

Raccoon wars

I returned home to San Francisco from a few months in Tokyo to find that half the gold fish had been eaten from my pond. 

For those of you following the raccoon wars, this is a surprising but not unexpected victory for the raccoons.

Neighbors have reported what happened.  The fish pond has an electric grate an inch under the water and several electrified bars above the water.  The raccoons rolled a small log onto the grate so they could stand on the log, reach into the water and get the fish.  The half of the fish that survived probably hid in one of the two underwater shelters I had built.

I'll will have to think about some new defenses.  War is alternating technology of defense and offense.

Security

I agree with Patrick Smith, author of Ask the Pilot, the nature of terror attack is always surprise.  9/11 is not going to happen again and airport security has nothing to do with it.  No group of passengers or pilots will let anyone or a group capture a passenger plane.

Remember the hundred captures that were hijackings to Cuba?  People had the experience of surviving so they tolerated the hijackings.  Got it.  9/11 was a surprise.

Surprise, the Fundamentalist (Muslim and Lefty) who took over the Greater Seattle Jewish Welfare office got through security by taking a 13 year old girl hostage.  Oops, surprise.  Security gates don't work any more.  Not at all, fini.

Original?

Does anyone consider my contributions original?

In my book Gods of Commerce I identified the three main clusters of commerce that are each significantly different from the other. (Trade is always aimed at a single customer; industry is aimed at lowering costs and clientrism is focused on a lifetime relationship with the customer.)

In the next book, Commerce, I identified the fundamental non-moral quality of commerce that generates its source of energy in meritocracy, openness and use of diverse human qualities. I compared the non-moral quality of commerce to the widely appreciated non-moral realm of technology.

Since the publication of Commerce, in this blog and the Commerce blog, I have identified other non-moral systems that have created modernity. The common law origins of our judicial system have been built on making justice non-moral. The democratic generation of legislatures has created a realm of legislative politicians who use non-moral skills in their harmonizing of conflicting power interests. Lastly, compassionate professionals operate in a non-moral realm.  Nurses, doctors, hospitals, paramedics and firefighters all carry out their work with compassionate rules that forbid moral selectivity among the patients encountered in their work.

Back to my initial question: Does anyone consider my contributions original?

Gandhi Hitler

The international story about a Mumbai restaurant named Hitler’s Cross is a good time for knowledgeable people to call attention to the fact that Indians don’t know history (When was Indian independence? “A while ago” is the common answer in India.) and neither do peaceniks.

Time to show the Hitler-Indian connection.

Gandhi forced the Brits to agree to Indian independence after the war otherwise Gandhi was going to have India join the Axis and support Hitler.

Ah, the basic premise of the peace movement: “I will support your murderer because you don’t do what I want.”

Sounds like the Lefty support of Hamas and Hezbollah.

Blasting core morals

Today’s news is that Robert Lanza et all have taken ten stem cells from a human embryo and found that this procedure did not kill the embryo. I don’t know whether this report in Nature deals with the blastocyst stage or not, but that is the usual point of implantation in IVF. The moral issue applies at every point in embryonic development after the initial blastomere stage.

This is the point at which my morals, and I believe most human morals, recoil.  The consequence of removing embryonic cells is that when the embryo is allowed to develop you get an experimental human. Your newborn baby is a lab experiment.

We cannot know if the removal of ten cells from the blastocyst will have a consequence in the future infant. But we cannot allow humans to be test subjects for a test that will take a lifetime to understand.

It is immoral to consciously bring a human into this world and watch to see what the harmful consequences will be from embryonic experimentation.

That is my main moral objection to human genetic engineering. It is time to yell and scream about this experiment.

Self-hating Americans 2

Self-hatred is an unusual psychological phenomenon.  Most of my readers have no idea what it is about.

Jews have no problem recognizing and dealing with self-hatred, it is very common among Jews.

I don't propose any theories about self hatred.  I only recognize and report that it happens to people who believe that some people around them are hostile.  That is all it takes to generate self hatred.

It is hard to live with people around you who are hostile.  The way most self-haters deal with their emotions is to try and assimilate, as blacks say...try to "pass".

The way to avoid self-hatred when there are hostile people around you is to appreciate yourself, if you can.  To cope with anti-Americanism which certainly exists in the world to some extent, you have to be proud to be an American.

Simple.  Hard for people who don't really appreciate their lives or their country or their fellow countrymen.

Fund for commerce

I mentioned earlier the idea that a chicken rancher wouldn’t want to pass on his inheritance to a foundation to support foxes. People who earn their money in the meritocratic, open and diverse world of business will someday feel the same way and will leave most of their money to philanthropy that supports business and commercial values.

To make such philanthropy easier I am starting a foundation that will distribute money to support the kind of society that created thriving commerce. Help me come up with a name. So far I only have Pro-commerce Fund and Fund for Commercial Values.

I need a better name. Please help.

Self-hating Americans 1

I regularly hear Americans say "most of the world hates America these days."  People who say that are self-hating Americans.

What they are saying, statistically speaking, is that press reports of  hatred of America ... by Arabs, and Lefty Europeans ... bother them because they agree with the anti-American foreigners.

Why would I say that?  Because the statement that "most of the world hates America these days" is totally false and some explanation is needed for why people would make such false statements.. Count the numbers yourself.

The Chinese are 18% of the world and they hardly care about America, they certainly are neutral not antagonistic.  Indians are 17% of the world and they range from neutrality to liking America.  Then add three countries that love America, Japan, the Philippines and Persia and we get another 5%. Then there are the majority of Australians, a third of the Canadians, a third of the Germans and about a third of the British who love us and have shown it with their elections. That is another 3%.  Finally there are all the Eastern Europeans who genuinely love America. 

I have enumerated a majority of the world, without doing any questionably competent cross-cultural surveys.  Moreover, there are plenty of people in Russia, Mexico, Central and Latin America who love us in spite of their long history of antagonism. There are many people in the rest of the world who I haven't mentioned; they clamor to get visas and green cards.

Only a person who can't think or add would conclude that there is a vast anti-American hatred. 

Back to my original point.  Americans who talk about the vast level of anti-Americans have constructed this nonsense to validate their own feelings, propping it up with articles and surveys of European elites who hated America in the 1950's when I visited there and have long complex love-hate relations with us, unrelated to reality or our behavior.

Three cheers for the GNP

In the late 1970s I wrote a book called Transaction Based Economics. The basic model was good,  I argued that the fundamental unit of commerce is not an exchange but is a transaction. An exchange is simple and clear but in the real world we have transactions that have many attendant features such as service, warrantees and recourse. 

I ended the book with a model of the GNP proposed by Hazel Henderson and others that weighted the GNP by attaching measurements of environmental goodness and an array of social equity standards.

I was ideological and stupid.  I apologize for my wrong position, my pathetically incompetent thinking about integrating social weights and economics.   Any harm done by my juvenile advocacy of narrow morality is deeply regretted by me.

The GNP is a brilliant invention, it is double entry bookkeeping, surprisingly reliable and resilient and it is not part of a moral system.

To weight this great invention down with morality would make it useless. 

Think for one moment about a Congress somewhere sometime subtracting from the GNP for every abortion, every child that announces his or her homosexuality and for every drunk who ends up in the drunk tank.  There will be a Congress somewhere else that subtracts from their GNP for every child born without two parents, they will subtract for every carton of cigarettes sold, for every species lost, for every addition to suburban sprawl and for every drug dealer sent to prison.

Don't those two hypothetical scenarios tell you why the GNP (or the GDP) should exist without moral constraints?

Who are we?

America has been shaped by our wars.  First we became equalitarian by fighting the stratified Brits and driving out the blue bloods, then we became urban industrialists when we fought the Southern plantation pseudo aristocratic dandies. In the past century we developed a competent government and managerial skills when we fought the highly stratified, organized and anal Germans and later the Japanese.  Finally we became lovers of the free market and triumphant lovers of commerce in our battles with the central planning of socialism and communism.

I suspect we are now in the process of creating a new religio/secular way of thinking and acting that is the outcome of confronting tribal religiosity.

America the dirty

I have many Japanese friends who visit the United States.  I frequently offer a guest room to my friends when they visit.

I feel bad about inviting Japanese to the United States.  Their country is so clean and so safe and my country is so filthy and so dangerous that I only feel OK sending them to Yosemite, Sausalito and Disneyland. There are whole areas of every American city, some entire cities, where it is dangerous to walk, especially for a foreign woman alone, even in the day time.

Why do we put up with these third world conditions? 

My only answer is pathetic, and I sure can't weigh the numbers.  There exists some sort of imaginary social scales where we make a direct trade-off.  On one side of the scales we are accepting boundless numbers of immigrants, letting total human failures fall off the ladder of merit, and letting lazy incompetents wander free without supervision. On the other side of the scales, this freedom to fail gives us an imaginative, creative and vigorous society.

We accept the dirty and dangerous for the freedom and creativity that come with it.

Fund for traitors

Attention Roland Arnall, (ambassador to Holland).  There has been a steady stream of American State Department traitors from Joe Wilson to the anti-American State Department bloggers in Europe.

Solution: Offer any State Department employee who is planning to attack the policies of the U.S. publicly or thinks they might do so in the future, $60,000 and a  pension fund if they will step forward and quit.

You and a few of your friends in the ambassadorial circle could afford to make this offer. The few department employees who take the offer would serve as good examples, and the issue could be dealt with publicly as it should be.  The State Department effectiveness suffers severely with each new traitor.

The Buffett issue

What should a wise wealthy person do with his or her money?

I have been a foundation president and a foundation executive several times. I have also been a consultant to many dozens of heirs and heiresses. There is no reason for me to defend my views that wise people already know. Inheriting money or expecting to inherit money is debilitating. Wise people also know that philanthropy seldom has positive social outcomes.

Skip to the chase.....

Earthquake soon?

While I was in Tokyo my basement began to flood.  Research has determined that the source is an artesian spring that puts out about 20 gallons an hour.  After I have the water quality tested, you may be able to buy Upper Castro bottled water.

My main concern about a spring that suddenly appears during the summer is that the ground water in San Francisco has shifted for tectonic reasons.  Before the massive San Francisco earthquake of 1864, the ground water that fills Lake Merced dropped.  My children all went to high school within view of Lake Mercer and I asked them to phone me immediately if the level of the lake dropped.

Could my Upper Castro Spring Water be a precursor to the next big earthquake?

Mephistopheles

I read The Devil Wears Prada on my vacation.  It is good trash.  Quite funny.  I have no idea how the movie will look, but that is one of my observations in this blog.

The Devil is not a character in the Torah.  He appears first in pre-European literature as the Greek Mephistopheles. The relevance of the title of the book to the issue of the Devil is that the book is the simple story of a Jewish suburban New York princess who works for a year as the assistant to a powerful fashion editor who is a yenta. It is a story about endless whining and self doubt.

Jews aren't very good at ...

Fetishistic world

In my book Commerce I talk about commerce being ultimately driven by consumer whims. I want to revise that　term, it is not driven by whims. Once one has abundance it is driven by fetishism.

This all hit me when I was tasting "the best sashimi in Japan" after having drunk three or four glasses of "the best sake in Japan." (I could have tasted a coke with a Big Mac at that point and been impressed.)

We consumers are driven by fetishism. What other term could describe the doctors in my gym locker room who talk about wine they buy and drink, nearly every day...or bicyclists who know every detail of every bike, or people who know everything about clothes and fashion?

Nearly everything, in our world of abundance has become a fetish, from shoes, to coffee, to bottled water. Fetish is a more descriptive term than whim.

The opposite of consumer fetishism is simple living.

Movie suit

A friend of mine sued a film maker for using his name maliciously in a feature film. My friend's exact name was used for the name of the rogue brokerage firm in the film. My friend and the studio settled for a few tens of thousands of dollars. (I had told him not to sue, it would only draw attention to him.)

I was wrong. The film was not supported by the studio and consequently was a bomb.

I just saw the film on cable re-run and it was really good. Had it gotten a modicum of promotion it might have done well at the box office.

Art in government

It was unusual to go to an art gallery in the Shibuya Welfare Office.

In the past few years, the Governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara co-author of The Japan That Can Say No, has started a project to create 100 art galleries in government offices.

In Japan art galleries are often self supporting, so having a free space creates a viable economic resource. Artists pay for their own PR and split the revenue from art sales.

Outside Japan most art galleries are either supported by wealthy people, tourists or a stash of very popular and abundant pieces of art.

Human mind

It is easy to tell if someone has even a rudimentary understanding of the human mind.

A person who understands the mind keeps a notepad and pen, to write with, on their person. All images, ideas and insights seem like they are monumental and would never be forgotten...at the moment they occur. But they are gone a short time later, forgotten forever, or at least forgotten until they reappear briefly a few years or decades later.

This phenomenon was first pointed out to me by Bucky Fuller in an idle conversation we had one afternoon.

Sunni-Shia war

Someone has to ask the question.  I guess it must be me.  Would the world benefit from encouraging a Sunni-Shia war?

Maybe the U.S. should pull our troops back inside the Green line and let the Iraqis fight.

It would most likely be a long war, with millions of soldiers. Both sides would have to keep selling oil to pay for the war, but both sides would also be targeting the oil fields.

The greatest advantage of such a war, mostly fought in Iran-Iraq and Iran-Afghanistan would be that it could last several generations and keep the Islamolunatics busy so they would ignore the rest of the world.  (Lebanon would probably be a battle ground too with 45% Shia population.)

A basic tenet of traditional international realpolitique is: 'lets you and him fight.'

Both sides would probably use nukes. According to Bernard Lewis in the 8-8-2006 Wall Street Journal, neither side would hesitate to nuke the other side.

The US would have to protect the Kurds and the Turks, but that would be a good place to have Middle East bases.

Maybe its not a bad idea. Its appeal may come from my personal discomfort at sitting around doing little and being a victim of a global anti-commercial, anti-Semitic movement.

Quiet city

A guest who stayed with us in Tokyo a few years ago was stunned by the quiet in the middle of the largest, richest, city in the world. I really hadn't noticed.

The level of quiet came home to me one day when approaching home. There is a wall of ivy next to our house. The wall seemed to make a sound like barely running water. Closer examination showed that the sound was thousands of seeds popping open and falling on the leaves below them.

Tokyo, in the near center, is so quiet that I could hear seeds popping open.

Israel and THEL

Israel and everyone else appears to have made a mistake.  Israel didn't install the THEL laser system that Israel participated in creating. The THEL was able to destroy Katyushas and Kassams. The land based device was big and costly...a desirable target. The mobile version is still under development.  Israel already has installed the radar from the THEL program for use in targeting launch sites with mortars.

Wait a second.  Maybe Israel wanted a reason to decapitate Hamas and Hezbollah.  It unfortunately cost dozens of Israeli military and civilian lives and got worldwide support for Israel to carry out attacks.  Maybe it was a positive but tragic decision. 

The THEL is a weapon that can be deployed in the future when it may really be needed more.

Israel's fault again

I was able, on vacation, to watch international CNN and BBC news.  Both news organizations, known for their anti-Semitism, were trying to be balanced in their reporting...partly because George Bush and many other global leaders made it clear that Hezbollah was a terrorist organization and Israel had a right of self-defense.

But even balanced reporting didn't work.  The newscasts come off as showing the miserable Lebanese victims and the staunch Israelis surviving in their shelters.

The Israelis just have themselves to blame ....

Honest Japanese

I have been studying Japan for 35 years, carefully. Most non-Japanese people I talk to immediately denounce the proposition that the Japanese are terribly honest. But I never stop finding surprising examples that confirm my observation and the observations of 4th Century Chinese visitors who wrote about the Japanese honesty.

One friend in Tokyo is a CPA and corporate treasurer who just became a consultant. Her job is to install financial controls for the up-coming Japanese version of Sarbox. Everywhere she turns she finds resistance except at international companies. Japanese executives always resist her, saying 'why would you hire anyone if you don't trust them?'

On the other hand, Japanese executives who have dealt with overseas operations totally support financial controls because the have been burned regularly by foreign employees they totally trusted.

Violence begets violence

I hear this statement from many otherwise intelligent people. It is not wisdom it is merely a truism. Violence is always responded to with violence, even among Quakers.

A modicum of thought will reveal to anyone with an open mind that all wars end. Europe was at war for a thousand years; but isn't today. The same was true for internal wars between different parts of China. What happened to the Cold War? All wars end and the truism about violence begets violence doesn't offer any explanation of why wars end. The phrase is inane.
Gandhi would be the worst example, if people knew their history. Not a peace lover, that historic sham, Gandhi threatened to have India join Hitler if he weren't promised independence. So much for non-violent theory.

All wars seem to end for different reasons. Some because too much blood is shed, others because of new offensive or defensive weapons, still others because of new alliances and still others when the outcome is evident.

Violence begets violence and after the violence there are new an unpredictable outcomes.