Pro Commerce

In case you missed it

I know that many of my readers don't read the NYTimes nor follow many other blogs.  For these readers I want to make two points.

* The NYTimes (called the Grey Lady by staffers, called the Constipated Grey Lady by me) did an editorial on Friday that attacked Obama for renouncing public campaign funding, opposing the Supreme Court ruling against capital punishment for child rape and for 'moving toward the center'. The Times had an op-ed by Frank Rich attacking the faux presidential seal and moving to the center. She also had a comment adjacent to an article saying that Obama's faith based plan was a sham because it requires churches to hire non-church members as employees.

The Times no longer considers Obama as the Messiah.

* The relevance of this is that the Grey Lady is the head of the Democratic Party.  What she says and does has always shaped the direction and sentiment on the Left.  Nearly every other Lefty follows lock-step in the path of the Grey Lady: cartoonists, magazines, blogs, TV news...Party leaders.  With the Party leader against Obama the Democratic Convention should be one giant uproar or one miserable crying fest.

Really bad for science

If you think we have a problem getting young people to study the sciences, just wait ten years for the time when the Global Warming hysteria has passed. 

Public support for "science" is at its peak right now.  Its downhill from here on as the public comes to know how much the 'scientific community' has misled everyone, especially with the unmitigated BS that there is a consensus among "scientists" about human caused global warming.

I watched the environmental movement become a ghost of itself after 1993 when I first announced that the global population explosion had ended.  The enviros were never honest enough to admit the demise of their Armageddon.

Science will lose out, technology will not.

I expect people to begin to understand that science and technology are largely independent fields of human endeavor.  Technology will gain, science will slip.  Technology almost always leads science in opening new worlds of understanding, just as it did with the Hubble telescope that opened whole new fields of astronomical studies.  Science is the realm of models and testable hypothesis, for which the Hubble was used to test a variety of hypothesis....a few of which were appropriate.

I've created a public table of global temperatures since 1968 with two charts, one since 1968 and the other since 1993.  The source is the Hadley Center at the University of East Anglia in Norwich England.

The data makes it clear that, based on 5,000 temperature measurements covering the globe, there has been no global warming since 1998.  The data is pretty clear, we are in a level or declining temperature period.

Deja vu

Back in the hippy days I personally took no stand on the Vietnam War because I knew I didn't have any of the relevant facts.  No one ever questioned me on the subject because it was assumed that everyone, no exceptions, was opposed to the Vietnam War.

Last night I was at a 4th of July Party where everyone made their living from Green tech and other business premised on Global Warming.  Everyone assumed that everyone else, no exceptions, took the global warming hysteria very seriously.

As good as

There have been many justifiable statements that the Colombian rescue operation team was 'as good as the Israelis'.  Obviously the Israeli commandos are the gold standard of the world and obviously the Colombian commandos did a great job.

When the movie gets made the world will have to know that, in fact, the Israelis trained the Colombians.  It comes from Haaretz and names names: former Brigadier General Israel Ziv, and former Brigadier Yossi Kuperwasser did the training.

Packing your one bag

I have always traveled with one carry-on bag so the current airline fee changes only mean I will have less space in the overhead compartment, due to more other people using it, the next time I fly.

The main advice I can give to anyone trying to fit everything into an overhead compartment bag is (1) buy the cheapest bag you can get in Chinatown because it will be light.  When it wears out get a new one.  Four light cheapie replacements will pay for one heavy expensive one.

(2) Wear your biggest-heaviest shoes, pack your light ones. The same thing with coats, sweaters and jackets.

(3) Figure out how to get clothes washed where you are going so you take only a few days worth.

Americans and the future

Peter Schwartz argued in the LATimes that Americans have been less optimistic than usual because:

"too many of us see change without progress and a world coming apart -- the dark dystopia of "Blade Runner" and "Mad Max" .....

"During the last 40 years, we lost faith first in science and technology, then in politics and finally in the economic engine of progress. Now science and technology seem poised to cause, not solve, problems -- "silent spring," smog and Chernobyl. Government is viewed as out of touch if not corrupt and incompetent -- Vietnam, Watergate, hanging chads and Katrina. Business, according to many, is rigged to reward an undeserving few while diminishing prospects for the rest -- oil crises, stagflation, a dot-com boom turned bust and Enron."

Peter you are mostly wrong.  Americans have lost some of their optimism because they think we have lost another war (Vietnam was #1 and post 9/11 Iraq is #2). The belief comes from the loud and dishonest voice of the current American media and the Democratic Party that loudly proclaims we have lost Iraq. Americans also live with a false history: we didn't lose in Vietnam, we won and the Democratic Party gave South Vietnam to the North 18 months later.

Of course as Americans slowly come to learn that we have won the war in Iraq, as much of the rest of the world already knows, our optimism will return.

Our optimism is returning, fortunately, and will be back by the end of the September Republican Convention.

The biggest issue

The biggest issue in the world of Pro Commerce is one that I nearly always forget.

I was reminded of my neglect when Alex told me about a recent phenomenon at his Internet company.  The company has over a million users worldwide and just recently added advertising to the site for the first time.

Alex was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the anti-advertising anti-business email that poured in. When Alex looked at the details he found that the email was almost entirely from Europe, including many young people.

That fact brought me back to reality.  America is unique in the world because we have gotten rid of our upper class.  (For how we did it look here.)  Europe is class riven and maybe always will be.  Business sustains the class structure, as most young Europeans are able to see.  A few countries have less class structure, Holland, Denmark and a few of the new East European countries.  But highly stratified classes are the rule in Europe and business, despite its need to reward merit, hasn't made a dent in the class structure.

We Americans simply forget how different we are.  Commerce has always been accepted, even respected in America, and still more so now that business is class free.

From Alex, I also note, that the rest of the world did not respond with hostility to new advertising on the website the way Europe did.  That difference will take a lot more discussion because hostility to business is rooted in different loci in different cultures.  The world has many tribal cultures, old classes (such as India), family and padrone structures that are quite different from European social classes.

Obama versus commerce

I just read Barack Obama's so called 'Patriotism Speech'. 

I can say without qualification that this man has overlooked 90% of what most Americans would say is the basis for loving this country and he ignores 100% of what I think warrants my love of America.

Obama never mentions commerce.  The closest he comes is a mention of the global economy that requires U.S. government intrusion in education and science.

Commerce has been what made America great.  Commerce is what made America work from the beginning.  Alexander Hamilton is the hero of those of us who understand the driving forces of our great nation.  From day one, Hamilton forced the new Federal government to assume the bonded debts of every state left over from the revolutionary war.  Any other choice would have left the 13 states a basket case.  Hamilton built the treasury, the tax collection system, the vehicles for international trade, the financial system; all of these are the core of a free strong independent America.  Commerce is the basis of our greatness.

Obama probably doesn't have any idea of what he doesn't know.  Obama has no idea that 90% of Americans would answer the question 'why do you love America?' different than he.  Americans will say our love comes from: the opportunity of every single person to succeed.  We love our classlessness.  We love our merit based open market, we love our ability to travel, to shop, to create our own homes, families and the direction of our lives.  We love the opportunity to start a business.

I go further than that. I love the diversity of America and our ability, beyond that of nearly any other nation in the world (Canada and Israel are the exceptions) to assimilate immigrants.  I love the boundless rewards for merit, imagination, adventuresomeness, invention and risk taking.

Obama is not pro commerce and in fact he has no idea what is at the core of most American patriotism.

Democracy and identity

Natan Sharansky has become the most prominent figure in arguing about the nature and definition of democracy.  In the 6/16/2008 Wall Street Journal, Sharansky argued that the American model of religion, where all religions are permitted to be open about their clothes, food, prayers, etc is a better model than the European model which represses public demonstration of religion. The example he cites is the banning of Muslim head scarves in public schools.

Sharansky argues that assimilation is more likely where religious demonstration is openly accepted rather than repressed.

I happen to agree with Sharansky.  Not for the reason Sharansky gives, which is his view that public religious demonstration is fine but religious behavior that violates democratic norms such as family forced marriage and multiple wives should be banned. In Europe the behavior is ignored and the demonstration is suppressed.

I believe that when religion is publicly expressed and is immersed in an open commercial society it loses it potency. That is even true if the behavior is tolerated.  In a commercial society, the attraction of a free, self made independent life is virtually irresistible to the second generation immigrant.

Europe's problem is that it is static, class stratified, backward looking and there is no place for an immigrant to triumph solely on merit.  In Europe, assimilation is very difficult and religion becomes the social bond that helps people survive in the stodgy old European society.  Immigrants would like Europe if the Europeans let them.

The unhappy people

The following song is from South Pacific, a post WWII musical first produced in 1949.
I have underlined the parts of the song that describe the group of people who were morbid in the early post-war period before the Cold War began and when every country in the world was becoming socialist.

When the skies are brighter canary yellow
I forget ev'ry cloud I've ever seen,
So they called me a cockeyed optimist
Immature and incurably green.

I have heard people rant and rave and bellow
That we're done and we might as well be dead,
But I'm only a cockeyed optimist
And I can't get it into my head.

I hear the human race is fallin' on its face
And hasn't very far to go,
But ev'ry whippoorwill
Is sellin' me a bill,
And tellin' me it just ain't so.

I could say life is just a bowl of Jello
And appear more intelligent and smart,
But I'm stuck like a dope
With a thing called hope,
And I can't get it out of my heart!
Not this heart...

Over the intervening 55 years the actual group of morbid people referred to in this song has changed a little.  In 1949, the fatalistic people that Oscar Hammerstein was referring to were (1) mostly the anti-Roosevelt crowd who believed that Roosevelt had taken the country down the road to Socialism and (2) the radical communists who could see that America was not going to have a worker's revolution. Roughly 70% anti-socialists and 30% pro-revolution/anti-commerce.

Today the morbid group has changed. The fatalist now believes human caused Global Warming is destroying the earth, that group is about 70% anti-commerce and 20% anti-George W. Bush.  Today, among the fatalists, only a tiny 10% resemble the anti-Roosevelt group that think we are doomed because we have lost our old values and gone too far down the road to socialism. 

A complete reversal in 'morbidity'.