Pro Commerce

For-profit schools

There is currently a massive attack on for-profit schools.

The Department of Education is inundated with lobbyists and political pressure, mostly from the left, to harm or shut down for-profit schools.

A for-profit school is a distinctive animal separate from private schools that are owned by nonprofits and public schools.

The best-known of the for-profit schools is DeVry University a noted technical training school.

Most for-profit schools depend on student loans and student loans are government guaranteed.  That is the leverage point that is being used to threaten for-profit schools.

The biggest claim by the antagonists to for-profit schools, is that they have a higher default rate on student loans than the other two categories of education.  

This is a blatant lie.  It comes from the left that has an automatic bias toward public schools, community colleges etc.

For-profit schools are disproportionately successful at attracting low income students who want technical and specialized training that will result in jobs. That is precisely the opposite of what the left wants. As usual with the left, poor people get the shaft.

For-profit schools graduate a far higher percentage of Latinos and blacks than any comparable private or public school. They do have a higher default rate because the student body is low income to begin with.

Look at the chart above. On the far right compare the two-year public schools default rate to the two-year for-profit school rate. The difference is insignificant when you consider that they are fairly close income groups; with the for-profit having more minorities.

Now you have the facts. Listen to the bias and selfish vendettas of the people who are attacking for-profit schools.

Personal

This blog is about commerce; it is not about me, except incidentally when my experience is the issue

I assume my readers are not interested in my personal life.  For the past four months I have dealt with carpal tunnel syndrome, a bloggers malady.  Here is a boring description.

 

Arab revolutions

Anyone who wants to make solid predictions about the turmoil in the current Arab world is operating on sheer bravado.

There are vast differences between Tunisia, Jordan, Libya, and several other Arab states.

I ventured into this issue for two reasons; one, a loyal and beloved reader asked my views; two I know a little more about the Arab world than most of my neighbors, but not much more.

First and foremost, George W Bush created the tinder brush that we now see erupting in flames in Arab countries with his creation of modern Iraq.

Bush’s vision of individual Arabs as seeking individual freedom is not my vision.  I have found Arabs from Bedouin in the East to Kurds in the West to be entirely tribal. That means that their cousins and family within and between tribes are the dominant elements of their world. Virtually no exceptions.

If two people have any conflict they will seek the highest ranking common tribal member to adjudicate. If they have any venture to initiate they will only use close relatives.  Arabs live in a world of pervasive fear, where family and tribal relations are the only protection.

This being my view of the Arab world I see stability occurring at a national level only as a pyramid of tribes.  Such pyramids can be very stable but are susceptible to resorting in periods of economic distress or political upheaval. The resorting period can take a long time despite apparent initial stability.  The best example is the nearly two-year period that Iraq has required to gain a modicum of political stability. Lebanon is an even easier example of a long time period for negotiation to achieve some modicum of stability; about three years after each erruption.

Lastly,  I foresee no new structure resembling democracy as we know it but I do see the development of expanding commercial trade in areas that create tribal and inter-tribal political stability.  Day to day economic life can get better as it is now in Ramallah.

The model that is being created in Iraq, with protection from foreign enemies created by the United States, is likely to become a model of several emerging Arab states.  I am not talking 2011,  I am talking decades and decades.  I see an Arab world not unlike that of Lawrence of Arabia but with the model of Iraq as a template.

Olbermann’s network

Keith Olbermann has been kicked off of MSNBC.

There is speculation that he will organize his own network in an effort to consolidate his following and generate more profit. He has roughly 400,000 regular viewers on cable.

There is a serious problem for him to start his own network. The problem is lawsuits for libel and slander.  Being part of a NBC protected him because the network has a budget of $20 million a year for legal fees.  Such a budget would rapidly eat up Olbermann’s own new proposed network.

Olbermann has a unique liability/slander problem.  He claimed, a year ago, during the Scott Brown Senatorial campaign that Brown had raped his own daughter.  That would be a slam dunk lawsuit that would put Olbermann out of business if he were on his own network.

I’m sure my one or two lefty readers will dismiss this possibility with claims that Limbaugh ( 22 million followers) or Hannity ( 14 million followers) convey libel and slander all the time.  

That simply isn’t true. Both read from scripts that have been carefully prepared and reviewed by counsel.

Google versus Facebook

The financial world is currently making comparisons between Google and Facebook largely because  Facebook is getting more minutes of user time than Google.

In my opinion this is an absurd comparison. Many things get more time than Google including television shows, cable, telephones and movies and yet the only question is how good is that vehicle for marketing.

The reality is that only Google offers the opportunity of marketing directly to the final consumer at the point that the consumer is looking for information about a purchase. Google will have that advantage long into the future

Facebook, on the other hand, may consume a great deal of the users time but the user is in no particular mood to buy. Advertising under those circumstances is nothing but broadcast wasted money like billboards and magazine ads.

Google is not in competition with Facebook. Google stands alone as one of the finest marketing tools available now and far into the future.

Don’t you wonder?

I created a Park for street people. I have managed food lines for the needy.  I occasionally wonder where these people came from.

No amount of conversation seems to give any clues.  Most had some education many have a modicum of skills and most have had a job at one time or another.  Many have addiction problems.

I think talking to a public school teacher is a good source for the answer.  Every teacher had some students who were dull, hopeless, disruptive and in a few cases, mean.  Teachers have no idea where these people end up.  I do.  In jail, prison and in food lines.

Can commerce find a productive role for these people?

For my answer I go to 1998 San Francisco. Unemployment rate was -2%.  Meaning no people were listed as looking for jobs, all the listings were for job openings.   Workers were so scarce that most of my clients were hiring their friends, family and relatives.  That was the closest to full employment I have ever seen.

Still there were plenty of people in food lines, hanging out on the street and collecting unemployment insurance.

 

Important source of productivity

In the past two decades we have seen stunning increases in productivity in the United States.  Clearly a large part of the current unemployment is a result of previous productivity increases and the consequent lack of need for workers.

Many suggestions have been made as to the sources of increased productivity ranging from computers, changes in management structure, better information in the workplace, better corporate structure, flatter management, outsourcing and better transportation ( UPS and FedEx).

I would still like to suggest an obvious source of increased productivity that is rarely mentioned or noticed.   We have dramatically reduced the number of private sector union workers. From 11 million in 1990 to less than 7 million today. Dramatic.

Unions are inherently counter commerce, counter productivity and the reduction of their importance in the private world must be resulting in productivity increases.  

Of course the growth of unions in government probably has little effect on productivity because government has a negative productivity measurement to begin with ( remember, every dollar spent on government means $.80 back into the economy).

Aliens anyone?

I have never been interested in the search for extraterrestrial aliens. There are so many species on Earth that can communicate that I wonder why we don't make an effort to communicate with them.  Nor do we treat that as a serious matter. Certainly we do not spend millions on our fellow Earth creatures as we do on SETI.

If there were aliens, 40 years of millions of dollars spent searching, should force data-based thinkers into asking the question 'Where are the aliens?'  Here is an article by Matt Ridley that explains why they don't exist or why they are so few as to not be near us. 

We have a very low probability with the size of our moon that gives us a uniquely stable gyroscoptic orbit and the consequent atmospheric stability.

Unhappy Jews

We hear a little about people who are unhappy about being black and people who were unhappy with a number of other identity issues: gender and ethnicity.

Of course if you are black or a woman, you can change that by becoming a Republican.  If you are a Jew you can usually change that by changing your name.  My uncle Fred, who was a self hating Jew, changed his name from Herz to Hart.  ( He spent his entire adult life in psychotherapy.)

Many Jews deal with their unhappiness and self-hatred about their Jewishness ( about 20% of American Jews, nearly all of whom are in the Reform category) by publicly attacking Israel or simply dismissing Israel as unimportant or a mistake.  ( They are implicitly suggesting that the 6 million Jews in Israel would be better off dead.) This self-hatred attracts attention ( think George Soros) because no other group has a similar response to their fellow compatriots.  American blacks don’t dislike or attack Africans, nor do Chinese, Gypsies or transgender people.

Self hating Jews are of great public interest because they are such a unique and bizarre group. They could hide their Jewishness in most cases, but they choose to assimilate by joining the people who want Jews eliminated.  

That is interesting.   That is interesting especially to journalism.  Remember, self hating Jews have no more authority or expertise on Israel than actors and actresses have on general politics and world affairs.

Commerce and compassion

When I see a state like Illinois or California driving out commerce because of their inadequate or false understanding of profit and commerce, I feel horrible. I feel deep compassion for the people of those states, people whose lives are disrupted and sometimes mutilated.

To someone else the fact that large corporations will be leaving Chicago and Los Angeles and moving to areas that are more friendly to business does not seem to matter.  Democratic politicians cannot even conceive consequences of their political actions.

To me that means individual children will have to move to new schools, give up their old friends, learn to adjust to new ways to dress and different ways of talking. Their friendship networks are disrupted, their relatives have to make major adjustments in their lives, in travel, to be able to keep families intact and functional.

Mothers and fathers will be forced to find new jobs, make new friends, adjust to new neighborhoods, trying to understand the complexities of new healthcare systems and new schools. To me, these are horrible involuntary disruptions, often resulting in divorce, family pain, family suffering.

Do you have compassion for the horror, misery and potential for moral breakdown that bad politics and even worse tax policy creates in the lives of these hard-working sincere Americans?

Darwinian state evolution

Three states are raising taxes and already have high taxes; California, Illinois and New York.  Three states have lower taxes. Texas, Georgia and Florida and are very pro-business.

The former three are not growing at all, based on the latest census, the latter three are growing rapidly. In the growth states business has been moving in, generating wealth and attracting population.

Somehow Democrats as people and as elected representatives are incapable of understanding or believing that taxes can attract business or drive it away.

Part of this Democrat blindness has to do with an ignorance of profit. The left thinks profit is exploitation, extraction and just plain dirty.  The rest of us know the profits are simply a measure of successful cost reduction, market expansion and customer satisfaction.

It may take a long time before people in California, Illinois and New York wallow in their declining job opportunity, declining prosperity and general dystopia.  

But we have the wonderful quality of Darwinian evolution to assure us that the Democratic states will empty out while the Republican pro-business states expand and grow vigorously.

Weekly magazines crash

There is a structural relationship between news and the reporting of news.

Fires, murders and other daily news were and are picked up by newspapers and tv. A day-old newspaper is still boring.

Political news was picked up by weekly magazines.

Contextual, commentary and academic related material was picked up in monthlies.  Basic records were kept in quarterlies.

The Internet has, interestingly, demolished the weekly political magazine’s because politics is so well reported promptly on the Internet and in blogs.

 Expensive photo weeklies died a long time ago because newspapers were consolidating in the 1960's, improving photo technology and getting better as the public shifted to TV for daily news.

The remaining weeklies are now dead. Newsweek closed and sold for a dollar.

Time magazine is dead and doing a shocking thing in its spasm death throes. Time has become the voice of international UN-Fourth Reich Jew hate.  It is disgusting to watch. Fortunately it will fail close its doors. 

Time is a symptom of the lefty anti-commerce milieu in the world of journalism. Like a prisoner on death row journalists choose their favorite food (Jew hate) for their last meal.

Japanese fog in San Francisco

I was a regular five day a week morning runner for a long time. Most of the runners at the 6 AM start time in the Presidio knew each other.

One morning a representative of a Japanese TV crew came by and asked a dozen of us runners if we would run the next day, when fog was expected, at the location in the photograph.

We showed up and were given blinking red bicycle lights to put on our butts.  We ran as a group with the blinking lights and a fairly light fog, and we were videotaped. 

As was explained to us at the time there was a television program, which I later saw in Japan, called “truth or punishment”.  The contestants were shown this video clip of my friends and I running in the fog.  They were asked if it were true that San Francisco had legislation requiring blinking red lights for runners in heavy fog.   

So far San Francisco has not gotten to be that ‘nanny-ish’.

Symbols and hysteria

The recent attack on Sarah Palin and her 2010 campaign use of a simple business symbol was blown into hysterical evidence that connected her public dialogue to murder in Tuscon.

That, so called Palin symbol can be seen in the images on the left and right side of this blog.  The symbol is used in the mobile telephone world to indicate that a GPS locator is turned off on. ( top line of the phone.)

A similar hysteria occurred in the 1980s when a century old symbol used by the Proctor and Gamble was connected to Satanic rituals.  There was no defense that PG could use, hysteria is hysteria.

Both these hysteric outbreaks have two things in common that all business people should be careful about. First there isn’t a shred of evidence which by definition makes them hysterical and impossible to counter. Second they occur in the fertile ground of anti-commerce and anti-technology.

Paradigm shift

Thomas Kuhn introduced the concept of a paradigm shift in science. He was referring to change, old theory to a new theory based on significant evidence. His actual theory was that the old scientists have to decrease in number for the younger scientists to become dominant.  I’m grateful for the term paradigm shift.

There has been a paradigm shift in ‘modern medicine’. There is no appropriate term for modern medicine, the term allopathic has unnecessary hostility built into it.   

I want to point out that modern medicine was shocked by a single acupuncture treatment and has opened its view of all acupuncture.  The thing that created this paradigm shift in modern medicine was that a single acupuncture point on the toe, is able to turn a breech baby around in utero.

Kaiser all over the country has sent MDs for training in acupuncture.

Keep this kind of single extraordinary example in mind if you are trying to produce a paradigm shift.

Near miracles

There are several areas of cancer treatment that have resulted in stunning recent breakthroughs.

The first is the development of medicines that attack estrogen positive breast cancer cells. If caught and treated in the early stages of post menopausal breast cancer, survival rates are near 100%.

The second development has been childhood leukemia. Just in the past few years the ability to destroy cancerous cells in the bones and replace the marrow successfully has meant survival for virtually all cases.  The opposite was true only a few years ago.

Off the track.  I see television commercials for St. Jude’s Hospital on this subject and these people claim success in childhood leukemia. The St. Jude people have nothing whatsoever to do with the radical improvement in this treatment.  They are parasites, frauds and have been frauds for decades.

The third development which is very recent and not confirmed by doctors who I know personally, is prostate cancer. According to articles I have read the use of targeted radiation has resulted in successful treatment for prostate cancer. Successful treatment means, for me,  survival without incontinence and survival with sexual functions intact.

Truly three miracles we can all be grateful for.   Our gratitude should be directed at the world of commerce that makes these developments possible.  The developments did not come from Cuba, North Korea, Iran or Mexico.

Commercial Real Estate

I was asked by a friend what is happening in the commercial real estate market that would generate a good investment.

My response is based on the knowledge of one great example, the history of my helping start hundreds of small businesses and the very nature of economic growth via small businesses.

When in Seattle, writing about an espresso machine called the Slayer, I visited the Slayer manufacturing space.  The space was in a building in a safe but rundown industrial section; the building owners had taken a very chaotic structure with roughly 70,000 ft.² and probably a cost well under under $1 million, that had plenty of parking and a little rustic character.   The developers moved in, installed plenty of electric power, light and slowly remodeled each space into a unique architectural vision.  Each space was clean, stark, simple and accessible. The developers remained in the space until all of the building was rented.  The rents were low and remain so. It is my guess that the building generates net rents of  $60,000 per month.  

That is a very high return.  

I think similar investments are to be found all over America. First you want a rundown safe neighborhood with low-cost industrial space.  My experience is that that is the locus of new business that need very low-cost space and significant isolation from residential and other Puritan morals.

Second you are entering a market that has permanent growth in America; startups.  The developer probably needs to be in the building for a long time because startups, come and go.  They are most comfortable around other similar startups. A small electronic invention  manufacturer is not comfortable next door to a button sewing sweatshop or a fire cracker manufacturer.

There may be a widespread belief that startups like greenhouse or hothouse environments. That is not my experience. These are not delicate entrepreneurial flowers they are substantial self-motivated competent people.

Start remodeling vacant industrial safe buildings and making money. Go to it.

Best blogs 1-1 to 1-14

My final comment on wikileaks. Nothing to do with openness or transparency.

I can't resist observing that environmentalists reject their fundamental theories. They don't believe their own science.

Update on natural gas, the major change in the 21st century.

Brilliant observation. The Euro will fail because it was based on poor analysis. A complete missreading of ethnicity.

A long but accurate comparison of pro-commerce to economics. It includes, for those who are patient, an explanation of the intellectual underpinning.

What economics is missing

This is a very long blog, my apologies.

It is from a letter to an intellectual Jerusalem magazine about Professor Moav's, an economist's, review of Prof. Rubinstein’s economics book.

"Omer Moav has done a wonderful job of summarizing and critiquing Ariel Rubinstein’s views on the theory and practice of economics. (Economic Tales)

My concern, as a business consultant for more than 40 years and as an author of business books, has been with the broader subject of commerce. Commerce has a separate intellectual history from economics with only a few major recognized thinkers such as Max Weber and Georg Simmel.  In the fields of commerce and economics, there is a small overlap with Adam Smith, who contributed observations about specialization, and David Ricardo, who demonstrated the positive sum nature of commerce.

In contrast to the work of both Moav and Rubinstein, who argue about the role of theory in economics, commerce does not have a theoretical framework behind it.  The study of commerce must be  inherently structured along the lines of lists, tables and hierarchical observations.

Commerce, as a field of study based on lists, tables and hierarchical observations would not be consistent with traditional definitions of science or social science. Such a field, without theory, is best understood by the work of UC Berkeley/Swiss philosopher Paul Feyerabend.

Feyerabend taught that it is not possible to have theories that apply to the emperic world. In the emperic world the closest one could come to useful thinking tools for understanding is a list or a set of priorities and a hierarchy of observations. In repairing an automobile engine it is not useful to have a knowledge of combustion gas theory; it is always useful to have a list starting with ‘check the battery, check the fuel, check the ignition’ and such and such.

Euro lesson: not America or Israel

The euro will be a 21st century failure much the same way as communism and socialism were in the 20th century.

I expect the European financial union to fall apart slowly over the next decade. In the end we will have several strong currencies the Deutsche mark and the Frank as we did before and a number of weak currencies. What was wrong with the model of the European financial union?

In the 20th century we found that communism didn’t work because people cannot be remade as individuals by their government.    The lesson in the failure of the euro is that governments cannot be remade into a unified structure that will have new and desirable characteristics. Putting governments together is not like making soup or salad. A combination is not positive. The new national entity has the same shortcomings as the individual nations. The Greeks remain just as lazy and democratically unwilling to bear the cost of government or control costs as they did before the union was created.

The founders of the Euro looked at the examples of the United States, Israel and the British colonies and saw the remarkable economic vitality of mixing different nationalities.  The problem with this model is that (except for India in the British colonies) we are talking about new population settlements.  These were nations that were settled by individuals with vast national differences; but tthey were able to coalesce slowly to form a coherent population and a functioning society.   

That has absolutely nothing to do with the Euro except the wonderful American,  Canadian and Israeli examples are misread as a synthesis of nations rather than a national synthesis of ethnicities.

Natural gas

I was wrong in an earlier blog to completely dismiss environmentalist's complaints about fracking of shale to release natural gas at 8000 to 15,000 feet.  I couldn't imagine having an effect on groundwater that comes from 200 to 600 feet below the surface.

While environmentalists have a long history of hysteria and scientific error, in this case there is a slight validity to their hysteria

Fracking: fragmenting, and breaking up shale to release natural gas is done with inert chemicals that will not harm humans even in the drinking aquifer.

The real issue is that the shale has acted as a rubber barrier for the natural gas coming out of the earth and when the fracking breaks up the shale the cracks can allow many elements to seep up to ground level. To the aquifer.

The solution is straightforward: removal of the intruding elements from the water in the specific places where the intrusion occurs.  Usually not expensive or difficult.

The second point to make about natural gas, the abundant world that we now enjoy, is that the most likely conversion will occur for stationary producers of electricity, electric utilities, and dense uses such as buses taxis and fleet vehicles.

3-D

In the 1950s there was a very aggressive movement in the film industry to introduce 3-D movies. It was hoped, at the time, that this would stave off the decline in the movie audience that was moving to television.  It didn’t work.

We are seeing the same pattern again today with a near hysteric worship of the modern 3-D movie by Hollywood producers. Now the effort is to stave off a movement away from movies in theaters to movies on home screens and many computer related activities.

I expect no more success today with a frivolous addition of 3-D to the ticket, than I experienced 50 years ago.

A worthwhile experiment to keep in mind for its general implications was done by Bell Labs in England in the early 1960s. A wide range of circumstances were tested with the introduction of phones and television supplement to the phones. There was a belief that television images to accompany the telephone conversation would be valuable, significant and highly desirable to consumers. It turned out to be untrue.

The bandwidths for communication are not necessarily flexible. Going from black and white to color seems to be valuable. Adding video to a conversation doesn’t seem to be of much benefit.

The same seems to be true for 3-D.

 

Gaia and environmentalists

Gaia is a theory developed by environmentalists that comes close to treating the biosphere of the earth as a single living organism.  This theory dates back to the late 1960s early 1970s. Gaia presumes that changes in the atmosphere will be reflected in the biosphere to compensate.  An increase or decrease in oxygen will result in a biological response from the remaining part of the biosphere to return the balance. The same is true for any other major atmosphere component.

I am beginning to realize that environmentalists don’t accept their own Gaia model.  if Gaia were indeed more than just a useless hypothesis we would expect  the current increase in CO2 to result in many mechanisms to restore the original balance.

The model would not require environmentalists, acting hysterically, calling on world governments and organizing perpetual conferences to change the composition of the atmosphere. Gaia should be able to do it herself.

Why don’t environmentalists believe in their own model?

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Environmentalism reached a peak 15 years ago. It is seeing precipitous decline in public support recently:

The Harris Poll of 2,352 U.S. adults (ages 18 and over), surveyed online between November 8 and November 15, 2010 by Harris Interactive.

'Not only are fewer Americans behaving in environmentally-friendly ways, but many are now also less likely to embrace, or be influenced by, "green" attitudes – just over 1 in 3 U.S. adults (36%) say they are concerned about the planet they are leaving behind for future generations, compared to more than 2 in 5 adults (43%) who said so in 2009. And, only 28% of adults say environmental issues are very or extremely important to them when deciding how to vote for political candidates, compared to more than 1 in 3 adults (36%) who said this was important to them in 2009.'

Good in several ways

Ellen Weiss has been fired by NPR for her disgraceful treatment of Juan Williams. This is good in several ways. One, the woman who was in charge of propagating Jew hate to upwards of 1 million listeners on NPR, a self hating Jew, is now gone.

This does not mean that the Jew hate from our national radio network will be gone in the future. The milieu of NPR Jew hate is probably so wide and deep that nothing will change it. That is the case at BBC where even Parliament was unable to make changes in the national radio and TV Jew hatred.

Second, the mantra of lefty hatred of Fox News has been made a national issue.  This lefty mantra is not going to go away and its infantile nature needs constant exposure.

Third, and to me most important, Juan Williams was vulnerable because he is not considered black by the left.  Williams advocated the position that blacks are not victims in the United States.  Such a position automatically removes the melanin from your skin. I hope this firing will make the issue of Williams politics as a brave black man increasingly visible

  Fourth,  Williams has historically defended other blacks who rejected the black victim mantra. He did so in the case of Judge Thomas.

Fifth Williams is in the unique position of having been a long respected journalist,  now out of the grasp of lefty harpies, he can become the public spokesperson for the value of black self responsibility. While there are many brilliant and competent black leaders who advocate black responsibility, such as Thomas Sowell and  Bill Cosby, having a national respected TV journalist making this point will be very important in the future.

Good taxis

I have pointed out in the past that taxis are very vulnerable. A particular taxi company will never get an individual’s business again if they fail to pick him up once, after a phone reservation. It’s very possible that all taxis may be rejected based on a bad experience with a single taxi company.

To my great surprise the opposite is also true. A taxi driver and a taxi cab company can do such an extraordinary job that they will gain the loyalty of a customer.

I  rode home from the airport in a taxi that was so clean, so safely driven, and so comfortable in every way that I made a point of getting the drivers name and I will call him in the future.  If he is not available I will ask him who he recommends.

Wikileaks

I wrote a blog a few weeks back to distance myself and the transparency and openness in business movement from wikileaks.

Now I can make the distinction very clear. Wikileaks has absolutely nothing to do with the long history of transparency and openness in business.  Wikileaks is part of the new world of cyber-warfare.

From this point on we should expect many secret agencies to be aggressively releasing secret and confidential data about countries who are their antagonists, competitors or enemies. Wikileaks is just the beginning of this process.

Design and civility

One of the most impressive contributions to design and civility occurred in the late 1980's when urban bus manufacturers realized they could put the engine exhaust at the top of the bus not at ground level.

The improvement in civility was quite astounding. No longer were buses belching exhaust in our face.

I would like to suggest that such an improvement is possible today with single engine private planes. The current exhaust manifold on almost all models is directed down toward the ground . The consequence is that airplanes taking off and landing into residential areas are particularly loud.

This situation could be significantly improved if the exhaust manifolds pointed upwards. Airplanes do not have mufflers the change in direction would not be costly nor difficult.
 
As it stands now for most airplanes to be certified they are required to have tens of thousands of dollars of electronic equipment. The increase in cost from outfitting upward facing manifolds would not be significant. We are only talking about total of several hundred thousand airplanes in America.

Where is serious debate?

I frequently have discussions with friends about public policy and politics.  I usually have a feeling that after each debate or discussion the person I’ve been talking to will come back days weeks or months later and be in the same position but only making a new argument from the original position. To put it another way.... lefties remain lefty in the new discussion regardless of where they ended up in the previous discussion.  I change my position based on discussion and debate. Most of the people I deal with apparently don’t.

This leads me to believe that they are not actually involved in a serious debate. The debate is going on somewhere else and I am just encountering a reflection of what they pick up in the actual debate going on somewhere else.

This is particularly frustrating because I am actually involved, in many cases, with the actual debate as it’s going on in the political and public policy world.

Martha and Oprah

You may have noticed that the market for Martha Stewart products and Oprah Winfrey’s world have been shrinking in the past few years. Martha’s profits have been small and declining, Oprah’s audience is declining.  Oprah is moving to cable to capitalize on the remaining audience.

What is the market for Martha and Oprah?

I believe it consists of upwardly striving  women. The two audiences overlap but not very much. Both audiences are growing older.

In the past the equivalent audience was Dale Carnegie’s aspirational meetings, Reader’s Digest and Rotary clubs. The earlier versions were directed at men.

Subsequent to Martha and Oprah we will see programs aimed at a younger audience.

Survey of bank tellers

Check-cashing businesses are enjoying boom times right now. Their customers report much better treatment at check-cashing offices than at banks.

Back when I was a bank vice president and ran the marketing research shop, I hired a young PhD sociologist to work as a teller for several months.

Most tellers at the time were young women who spent their entire free time shopping for shoes and cosmetics and talking about hairstyles. My PhD employee desperately needed to talk to me weekly to be reminded that she, as an academic, was from a more prestigious social world than her fellow tellers.

The most powerful observation she made was that the tellers were very careful to notice the social distinctions among their customers; they were very nice to customers who they thought had higher social status and they were downright rude to those they felt had lower status than they.

Of course I became adamant to encourage our bank to buy and install new ATM machines and eliminate the bank tellers as quickly as possible.

Comparisons to the 1950’s

I don’t know which is more annoying: * sentimentalists showing me images of products from the 1950s and treating this period as some peak in human development  *or your run-of-the-mill revolutionaries who are completely ignorant of history have, no idea the devastation that revolutions have done to society nor do they understand how actual revolutions occur.

The United States saw two of the greatest revolutions in human history occur in the late 1950s. First was the elimination of hereditary social classes in America. This type of revolution has never occurred anywhere on the planet whether deliberate or otherwise. It occurred in the United States because of the vast draft for World War II and the subsequent elevation of highly qualified people in academia and business to replace the hereditary elite.

The second revolution was the full legal establishment of rights for a former slave population and the elimination of laws and practices that had suppressed this population for a century. This former slave population had served in every military of the United States and earned their full representational rights because of the aggressive military integration in the South,  because of the religious community activism (particularly Jews) and because of the former slave populations nonviolent behavior.

Two social revolutions whose magnitude cannot be matched anywhere else in the world.