Pro Commerce

My parade

I just saw the photos from a parade in San Francisco.  It was about 80 people who were part of a wedding party.  Lovely.  They had gotten a parade permit for the five block walk from their wedding ceremony in Chinatown to their dinner party at a private athletic club.

It reminded me of my parade.  

In the early 1980’s I was being forced to close the Drunk Park on 6th Street that I had created.  The Examiner newspaper had run three front page articles attacking the park with false stories and fabricated data.  The mayor, Dianne Feinstein, was publicly attacking the park after two years of its success in the neighborhood. (She wanted the Democratic Party Convention the following year to come to San Francisco.)  Drunk Park had reduced crime and dramatically reduced the street people population. The neighborhood loved it, so did the park habitues.

I realized that the forces of Puritanism would win.  My Glide Board was Protestant and could not weather the Puritan pressure against the park.  I had tried to give the park to Mother Teresa’s order in San Francisco but after six months they had still been unable to get permission from Mother Teresa.

I was depressed.  Puritanism had conquered care and decency.

My staff, including the staff at the park, found a solution.  They had a parade for me. (No one got a permit.) The route was about 10 blocks long.  From Glide Church, to Market St., up Market to City Hall. At City Hall I was presented an award: a certificate of honor voted on by the Board of Supervisors and signed by the Mayor. (One of the women I was dating at the time was a supervisor.)  There were about 70 people in the parade and many musical instruments.

It worked.  I loved my parade.

Ubiquitous Wi-fi

I have been visiting a few friends homes recently and noticed that hidden in the corner or sitting under a desk is a Wi-Fi transmitter.

Why is this?

I think it is because this little piece of technology was expected to be a short term solution to connecting all of the digital objects in a home or office.

The fact that it not did not become a short-term solution and is now with us two decades later means that it has not been thought through.

The Wi-Fi should long ago have become a household appliance that is well-designed and effectively fits into a wide range of decor.

It isn't; it needs to become part of the house. Brand-new houses are able to build wires into their circuits. But even this ignores the fact that a wide range of household and office electronics are going to be transmitted through the ether not via wire or cable.

Let's get some design students working on something far more relevant than a god damn chair or bicycle. Design students, its time to design some Wi-Fi's.

 

Looking backwards

We know that many Lefty Fundamentalist and environmentalists are Luddites.

We seldom realize that they are looking nostalgically at the 19th century. A place and time many of us are happy to leave behind.

One of the major innovations of the 19th century was the bicycle. Today envirotech and do-gooders are fanatics about the value of bicycles and are promoting them aggressively.

I personally like bicycles and find they have an important role to play in transportation. So do Segways and skateboards that are much underappreciated and deprecated.

The problem with this bicycle love affair by the American environmentalists is that they are inappropriate for older people, people with disabilities, families and regular American style shopping. There is room for more bicycles but it should not be at the expense of other motorized vehicles.  We needn’t glamorize 19th Century life.

There is also a worship of wind generators. Wind mills (the brother of the wind generator) have been used for many centuries. In most of America they were used as water pumps in rural areas.

The problem with windmills or wind generators is that there are very few locations with high wind speeds over long periods of time. In San Francisco we have only one windy month where the average wind speed reaches 10 miles per hour. The consequence is that for an established demand curve for electric power, wind generators are only available at their peak wind output and the rest of the time the electric network must provide backup. That means more conventional electric generation facilities than wind generators. Until there are effective storage mechanisms for electricity wind generators will remain a Luddite luxury.

Commerce and big business

Somehow or other in the Lefty fundamentalist mind small neighborhood businesses are good and big national and international businesses are bad. I cannot defend or understand this absurdity but I can point out the logical failure.

In nature there are a multitude of small species for the very few large species. There are billions of blades of grass, there are millions of bushes and their only tens of thousands of tall trees. The same with business.

Businesses grow for two reasons: first, because consumers like their product and second, because growth offers economies of scale. Economies of scale can occur in marketing, innovation, production, and distribution. Economies of scale reduce costs, the driving force of industrial commerce.

Because the world is made in such a way that when building 1000, each widget can be cheaper than each widget when building five, we will always have big companies.

The biggest problem that seems to be the source of Lefty antagonism, other than the fact that they are antagonistic to anything big as long as it is not a whale or an elephant, is that big business seems to destroy small business.

This is completely untrue and the result of biased observation.

First, when a new innovative enterprise enters a new field it rapidly expands the number of small businesses in that field that are able to thrive. In this earlier blog I show that the arrival of Starbucks in San Francisco in the 1990s dramatically increased the number and quality of independent coffee shop's.

Second, I have worked with dozens of small businesses that were faced with new entrants in their market; bookstores faced with national chains, retailers faced with Walmart and organic foods (and even bagel shops) faced with new chains. And every retailer faced with the Internet.

In each and every case I was able to recommend changes in the business operation that made the local store more valuable and more desirable to its customers. In a few instances I saw success where the local store made the adaptations I recommended.  In almost every other case I found that the local store owners did not have the energy to make the necessary changes.  Old-age, boredom, and exhaustion are the reason they closed their store. It had nothing to do with the big businesses. Nothing.

Most people don’t know what a physical struggle it is to keep a small local business running.  They can’t see the exhaustion that is the real reason the local businesses close.

First lessons

I am reading a rather spectacular book. David Nirenberg’s Anti-Judaism and WesternTradition.

Nirenberg wisely has written the entire book from the vantage point of the anti-Jews without any relationship to Jews or their history. This is appropriate because anti-Judaism is entirely based on arguments and fights among the people who hate Jews. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Jews or the behavior of Jews.

The first and most stunning thing to me is that by the time King David was building the Temple in Jerusalem the Egyptians of that era were already creating and spreading anti-Jewish stories. The Egyptians had their own version of the Exodus in which they claimed to have driven the Jews out of Egypt.

I have not finished the book but there are already three things that are worth pointing out to my readers.

If you are a Jew and living in Europe, get the hell out of there. Europeans have a 2000 year history of hating Jews and being ferociously antagonistic and cruel to Jews. There is nothing in their worldview that was changed by the Holocaust. Whenever Europeans have an internal debate (such as the way to deal with slow economic growth) or need a scapegoat the Jews will be the target. Nothing has changed this. Nothing.

At present there is no anti-Judaism in India, China or Japan. While this is reassuring and could mean a comforting future relationship for Israel and this half of the world, we should not take this as a fact. Jew hate is the byproduct of internal dissension and internal distress. None of these societies are immune to the kinds of problems that would generate scapegoat based hatred for Jews.

Lastly, Islam is never going to change its attitudes of Jew hate. This Jew hate is deeply embedded in everything about the Koran. While Jews have been allowed to live in Arabia and Persia for more than a millenium, the teachings of the Koran are inherently and pervasively anti-Jew. This is not going to change. It is integral to Islam.

Don't let the followers of Allah get a nuclear weapon.

Human reward systems

Awhile back I was invited to a special prison not far from Tokyo. It was the only prison in Japan for recidivists. A prison for people who had committed and been found guilty of a second crime  punishable by prison.

There were roughly 2000 prisoners. All  male.

Not only were these prisoners well behaved, but as we toured the prison, they were very quiet and were not allowed to look at us visitors. We were shown their quarters as well as their exercise, work environment and dining hall. They were trained in a wide range of modern job skills with up-to-date technological equipment.

That is not the point of this blog. The most significant observation, for me was that there was a tiered hierarchy of rewards that was very effective in maintaining control.

In our society rewards are very explicit and the jumps from bottom to top are very large. A prisoner may get cigarettes, a larger cell without a cellmate, outdoor work duty…. a whole range of significcant rewards.

In this Japanese prison there were only three categories of rewards. One example was the frequency of getting a new toothbrush from one every two weeks for good behavior down to the lowest, one every three months. The same was true for washcloths. One new wash cloth each month or one every four months for bad behavior. For the best behaved there was white rice, the middle step was a mixture of white and brown rice and the bottom category was pure brown rice.

These very minor gradations seem to be sufficient to incentivize the men.

Of course this Japanese prison did not resemble anything in America. It was clean, it was beautifully maintained and most of all ….it was quiet.

Warning: explicit sexual language

In yesterday's blog I mentioned that I was the subject of a documentary film. The film was about the history of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality.

I was involved with the predecessor of the Institute while I was business manager of Glide Memorial Church. The predecessor was the National Sex and Drug Forum which became the National Sex for Forum.

The movie is about the founder and hero of American human sexual education: Ted McIlvenna and his wife Vinny. Ted is the man who really made gay sex publicly acceptable. You will learn this when you see the documentary. Ted brought the lawsuits that stopped the entrapment of gay male prostitutes. Most of all Ted and the many people he worked with taught tens of thousands of doctors and ministers what human sexuality is about.

Ted made the training films that allow the helping professions to talk to and listen to gays with problems.  And to listen to people dealing with the whole range of human sexual behavior.

I am in several films and one photo book about masturbation.

Making the documentary reminded me that I played a constructive role in the history of opening American sexuality. I funded Coyote the prostitutes union and helped organize it. I funded the first sex information hotline and was actively involved in it. I sponsored work on transgender medical practices and did research in that field. I was on the credentials committee that authorized the first doctorate degrees from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality.

I was the first paying member of and active supporter of the the Bisexual League.

I was the first person to sell cock rings in the United States. I read about their use in Mongolia in the quarterly tribal orgies. So I made some out of Velcro and sold them by mail. My main promotion was in the hippie newspaper where I asked Dr. Hip, the public sex authority of his era, Eugene Schoenfeld, to review them.

To me, there should be an extra-large palace in heaven for Ted McIlvenna and the people who worked at the Institute for the work they did in helping bring sexuality and explicit touching to open up the subject of sex for the disabled.

Live film shoot

I was in a documentary movie a few days ago. The shooting lasted nearly 6 hours. The photo on the right shows the team that was making the movie.

Everything about the making of this documentary was just as complex, with modern technology, as anything in the old filmmaking world. It was just lighter and more efficient.

The two cameras are traditional through-the-lens Canon but they have video chips in the gigabyte range.

The microphone and digital recording system was extremely complex and allowed for many microphone inputs as well as extraordinary control of the sound and noise suppression. I was in the radio business, making half hour programs for public radio for nearly a decade, and my equipment was much simpler.

The lighting panels were lighter and had the interesting ability to adjust the wavelength range from warmer to colder. That seems a great advantage.

As with the QWERTY keyboard, which is now the standard for keyboards all over the world in nearly every language, often in phonetic form, the language of movies remains film oriented.

They still talk about reels as the length of the segment. They still talk about slicing and splicing for both the video and the audio.

The persistence of old technology language into the new world is always fascinating. It is a good habit that humans maintain. We need as much stability as we can in our social structure and worldview.

 

Legal foods

It is rather stunning to me that we live in a society in which a whole range of foods are illegal for us to buy. Illegal for businesses to sell to us.

Simply looking at the list is rather stunning.

Americans are not allowed to buy or eat horse meat. I personally love horsemeat and have eaten it raw in Japan and in Seattle when I was young.

We are not allowed to buy any cetacean meat: that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises. I have had good whale meat in Tokyo and some not-so good whale meat at a tourist trap. Whale is not a fish but I recently had it served in a rotating sushi bar in Tokyo.

The list is actually much longer. There is a wide range of fresh water and sea creatures that are illegal to catch because they are too small and consequently illegal to sell in the U.S. Some of these species never grow to the legal minimum size of 6 inches. There seems to be no actual problem with abalone that do not grow to that size or the 10,000 species that the Japanese eat that are smaller than 6 inches in length. I have eaten at least a dozen delicious sea creatures that are much smaller(excluding sardines).

Today's list has not really begun. In California illegal foods include goose liver pâté, chickens and eggs from chickens that grew up in a small cage  and shark fin soup made from real shark fans. I have had shark meat in Tokyo that was probably the best fish I have ever eaten.

Ortolan, a French songbird is illegal to catch and sell.

As my readers can guess there are many other foods that are illegal for us to buy or sell. This list is just a start.

Is there something seriously wrong with democracy when a bunch of idiotic self serving fanatics can vote to decide what foods we shall eat? I think there is.

How commerce really works

I may have been unfair in pointing out that Lefties don't know how commerce works. Virtually nobody knows how commerce works.  Even great entrepreneurs can operate with ad hoc tools.... without understanding the milieu.

There are three types of commerce.  You can read in detail about them here.  Trade, Industrial commerce and Clientry.  Trade you recognize as the local coffee shop or local flower shop.  It is also your drug dealer and your auto repair shop.  The goal of trade is to make enough money on each sale to replenish the merchandise and have enough to stay in business.  Price competition counts and each sale is final. Trade is what most people mistake for general commerce.  In developed countries it comprises about 5% of all dollar transactions, but it is the oldest form of commerce and it takes place with little or no structure around it.  It operates in prisons, on battlefronts and everywhere else.   This is the only part of commerce that is nearly all based on competition; price and other non-price elements.

Industrial commerce is nearly all the rest of business.  Roughly 90% of all transactions in the developed world.  Any business with multiple outlets is likely to be industrial commerce. The goal of industrial commerce is to reduce costs.  This can be done in many ways: increase output with marketing, use economies of scale in production, combine them both and apply technological innovation. Think about IKEA, Lufthansa, your local housing developer and Bank of America.  

Nearly every part of industrial commerce is based on cooperation, not competition.  The suppliers of industrial businesses and the workers have an intimate and direct contact with the business.  Honesty, trust and honor are the basis for their successful interaction.  The same is true for industrial businesses in their relationship with customers.  Honor, integrity and prompt recourse are what generate loyal returning customers and is the most effective form of marketing.  Every industrial business cherishes its reputation with the final consumer.

Clientry is the final 5% of business transactions.  Clientry describes the form of business where the goal is to maintain a lifetime relationship with the client.  Clientric businesses include dentists, lawyers, graphic designers, private teachers and accountants.  Price is not an issue.  Providing the best and most appropriate service is paramount.

Both industrial commerce and clientry require an environment where the government is stable, not too corrupt, not too strong that the tyrant's brother can confiscate the business and where the business can get started without excessive and burdensome regulations.

Three major misconceptions about commerce are:

* that business tries to control government, cronyism,

* that businesses dump products to gain market share and

* greed is a driving force in business.

No entrepreneur I ever met (and I've know nearly 2,000) went into business to deal with government.  They generally dislike government local and national.  They are forced to get involved with government to protect their business from the rapacious and anti-commerce people in politics.  They end up using whatever they can to protect themselves including participation in the government created corruption.  I repeat, no one (outside the third world) goes into business to be a government crony.

Dumping is the hypothetical practice of selling large quantities of product at below production costs in order to gain market.  Labor unions and inefficient domestic businesses promote this nonsense to try and stop legitimate foreign competition.  The problem with dumping is that it doesn't work.  It requires a large investment to sell at below production costs and it may drive one business to failure but new businesses will soon emerge that are more efficient and will satisfy the market at the newly established lower price.

Lastly, while some people go into business and some rise to top management positions based on personal greed, it is irrelevant.  The only way a business succeeds is by having a better product or service.  That is the only way.  The motivation of the principals is irrelevant.  Nearly every successful business person I have known, heard about or read about was in business because they love business.  No matter how much money they make, they keep working because they love business.

Did I skip anything?  Yes, I ignored non-profit businesses.  Non-profit is a tax status, it has nothing to do with the way a business is run.  Countless non-profits have abandoned their non-profit status and usually become better managed.

With these new eyes.  Can you see commerce better?

The current wizard of oz

In the story of the Wizard of Oz, the Wizard is actually a midget behind the curtain who is using a loud voice to pretend to be all powerful.

The metaphor of the Wizard refers to: a behind the scenes wise advisor who is hidden but really powerful.

I believe that some of the high tech companies including Google, Amazon, Uber and Airbnb are listening to a real Wizard.

*Google, in Europe, had an unfavorable ruling about censorship by the socialist idiots. Instead of Google making a public fuss they put up a website for people who wanted Google references removed.

*Amazon, despite constant imposition of taxes by state and local governments for services that do not benefit the company, has ignored these malicious attacks and built warehouses in the very states that are so vicious.

*Uber and Airbnb face constant harassment in local jurisdictions and especially in Europe. They just quietly go about their business.

I hypothesize that each of these companies have a wise advisor who says to them:' you guys are so infinitely rich you can do whatever you want with your lives, just ignore all these Left-wing political buffoons.'  'In some cases you'll lose.... but so what? You are rich and these battles will continue to waste your time.  The outcomes will go your way over the long run as they did for automobiles, radios, TVs and telephones.'

Is there such a Wizard giving all these businesses this wise advice?

 

Greens are really anti-green

The point of this blog is that environmentalists and other Lefty Fundamentalists have captured a false term: green.

The so-called Greenies are fanatic about wind generators, solar panels and anything else that they believe will reduce the production of CO2. They call CO2 a greenhouse gas.

CO2 is definitely a gas used by marijuana growers in their greenhouses but the reason is the exact opposite of what the greenies believe in the meaning of ‘greenhouse gas’.  Marijuana growers us CO2 to make their crop grow faster and more lush.

Consequently there is a problem with any CO2 terminology that uses the term ‘green’.

Everything green and living depends for its survival on CO2. The CO2 that all green living beings need comprises a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, less than half of 1/10 of one percent of the atmosphere. That tiny tiny amount is what is necessary to give us the trees, the flowers and the grass that most of us can see outside our windows. CO2 is the chemical that greens this planet.

Because the ‘so-called greens’ are so actively working to suppress CO2 they should be called the anti-greens.

Cargo cult on the Left

I consider this an original idea but it is not fully developed to the point where I would put it in my list of original ideas.

The Left is part of a cargo cult.

The term ‘cargo cult’ has been applied to the conditions among the natives in the Pacific Islands (Melanesians) in post World War II. After the American forces left these islands the airplanes and ground transport was removed and most of the airport related facilities decayed.

The natives had become accustomed to mechanical transportation, electric facilities,  lighting and the other accommodations of the mid-century American world. In order to invoke the gods to return these products of modernity they began building facades of hangars, control towers, airplanes and jeeps out of wood.

Cargo cult refers to the natives’ belief that it was only the outward manifestations of these objects that created the modernity they wanted. They had no idea of the physics or commerce that was behind the real airplanes they had seen.

So cargo cult refers to a belief in a superficial world of modernity.  A belief in the facade. A cargo cult fails to understand the physics and commerce behind the visible façade.

To me this is a perfect description of the Left today. They believe they can raise the minimum wage and improve the labor market. They have no idea how commerce works as evidenced by their failure to understand the rudiments of free-trade agreements and the absurdity of anti-dumping laws. They are adamant about supporting unions and increasing regulation of consumers and business. They are always willing to raise taxes on individuals and businesses without the slightest comprehension of how markets and commerce are harmed by these activities. They do not understand that non-retail businesses can and do move away from their destructive tax plans. They don’t comprehend that money is fungible and can move easily. They don't see that their ideas destroyed Detroit and many other modern cities.

The Left, like ‘cargo cult’ natives. simply do not have a rudimentary understanding of the commerce behind the façade that they see in retail stores and magazine advertising.

The Left is the first to try and create laws to ruin new businesses like Uber, Airbnb, Amazon and Google.

That is why I call the Left and its followers a cargo cult.

The immigration issue

I find that many people consider the immigration issue a blatant left-right matter. It isn't.  I also find that no Lefties seem to comprehend the arguments against the Senate Immigration Bill.

I don't personally agree with most of the reasons against the bill but I think it is important for intelligent conversation among my friends that there is a clear understanding of the objections to the Senate Immigration Bill. Let me exclude three parts of that bill from my explanation.

One part of the bill expands the H1B visas for highly skilled workers from all over the world.  Another part gives green cards to graduates of American universities with technical degrees. There is still a third part that deals with workers providing temporary visas for migratory farmworkers. Since these parts are important to commercial productivity there seems to be little or no political opposition.

The opposition focuses on creating a road to citizenship for the illegals already in the country including those who grew up and were educated here; the so-called ‘Dream Act’.

The opposition to the citizenship path deals nearly 100% with Mexican and Central American immigrants. The explicit objection is that any leniency in granting citizenship to this group will result in new waves of immigration across our porous Southern border. This is most evident from the prevailing talk radio argument that the ‘border must be closed’ before the immigration bill is taken seriously.

There is no such concern about the Canadian border.

So what is it about Mexicans and Central Americans crossing the border that particularly concerns so many Americans?

The answer: Mexicans have a distinctly different culture than people coming from Canada.

* They come from a socialist country and are likely to vote 90% Democrat-Union. 

* They come from a culture that is cancerous with corruption;  in the cities that they control in the United States corruption is rampant  Examples are Bell and Southgate in Los Angeles.

* Mexicans and Central Americans have a culture that is hostile to education.

*Lastly, among many adult immigrants, learning the English language is not given a high priority.

 

I do not agree with these characterizations but I understand that the media provides information to support these views.  To a large extent they are accurate while ignoring the positive side of the Mexican  contributions.

I would say that it is these cultural differences that make Mexican immigration particularly troublesome to Americans.

Downhill views of Obama and Carter

There is a strong similarity between the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. Gloom.

Jimmy Carter spent his initial campaign for office and four years in office, during which we had out-of-control inflation and virtually no economic growth, admonishing Americans to tighten our belts and learn to live within our means.

Jimmy Carter was an advocate of environmental Armageddon when Armageddon was seen as global cooling, population explosion and pollution. Carter emphasized the need for alternative energy both in biofuels and coal gasification. Jimmy Carter constantly used the imagery of belt tightening and America on hard times. Jimmy Carter was the voice of gloom.

He was defeated for re-election in 1980 by a campaign of ‘It's morning in America’ espoused by a jubilant and energetic optimist, Ronald Reagan.

Barack Obama has, from his first day as a candidate, emphasized that America is in bad shape and needs healing. He promised openness, he promised to stop the oceans from rising, he promised to bring the country together and bring troops home from an unwanted and irrelevant war. Every year he has been in office he has found a new enemy of America. It is always a domestic enemy. First it was the bankers and Wall Street. Next it was the disastrous mistakes of his predecessor George W. Bush. Then came a barrage of attacks on private jets and hedge fund managers. This was followed by attacks on a category of people Obama called the 1% whom he considered anti-American in their selfishness and tax avoidance.  

At the beginning of the Obama administration he made a point to argue that America was absolutely no different than any other country and there was nothing ‘exceptional’ about America. Today he has gone further and argued that America has a uniquely serious maldistribution of income. Income distribution in America, he endlessly claims,  has been getting worse, more egregious and more harmful to the middle class.

To put it in the simplest language Barack Obama like Jimmy Carter is a prophet of gloom. He has portrayed his Republican opponents as enemies.  They are attacked as malicious. Above all Obama has raised the flag of racism in America. he has raised that flag above all other flags.

Have I made the point clear enough that Barack Obama like Jimmy Carter is a prophet of gloom and doom. Whoever runs for president against the Democrats in 2016 will undoubtedly ride on the Ronald Reagan ticket of ‘Morning in America’.

New Cold War, France and the EU

I want to remind my readers of the Cold War. During the Cold War, France was an occasional ally of the Soviet Union. As a consequence, France partially removed itself from NATO in 1966, and had its own nuclear arsenal.

Why do I remind my readers of this fact?  Because the weak current leadership of the United States has re-invigorated Russia and the forces that created the Cold War.

France has in the past few months refused to act against Russia in a pan-European boycott resulting from the Russian Crimean annexation. France, recently began selling new military equipment to Russia.

This should look somewhat like the Cold War to my readers. Moreover it should be a sign on the wall that France may soon pull out of the Eurozone. The Eurozone did not begin until the end of the Cold War in roughly 1989-91. The Maastricht Treaty took force only after the Cold War in 1993. The actual euro didn't come into use until 1999.

I am predicting that the re-emergence of a Cold War resulting from the weak and cowardly behavior of the United States.  We will see the rapid decline and elimination of the euro as well as the EU.

University students were the backbone of Nazi Party

I have recently been reading the history of the interwar period in Germany and the rise of the Nazi Party.

From the year 1920 until roughly 1924 nearly all the growth of the original German Workers Party came from reaction to the loss of the War.  Late in that period the organization changed its name to German Socialist Workers Party to distinguish itself from the many other socialist and communist political parties.  It was anti-capitalist, anti-Jew and pro-Aryan.

After Hitler got out of prison in 1925 his organization began growing aggressively on college campuses. Hitler made it very clear that the enemy of the German state was an international Jewish conspiracy which had defeated Germany in the War. Hitler's Jew hate seemed to ring a particular bell among college and university students who had a tradition of being oriented toward anti-establishment ideas (as they still do in the U.S. and many countries).

Hitler made two points about the rising power and control of Germany by the Jews. First was that the Jews were alienated from the blood and soil of the Aryan race. They were focused on rational thought and greed not deep emotional ties. Secondly, Hitler argued the Jews formed an international conspiracy of non-German interests. These arguments rang a bell among college and university students.

When Hitler finally ascended to power in 1933 the University was the first place he banned Jews from teaching or holding office. There was absolutely no resistance at the university level because he had done the spadework over many earlier years in creating a loyal Nazi cadre of University Jew haters.

This history is alarming to me. For one reason. Jew hate on American campuses has been rising steadily at a shocking rate. I saw it first in the late 1990s at San Francisco State University where it was promoted by Muslim students. Their provocation was ignored by the faculty and administration.  I visited the campus several times and saw the malevolent Jew hate with my own eyes.

Campus Jew hate is more virulent today.

In the most recent decades, colleges and universities have become homes for unbridled Jew hate in the United States.  Jews on many campuses, including the Ivy League, describe an out of control academic Jew hatred.  With no faculty or adminsitrative restraint.

Not all history is repeated. The source of movements that become historically powerful, do have among them a great deal of commonality. A strong Jew hate movement in the United States should be expected to start on campuses where Left-wing academics promote their global view of minority misery, environmental catastrophe, paranoia and capitalist oppression.

Parallels are not symmetry but Jew hate on American campuses is worrisome to me.

Elders of Zion no longer a joke

At many times in my life I have had a personal joke. I saw myself telling other people, in ultimate confidence, that I was in fact a delegate to the Council of the Elders of Zion. I never actually said it outloud.

At various times I have held the position, in my mind, of Pacific Director of Problems with Blacks. It was my job to make sure the blacks in English-speaking countries were kept from succeeding in ventures that they were pursuing.

At other times I have been in charge of the Nonprofit Organizations in North America and Europe to make sure that hard-working deserving minorities and right wingers did not get the grants or funding that they deserved.

At still other times I have been Chairman of the Committee in charge of Global Communications Networks to make sure that only Jews and friends of Jews were successful in building-out their high-speed networks and implementing new technologies that would benefit these groups.

My self humorous fantasies went so far as to picture these secret Elders meetings in Singapore where over 1000 members convened every three years to operate our committees and make sure that our plans were widely discussed and reviewed.

I can no longer even think to myself about this humorous vision. It is no longer a joke.

There is a vast number of people, in the hundreds of millions in Arab countries, that believe in this Elders of Zion stupidity. There is an even more significant population in Europe that not only believes in this absurdity but is beginning to act on it in openly Jew hating, Zyklon B, manner. Jew hate in Europe is growing at such a rapid rate that it is no longer possible for me to even joke in my own private mind.

The State of Israel has seen the rise of Jew hate in Europe become so extreme that the Israeli government budget now includes money to help more Jews from Europe to escape from the impending  European Holocaust.

It is no longer a joke to me or to anyone else who is knowledgeable.

I predicted this

I have predicted many things in my life. My accuracy level is roughly 50%. Meaning I could be flipping a coin and be just as accurate.

When I am accurate and I have given my reasons in advance I have a  tendency to treat my reasons as being connected to the predicted outcome. This may be wrong in some cases but it is probably right in most cases.

I predicted, when I first heard the promos for the new Arsenio Hall late-night comedy show, that the show would fail quickly. It did.

My prediction was based on a combination of two elements. First Arsenio Hall was sent into the tv wilderness about 10 years ago after his first TV show aired an interview with Louis Farrakhan that was mild to favorable for the evil monster himself. I doubted that Hall could ever redeem himself in the media world. I was wrong the media world has no concept of evil and treats Louis Farrakhan as just a trivial problem. I was certain there would still be plenty of American viewers who remember that Hall is a man with no moral judgment.

My second, and most powerful, reason was my belief that  Americans have grown tired of the a president of the United States who is lying to them on a regular basis and is a vindictive, shallow and unpleasant person. Because Americans have become uncomfortable looking at this black president it is my projection that they do not want to see another black male face on television in front of them on a regular basis.

It was simply on the basis of these two observations that I predicted a failure for the new Arsenio Hall show.

I think Mr. Hall's failure is evidence of my logic. Americans are sick and tired of looking at the face of a failed black president.

Choke point: banks and business

I thought the level of criminal evil carried out by this administration was best exemplified by the use of the IRS to carry out political punishment.

I think this takes the needle on the measurement of criminal evil to about 80. Operation choke-point, being run by the Justice Department, pushes that needle to 96 out of 100.

We have in Washington, under the Democrats and the Barack Obama administration, the most criminal evil in American history. Hands down.

I have written often about the evil in the IRS exemptions department. It is time to comment on the criminal evil in the Justice Department. Is it unfair of me to point out that the head of the Justice Department, Eric Holder, is black?  Being a black is not relevant but being a black Democrat appointed by Barack Obama is a bad sign.

Project choke-point dates back more than a year. It was claimed to be a campaign against illegal money laundering. (I personally consider all money laundering to be desirable but that is a separate issue.) Project choke-point became an effort by the criminal evil forces in the Justice Department to use bank regulatory authorities to harass banks. The goal in harassing the banks, so far 80 banks have been harassed by their regulatory authorities that control their survival, is to close the accounts of perfectly legal businesses.

The largest group of businesses that have been harmed so far have been payday lenders. These are the retail outlets that make loans to poor people who cannot get loans anywhere but the Mafia. The payday lenders have brought a lawsuit in Washington DC. Hopefully they will get immediate injunctive relief. I don't count on that; evil is quite prevalent in the legal system.

Not only were the legal payday lenders targeted but the Democratic-Union Party went after some of their other moral enemies. Everything in business associated with guns and ammunition has been targeted. Businesses associated with pornography have been targeted; the same goes for tobacco and dating services.

There is no possible reason that bank regulators should use their power of life and death over banks to tell banks to punish legitimate businesses.

This whole concept is beyond my comprehension. It is evil at such a high level that it makes one think our government and our regulatory agencies are infested with a moral cancer.

Let me take one step back from this whole process. I am a lover of commerce. I appreciate commerce.

One of the most important qualities of commerce, that I seldom emphasize, is the ability of commerce to circumvent the evils of government regulation. When the Arab nations first instituted their boycott of oil to Israel, Shell Oil Company found a secret way to sell oil to Israel and still remain in the oil business. Commerce always finds a way to circumvent the evil of government regulation.

Which is by way of saying that all of the industries and businesses targeted by the evil criminal Justice Department and its bureaucratic cancerous parasites will simply create a new underground banking system.

I look forward to using this underground banking system which up until now has probably been the exclusive home of the drug cartels. It will soon be available to all of us and will make sure that we can transfer money anonymously.

It is not going to be bitcoin because bitcoin does not make sense; but it will be something similar that makes good sense in operation and functionality.

I welcome our new underground banking system.

Analysis of variance on the human genome

I'm waiting to see some good statistical analysis applied to a sample of diverse human  genomes.

I have never personally operated a PCR machine so what I say must be discounted appropriately.

I know from reading that there are roughly 20,000 genes that are associated with specific protein generation in the core DNA.

What I know has not been done, so far, and which would make a great deal of sense to me would be to take a sample of different human populations determine the sequences that code for their roughly 20,000 protein encoding genes and do an analysis of variance. A matrix with different individuals on one dimension and their sequenced alleles in the other dimension.

An analysis of variance would show us what are the deeply abstract differences among human populations. We know there areanatomical differences that have been carefully recorded ranging from soft versus hard earwax,  large butts versus small butts, melanin differences, lactose processing differences, sweat and follicle differences, etc.

What we don't know is how significant these clusters of differences are. Does it take many genes to create these differences or only a few. That in itself would be a clue as to the number of years of evolution involved in human differences.

An analysis of variance would show first the most significant differences. The largest number of protein encoding genes would undoubtedly have to do with sexuality and reproduction. Those are often the major categories of DNA in other species especially microscopic species. Sexual differentiation defines the species.

Beyond this initial cut, it would be interesting to see whether our visual perceptions tell us about real genomic differences. We tend to sort people on the basis of their melanin level, their hairstyle, their epicanthic fold and their noses. I seriously doubt that the initial analysis of variance would find these to be major population differences.

I hope someone will have the data available and the ability to do the statistics.

Schaufensterpuppe

The word Schaufensterpuppe is German for store window mannequin.   I used this word a few blogs back to describe our president. (2014 Obama.)

Do I consider this description to be objective? Yes for the two following reasons. I am perfectly willing to say positive things about president Obama which suggests to me that my position is not blind one-sided. The president has made several brilliant speeches, one was his speech on winning the Nobel peace prize. Another has been his appointment of several highly competent and outstanding people. One was Bob Gates as Secretary of Defense another was Stanley Fischer as vice chair of the Federal Reserve.

The second reason I consider myself to be objective in describing this president is that I have a set of explicit criteria on which I judge all political operatives: are they good for commerce and are they good for Israel, the only genuine democracy in the MiddleEast.

Commerce in America has generated the greatest human benefits for the greatest number of human beings on the planet. Support for commerce therefore is the highest priority for me.

Support for Israel is in the same league. Israel is today the shining light for modernity, technology, rationality and the future of the Western world. It is in the middle of the darkest geographic hellhole on the planet. It therefore demands support.

On both of my criteria, president Obama has been an abysmal failure.

He has promoted a failed 19th century socialist platform from his first day in public life. This is a an anti-commerce position. He has explicated it in politics and his policies have resulted in the longest most protracted economic recovery in a century. He has blocked foreign trade agreements and supported disastrous unionization and excessive commercial regulation. In terms of Israel he has been openly hostile and maliciously provocative.

The reason I call him Schaufensterpuppe is because of his half Kenyan family background. Throughout his life he has benefited from the Kenyan part of his visible anatomy. He is affirmative action personified.  It got him into his first college, it got him into his prestigious second college, it got him into law school, it got him a prestigious editorship at law school, it got him jobs in Chicago it got him appointed to political office. Finally it got him elected president twice. Endless affirmative action.

The use of his half Kenyan family background to achieve this stunning success is referred to in the language of the 1960s as window dressing. He has been the benefactor of affirmative action window dressing all his life.

The reason I consider him a mannequin, empty and hollow, is that he does not appear to have rudimentary intelligence. He is very verbal as is common in the black community but he is for the same reason simultaneously innumerate. He has always misused numbers and shown that he does not understand rudimentary arithmetic.

The most shocking thing to me is that he does not appear able to learn. When he first came into office he flew to Copenhagen to try and get the 2016 Olympics for Chicago. He made no preparations and he was doomed to lose before he even got there. He did the same thing in Copenhagen for a Climate Conference.  Those were not the acts of a person who understands political negotiation.

Five years later he still has not learned. He can accomplish virtually nothing without cooperation from the other party that controls the House of Representatives. Yet he daily attacks the opposition party in the most mean-spirited, vicious manner guaranteed to make sure he will never accomplish anything politically. Moreover he constantly pushes his actions beyond the boundaries of his constitutional office which steadily inflames the hostility of the American public and assures that he will not be able to carry out any of his policies.

Those are the main reasons I'm very comfortable in referring to Barack Obama as Schaufensterpuppe.

 

Adaptation processes, Darwinian, social sorting

There are two adaptation processes that I have used in my writing. Both seem to be hard for people to understand.

One is what I call Darwinian, though it is not strictly Darwinian. I have referred to the obesity epidemic as the result of a Darwinian process occurring on grocery store shelves. Food producers are adapting their food to become nearly addictive to shoppers tastes.(As my son points out) peanut butter has become increasingly appealing with more salt over decades simultaneously covered with sugar. Two nearly addictive taste attributes. In the case of other foods a wide range of adaptation is being used to make the product insatiably appealing, ranging from added sugar and salt to vanilla and fruit flavors.

This is not truly Darwinian because Darwinian adaptation is survival of the fittingest applied to a random variation. This grocery store shelf adaptation is simply the observation by food sales organizations that a particular variation is increasing its sales volume and indicating a direction to modify future new products.

One of my most important contributions has been to understand how our voluntary society has created and evolved its organizations. I call this process social sorting.

In social sorting there are three steps to joining an organization or institution. Regardless of whether that institution is the PTA, a political party or a neighborhood. First is the flag. The element about the organization that we understand and attracts us in the first place. Then there is the screen that determines whether we can become a member or not. Sometimes the screen is trivial as in which airline we choose, sometimes it is rigorous such as becoming a member of a legislative body. Lastly there is the overflow. The point at which experience and membership convince the member that he or she does not fit and it is time to leave.

That process of adaptation is what determines the nature of all of our institutions and organizations.

Because the concept of adaptation is hard to grasp, my observations are generally ignored in this area.

I contend, that is true for both my idea of food product adaptation as well as adapation needed to join voluntary institutions.

Deaths Blacks, Whites, Latinos and the NRA

It is always unfortunate when a young person is murdered or killed. I want to comment on some of the outrageous statements that I hear on local TV news, on this subject, several times a week.

I believe there is one common theme behind them. When a young person dies it is important for their survivors to identify something that gives that shortened life a meaning.

Most commonly the meaning is emphasized in young lives by pointing out that the person was a good student, well loved by fellow students, a promising athlete but most importantly that the young person helped children and the disabled. That gives traditional meaning to life in our Judeo-Christian culture.

In the past few decades, when young blacks have been shot by police because they were pointing a gun at the police or acting in some similarly threatening manner, the survivors usually call the young dead black ‘a victim of police racist brutality’.

That is giving the young black person's meaningless life meaning by putting them into a political context.

The same thing is often done (more recently) by Latino survivors who first state that the young dead person was much loved by his family, a Latino term for a 'meaningful life', and then adding the police racist brutality to make sure that a political meaning is added to the value of the deceased’s life.

The most recent instance I have seen is where the dead young white person is the victim of a 'gun culture' that the survivor claims could have been stopped by political legislation and abolition of the NRA. Again the young person’s meaningless life is given meaning by putting it in a political context.

Does this need ‘to give a dead person’s life meaning’ explain the preposterous statements we hear from survivors about murders and killings on TV news?

What do black people think of our Schaufensterpuppe?

The black community has voted nearly unanimously for a half black president. In his reelection campaign the black community turned out in such large numbers that they actually made a significant difference in the outcome.

I would say as objectively as I can that our half black president, Barack Obama, is a Schaufensterpuppe. Schaufensterpuppe is German for ‘window dressing mannequin’.

I believe that Obama is not very bright, innumerate, vindictive and completely unable to learn. That is to say, he will be considered among the worst presidents in American history. We already know that historic judgments of Jimmy-boy Carter are negative. It is clear to me that the long recession under Obama and the reversal of America’s position of respect in the world, and his negative worldview will consign Barack Obama to a position on the ladder below Jimmy-boy Carter.

At this point I think the black community is pretending that they are proud of Obama as the first black president.

A few months ago when I first saw promotion pieces for late-night television comedian Arsenio Hall, I predicted his reign would be short because Americans are really tired of Barack Obama and his lies, and we don't want another black face in front of us. Arsenio Hall will soon be off the air after only a few months; his contract was canceled.

I think the black community has a sense of this American distaste that is evident in polls.

I also have a sense that the black community foresees Barack Obama consigned to the dustbin of history as an ineffective and embarrassing president.

So far, in the black community I have only heard the complaint that Obama has never done anything for them. His reign included the worst economic recovery in a century and the worst black unemployment in the same period.

Because the Democratic reign under Obama has seen daily accusations of his opponents as 'racist' the term is now on the borderline between trivial and complimentary.

This I think is particularly disliked in the black community... though there is some sympathy to the idea of Blacks being victims.

Also during Obama’s presidency the non-black homicide rate has continued its 20 year decline while the new permanent black violent underclass has become more violent.

It is my belief based on only a few conversations with good friends that the black community is aware that Barack Obama, the first black president, is not considered a good one.

Willie vs Jerry: politician vs statesman

My readers know that I spent many years in politics and I have always been running a campaign or active in lobbying some legislature or other.

The Willie in this blog title is Willie Brown. Willie was the speaker of the California Assembly and two-term mayor of San Francisco. He first went into politics in 1964. I did some of the survey work to determine whether he could win his Assembly race at that time and to design the Republican strategy against him.

Willie spent his life in politics and at several points in that long 35 year career I helped him with some financial matters. Willie must be considered an outstanding political genius in the ranks of American politicians with Jesse Unruh and Huey Long. Willie was a master politician and ran the state of California for at least 25 years from behind-the-scenes with unilateral control.  He turned California into a 2/3rds majority Democrat Party state. (To me, the Democrat-Union Party is anti-commerce.)

I personally like Willie.  His decisions were always political in the meaning of the word ‘political’ to: resolve power conflicts amicably.

The Jerry in the blog title is Gov. Jerry Brown. Jerry is more than just an acquaintance, he knows my name and he recognizes me when we run into each other. Jerry is approaching his fourth term as governor of California. He served two terms as mayor of Oakland. Jerry actually ran for president in several campaigns and came as close to winning the Democratic nomination in 1992 as anyone could imagine.

If Jerry had not mistakenly announced that he would have Jesse Jackson as his vice president three months before the New York primary he would have been the Democratic presidential nominee. However Bill Clinton won the New York Democratic primary, big, by pointing out that Jesse Jackson had referred to New York City as ‘hymie town’ .

I consider Jerry one of the great statesman in American politics.  Jerry has done three things that are rather astounding.

* In his first term in office he appointed Ed Roberts to head the disability office and revolutionized disability in America and around the world.

* At the beginning of his third term he abolished the California Redevelopment Agency, more than 420 offices. Probably the first government agency totally obliterated.

* And third, Jerry forced the Democratic Party at a time when it controls the State of California, and is in turn controlled by unions, to fully fund the teachers’ retirement pension by making the teachers and the local school districts contribute to their own retirement over a 35 year period.

California is fortunate to have had a brilliant politician in Willie and I would say it is even more fortunate to have a brilliant statesman in Jerry.

Alice and Tiffany

This blog is among my most trivial. My apologies in advance.

Alice is my late mother and Tiffany was a great turn of the 20th century designer.

My mother left me an inheritance of several pieces of art that are functional. One is a Tiffany lamp illustrated in the photograph on the right. I think this was bought by her aunt Blanche who liked Art Nouveau.  Bought when she was in her 20’s.  I remember seeing some of her art in her 82nd near 5th Avenue apartment in Manhattan.

This lamp still works perfectly and I use it. Because it is a Tiffany I wanted to insure it if it was especially valuable.  I sent photographs of it to a Tiffany appraiser.

The appraiser informed me that since the plain eisenglass was prominent on the lamp it was not worth much. He made the point that people pay for fancy colored glass when they buy Tiffany.

I have shown here on the left what he is talking about.

I understand that there was plenty of bad art in the Art Nouveau period.  There was clearly plenty of good art as well.

The appraiser said that Alice's lamp would auction for something in the low thousands of dollars but it would be in the 6 digit range if it had colored glass.

I certainly plan to keep my mother's lamp and pass it on to whichever child or grandchild can appreciated it. I simply want to complain to my beloved blog readers that I think the clear eisenglass version can be considered beautiful but the colored glass versions are rather gaudy. Not in the positive Gaudi tradition.

Commerce in Holland

On my own, I have concluded that the origins of the modern world of commerce date back to Amsterdam in the 1600’s.

Holland was the first modern democracy, founded in the early 1580s. It was a genuine Republic. The model for the United States two centuries later.

Holland became the center of the entire explosion of the rational world that included both the Descartes rationality as well as the scientific use of evidence to explore the empirical world.

Holland pioneered the modern financial instruments including bond markets, stock markets, joint stock companies, global insurance and the first salaried tax collectors (as opposed to the corrupt commission tax collectors everywhere else).

In 1688 the Dutch army invaded England and installed William and Mary as King and Queen. The entire Dutch commercial revolution was brought to England. As England became a global dominant force it spread the commercial world and the most powerful elements of Dutch commerce to every corner of the planet.

I am indebted to Paul Johnson in his History of the Jews for pointing out that nearly every innovation in commerce, including the bearer bond, was invented and introduced by the Jewish community in Amsterdam. I didn't know that. My main source previous to that had been Jonathan Israel. Johnson is a very reliable historian and when he gives the Jews credit for that creative Big Bang to commerce I will have to take his word.

My paternal family comes from Holland in that era, having been driven there by the Spanish expulsion. I am not giving myself a pat on the back because I had nothing to do with any of it. But I do consider myself a contributor to the ongoing understanding of the importance and future of commerce.

Movement and commerce

In Paul Johnson's History of the Jews he makes a very interesting and possibly original observation.

Johnson suggests that major population shifts, by themselves, can generate an increased output of commerce.

That has certainly been the case throughout history in which European rulers and Middle Eastern potentates have invited Jews to settle and been rewarded with significant increases in commerce and royal treasuries.

There was a rapid change in population due to the advances of Genghis Khan and his son across most of Asia and I see no productive increases. The same was true for many other invaders from Napoleon to Hitler. They drove hordes of people in front of them to no apparent economic benefit.

In fact, like the Spanish, in 1492, the Portuguese a few years later and East Europeans in the mid-20th century, these nations were commercially emiserated.

Certainly the most recent and powerful evidence that population movement is not necessarily commercially productive is the mass exodus of Arabs from the old state of Palestine. They have brought misery wherever they go. I should also mention the Rom people who have moved all over Europe without any known economic benefit to anyone.

Johnson has a brilliant and insightful idea. It seems only relevant to Jews and possibly to the settlers in the vast American heartland.

Tax on tenure

According to Megan McArdle at Bloomberg Views she heard the idea of a tenure tax at an economic conference she attended.  The idea is treated as a subset of the idea of a wealth tax.

Not to me.  

To me a tax on tenure is not an idle concept related to a wealth tax.  To me it is a tax on a labor market monopoly.  People who can not be fired impose a cost on the entire society for two reasons.  

The most important reason is that they become a barrier to meritocracy.  They permanently occupy a potentially productive position as a meritocratic failure.  They block the potential output of a more competent or more productive person.  Think of your average bored and tenured teacher who can’t be fired for blandness.  They occupy a job that could be held by a productive inspiring teacher.

Second, they create a labor market rigidity.  In a market where people can’t be fired social adaptation is thwarted.  A worker who is productive at night is blocked from working the night shift by the tenured person who hates working nights but has that time slot.

To me, a tax on tenure would apply to any job where the restraint on firing the worker presents significant obstacles. Say more than 100 hours of work by management to fire the person for mediocre output.  The tax on tenure would apply to nearly every union job.

How much would the tax on tenure be?

I take the issue seriously.  I use a  present value calculator.  Assuming a low level unionized city worker who’s average 40 year income is $100k in current dollars.  Discount that at 3%, the longterm U.S. inflation deflator. The present value of that tenured job is $2.3 million.  Tax it on the annual amounts of $58,000 that would be paid over the 40 years.  In addition to the tax on the actual year’s income.

That makes sense to me.  We would be taxing the value of tenure, which is the present value of having a lifetime job the person can’t be fired from.