Pro Commerce

Baltimore reminds us the Civil War is not over

President Obama and AG Holder have regularly proclaimed that America has a race problem that it is unwilling to confront.  These are two men who are doubly blind to this issue.  They fail to see and admit the creation of a black hereditary criminal class in America.  

They also fail to see another less visible American black issue.  America has not celebrated the 100th and the 150th anniversaries of the end of the Civil War.  

The 100th anniversary was in 1965.  Just after two Civil Rights Laws had been passed and when black urban riots were occurring in Rochester, Harlem and Philadelphia.

America was clearly not over the Civil War, despite a large celebration at the 50th anniversary with parades in major cities in the North.

Right now is the time for the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War.  It would be sometime between the signed surrender of General Lee to General Grant on April 9th and the successive surrenders of the Confederate generals and states over the next four weeks ending with the last battle in Texas on May 13th.

Why don’t Americans celebrate the end of the Civil War?

Because the slaves who were freed have become a serious major burden on the rest of society.  The cause for the war, pro and anti-slavery is unresolved.  The slave population of 4 million has become a population of 40 million. With nearly 25 million still living in the South.

This 40 million blacks, most heirs to slavery, are still far from integrated into American society. Millions are in jail or prison, have been or will be.  Few children live with two parents and a large proportion don’t graduate from high school.  These constitute a large population that is unemployed, on welfare and living well below the average American income.

They have destroyed Detroit and are now destroying Baltimore.

A sorry state, for which the black community is doing an inadequate job and complaining rather than changing. And the white community has given up a ‘hopeless’ effort.

Mobile phones and city government

Not everything in city government is hopeless.

I haven’t been to Tel Aviv since 2013, so I didn't see this.  My friend Alex sent the link to me.  Tel Aviv is out in front in making a hopeless bureaucracy functional for the citizens by making the internal data available and welcoming mobile apps to use the data.

Tel Aviv recognizes its environment as one of the two or three tech start-up capitals of the world.  And is making use of this vitality.

San Francisco is one of the other two or three tech start-up capitals in the world and proclaims this title often.  But being a union controlled, failed socialist state, talk is all that San Francisco can do.

As Tel Aviv shows, even the worst bureaucracy can serve its customers with open data and mobile apps.

San Francisco has one mobile app, probably bought from Israel, that I like.  It is SF311 on my phone.  Shoot a photo of graffiti on a public wall or a pothole and give the location.  A clean-up crew is there in hours or by the next day.

The beginning of a responsive government bureaucracy.  

Now we need to be able to find people in the hospital, send a message to the police and fire departments with photos, file a police report and a dozen other simple tasks. Especially dealing with the planning and permit departments.

Politics and commerce

Both politics and the ‘trade’ part of commerce are very old.  These institutions have survived for one reason: they fit perfectly in a zero sum society.

Politics is the allocation of zero sum resources, mostly political power.  It exists wherever humans convene.  Tribes use their complex and intimate networks to constantly re-allocate resources.  (He lost a leg hunting for all of us, we will provide his widow with food.) It can escalate to warfare as it has throughout most of history; particularly when zero sum becomes negative sum. (In drought years the Zuni raided their Pueblo neighbors.)  

The trade component of commerce is almost as old.  It is an effort to allocate zero sum resources to improve resource allocation to get more mutual satisfaction, voluntarily.  (The Zuni traded corn for clay pottery with neighbors.  The Zuni were good at irrigation, others had good mines for clay.)

Thanks to commerce, which uses many unnatural and non tribal elements, such as meritocracy, diversity, technology and open markets, most of us now live in a positive sum world.

Politics and modern commerce constantly come into conflict because one is dealing with the older zero sum world and commerce IS the modern positive sum world.

 

New technology and politics

The Socialist Republic of San Francisco has recently set a precedent for much of the world.

The San Francisco City government, last year, passed a law putting Airbnb and similar popular home and couch rental Internet services under strict City controls.  

Airbnb cooperated in its emasculation because top management are wimps and foolish rich Lefties.

The law was so poorly written that the three City departments tasked with implementing the law complained bitterly. They didn’t know how to cooperate, they claimed insufficient budgets, etc.

Of 7,500 Airbnb renters in San Francisco, 4,000 were regularly renting out their spaces. Of these, 445, applied to be licensed to rent using Airbnb.  Of these 141 made it through the licensing process in two months.  Several of my friends ignored the City and one got out of the business.  All were or are making tens of thousands of dollars in rental income.

My prediction.  The elected officials will now squabble until there is no new law.  The anti-Airbnb crowd, unions representing hotel workers and rental control fanatics, will put an initiative on the ballot.  It will fail in San Francisco, where the rich Lefties are anti-everything but not anti-technology.  Once it fails, Airbnb and the other cowardly tech companies will get some balls and fight government tyranny everywhere else.

On this point.  One company that was not run by cowards and wimps is Uber.  Uber is a San Francisco company that pre-empted this whole mess.  Uber went straight to the State agency that controls limousines, the Calif. Public Utilities board, and got statewide licensing (trivial) and won the battle at the beginning.

Bad business

For those of you not following the current business news, Comcast CMCSA was trying to buy and merge with Time Warner Cable TWC.  Yesterday they pulled out of the deal after the FCC scheduled public hearings on the merger.

I was following the issue because the California Public Utilities Commission, where I am an expert witness, had decided that it has jurisdiction in the issue.  Whether a California agency can have legal authority that trumps the FCC which has to decide on this case, I don’t know. The CPUC is having public hearings on the issue, itself, and the chair has written a 127 page anti-merger tome on the issue.

In any case, and aside from the anti-commerce political grand standing on the issue by Democrat buffoons, Al Franken and Elizabeth Warren, Comcast would not have been allowed to merge with Time Warner.

There is nothing on 'true anti-trust' grounds, if such a concept were ever valid, to keep the merger from happening.  Technology and consumer behavior is wiping out the cable monopoly as consumers shift to direct online sourcing of cable material.  The networks are cooperating with the public and will wipe out cable’s profitability in the foreseeable future.  We can really thank Netflix NFLX and Hulu for the collapse of the monopoly.

Comcasts attempt to extend its monopoly is a last gasp strategic move.

The problem that Comcast has and which plagues most other monopolies is that the public hates them.

Monopolies are hated in an open market society like ours.  Comcast is hated secondarily because they are a monopoly.  They are hated primarily because they provide the worst  customer service imaginable.

I have had Comcast Internet for half a year with no problems, so I am not a complainer.  Everyone else I know is a complainer.

My guess is that Comcast could have ameliorated much of this anti-merger problem by spending $30 million a year on a decent call center and a dozen regional consumer advocates.  

They didn't and now we watch them fry in their own boiling oil.

Meal delivery on the Internet

There seems to be some exaggerated enthusiasm in the Internet investment world these days about home delivery of meals.

I can see that the field of home and office delivery to busy people is growing.  The Internet is helpful in the delivery of many goods and services including dry cleaning, groceries and meals. 'Helpful' but not a billion dollar valuation.

Google and Amazon are taking aim at this ‘busy modern person’ phenomena. Amazon has the infrastructure to deal with it.

I can get excited about provision of home services, such a Task Rabbit and Diamond Certified and the dozen other outgrowths of this workers in your home realm.

But it doesn’t apply to meal delivery.  People have been ‘ordering out’ Chinese and Pizza for half a century.  It is hard to get excited about the natural expansion of this service and the concomitant growth of to-go foods from mainstream grocery stores.

Where am I wrong on this?

 

Intelligent people of the day

Both my parents were Lefty fundamentalists.  

In discussing this with some people the other day I made the excuse for my parents that intelligent people in their day were Lefties.  They had nowhere else to look for intelligent leadership.

That is very clear.  There are no good intellectuals from the era before 1950 when my parents were in college..  There were a few good thinkers after 1950 such as Orwell, Lippmann, Irving Howe, Koestler and  Sidney Hook. Among the most brilliant was Raymond Aron (photo). These were hardly known at the time.

That has not been true since 1970 with the rise of such brilliant lights as Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Wm. F. Buckley Jr, Milton Friedman, Charles Krauthammer, Daniel Pipes etc.

There has been no excuse for any intelligent person under 45 years old to be a Lefty since then.

The reason we are stuck with so many business Lefties in society with no solid foundation in pro commerce is that a pro commerce value system was maintained privately by the American hereditary elite before they disappeared in 1960. They promoted pro-commerce among themselves but it never got much outside their circles.  They were Republicans and supported pro commerce values but never had an academic or intellectual framework for their views.

Born after 1960 and still a Lefty.  You have no excuse.

Greatest disgrace in black history

Lets start with the facts.

• Fifty members of the House of Congress boycotted the speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

• Of that 50, all were Democrats and 26 were Blacks. Half.

• The blacks were all members of the black caucus.  They were more than half of the 46 members of the Congressional black caucus.  More than half.

• Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was the first elected leader of a democratic country to plead before Congress for American protection of his country since Winston Churchill.

To me, this is the greatest disgrace in the history of black group behavior in the history of the United States.  The half of the blacks who expressed their Jew-hate are evil blacks.  They are in sharp contrast to the other half of the black caucus who are good people.  Half good and half evil.

MLKing Jr. loved Israel.  Barack Obama hates Israel despite his perennial lies to the contrary.

Obama comes from the evil part of the black community that produced his own America hating Jew-hating minister, Jeremiah Wright Jr.  A good friend of the first prominent black leader of Jew-hate, Louis Farrakhan. Obama spent 20 years with these open Jew haters. Twenty years of his adult life.

On his first day in office he declared all written executive commitments from the White House to Israel null and void.

For three years Obama has negotiated with Iran and given $119 billion in relief from sanctions.  At the same time creating 3 deadlines for an agreement to end nuclear weapons production, all ignored.  Finally, during the entire three year period, Iran’s leaders have relentlessly called for the destruction of America and Israel, unabated. Every week.

Obama asked the black caucus to boycott the Israeli Prime Minister.  The evil half did.

This high ranking Jew-hate is not the only problem in the black community.  Blacks create 5 times as much crime in America as any other group.  There is now an hereditary black criminal class.  The children of several million black criminals are criminals and their children will be too.

The black community has a serious problem for the good half of the blacks from uncontrolled crime and rising opprobrium from other Americans.   Jews in America have a problem with this Jew-hate at top levels of the black community, which is spreading.  The rest of America  has this problem as well.

My tea house

In the late 1970’s after studying Japanese Tea Ceremony for a few years I decided to build a Tea house.  I became so enamored of the beauty of the whole practice and its emphasis on seasons, simplicity and conversation that I wanted my own innovative environment.

I decided on using a 20 foot shipping container.  I bought two for about $1200 and put them in the parking lot at Candlestick park.  I got permission by offering one container for storage use by the parking lot cleaning crew.

One friend built a garden outside the door of the container.  Inside I put a tatami floor, a small enclosed room for a toilet, and I cut a floor to ceiling panel out of the West side for a window.

I invited all my friends for Tea and had one wonderful evening at the Tea House.

Containers have been in use by architects ever since then.  This piece with many photos is what reminded me.

Candlestick Park is in a black neighborhood.  Consequently dangerous.  It wasn’t long before someone broke into the Tea House.  There was nothing to steal.  So the bad guys pooped on the tatami.  The cops told me that burglars do that often.

I never paid attention to my containers after that.

The Bloomberg mess

I was a long time subscriber to BusinessWeek.  I gave it up when it finally annoyed me too much.

What was annoying?  Many of the op-eds and editorials were anti-commerce.  I can’t read anything that is intended to provide business information that his produced by people who are anti-commerce.

At the same time, the Wall Street Journal got better and so did the Internet as a source of business news.  I got better information from those two than I ever got from BusinessWeek.

As BusinessWeek rapidly failed, because other readers are like me, it was bought from its funeral coffin by Bloomberg.  

Bloomberg built a very successful business by replacing the teletype of stock market information with a modern Internet news feed.  He did a great job and since it was pure news, and very up-to-date, it succeeded quickly and famously.  

But the man behind it, whose name is on the service was a Lefty at heart, as evidenced by his success as mayor of  Manhattan.  He is able to put his anti-commerce ideology into many published vehicles.  But his readers don’t like it and they skip over the ideological infantilism.  He knows this from many surveys but doesn’t care.

In any case, I was reminded of his ideology by a positive review of a book in one of his rags about how criminals built capitalism.  Blatant stupidity.  Volunteer transactions allow for bad choices and bad information. Trivial in the marketplace where everyone can walk away with a loss, but still have their lives.  Something that is not true when the government operates on bad choices and bad information.

His purchase of BusinessWeek and relabeling as Bloomberg hasn’t attracted any sustainable readers.

And why doesn't he, like thousands of other rich Lefties. learn anything from their lives?  Because the brain of most mammals becomes hard boiled at age 23. A theme I push all the time.

In the time of an American hereditary elite, before 1960, successful business people understood business before age 23 and supported business in later life.  Today, the hoi polloi go to college, get indoctrinated by market failures, communist buffoon professors, and we are stuck with the public idiocy of the few who succeed in business. Like Bloomberg.

Appropriate and privileged

I am fortunate to live in a world where these academic terms are never heard.  My son who lives near a university is less fortunate.

I happened to see a light melanin woman's video on Facebook ranting on the subject of black music being 'appropriated' but that black people's behaviors are not welcomed.  No comment needed on her idiocy, unless we want more crime and lower educational standards.

Both terms, 'appropriated' and 'privileged' come from and anti-commerce mindset.  They come from the Marxist failure to see that the Marxist pro-central government ideology killed tens of millions of people in the 20th Century and failed miserably in every way in a world where the choice of commerce existed.

The failure arises from a two word phrase: zero sum.  The Marxist world of zero sum is the one where government can make changes and some people will be improved while others are emiserated.  In that zero sum world 'appropriation' means one group is hurt when their values or assets are transferred to another group.  

Jazz from black Louisiana swamps to global trotting musicians was just such a transfer.  

'Priviledge' is the same zero sum mentality.  Some people benefit from everything that is creative and others are penalized.

Most of history appears to be a zero sum world, as is most of Africa, Latin America and Arabia today. But for most of human history we have had a slightly positive sum world, thus agriculture and trade developed.

The positive sum world became explosive in the 1600's in Holland and has grown geometrically since then.  Appropriation is now wonderful.  African art has enhanced art worldwide for 100 times the number of people that saw it in Africa. The same is true for African dance and music.  While not leaving Africa any worse than it was before modern commerce.

Yes there is a privileged group.  It is everyone who is part of commerce.  Who eats abundantly, lives longer and is dramatically freer of illness and birth disabilities.  The privileged is an open group.  Japanese and Taiwanese are enjoying it.  So are the newly emancipated Chinese and the vast number of immigrants who flood the U.S., Canada and much of Europe.

So much for the popular terms of academia.  Signs of an ideology of the zero sum mind.  

Its a crime

You will have to believe me, if it matters.  

The public has recently begun to notice that police seizure of the property of people accused of crime seems a little unfair.  These people need their bank accounts to hire legal defense.  

It also seems unfair because they are being treated as guilty of a crime before there is a trial.

I started saying this was unconstitutional behavior in the early 1970’s soon after the RICO act was passed.  The trouble is that blogs and the Internet didn’t exist to record my opposition to this preposterous legal behavior.  I never put it into a book, because it is an issue of justice that has little impact on me or anyone I know.  The people I complained to about this injustice didn’t pay much attention at the time and certainly won’t remember now, how often I said it.

But it probably only matters to me, that I realized what a great injustice this is, long ago.

This seizure of assets before trial was initiated by the RICO act of 1970 and by similar state acts a few years later.  

The argument at the time was that the Italian Mafia was so powerful and potent that this unfair seizure of their assets was necessary to reign them in.  This argument was widely accepted because the Italian Mafia story of awesome power was widely believed. It was only partially true. Partially, because of Italian influence in the world of the unions that were powerful in some areas.  Anti-union sentiment wasn’t strong at the time.

The unfair seizure laws quickly moved into the realm of drug prosecution.   Again, a group of people that had no sympathy from the general public.

Every American can say: ‘First they came for the Jews, then for the Quakers ….., and finally they came for me.’  But it is meaningless because ‘first they came for the Italian-union-Mafia, then they came for drug dealers,... ‘ never gets generalized to ‘finally they came for me’.

But the aphorism is true.  Finally they came for middleclass homeowners and now we are concerned about it.  Forty years too late to remedy the fundamental injustice.

Frankly, it is a crime in my mind and a blatant abuse of the 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution to seize someones assets before a trial and before a guilty verdict.

A close friend of mine was a criminal defense lawyer in the late 1970’s and never lost any of her 114  marijuana cases.  She had a rule, because of the asset seizure laws.  When you know you are going to be arrested, you better bury a bag with $5000 in cash in it in my backyard so I can be your lawyer.

That was 35 years ago.

Asset seizure before trial is still a crime in my mind.  For any crime.  Including the IRS;  that is a prolific user of this outrageous injustice.

Empress

The photo on the right is the Emperor and Empress bowing in memory of the 2,000 Japanese soldiers lost in a battle on Palau to an American force of 20,000.

Trouble is, there is no Empress.  She is merely the wife of the Emperor. When he dies the locus will move to his son the crown prince.  There are plenty of women Emperors in Japan's 2,500 year history of Emperors, but that won't change again until the crown prince's only daughter survives him.

The relevance of this story is to summarize my recent trip to Japan.  

Japan, until 1944, was the greatest military power in history.  Japan is beginning to feel that history as China exercises an aggressive military stance.  And the U.S. relinquishes its global role.

I talked to a dozen knowledgeable people connected to the foreign service, think tanks and other parts of Japan's elites. As I do every annual trip to Japan.  There is a consensus that the American president is an 'idiot' (their word) , and his Japan Ambassador (Caroline Kennedy) is a 'bobble-head'.  Japan must become militarily more powerful and capable of acting on its own. Legally and with a competent military force. The general voting public is staying out of this.  Young people are supporting this direction.

Most Japanese in power believe that Japan is currently superior, militarily, to China in air and sea forces. China bought one carrier from Russia to refurbish.  Japan manufactures carriers and nuclear submarines for sale to allied nations.  Japan just created the first littoral carrier with a deck to launch 5 helicopters simultaneously and carry 50 below deck.

Japan is no longer concerned about population decline.  It expects the decline to level out around 85 million people, down from 122 million.  All factory labor will be done overseas much as it is now.  Robots will be a major part of the new work force and elderly care.  The level of labor productivity is capable of 3-4 times the current output.  Management is capable of massive improvements in productivity. The population is becoming more urban than any other country, except Singapore.  Which will be a source of strong economic efficiency.  Food production is becoming hi-tech and will be more so in the future, available for export.

Japan is aggressively forming economic and military alliances with its Pacific partners.  Vietnam, Thailand and Australia.  Other countries are on the list of potential allies in a second or later stage.  

South Korea is merely a nuisance with little change expected in future relations.

China is expected to be less aggressive.  She has a history of aggressive probing and then periods of calm.  China is increasingly tied to Japan with trade and tourism, which is bilateral.

Japan remains a creative and highly productive nation; with a hard working educated people and a highly stable political-social environment.

Japan is the only society on the planet that retains its tribal, traditional behavior and values with an ultra modern functioning commercial market.  Cherry blossoms are the national religion.  Cherry blossom time is the beginning and end of all commercial functions including bookkeeping, budgets and the school year.

Communist medicine

It is clear to me that the revolutions in medicine and surgery in the past century are entirely the by-product of commerce.  Demonstrating this is a different matter.

Therefore I ask the question: in a century of communism, has any communist country ever developed a significant medical or surgical innovation?  

The Russian communist revolution was nearly 100 years ago.  Over a billion people have lived in communist countries in that 100 years.  Yet no significant medical or surgical innovation has been developed.  

The first life saving innovation was the X-ray.  X-ray equipment was developed in Britain, Germany and the United States.  X-ray machines created General Electric.

From that point, until the end of WWII those three countries were the source of all medical, dental and surgical innovation.  After WWII the locus of such innovation moved almost entirely to the U.S.

The communist countries were always parasites, using innovation that originated in the commercial countries.  Cuba and North Vietnam are still 50 years behind the rest of the medical world.

With the advent of socialized medicine in post WWII Europe, innovation stagnated and nearly all medical and surgical innovation moved to the United States.  The most radical innovation began with the Salk polio vaccine.  Radical emergency medicine was developed on the American battlefield in the Vietnam War. Tamoxifen, the first successful pill treatment for breast cancer came from Britain. One of the great surgical innovations is the catheter lab; developed slowly mostly in the U.S. in the post WWII era.

Commerce and positive mortality and morbidity correlate perfectly.  Commerce is the source of modern health.

 

Today's America is an anti-commerce disgrace

Commerce is fundamentally about meritocracy and diversity. Meritocracy is about individuals. No one can do a particular job better because they are a member of a 'protected victim class'. That goes for teaching black history or being a professional football player. Merit goes only to individuals not to tribes, families or class.

That is even more true of diversity. Diversity is about individual uniqueness not about being a member of a 'protected victim class'. A good group of fashion designers will be made up of people with a wide range of talents including differing esthetic tastes, not different sexual appetites.

The same is true of an engineering team where diversity means different training and a variety of experience. Bell Labs was the greatest research institution on the planet because of the wide range of geniuses that came from every society on the planet. Certainly not based on melanin level or sexual preferences or gender.

Today in America, the Left has adopted a very totalitarian anti-commerce value of arranging society to reflect 'protected victim classes' differences in all institutions ranging from CEO's, boards of directors, employment to home ownership and educational outcomes.

Everything except sports such as football and basketball where the stupidity of this idea is obvious.

This idea of 'protected victim class' is a fairly new one. The idea of equal outcomes for all 'protected victim classes' is even newer.

We have always had hated outside groups: Chinamen, Irish, Jews. The idea of 'victim groups' was first promoted by the American Communist Party in the 1930's trying to divide Americans and gain membership. It gained currency on the Left in the early 1960's as civil rights became a source of political power for 'civil rights victims'. The Left learned that treating all blacks as a class of victims gave the Left power.

That led to the increased fracturing of society with the rise of the women's movement as a 'protected victim class' in the late 1960's. Academia took the lead in expanding the 'false authenticity idea' with black studies departments in the 1970's. The idea has continued to expand ever since then.

The evil of this idea is most visible in the election of an unskilled, untrained, incompetent man as president, and his re-election based on his skin color. The evil was most visible when he asked the black members of Congress to boycott one of the greatest leaders of a democracy to address Congress, and most black Congress-members did boycott PM Netanyahu. Solely based on their own skin color.

It is a sad day in America when a woman who has high melanin becomes 'black' and a 'woman' only when she changes her political party affiliation to Democrat. I'm thinking of Condoleezza Rice a Republican who is not considered either 'black' or a 'woman'.

On the other hand, only Republicans are real people. Democrats are members of 'protected victim classes' with no real personal attributes.

We went wrong when the Left adopted the American Communist Party definition of human group differences: victim classes.

Zen

The hippy world brought chaos to all American norms. The hippies searched the world for new perspectives and new ways of living.

In San Francisco they found a Zen priest, Shunryu Suzuki san, who had come to America particularly to teach Zen to the people whom he viewed as open and curious. By 1971, when I found his disciples, he had a solid organization alive and vital. In the middle of the 'scene'.

I spent many years learning about Zen and practicing its teachings. Suzuki, who wrote Zen Mind, Beginners Mind, had one main disciple, Dick Baker, who became a close friend of mine. Dick, was brilliant and exciting in an exciting milieu.

Zen seemed to offer a new approach for humans. Sitting motionlessly for hours, days and weeks, with an empty mind brought a clear view of the world without the on-going video that endlessly plays in our heads. The empty-mind-world was fascinating to me. The teachings that explained it as the 'original mind' or 'big mind' were a well developed 2,500 year old oral tradition. That rationale on top of the experience was also fascinating.

I remained associated with Zen for the next four decades. Unfortunately the hope and promise that Zen appeared to offer me, turned out to be imaginary. Zen is no different than the mainstream American religions that failed their followers, too. Zen, like Methodism, Lutheranism, Reform Judaism and the rest of the mainstream religions became ideological caucuses for the Left wing of the American Democrat Party.

This hit me painfully when a 40 year practicing Zen abbott (Norman Fischer) gave a favorable memorial pitch for a Jew-hating communist poet. The same view of the world he held when he started practicing Zen at age 18.

I realized that sitting on a pillow, quietly for any amount of time, hours, days, years, does not help anyone get through the period of age 20 to 25 when the brain becomes hardboiled and freezes all original thought capacity.

Too bad.

Zen fails. People who practice Zen will not come out appreciating the be-here-now world of commerce if they started out with the normative anti-commerce values.

Sweden learned from us

After about six years of successfully creating a network of small businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area, with over 600 members, at the time, I was invited to Sweden to help Sweden get new businesses started.

Sweden had a poor record for start-up businesses. It was common to build housing projects with several thousand housing units and not even one private laundromat or convenience food store.

I showed the Swedes how to get small businesses started. They paraded me around the country where I would talk to small business people and potential start-ups. The first place I talked was to a group of about 30 in Filipstad.

After talking for an hour to an audience that only pretended to know English, I had the group take a break and stand up. Then I had them go around the room and announce one thing their business needed. They each had one thing that they needed badly: 'Some one with a truck who goes to Stockholm once a week', ' some one with a commercial grade wood plane', ' a good bookkeeper who can work part time'....etc.

What happened then?

Chaos ensued. They all went to talk to each other about how they could help. The din of noise was all in Swedish. The group finally broke up for lunch.

The lesson for small business start-ups? Every business needs a little help and every business can help another business. Cooperation is the key ingredient in helping businesses get started and surviving.

Within four years Sweden had its first burst of new small businesses, 4,000.

The Swedes taught the Germans. The Germans brought the Phillips (me) small business start-up approach back to the U.S. with funds from the German Marshal Plan. A small circle.

Tree vow

During the time I spent in Kyoto many years ago, I was impressed with the civilizing properties of old trees that give gravity to a city. I vowed to help the tree planting programs in San Francisco when I could.

A few years later, while sitting in the window of coffee shop in North Beach, a friend came by (Charlie Starbuck) and told the story of the woman who ran the local tree planting organization: Friends of the Urban Forest. She had embezzled over $300,000 from the organization by never sending the IRS the income tax withholding for the five employees. Charlie was getting the books in order for the local district attorney so charges could be brought. (Like most DA's in America, our local DA was incompetent and had no employees with accounting skills.)

Remembering my Kyoto vow, I told Charlie I would step in to help the organization survive. Charlie told the board, which included several people who knew me, and I was asked to be the interim manager.

It was a terrible job. All the employees were immediately nasty to me. They wanted to be fired so they could collect unemployment insurance. I kept most of them, because they had the institutional knowledge that was needed.

The board had to raise the money; there was no net worth to the organization, it was negative $300,000. I negotiated with the IRS. I demanded the same treatment a large corporation would get.

The IRS finally agreed to a payment of $50,000 with no penalties and a payment schedule. The board raised the money and hired an old friend of mine as the permanent manager.

Salvaging an institutional mess was hard on me. I hadn't been a manager for many years. Every night I went home to a martini and a hot tub.

But I was able to keep my vow. The Friends of the Urban Forest still survives in San Francisco and is still doing a good job.

(That's Charlie in the photo with a green beret.)

Repairing a bus system

My trip to Kyoto, a few days ago, reminded me of the two vows I made 35 years ago to help my San Francisco. The first was based on the reliable bus service that was ubiquitous and prompt in Kyoto. Bus schedules were timed perfectly to the minute. Buses were frequent and exactly on the minute. I vowed to bring this to San Francisco which hadn't had good bus service for a decade since the newly hired black drivers took over the union local.

The second vow is tomorrow's blog.

When I got back to San Francisco I went to the head (Richard Sklar) of the municipal railway system, MUNI, and offered to help him with any problems he had. My plan was to expose him to my managerial skills and organizational talents so I could work on the overall problem of a failed system.

My plan was to create volunteer bus driver outside sports teams (basketball and baseball) that matched major bus service lines. Example: the Geary Devils vs the Mission Eagles. I was going to build a sports competitive environment to stimulate on-time competition in the actual bus system.

Dick gave me my first assignment. To understand the disability community's issues with the transport system and find a solution. At the time, the disability community only had a separate van service available. They wanted access lifts on all main bus lines. I had deep roots in the disability community based on friendships and my previous activism; I understood their needs.

I went to a public meeting with Dick on the disability issue and heard many powerful and sympathetic spokespeople present the case for universal bus access. Unfortunately, a few people presented it as a 'civil rights' issue.

After the meeting, Dick was furious. He felt attacked because he believed himself, as a fanatic Lefty, to have been an active supporter of black civil rights. It was a direct offense to Dick.

Since I had planned to offer Dick a plan for a slow but steady conversion of the San Francisco fleet to full accessibility, that would have worked for everyone, I was forced to drop the matter. After that point Dick would no longer listen to anything about the issue of disability access to the San Francisco MUNI system.

I failed on that vow.

Now thirty years later all San Francisco buses are accessible. Service which had an 85% on time rate at the time of Dick Sklar is now 55%. But we have a GPS service to tell us where the buses are.

Ring the silver bell

In the early 1970's when I was simultaneously the treasurer of one foundation and president of another, I was an early activist in the 'Corporate Social Responsibility' movement. I made face to face calls on all the major New York foundation treasurers to encourage them to use their portfolios for social activism. That included pressuring corporations to put women and minorities on their boards.

I was a failure in convincing the New York foundations to follow my lead, but they did listen. Most said: "if you are unhappy with a particular stock... sell it." Nearly a decade later some of them became activist investors with their portfolios.

At the same time my live-in girlfriend, Sharon, was a close friend of the girl friend of Arthur Rock. Arthur was a tech investor and on the board of Xerox. Out of obligation to his girl friend, Sharon and I were invited to Arthur's home several times for parties.

Because I was an investor, pressuring his company to put women on his board, he didn't like me. His response to my argument was: 'we can't put Xerox at a competitive disadvantage with women on the board. If you can get the government to mandate your opinion for all companies, we will do it too.'

Arthur took a few months to find his revenge.

We were again invited to Arthur's home. The four of us were seated for a formal dinner, Arthur at the head of the table. He rang the delicate silver bell. In came the butler. Arthur said: "Philips, we are ready for the appetizer."

My last name is Phillips.

I have since regretted my involvement in the corporate responsibility movement. It is not the responsibility of business to respond to the fickle winds of political bobble-heads.

Burning man

I am in Japan, and I announced it in this blog. Years ago, I put a Tokyo by-line on the blog and watched the readership drop every day. On a much lower readership base, today, I'm still seeing the readership drop because I am writing from Tokyo

Actually today, I'm writing from Kyoto. An ancient city I visit once every 35 years. Last night I had dinner with a writer who writes about the Kyoto area for magazines. I told her how much I loved a spectacular fire event years ago. It was in a rural area near Kyoto, at the August time of year when fires are lit to welcome home the gods. In a forest clearing, a 70 foot pole was erected with a large pile of dry wood and kindling on top. Men swung small burning bundles in a circle, like a sling, an launched them to the top of the pole. Some finally caught the pile on top on fire. This led to a giant bon fire in the sky with sparks cascading down. I never had seen such an awesome display before.

I suggested the writer find out about Burning man, the annual fire village in the Nevada desert.

I am the connection between the two. I and my girl friend of the time (Carole Rae).

After seeing this primeval sight in the Kyoto area I wanted one in San Francisco. So after Xmas, at New Years, Carole and I and a few friends filled a rental truck with dried Xmas trees from the street. We took them to the beach, where we had about 200 friends gather, built a pile of dried trees and lit them. It was a 40 foot high pyre. That became a San Francisco event. Now, every year there are hundreds of smaller fires at New Years on the beach.

A few years later, a close friend of mine, John Law did the same thing at nearby China beach and added his own touch... a wooden man outlined in neon. (John is a neon artist). That event grew and lasted a few years, until it was too big and moved to the Nevada desert as Burning man.

Simple living and commerce

I am a strong advocate of simple living. I am on several simple living mailing lists. All of them are religious in nature, which becomes clear this time of year, Easter

My book, Simple Living Investments for Old Age points out that American simple living has many parents ranging from the military to the Quakers to the Bohemians. My support for simple living comes from my own experience. If I seek fewer possessions and I can live on a minimal income, I am free to do whatever I want with my life. And I have.

The question regularly comes up: 'isn't reducing income harmful to the economy?'

Yes it is, if we use only the current method for measuring the economy, GDP.

We adjust the reported GDP by deflating it with inflation measurements. But we don't raise it with deflation measurements. Japan has had deflation for 25 years and no GDP growth according to standard data. By my measurements, Japan GDP has grown by the amount of deflation. Significant growth. Why? Because when the cost of living decreases for participants in the economy, their effective income increases.

The same is true for all aspects of simple living. If the same person gets comparable pleasure from a $200 meal at a restaurant and choses a $20 meal. The effective GDP has risen. The same is true for buying a used car; shopping via Craigslist for a used item, or from eBay. We can add dozens of similar choices ranging from getting an education by not going to college, or choosing to be a medical aide rather than a surgeon.

I have no way to measure the GDP growth contribution of any of these simple living choices.

They increase the economic value of the society, just as planting a garden and spending time raising a happy child.

Someday, we will have a way to measure simple living choices. Many of our economic measures already come from survey data, such as the cost of living and employment. When we know how, we can add another measure.

It is an inherent value of commerce, that people can live productive lives in an infinite myriad of ways. Unrelated to how much they earn.

Grandfather clock art

The video is a rough welded version of a grandfather clock with a screen on the front where the clock face would be. A video cuckoo is on the top.

 

As the minute hand and the hour hand change you see a pair of fingers erase the existing hands and then use a magic marking pen to put in new lines to the appropriate minute and hour.

This art was in the 21-21 Design Site Museum in Tokyo. The building was designed by Ando and the curator is Issey Miyaki. This particular show was about measurement.

I consider this clock to be a piece of superb art. My definition of 'Art' is a deliberate human creation that changes the language, the visual vocabulary, institutions, behavior or our conceptions of the world.

When I see any clock from now on I will think of humans as meticulous creators of time. I think of the problems this clock has in being accurate. Is it reset everyday? How often is it reset? It is a computer program in or on some memory medium using hand made videos. Hundreds. A computer could be pretty accurate in selecting and calling up the video images at the minute mark, but it would need some form of correction at some point.

Which is the place in this blog to remember that the wristwatch on most people's arm has a Swiss quartz timing mechanism that is accurate to one second per year. An incredible human feat that took at least four centuries of clock technology to achieve. The price of the Swiss made mechanism is under $5.

When you see this art clock, you really have to look at its dimensions to make sure there is no one inside it, much less an old man. It is steel and doesn't have a enough room for a human.

Sushi and Japanese prosperity

Yesterday I ate in a sushi restaurant that personifies why Japan became one of the great commercial societies on the planet.

Those of you who are up-to-date on Japan, sushi or interesting films already know the film Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

Jiro owns a sushi shop in the Ginza that got 3 Michelin stars. Considering that it only has 10 seats, allows customers only 1 hour to eat and costs $300 for a serving, with the sushi being the choice of the chef.... that warrants a film.

Two things came out of this for me. At the time the film was popular, my friends in Tokyo who are hip and au courant showed me that they knew about the Jiro film and knew more about Japan. One couple took me to a 12 seat sushi shop for only $250 where the chef got the more prestigious 'best sushi' in Japan from the Japan Sushi Association.

The second, was my notice in the film that Jiro had a son who was a sushi chef himself but did not inherit Jiro's shop.

I tracked down the son's sushiya. The photo on this page is in front of the shop. We had a great lunch for $40 for the three of us. Spectacular maguro (tuna), in my opinion. Everything else was superb.

The lesson on why Japan became a commercial super power is that the Japanese don't consider it necessary to pass a business on to the oldest son. Nepotism just isn't an integral part of commerce.

Save old languages?

There is and always has been a high level of sentimentality about anthropology.

I don't object to saving old languages, I agree, that someday they may provide useful information.

What concerns me is that it goes with a blindness to saving the artifacts and institutions of still living ancient human societies.

It wasn't anthropologists who brought back a language that had not been spoken for 2,300 years: Hebrew. It was brought back because a living people needed it. Anthropology journals and texts ignore this historic feat.

They do even worse on Latin. The Catholic Church has kept Latin alive as a spoken language. How else do you think the College of Cardinals communicates with cardinals and arch-bishops from 160 nations?

Latin doesn't need to keep up with current technology but Hebrew does. How do these two compare?

Even worse than this sentimental blindness in anthropology is overlooking technology and math from highly developed cultures.

Joseph Needham did a masterful job on recording the history of technology in China. It revolutionized the history of the clock and led to many technological insights about commerce and history.

On this page I have put two Japanese contributions that are overlooked.

The first is a 'hippy clock'. The hippies would have loved it had they known about it. It reflects the traditions of time in Japan. The clock starts at sunrise and stops at sunset. For the rest of the day it is divided into 6 hours before noon and 6 after. Truly connecting humans and their daily life with the sun.

The second image is from math placed on temple walls. Never translated.

Math is not a simple matter as Americans are learning with the latest curriculum iteration: Common Core. In the first printed text on accounting Luca Pacioli describes 6 different ways to multiply.

Time to stop being sentimental about anthropology.

Tech and travel

Since the early 1970's I have left San Francisco to travel regularly. More than a month at a time and more than once a year. That continues to this day, 45 years later

I've noticed two important changes over that period.

When I first started this extended traveling I had to allow nearly an extra month to straighten out the mess caused by my absence. Mind you, I had a secretary to do many things in my absence. Nevertheless I would come back to find my checking account overdrawn, some bill not paid or miss paid with penalties accruing or any of a dozen other unforeseeable problems.

We forget how badly American business and bureaucracy was in the 1970's when every invoice had to be checked for errors and every institution was riddled with errors in processing

Most of this nightmare began to subside in the 1980's as businesses got better at using computers, fewer employees were stoned on grass and more were using cocaine. Competent small businesses were growing and forcing bigger businesses to improve and overseas corporations were buying American companies to install better management.

By the mid 1990's, I could return from a two month trip and there were few problems that needed to be dealt with.

In the past few years, tech has actually helped make some elements of travel better.

Uber reliably gets me to the airport or to the train to the airport, with little wasted time.

My T-mobile phone works around the world, often with wi-fi, at little or no cost and high reliability. I phone people anywhere without a second thought. I text them too.

I no longer have a travel folder with names, numbers, addresses, maps and notes about businesses. Its all on my smartphone.

I take pre-authorized, post-dated checks with me from people who pay me regularly and I make the deposit to my bank with my smart phone from anywhere on the planet.

I can set my smartphone to not make noise from 9pm to 6am and wake me up, in any time zone.

I can check my airline schedule and ticketing on my smartphone.

I can check my mail, my business messages on my smartphone and I can work with every document for business anywhere.

What a change. A wonderful change.

Terminal Island hypocrisy

I've written about how I tried to save the Japanese dolphin hunting villages from the ravages of environmental hate, with an article I wrote in 1978. I wrote about the village I visited on the North Sea.

More recently, I've written about being interviewed and videoed on this subject as it concerns the village of Taiji from the movie The Cove. Taiji is on the Pacific and took up dolphin hunting after whaling became un-economic in the early 1980's.

In talking to the journalist who was writing about and living in Taiji, I learned about a level of American hypocrisy that I never knew before.

Independent of whaling and dolphin hunting, I was involved in the campaign for reparations for the Japanese based on their internment in 1942. I know many unusual things about that historic atrocity, such as the treatment of Latin American Japanese interned in Texas and the fake treason stories of the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. What I didn't know was how the internment affected Terminal Island. Part of Long Beach, California.

Terminal Island, which today is part of the major U.S. shipping port, was a thriving Japanese community of 3,500 people before WWII. The homes and businesses were a reproduction of Japan on American soil. Whaling was the main business.

After the internment of the Terminal Island villagers, the village was bulldozed for use as a military base.

When the war was over the villagers from Terminal Island moved to Japan, to the coastal village of Taiji.

First Americans imprisoned them for 3 years in the desert with little shelter for no genuine reason, then Americans destroyed their homes and businesses. Then Americans used the International Whaling Commission to again destroy their whale food business.

Finally American's follow them to Japan to make a Joseph Goebbels style film about their replacement business of dolphin food hunting. Lastly, Americans settle in their village to daily harass them in their homes and lives.

Americans don't sound so good when this story is told this way.

Does commerce need democracy?

There are two parts of this blog. One is on commerce and democracy the other deals with current democracy politics.

What is the relationship of commerce and democracy? I have no final answer. It is historically too early to tell. We have seen an explosion of democracy in my lifetime. From four dozen democracies before WWII, to four score today. A democracy has regular elections and the government involves more than one party. Power is moved to new people based on popular vote.

Some clearly new democracies are Taiwan, So. Korea, most of East Europe, Chile and Mexico. A few that aren't include Russia, China, India and Singapore.

The thriving commercial centers of the world are all democracies, deep democracies, non-extractive economies, like the U.S., Holland, Israel, Germany and Japan.

The problem examples are China, India, Singapore and Turkey. India is problematic because it has a few cities that are thriving commercially with third world socialist infra-structure. China is problematic because it is a thriving commercial society with no democracy. Singapore, where the brilliant Lee Quan Yew, founder, just died, is a thriving commercial center with a socialist infra-structure and very little democracy. Turkey is doing well economically but has gone from a democracy to an Islamic tyranny.

A few healthy commercial societies are socialist, like Canada, Sweden and Denmark. These are very white societies without an indolent black population.

In my lifetime it is possible to say that successful commerce thrives in democracies, but can also do well in other unique situations. A stronger statement isn't possible at this time.

Now politics. The American president Obama, has done something unique in world history. He is the first leader of a great democracy to publicly criticize another democracy. Obama has virulently criticized Israel for 5 years and after the most recent election in Israel has viciously criticized Israel and its re-elected leader.

This act is significant for one reason other than its historic first. An American president clearly shows he dislikes 'democracy'. A democracy is the creation of its people. To criticize a democracy for the results of its election is to say in the clearest possible language that the people of that democracy are not competent to create and run a government.

Further proof that this American president dislikes 'democracy' is his reaction to the 2014 mid-term election where the president's Democrat party was routed at every level of government in the most decisive overthrow election in a century. He promptly signed executive actions to override the new legislators and announced a refusal to work with the newly elected officials.

We have a stunning anomaly: the elected leader of democracy who publicly dislikes 'democracy'.

Collapse of conversation

I want to talk about a non-business subject. The collapse of conversation outside of business.

Businesses still function because subjects outside of business are taboo. Some of my friends who have wrapped their lives in their business are not aware of what has happened in the world outside of business.

What has happened is the complete collapse of conversation. It is no longer possible to have a conversation in the United States. The following are the mainstream media memes of the past few months.

* We need a race conversation in America.

* Blacks are being excessively targeted by police.

* Gays are being discriminated against in a law in Indiana and everyone must boycott Indiana.

* Women are being raped at high rates, often gang raped at colleges and Universities.

* Universities remain open to diverse opinions and diverse outside speakers.

* Young people are joining radical extremist military groups because they lack work opportunities.

* Anyone who thinks humans are not causing a catastrophic change in global temperature is nuts and ignoring a scientific consensus.

* Voter ID's are intended to suppress the black vote.

* Islam is a religion of peace and has nothing to do with the so called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

* Income inequality is worse than ever and the major social problem.

* The Tea Party is an extremist right wing movement.

* The Koch brothers and a few others control American politics with money.

* Republican Senators sending a letter to a foreign government makes them traitors.

I can't believe that anyone who reads this blog would support any of this dozen statements. (I'm sure one or two readers do concur with one or two.) I've left off several other dozen memes dealing with Israel, Jew hate, Europe, global events, Congress and the media itself. My whole point is that none of these weekly topics is subject to conversation. You either agree or you don't. No data, no information, no conversation will change the minds of people who hold these opinions. No discussion of these topics is interesting.

Conversations related to our national life have come to a complete halt in America. What has happened?

Tel Aviv

A few blogs back, writing about Tokyo, the most interesting city in the world, I mentioned that Tel Aviv is the second most interesting city. Naturally I was asked 'why?'

Both cities reflect their larger society, so one has to realize that Japanese are clean, meticulous, honest, much smarter than nearly every other society, have a wild, original and deep esthetic history. A great commercial people. Their food is also imaginative and extraordinary.

Israelis are honest, in fact candid is a better word, much smarter than nearly every other society, commercial and creative to a greater extent than any other people on the planet and friendly.

In both places, every visit will be rewarded with artistic, commercial, technical and institutional novelty. These societies are bubbling with creativity, more so than anywhere else, and more so in Israel.

Most importantly, I have always been able to find and talk to every person of interest to me. The social networks will deliver the person I want to meet, whether governor or cheese maker. In Israel, everyone can get a meeting for me with one phone call. You can sit in a coffee shop and always find an interesting person to talk with...freely.

Both cities have a permanent party underway, 24 hours a day. When I was younger I got into it just the way you get on a circulating tour bus or a cable car. Get in, ride for a few days. Get off. Israel is less age conscious in this 24 hour party. Tel Aviv has great beaches.

How could I ignore the fun and excitement of Tokyo and Israel. How can you?