Pro Commerce

Why is a rich entrepreneur anti-commerce?

I ask the question about one hypothetical entrepreneur who gives millions of dollars to the anti-commerce Democrats. There are hundreds of people who fit this category.

One reason is Trump’s reason.  ‘I play both sides so no one goes after me.’

This historic tragedy (rich successful people giving to Democrats) is probably influenced by the most common reason people align with the Democrat Party: my parents voted that way.  We have too many rags to riches stories.

The second most common reason is ‘the Democrats are more attuned to the little-man’.  An American core moral value. And lastly, the Republican Party is considered the party of the wealthy elite.

So how does that fit a billionaire entrepreneur?   Most if not all are nouveau riche. So they are influenced by their family Democrat traditions.  The sad fact of America is we reward meritocracy these days and that makes ordinary Democrat men into Democrat billionaires.

They are also people who have focused on their own business and their narrow life….and have seldom thought outside that realm.  The fact that nearly all Democrat policy, especially environmentalism, severely hurts the little-man is something they have not learned.

The last point about Republicans being the party of wealthy is an old model that they haven’t noticed has changed.  Mostly because of them.

They also know they are wealthy and fly in private jet liners but it hasn’t sunk in.  Many are Hollywood stars or the commercial equivalent and live in a cloistered Lefty circle.  The wealth issue hasn’t sunk in.  Having bodyguards leads to a reaction like the Europeans toward the Arabs, maybe if I support Leftie causes I won’t be a target of the little-man’s anger.  Or the Arabs anger.

Lastly, and this is pure Phillips.  They have lived in an exceptional modern commercial environment where most people help them, most people are kind and generous to them and only nasty outsiders ever sue them.  People all around them admire them, are differential and most of all they are surrounded by obsequious ass lickers.  So their world is one of pleasure and parties.  There is plenty of stress from hard decisions but it is in an environment of sandbox gentleness.

These entrepreneurs are never forced to question their core Lefty thinking or their marshmallow surroundings.  Even when the government screws them left or right, the lawyers tell them it can be handled and their supplicants say the same thing.  

Getting rich has left them immune to real problems and contact with the real world.  

That is half the reason they can remain big Democrat donors. The other half is that their friends and associates are in the same bubble.

Saved by a Broadway musical

By now we all know that the face of Alexander Hamilton was slated by Obama and the Democrat Party for elimination from our paper currency.  He was saved by the brilliant Hamilton book by Ron Chernow, which I reviewed and praised highly, and the astounding Broadway musical Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda.  Miranda and most of the actors are black which appealed to our racist president and saved Hamilton on the $10 bill.

Just in passing it is worth noting the confluence of good forces that avoided a ferocious political war.  A brilliant author and a comparable brilliant musical writer-producer.

That is not this blog subject.

I feel a special alone-ness in the world as I suspect Alexander Hamilton did.  Why have I had such an enormous impact on the world?  You can look at my abbreviated biography here.  I changed the global financial system, the global democratic elections system, the level of employment for blacks in America, the whaling industry, the understanding of modern commerce and a dozen more large impact actions.

I believe we are inclined to think of one dimension of innovation and another dimension of intelligence and a third dimension of long-term trends that shape the world.  I don’t think these play a significant role in modernity.  I also discard the ‘great man theory’, since that is usually political.

I think the reality is the occasional person who has a clear vision of the world around him and is willing to act, has a disproportionate influence in the how the world works. Everyone else is secondary.  That occasional person of clear vision is so rare I can not make an estimate of the number of such people.  It is parts per billion.

Which is back to Alexander Hamilton.  A man who shaped America in every way, probably saved it from oblivion.  He made America pay its war debts, created banking, a financial system and was the champion of all the elements of the Constitution that made the society work at all.  He was probably the reason Washington won the war of independence.  Jefferson was an ideological man of the agrarian Luddites variety; and Madison was a bright person of modest influence.  Washington was a man of strong character.  Only Hamilton was a man of vision and action.  He saw the world clearly and nobody else alive, willing to act, did.

I offer praise to the infinitesimally few men who have given us our modern world.  Here is to the rarest of human traits: clear vision and the willingness to act on it.

Global currency

Getting off the airplane in Tokyo I found a 7/11 ATM machine that promised to give me yen to be charged to my credit card.

I didn’t use it at the airport because I had plenty of Japanese yen from earlier trips.

There are thousands of 7/11s in Tokyo.  When I next needed cash I used one.  To my great surprise I was able to withdraw $1,000 worth of yen.  One hell of a lot of money for a single withdrawal. The fees are low, but start at a minimum $5.00 charge.

My dream of creating a global currency has now come true, certainly for Japan.  I don’t know how many other places you can just put in a Visa and MasterCard and get large amounts of local cash, but it has started now.

I am the father of this modern miracle.  When I uniquely understood that the bank check clearing house model could be used for credit cards, I made it possible for banks to join together and gain total credibility for credit cards.  That is the a priori necessity for a trusted credit card and a global consumer monetary system.

Finally it has happened. 50 years after I invented and created the modern credit card. We can all get cash around the world with our credit card. You are welcome.

Merry old England

I’m constantly asking myself how much abuse can commerce in America take before it stops working or is so degraded as to be minimal?

I am first looking at Britain after WWII.  Led brilliantly by Winston Churchill during the war, the nation immediately elected a pure socialist government led by Clement Attlee and Aneurin Bevan in 1945.

England immediately bought all the large industry with government bonds, socialized medicine and created a communist five year plan.  Every functioning private industry was nationalized from steel and autos to transportation and telecom. Most of coal was nationalized.  

England remained a highly stratified hereditary class society, so most of the hereditary elite remained in their top management positions.  The creaky old industrial world just got more creaky and unable to innovate.

This communist model lasted until Churchill was returned to power in 1951. Because the election was close and the government coalition only lasted until 1955, Churchill was unable to undo much of  the socialization that had been completed.  Britain remained a socialist backwater until Margaret Thatcher in the 1980’s made an effort to reverse the damage of socialism.

England was a major auto, coal, steel, clothing and pharmaceutical powerhouse before WWII.  After the war it was insignificant and has remained so since then.  It lost its empire as a source of exports but gained the wealth of the commonwealth as the natives moved to London and made it a wealthy and vibrant center.  Only London.

In summary, England is evidence that a vital commercial society can be reduced to economic ruble for nearly a century after sufficient socialization of industry.  England is not a pure case because WWII did a great deal of damage to the capital of the country. Much of that was offset by the U.S. Marshall Plan aid.  The second problem with a pure case example is that the hereditary elite remained in control of the society and that makes commerce ineffective under any circumstances.

In any case, a valid conclusion can be drawn: a sufficiently powerful central government can destroy commerce, especially if meritocracy has never had a chance.  England today is coasting along. As is most of the rest of the world, on the driving  power of the United States which continues to generate innovation and vigorous global commerce.

P.S. A powerful sign of modern commercial failure is found in England: half the resident Jews have left since 1990.

Operation Choke Point

If you think the American justice system is somehow decent and respects the Bill of Rights you will not find me sympathetic to your position.

My three obvious points have all been to the Supreme Court and found Constitutional.  But anyone with 51% of a brain can see that they aren’t.  

• One is the RICO laws that allow special punishment for colluding with others. Designed to imprison Mafia members it is often used just to punish anyone the Justice Department doesn’t like.  The Mafia justification is typical.  Take away any rights you wish, if the victims are unpopular.
• Second are the laws in nearly every state that allow seizing of assets of people arrested, usually for drug related crimes. Called ‘civil forfeiture’.  Seizing assets before trial.  Again, such outrageous behavior is justified because the world of druggies is unpopular.
• Third are the condemnations of property under eminent domain laws for private development.  Again, anything the government wants is OK if the victims are unpopular and have low incomes or unsightly homes.

Now we have a new one that has been around for three years.  It is called Operation Choke Point.  The Justice Department has corralled a few agencies that regulate banks, such as the FDIC and told them to pressure all banks to close the banking accounts of anyone the government employees dislike.  

Its real.  It is happening everyday here in the U.S.  Ask anyone in any of the taboo businesses.

Here is the list of businesses being punished by our government:

• Ammunition Sales
• Cable Box De-scramblers
• Coin Dealers
• Credit Card Schemes
• Credit Repair Services
• Dating Services
• Debt Consolidation Scams
• Drug Paraphernalia
• Escort Services
• Firearms Sales
• Fireworks Sales
• Get Rich Products
• Government Grants
• Home-Based Charities
• Life-Time Guarantees
• Life-Time Memberships
• Lottery Sales
• Mailing Lists/Personal Info
• Money Transfer Networks
• On-line Gambling
• Pawn Shops
• Payday Loans
• Pharmaceutical Sales
• Ponzi Schemes
• Pornography
• Pyramid-Type Sales
• Racist Materials
• Surveillance Equipment
• Telemarketing
• Tobacco Sales
• Travel Clubs

Some of these offend me, such as ‘get rich schemes’ and telemarketing but they need to be tried in a court of law with a proven offense.  The rest are legitimate forms of business, just not popular with everyone.

The rest just prove that the Bill of Rights means nothing to the Justice System.  We live in a banana republic with excessive power in the hands of the government.

Of course, the way around all this crap is to carry guns for protection and operate outside the financial system in the underworld.  Which thousands of business people are now doing.

Payday lending

Do you know about ‘Operation Choke Point’? I’ll discuss it  in tomorrow’s blog.  It is a federal campaign to keep banks from providing banking services to any business that Lefties don’t like. It is intended to put them out of business.

One of the businesses on the target list are payday lenders.  These are businesses that make small loans to individuals for short periods of time, usually until the next paycheck and are secured by the repayment from the next paycheck.

Many minorities use payday lending facilities.  What Lefties consider evil about payday lenders are the supposedly high interest rates, well over 35% per annum, and the market, largely black.

I just want to put my experience into the subject.  I had two occasions to witness this form of lending up close and informally.

I was in the Army at a Virginia base, Fort Eustis, which was heavily black because it was in 1961.  The Army paid wages every two weeks.  All my black friends, dozens, would borrow money starting at the party the night we all got paid and borrow more as the days got closer to the next payday.

I saw the same thing when I built a park for street people in the late 1970’s, most of whom were black.   Then the borrowing began the day the social security checks arrived and ran until the next social security checks arrived.

This borrowing practice was not designed to take advantage of stupid minorities because every person understood the cost of the transactions and the perpetual nature of the debt.  It was cultural and fulfilled some other need.  It appeared to me to strengthen social networks, but that is only a guess.

The two points I would like to make are: (1) stopping payday lending is something only airhead Lefties think is possible and (2) only white Lefties think it is ‘good for the black community’ to stop doing this kind of business.

My experience versus Lefty do-good ideology.

Suicidal snowflake generation

I wrote this blog before I saw some stunning recent data that suicides are increasing among white Americans. From the Centers for Disease Control.

Nobody really has an intelligent or an empirically backed idea of why people commit suicide.  I don’t claim to either.

I just have an observation.  I have personally dealt with several suicides.  I’ve dealt with them intimately as they became more depressed, tried every drug and electric shock therapy. And still committed suicide.

My observation is that each of my friends, my case studies, completely identified their feelings with ‘themselves’.  Now this sounds sensible.  We are a composite of our feelings.  I am the person who right this moment is a combination of anxiety about some impending problems, some distress over unresolved issues due to come up in a few days and some joy about a recent problem resolution and an emotionally satisfying relief about new friendship.  To most of us this composite of feelings would be ‘me’.  

My, ultimately suicided, friends felt they were the compound of their feelings.  Their feelings were nearly all in the depressed, unhappy, futile, worthless category.  So they saw themselves as the composite of these feelings.

We are not the composite of our feelings.  We exist somewhere independent of our feelings.

To me the issue is where do we learn that we are not the composite of our feelings?  I know two places.  One is intense commitment to athletics.   The other is intense commitment to public performance.

Athletes know that they have to get up at 5 am to go to the pool for the workout, get in the water no matter how they feel.  Everyday for years and years for hours and hours each day.  A runny nose, a fight with a close friend, a sad loss of a pet, muscle ache….none of this matters.  You get up and you go into the water and you swim.  There is a part of each person that is much more powerful a driver of action than feelings and the sum total of feelings.

The same is true for performance.  A sore throat, tired muscles, confusion, depression…. It doesn’t matter.  You go and you perform the best you can.  The audience expects you and a part of you that is not your feelings propels you go in front of the audience.

The snowflakes, in the current higher education world, who  complain about micro-aggression, white privilege and their need for safe spaces and trigger warnings are committed to their identity as the sum of their feelings. They are good candidates for suicide. They believe that their identity is the sum of their feelings. 

I foresee a significant rise in the suicide rate as the current wimp generation ages and enters the real world.

San Francisco business licenses

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to require that casual drivers for Uber and Lyft are required to pay $91 and get a business permit.

I have mixed feelings about this. The idiots on the Board (and I am giving them too much credit for intelligence) are doing it out of malice because they hate new businesses and they particularly hate a business that challenges their union controllers in the taxi business.

Putting their stupidity aside, everyone is now or soon to become a casual worker. I hire at least half a dozen casual workers other than Uber every month. Gardening, doing housework, fixing home problems with Task Rabbit, Latinos off the street to do heavy lifting. I myself am a casual worker, even though my clients are all around the planet and operate teams of people in the thousands.

So everyone should pay the business tax, starting at some early age. Or nobody should.

In San Francisco I expect the City to be sued and pay some large fee for their stupidity. Taxi drivers themselves are contract workers who pay $100 each time they drive their taxi, they should have to pay the business license. So do policemen who do part time guard work. And election poll workers. This list of people who are in the same category as the Uber drivers is long.

Political malice is going to be expensive for all us taxpayers. With no hope for change on the horizon in this city that is home to casual do-gooders, environmental nuts and trust fund bimbos.

Third world country

Three of my oldest granddaughters joined me in Tokyo this year. They marvelled at how clean and safe this city of 40 million is.

I responded that I always feel, on my return to the U.S., that I live in a third world country. They jumped on me. ‘Ridiculous’ they said. They had spent a few summers in Mexico where men are dangerous for young women and everything is filthy.

In comparison to Japan, the U.S. is a third world country. Where I park my car, going to coffee, there is a mess every morning. I mean a genuine mess, 5 feet high and 20 feet wide. Created by street people and half cleaned up every few days by the city. ‘Half’ cleaned up because the street people stand around and demand that much of their trash and rubbish they have a right to keep. Much of this crap is in the entry of the neighborhood library.

Neither I nor any of my friends will ride the city buses except in rare instances of necessity. The buses smell terribly inside from street people, the dogs everyone brings aboard and the ordinary people who are adverse to soap and water.

In San Francisco, crap and piss are everywhere. I mean everywhere except on residential streets where the neighbors clean it up along with their dog poop.

Then there are the hundreds of auto break-ins every day and the window glass everywhere on the streets of the city.

I could go on. But it is too depressing. I go back to San Francisco with a patient tolerance born of the realization that I can’t do anything about it in a city that is filled with Lefties who hate commerce and vote union-Democrat out of racial guilt.

Metal in Japan

Last year I brought back from Japan two metal cups.

They are like Bodum glass cups, with a vacuum in an inner layer so the outside is room temperature while inside of the cup with fluid is another.

Except these two cups are made of hand pounded titanium. Light, rust proof and beautiful.

This year I brought home a trivet. I’ll use it for serving bagels and scones. Simple design, again rust proof and elegant.

This time the object is made of pure cast tin. That makes it malleable. It feels wonderful and can change shape. I love it.

What is it about the Japanese that says to look at any object with new eyes. To see the essence of an object, especially metal? Could it be a millennium of Zen?

I got Muji wrong

Muji is the Japanese global retailer that opened a premier store on Park Avenue in New York recently. It has always been called ‘No brand’ because the products don’t display a brand name and are made of cotton, wool, wood and other no frills components.

I advised the Muji creators back in 1982 when they were just getting started with one store in Tokyo in Omotesando. The store was an experiment of the giant Seibu department store chain.

Because Muji was ‘natural’ and anti-ostentatious in a hippy way, I suggested that the first international store should be opened in San Francisco.

The Muji creators wisely ignored me and opened the first international store in a stylish area of Paris. It was an immediate hit and has grown ever since.

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Muji finally came to San Francisco, after 25 years, and is in an obscure location. Nobody, ncluding hippies, seems to have found it, yet.

I was wrong. In marketing it is almost always best to start at the top of the hierarchy, where trends often start.

Robohon

I’m on my way home from Tokyo today.

The biggest surprise of this year’s trip were the robots.

First was Pepper made by Softbank. In Japan, Pepper is just another walking talking robot, like many others. What I saw was a classroom full of artists designing programs for Pepper.

Years ago before Segway became a marketing failure, I suggested that the way to make the product a success was to give a dozen to a college soccer or lacrosse team and let them figure out a game.

The same is true for robots. But in this case, let artists find new and imaginative uses for them. The Japanese have done just that. They are the most brilliant marketers on the planet.

The second was Robohon. You can look it up to see him in action on Youtube. He is about 10 inches high and will be sold as a smartphone. But he shows the range of functions a robot can achieve. He dances, does acrobatics, takes photos, is a phone, and can project the pictures he takes on the wall. In due time he will do many other tiny amazing things.

I count on the Japanese to find interesting and productive uses for robots as they always have. We seem to depend on ARPA for innovation which is mostly concerned with war fighting. The Japanese dominate the industrial robot world and have for the past 50 years. They will be our future

Putin redeemed

Vladimir Putin is becoming a more important world leader. The American media seems to be stuck in its love affair with the half-black Obama who has turned America into a global pariah and ignored the man who has gained the influence left by the American vacuum.

Not only is Putin a man who ignores bobbles and luxury, living a simple life in his personal auster realm, but he is a master warrior with a martial arts background.

He is popular at home for beginning the process of rebuilding the Russian empire. He is respected around the world for a quick intervention and withdrawal from Syria.

Read a good description here. It is behind a firewall so you need to go to the blog for 3/20/2016. It is worth the time for my wise readers who are not drugged by the American media lackeys and their blindness to the world of international relations.

San Francisco business license

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to require that casual drivers for Uber and Lyft are required to pay $91 and get a business permit.

I have mixed feelings about this. The idiots on the Board (and I am giving them too much credit for intelligence) are doing it out of malice because they hate new businesses and they particularly hate a business that challenges their union controllers in the taxi business.

Putting their stupidity aside, everyone is now or soon to become a casual worker. I hire at least half a dozen casual workers other than Uber every month. Gardening, doing housework, fixing home problems with Task Rabbit, Latinos off the street to do heavy lifting. I myself am a casual worker, even though my clients are all around the planet and operate teams of people in the thousands.

So everyone should pay the business tax, starting at some early age. Or nobody should.

In the San Francisco I expect the City to be sued and pay some large fee for their stupidity. Taxi drivers themselves are contract workers who pay $100 each time they drive their taxi, they should have to pay the business license. So do policemen who do part time guard work. People who work the election polls should pay too. This list of people who are in the same category as the Uber drivers is long.

Political malice is going to be expensive for all us taxpayers. With no hope for change on the horizon in this city that is home to casual do-gooders, environmental nuts and trust fund bimbos.

Redskins and eggs

Now that title should be intriguing.

It relates to a little story. A few years ago I returned home from Japan determined to get eggs in the U.S. that are as good as the ones I eat in Tokyo for breakfast. The Japanese eat great bright orange yolk eggs.

They also eat eggs raw all the time. That part I already knew from being a consultant in agriculture. American eggs are likely to have salmonella unless they have been pasteurized in which case they have a symbol stamped on the top of the egg.

Back to the bright orange yolks.

I asked many of the good and famous chef friends, I know in San Francisco, where to get the best eggs. Every one told me the same thing: ‘get them from free range chicken farms’. Every one had a story about the great farm they go to where the chickens eat outside freely from the ground.

Wrong. I only found the good Japanese eggs in a Japanese grocery and they came from New Zealand at $1 each.

So the next trip to Japan, I tracked down a major egg producer and asked how the Japanese get their incredible eggs. He told me. 'We experimented using every reasonable chicken feed until we found the combination that produces the great eggs we produce. You may not have noticed. We have 5 grades of ‘great’ depending on the combination of foods the chickens eat'.

Simple lesson. The Japanese are a smart empirical people. They experiment with chicken food to get great eggs. Americans are primitives we go to our metaphors of 'good'.

Yes we are primitive. We worship paleolithic behavior. If our paleo ancestors ate what they found outside, we should do the same. ‘If it came naturally from nature it is “good””. The Redskin is our deep psychological hero.

Sorry, that is why we Americans are so attached to the term Redskin. Our view of ‘nature’ is what the American Indians lived in, on and with.

Internet skills and Tokyo

I’m really not comfortable with people telling me how the Internet is changing lives when there is no measurable observation.

I have some good measurements. For over 25 years I have had guests visiting me in Tokyo and staying in my home. Tokyo has no straight lines or corners to the streets (except in one dense business area). The rest of the city is as chaotic as a Moroccan suk or Mumbai.

Except that it has an infinitely complex subway system and impossible bus system that makes London look like a 3 year old’s puzzle. It is all high-tech with glitz and trains that run 2 minutes apart on tight published schedules.

For 25 years I have had to give the 80+ guests a folder of maps, travel brochures and guidebooks for everything. So they can get around Tokyo and find things they want to do.

It usually took 3 or 4 days before my friends were confident enough to find their way home. Some never got that confidence in a week.

Starting two years ago, that was over. Now all the guests arrive with their smart phones and can figure Tokyo out right away. My three granddaughters arrived late on a Sunday night, and Monday night they walked home on two different routes that were complex. With their phones and websites they planned every day by themselves with no help. The same with the next guest who did it all by himself. Every day.

Now that is what the Internet can really do. Make a truly complex and inaccessible problem in the real world… totally accessible. Quickly.

Business is the next big thing

Some techie has started a blog with the title ‘business is the next big thing’. Meaning to me, that this is a good time to correct the record. This dude wants business to be more socially responsible and sustainable. I can’t respond to the sustainable part. The word has no meaning unless one prefers life without steel, airplanes, cargo ships, bananas and restaurants. Paleo, real paleo is sustainable.

It is hard or impossible to understand the nature of business unless one has worked with dozens of small businesses and extracted the core operating rules. I’ve overdone it with over two thousand businesses of all sizes. And an open mind.

The core principles are in the upper panel of this blog. Meritocracy, diversity and openness.

A modern business will fail if it hires a brother, a sister-in-law or uncle to do serious work. Meritocracy only thrives in modern commerce (and the modern American and Israeli military). Since it is the only way people become fully developed as humans, it is clearly the only socially responsible and decent form of human organization.

Diversity is what is never appreciated about modern business. Not diversity of skin color or genitals which is not diversity but absurdity. Diversity of viewpoint and experience are what make businesses vital and successful. Modern commerce brings unique humans together and promotes vigorous interaction and development. A Muslim Pakistani can work with an atheist Texan. Again, a unique quality of modern commerce not found in any other institution.

Lastly, openness. An analog for honesty. Commerce is often seen only in terms of competition between businesses and based on trade secrets. Non-sense. Everyday business is based on trust and openness. Orders are shipped, advisors advise seriously, people work together amicably, internal theft is negligible, businesses help each other everyday, receivables are received and trade organizations work for their common interests.

Commerce is 95% cooperation and camaraderie and 5% competition of the kind that is found in sports. Where else do people behave that way? Nowhere.

Business is not the next big thing. It is the only big thing and has been for 200 years.

Fortuitous

I keep asking myself ‘How long can we have vigorous commerce in the current bureaucratic climate with global hatred of commerce and even the richest most successful tech developers supporting the anti-commerce political party in the U.S?’

The first step in my thinking is to recognize the fortuitous nature of our current peak.

Only in the U.S. has the hereditary elite disappeared allowing for the rise of meritocracy in big business. This was due to WWII where competent Americans rose to officer status in the military and became part of business after the war. The war was a response to Hitler, a fortuitous emergence.

The War also produced the American baby boom with the pro-small business generation of hippies. The small businesses became the commercial boom of the 1980-2000’s.

The post-War dominance by the Democrat Slave Party would have brought the U.S. the same socialist morass as arose in Europe except for the power of Stalin in starting the Cold War and the temporary emergence of an anti-communist wing of the Party. The anti-communist Cold War wing of the Democrat Party suppressed big labor unions and opened up global trade in the 1960’s. Fortuitous.

The combination was all fortuitous and we got the first and greatest tech and commercial boom ever to exist.

Meritocracy was joined with global trade, global American tech standards and a population that generated small business. All fortuitous. It didn't happen anywhere else. (Similar conditions created commercial vigor in Israel.)

Where are the terrorists in Shanghai?

When you try to answer this question you get some startling answers.

There was one Muslim bombing in Bali more than a decade ago in an Australian night club. Not after Asians.

There are plenty of Muslims in Asia. Indonesia, Malaysia and half of Thailand, Western China and India.

The only answer I can come up with is that the Muslim War is against Europe and Christianity and has been going on for over a millennium. In Nigeria it is against Christianity and Europeanism.

Somehow, the Muslim mind doesn’t include Latin America in its War, because Latin America is so strongly mixed in with indigenous people and wasn't known when the Great War started.

The Europeans first attacked Islam in the great Crusader events directed at recovering Jerusalem. Then four centuries later, after continuous warfare, the Europeans drove Islam out of Spain and Portugal.

The Turks arrived to protect the Arab Muslims, ending the Crusades. The Turks then successfully invaded Europe and held part of it for four centuries. But then the Turks and all of Arabia lost to the Europeans in 1916. The Muslims have been on the warpath ever since.

When we modern commercial Westerners finally realize how old this war is, then we can understand that it will only be won with military conquest and occupation. Probably brutal occupation.

Having chidren

The world is facing a perplexing problem. Most of the modern commercial world is not reproducing, not having enough children to sustain their populations.

As commercial societies face a rising median age they also face a sclerotic innovation problem as discussed in an earlier blog.

Many societies have explored techniques for increasing reproduction. None have succeeded. Now several European societies are trying the scorpion approach. Bringing in tribal young Arab men in hopes they will replace the native Germans and others and also reproduce. ‘Scorpions’ because they are openly hostile to the new societies they are entering.

One society has a vigorous reproduction rate. Only one. Israel. Which isn’t enough for me to draw solid conclusions.

But I know one of the decaying societies, Japan, and I know Israel. It is on this basis that I advance my thesis.

Israeli’s have a future, an exciting and vital future. The kind of future that invites children and reproduction.

Japan is getting old and stolid. There is no vital future to look to. Europe is a socialist morass, that excites no one and is not worth bring children into.

I notice, recently, that Japanese are beginning to become patriotic and see a hopeful role for Japan in the future. These young people are beginning to reproduce.

I think the willingness to have children is based on a patriotic and optimistic view of the future. Which is why reproduction drops when the economy drops and why it has dropped in the past decade in the U.S. under the morass of Democratic socialist boredom and environmental Armeggedonsim.

What color am I?

I know three children of a black father and a white mother. We all know a fourth. Barack Obama.

What I have observed is that the ones I know, and the one we all know, have grown up to be terribly confused people. In some cases, completely dysfunctional. I know my sample is too small to draw broad conclusions. It is only a casual observation about half-black children. It doesn’t apply to any other half-one-color populations.

Half black children seem to be perpetually wondering who they are. This leads to confused and often self destructive behavior. In the case of Barack Obama we have a young man who tried to identify with his father who was a drunk hater of the British. The son adopted the father’s hatred of the British.

Not growing up in a black neighborhood, ‘Barry’ (as he was called then) didn’t know how a black boy was to behave. So he adopted the most extreme ‘black behavior’ and ideas he saw. Those of Louis Farrakhan.

The other half-black kids I’ve known adopted other extreme black behaviors. Criminal, hooker, drugie and street person.

All I’ve seen of black-white offspring has been negative. Have you had a different experience?

Emic and etic

Don't bother to look up the words.

I’m not satisfied with the current definitions. I rely more on the original usage of anthropologists particularly Gregory Bateson.

To me emic is the explanation that members of a society give to each other to explain their behavior. Sometimes it its the explanation given to others. Etic is a more measureable meaning to that same behavior.

Americans will explain a recently cut pine tree with lights on it inside a home in desert Palm Springs in December as a sight and smell reminder of the Christian season of gift giving and religious appreciation of the birth of the Christian god. That is emic.

A careful review of the literature in many languages will find descriptions of this same behavior dating back to pre-recorded history in Northern Europe by pre-Christian groups for multiple reasons including fresh winter smells in foul smelling homes and nature worship. That is etic.

This comes up in Tokyo every year because many people, maybe 5% of the population, are wearing face masks. When asked, the foreigner is told the face mask is to protect against pollen. Emic.

Since I have been coming to Japan for 45 years I can tell my readers that until 20 years ago, everyone including, foreigners were told the face masks were for people who have colds to keep the colds from spreading. I can also find older Japanese advertising to the same effect. Etic. That changed.

What seems to have happened over time is that foreigners heard the ‘protect others from colds’ as exceptionally kind-considerate behavior by the Japanese. The Japanese didn’t want to be seen in this way and came up with a more self-serving explanation.

The reality is that face masks are used all year long, more in the cold season and not so much in the pollen season. That is further evidence that the pollen explanation is ‘emic’, it is now told specifically to foreigners.

Today, the mask is explained as fashion and with myriad other reasons including hiding. What is noticeable is that face masks are now spreading to other Asian nations.

Why the Japanese want to be seen by foreigners as self serving rather than kind-considerate is another issue outside of emic-etic.

Is voter fraud a serious problem?

Count me out when it comes to complaining about voter fraud. Sure it happens. Sure it was important when big city machines were effective up until the late 1960’s. Sure it was what happened in all the Confederate States during reconstruction, up to WWI.

But it is no longer meaningful.

I watched Willie Brown try to make it work in San Francisco. Willie ranks as the most brilliant politician in American history, in my book. He thought, fried chicken, church and limosines would influence blacks.

In one important presidential election Willie got word out to the black community, about 5,000 potential voters, that they would be picked up at 5pm in limousines to be taken to black churches for a free fried chicken dinner. After dinner they would be taken to their respective voting locations.

About 200 people showed up. Virtually all political regulars who owed their high paying jobs to Willie.

So much for voter fraud.

The world is growing old

Years ago I showed that the number of stop signs in San Francisco has grown for 60 years at a steady unremitting pace, unrelated to population or the number of cars. Driving time has gotten steadily slower and the entire transportation system has become pure sludge.

This is what has been happening to the world.

As modern commerce has brought miracles of vitality and vigor to the world, bringing us out of our millennia old tribal world, at the same time it has allowed for longer lives and consequent national sclerosis (see yesterday’s blog).

Europe is so sclerotic nothing of importance has happened there in 50 years. Most Europeans still live in the social, artistic and cultural world of Vienna 1914. Socialism has made life so boring and trivial that nobody sees a future to their lives and Europeans aren’t wasting their time on children. The future is so grim, it is irrelevant.

America, the driving engine of global modern commerce, has been on the same track since the USSR died. The richest people are now supporting socialism and Armageddon with their political contributions, the media is a now a global voice of socialism, regulatory hell and religious commercial hate (environmentalism). The entire academic universe is committed to teaching hatred of America, commerce and promoting a future of unrelenting misery.

The world’s population is getting older, because of health, medicine and hygiene and it is becoming a boring scleroic place to live.

Only Israel is young and vital…. and consequently, widely hated by the old and dying people of the planet.

Social sclerosis

This observation may exist somewhere else. I just haven’t seen it.

As societies get older they become sclerotic. By ‘older’ I mean nothing more than a rising median age. Japan has an aging population as does most of Europe and especially Eastern Europe. The country with the worst aging problem is Germany. Germany is putting a scorpion on its back by trying to lower its population age with Arab immigration. Japan gave up trying to fix the aging problem.

By ‘sclerotic’ I mean that bureaucracy intrudes on everyday life to the point of draining vitality.

The example from my 45 years of spending time in Japan is street life. As recently as 30 years ago I could buy beer and sake from vending machines on the street. Everywhere. Banned for no good reason.

A decade later smoking in coffee shops was put in air conditioned rooms and signs were put on the street saying ‘no smoking in this sidewalk area’. Again no good reason. The smoking research in Japan never showed any effect of ‘secondhand smoke’.

Prior to this, young people in bands and young dancers practiced in a main street on Sundays that runs through a large central Tokyo park. Tens of thousands of young people paraded in great clothes around the bands in one of the greatest street events in the world. Gone, when the city tried to move the event to the fancy Ginza district.

In San Francisco, my lifetime is the measure. The Golden Gate Bridge and the 8 mile Bay Bridge were finished in 1937 after 3 years of construction. An earthquake in 1989 destroyed part of the Bay Bridge. Requiring a new 4 mile section. That took 12 years to build thanks to myriad bureaucratic rules ranging from ‘worker safety’ regulations, to ‘no environmental impact on anything’ laws and buy American preferences and union shop rules.

That is what ‘sclerotic society’ means. The whole society gets older, less vital, more crotchety and dies a slow death while complaining about noisy kids and rambunctious young people.

(You can find data on national median age in wikipedia.)

Our new black media problem

The TV and film industry is under domestic pressure to include more blacks and minorities in the media. The pressure is only coming from blacks, the rest are just along for the ride.

The problem with this domestic pressure is that nearly 60% of American media revenue comes from the international market. In the international market, a dominant role for blacks will kill a TV program or film. See this article.

The biggest and fastest growing market is China. Blacks are openly disliked in China. A very deep and pervasive hostility. This is generally true in Asia. In many other markets, blacks have no credibility as executive characters or top managers.

The most successful TV program on the planet is NCIS, which has been #1 in 180 countries for 12 years. The most successful comedy is Big Bang Theory. Neither show has a black as a central character. NCIS has one black manager who appears for about 10 minutes out of every 3 hours. Big Bang has none. None of the giant global films has a black character in the lead.

This may or may not matter to my readers. What matters is that only a few films and TV shows will meet this ‘no blacks as important characters’ criterion. When major American films are missing from the usable international repertoire, local filmmakers will step up to fill the void. This has happened in India and Japan and is happening now in China, Korea and Indonesia.

We already have a declining domestic media market. When we lose the international market it will be a large dollar value. Much like losing our Boeing airplane sales. Many jobs will be lost for good.

In this case PC, politically correct, in business will be costly for Americans.

Yesterday CBS annoounced the end of NCIS as a major global player. The producers are making one of the central characters a light black with an English accent. The original producer of the show was kicked out many years ago.

Do businesses need to grow?

I saw an ad for some schmuck who teaches a class on business about ‘Why a business doesn't need to grow’. His reasons for teaching the class were to promote 'sustainable nonsense'. This is clearly not a person who has dealt with real business.

There are millions of small businesses in the world that don’t grow. Growth is not a necessary component of business except in the syphilitic heads of anti-commerce Lefties.

Even among publicly listed companies there is a high proportion that don’t grow. In general they get absorbed by other public companies or get taken private by investors. But they do not necessarily grow. Even for many decades.

From my vast experience, consulting with several thousand businesses, the market in which the business operates determines the nature and degree of growth. So does management.

My favorite example is the Body Shop in the San Francisco Bay area. It grew to three stores, one for each of the three principals. They were happy and didn’t need to grow.

Along came a Brit who saw the ideas in the shop as a global business. She made it global and after a few years, went back and paid the three original Body Shop women for their original ideas and graphics.

The idea that businesses must necessarily ‘grow or die’ comes from investors. It makes sense in terms of investments. Since growth it is not inherent in commerce, many businesses are forced to grow by buying other businesses. That should not be read as anything but investor interests.

There is nothing inherent in business that warrants growth, other than serving a growing market of satisfied customers. Even then, multiple businesses can suffice.

The photo is a 'climax forest' with plants of all sizes and steady death and birth of life.

The two cities that count

If you are a world traveller, as I am, there comes a time when novelty in travel doesn’t work anymore. I’m not talking about people who take tours or get off a cruise ship for a few hours, I’m talking about people who live in a new country for days or weeks, outside a modern hotel, and get a sense of the culture.

Again, this visiting anthropologist gig can get old too. And hard, since much of the world is red dirt streets.

I have been to many countries and cities. The two cities I never get tired of are Tokyo and Tel Aviv. First the accommodations are fine for my taste. The food is superb, the water on the street is drinkable and the people are wonderful. But that is not enough.

Tokyo is, for me, an endless source of novelty and inspiration. Every year there are new technologies and new art. Not trivial stuff, real things that impact the world. In art it is often in fashion and fabric. In technology it can be anything. This year it is robots. The best in the world. The Japanese are innovators and love novelty. While having the longest tradition of civilization on the planet.

Tel Aviv has everything Tokyo has plus swimming in the Mediterranean. It is genuine innovation in art, style and technology. The one unique quality of Tel Aviv, not found anywhere else on the planet is vitality. The population is young, smart, generous and energetic. That isn’t found anywhere else.

You can go to all the places I no longer go to. Europe. To me it is stale and smells of a funeral home. Boring beyond my level of tolerance. Plus Jew hate as the only excitement. The rest of the world is tribal, with a few urban people trying to join the modern world. Interesting the first time you see it.

Give me Tokyo and Tel Aviv and you can keep the rest of the planet.

What is a zoo?

I know the answer because of regular revolutions. I went to the zoo in Bamako which is the capital of Mali in West Africa.

In the 1980s there was a regular monthly coup d'etat in Mali because the military barracks were only three blocks from the capitol. The top ranking officer only needed to walk his troops a few blocks to take over the country.

Everything in the country that was of value was stolen and everything the government ran was left in ruins.

Can you guess what animals were left in the zoo. No cage gates were left closed.

Answer: a few chimps, one camel and a lioness.

Why?

All the other animals had escaped, been eaten by the local population or eaten by other zoo animals.

One man, a vendor was in the zoo selling bags of peanuts during the day. Visitors bought the peanuts and fed them to the chimps who made faces and noises to entertain the kids. Kids also liked to feed the camel who could entertain with the most monstrous belch. At night the chimps and camel found other food near the zoo.

The lioness found her cage to be a great safe haven to sleep in. The rest of the time she roamed the neighborhood finding animals to eat.

What is a zoo? A zoos is an expensive European creation intended for educational purposes. That is obvious when the Europeans are gone and the government can barely pay for regular schools.

Navigating international commerce

I bring up this subject because of my experience with Starbucks more than twenty years ago.

Starbucks was ready to expand internationally. A board member came to me for advice about opening in Japan, the first country they had chosen.

Since Starbucks depends heavily on location, and location everywhere in the world, is deeply connected to the corruption of local government, I advised partnering with a local business to get good locations.

Starbucks wisely partnered with the Sazaby brothers, who came from a family with 200 years in the food industry. Since the Sazabys were in the process of expanding their tea cafe’s, Starbucks was able to get some of the best foot traffic locations in Japan.

The Sazaby Co. recently bought out Starbucks in Japan. The same thing happened earlier when 7-11 Japan bought out the Japanese chain and then bought the U.S. parent company, Southland.

I watched Peet’s coffee fail promptly in Japan; a few years after Starbucks. They hired a Chinese man as the regional manager, assuming he would later handle Korea and China efficiently. Wrong. The Chinese are not Japanese, in anyway. He got many things wrong in the marketing. Failure built in from cultural stereotypes.

My Indian wedding

I once went to India, Bangalore to be specific, for the wedding of a friend. The wedding was between two Christians but that was irrelevant. The actual marriage covenat was in a small church but the celebration was at the local tennis club.

If you saw the movie ‘Monsoon Wedding’ you will know what it was like, plus the smells of India.

We arrived at the big tent for the reception early to help set up. Nothing was ready.

The table clothes from the last wedding were not washed and were in a pile. There was about an hour left before the event started. Over 200 people were expected. Most of the Indian workers were doing nothing. When I asked them to help, they responded with a ‘no way’ nodding of the head.

The 20 table clothes were mushed around in a bucket of water. Not cleaned. Then wrung out by hand and put, wet, on the tables.

There were messes everywhere on the white cloth. I had brought gold leaf flakes to put on the presents. It promptly went on the worst mess spots on the table clothes. We barely finished when the wedding crowd arrived.

Despite the Indian workers 'do nothing' habits, the event was spectacular. The food was incredibly good, the dancing was wildly energetic because the band was magnificent.

In deep Indian tradition. Details don’t matter. The event was great fun for everyone.