Pro Commerce

Deep Truth About Commerce

The modern world exists for one reason, one reason alone; modern commerce.  On the surface one sees technology as the vehicle for the miracles in the modern world, the movement of half the population on the planet out of poverty, short life-spans and away from hunger.  

Simple proof that technology is not the prime mover:  you don’t see the broad use and acceptance of technology in the parts of the world that don’t have modern commerce, areas such as most of Africa, large parts of Indonesia and vast tracts of the Middle East and the Steppes.

Modern commerce is the primary source of technology in everyday life. Russia and India are  good examples where the military makes extensive use of the latest technology but very little of it trickles down to the vast Russian or Indian population.

The same is true when you compare a small rural Iowa town with technology overflowing in every household to a small similar town on the same longitude in Puebla, Mexico, or continuing on the same latitude to the other side of the planet to Mysore in India or Astana in Kazakhstan.  Maybe 5% of the technology in a farm village that in Iowa is found in every home can be found in even a dozen homes in Puebla, Mysore or Astana. Widespread existence of modern commerce is the difference between an abundance of technology in every home and a technological desert.

Technology is a common element in the lives of people who live in the world of modern commerce.  But technology is only found in areas where modern commerce thrives. 

The two real benefits of modern commerce, the two greatest daily benefits are pervasive cooperation and an infinite array of livelihoods. 

 Pervasive Cooperation not competition.

For people whose eyes and minds are closed, modern commerce is a competitive system. For people whose eyes and minds are open, modern commerce is more than 95% cooperation every minute and every hour of the day. 

Yes, Boeing competes with Airbus, Peet’s competes with Starbucks and Taco Bell competes with McDonald’s.  But the same airline can buy both planes and a consumer can go to any coffee shop or any fast food outlet minutes apart.  That is the  strange idea of market competition from the consumer point of view.  Competition in the market means multiple businesses are clamoring to make you happy.  Acting as if they were potential lovers, going after you;  the word competition doesn’t make much sense. Lovers pursuing you, is more like it. Market competition is more accurately a love fest.

For people whose eyes are open we see employees working together, every minute of the day, supporting each other, having birthday and anniversary parties at work, being extra kind to customers and suppliers.  We see suppliers doing everything they can to help their customers with the best possible service, the latest technology, advice on best practices and useful trade information. Everywhere we look in modern commerce we see cooperation and mutual help. 

That is the incredible beauty of modern commerce.  There is no tribal rivalry.  It is the opposite of  many Chinese stores where you see fellow clan members treating family much better than other customers.  In Southeast Asia, you see Malaysians and Indonesian merchants being cold or rude to Chinese customers.  In tribal societies entire families work in the same business. In contrast, in a Los Angeles Peet’s coffee shop you’ll find a barista who is Shia Muslim, a Bahai, a Jew, a Baptist and three atheists working together effectively for years, on every shift. Helping each other. That is modern commerce versus all other economic systems.

An infinite array of livelihoods

One of the greatest benefits of modern commerce is most often overlooked.  One can find work in a very wide variety of livelihoods.  Before the turn of the 20th century, the variety of occupations was limited.  There were several types of farm workers, several types of day laborers, ministers, medical workers, lawyers, teachers and public officials.

As the government grew in the 20th century,  the need to classify occupations increased and the first Occupational Codes were published.  In 1938 the first classification of occupations  had 4 digits, for a possible 10,000 occupations with only a few hundred occupations listed.  By 1958 the list had 5 digits for a possible 100,000 occupations with less than 1,000 actual occupations individually itemized.  By the 1970s the Occupation Code list fell out of use in most of the United States, except for tax authorities,  because there were so many ambiguous multi-functional occupations and so many people who had broad occupational responsibilities that a simple occupational number was meaningless.

Today, people working for large corporations are hired with a specific occupational title but the responsibilities are diverse, complex and variable; especially where managerial responsibility is included.

A young person entering the job market has a nearly limitless choice of livelihoods and a mature worker can virtually define their own occupation.  This is a miracle of the modern commercial world. Almost limitless variety of available livelihoods,

Adam Smith, more than 250 years ago, championed the commercial marketplace where the miracle of individual greed was supreme as opposed to individual generosity.  Smith pointed out that the baker would not get up every day at 2 in the morning, for most of his life, to bake bread out of the kindness-of-his-heart, but he would out of personal income earning desires.

That was a very limited but persuasive argument for the open commercial market.  Today, with modern commerce ascendant in much of the world, we know that there are two more powerful arguments for the open market: a daily world where a wide variety of people can work cooperatively together and a world where a myriad, nearly infinite, number of skills and talents can be appreciated and rewarded.

Modern commerce has created a  miracle never seen before in human history.

Compatibility

I’ve found an element that is crucial to a couple's compatibility that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere else.  Physics.

The insight came when a close friend died and I asked my partner if she could have married him.  She asked me the same question about my friend’s wife.  We both answered ‘No’ and came to the same conclusion.  The reason for Our mutual compatibility was the same reason for our incompatibility with our married friends.

My friend and his wife are klutzes.  They can’t connect a TV set to the cable system, can’t assemble the simplest appliance or use their new cell phones.  

Some people are good at manipulating the physical world, hammering, sawing, attaching and detaching and others are not.  From our experience the reason for this effectiveness in dealing with the physical world has to do with their understanding of physics.

Humans develop a physical sense of the world.  What is hard, what is pliable and what is similar. That view shapes how people manipulate the world and how they direct workers around them to manipulate the world. 

I never recommended my best hired workers to my friend and his wife because they could not distinguish a hard job from an easy one and they would complain about the work done by a worker whether it was excellent or shoddy.  Neither of them could give good directions to get a job done, whether for a plumbing problem or putting a new lock on a door.

This view of the world seems to me to be a key element in sexual partnerships.  We know that smell, cleanliness, money views and countless other prominent issues are part of compatibility and are what counts when sexual attraction wears off.  I just want to add the physical view of the world to the list of compatibility issues. 

 Just a note for marriage counselors and people who counsel couples before marriage. Check on whether one or both are ‘handy’ with tools.

Good Summary

Victor Davis Hansen, one of my favorite thinkers and commentators, has written a beautiful summary of how wrong the current situation in America is for those of us who love this country and appreciate the contributions we have made to the world and to humanity.

Here!

The Woke World

I have 8 grandchildren.  It looks to me like they are nearly all ‘woke.’  What does wokeness  mean for a large new generation?  What does it mean to be woke in terms of the survival of the commercial world?

First, what is woke?  Wokies hold the following main ideas:

• America is a systemically racist country.
• Women are second-class citizens and are subject to discrimination..
• Humans are causing a catastrophic rise in global surface temperature.

I won’t argue against any of these propositions.  My job is to consider their effects on America and the larger world.

The first, anti-black racism, will have the worst consequences.  America is not racist at all.  It is predominantly meritocratic and the consequence is that American blacks are the main component of the bottom class.  Holding the ‘woke’ view that racism is systemic will only make the problem worse.  Nothing in the way of government policy or private behavior will change the Black outcome. Nowhere that blacks live, whether in black societies in Africa or in mixed societies such as Haiti or Louisiana, is the outcome any different.

But the black attitude of ‘white oppression,’ promoted by ‘wokism’ is counter productive.  We are already seeing urban areas re-dividing as forced school integration has turned public schools into black schools.  San Francisco, for example, has gone from a citywide population with 12% black to 4% black since the 1960’s and the public schools are now less than 10% white down from 55%.  Asians and Latinos are the rest of the non-black.

The same effect will be seen increasing in employment.  In commerce, as opposed to government, employment will see dis-ntegration as whites and other non-blacks are less and less willing to hire blacks for fear of workplace antagonism and discrimination lawsuits. This is the saddest outcome of ‘wokism.’

The same will be less true for women. The dis-integration is already happening and will accelerate as the influence of ‘wokism’ expands.  But women as a whole, excluding black women, will be able to create and operate businesses at a comparable rate to existing business formation.  Reproduction will suffer. But it is already declining at a rapid rate as the general social optimism is declining with the rise of ‘wokism.’

Lastly, the belief in human-caused global warming has never been strong in the general population and will be discarded step-by-step as ordinary people are expected to endure hardships or deprivations of any sorts caused by this woke thesis.

In summary, the ‘woke world’ is generally a dead-end with some bad outcomes for the black community.  America will survive because meritocracy and commerce are well embedded in the society and can not be fully suppressed.