Pro Commerce

What Destroyed California and San Francisco?

Term limits and small districts.

I’ve watched California go from a Republican state to a super-majority Democrat one. I was close to politics all that time.  I finally figured out what happened.

I watched the change in the legislatures as Assemblyman Jesse Unruh took over the Democrat Party from 1961.  In those days I was an Assembly Legislative Analyst running the campaign of a San Francisco Assemblyman.  Unruh took contributions from all the lobbyists and used the money to elect loyal Democrat legislators.  He was later succeeded by Willie Brown who used the same formula to govern the State.  Labor money became the backbone of state campaign finance and there was a direct pipeline from union state employees to the Democrat Party. The system became stronger and embedded over time.

Term limits were introduced statewide in the late 90s and in San Francisco for the second time in 2000.

First we got a deep well of funding for the Democrat aspirants, then we got a ladder to a life in politics.

The term limits meant that winning the first step on the ladder offered a series of steps up the ladder as the term-limit law created all the steps on the ladder upward.  In San Francisco that meant the first step was a trivial spot on the school board or the City College Board. Then a spot on the Board of Supervisors, then a position in the Assembly followed by a seat in the Senate followed by election to one of the many Statewide offices.  

That is what we have today. A home grown political machine.  The tiny districts just make it easier for a political nobody to get their first step in office.  Tiny districts are often controlled by one or two fictional neighborhood clubs.

Don’t Do What You Love

There has been a recent flurry of articles on the subject ‘Don’t do what you love.’  This is pretty much in response to an unattributed popular phrase ‘Follow your passion’ or its earlier version ‘Do what you love and the money will follow.’

As the father of this idea, I feel compelled to comment.  I introduced this idea to the world in my 1974 book The Seven Laws of Money.  The first law is ‘Do it. Money will follow if you’re doing the right thing.’

I wrote this theme in response to all the people who were coming to me soliciting help in raising money for their project.  Mostly hippies. It was the right response to the subject at the time.  Most of the thousands of projects I saw needed to be tried in the real world to know if there was a market. Simple, clear advice.

It promptly morphed into the ‘Do what you love and the money will follow.’ Which is a mystical statement that I couldn’t support. That morphed into Nike’s ‘Just do it.’   A very American sentiment.

Frankly, as advice for the corporate world it is nonsense.  Most people enjoy their work, because of its sociability and its challenges, but doing it as a passion is probably rare. For owners and top managers the business world is hard and stressful.  That is a reality.

If you are just starting out in the world and are a highly competent person, I would always encourage you to do what you love, but be prepared to do it for a long time without much monetary reward.

What I KNOW and Most Don’t

Why don’t we have flying cars or jet packs?

What was the surface temperature of the earth in 1950?

Why did inflation begin on 1/20/21?

What single man created the modern world?

Did the Dutch army ever completely defeat Britain?

 

Why don’t we have flying cars or jet packs?

Anyone who can watch a butterfly or look at a tree with leaves can see that the air moving around us has many very small cells of moving air going in different directions.  That is what tumbles a jet pack or a flying car, upside down.

 

What was the surface temperature of the earth in 1950?

It was 57.1 F.  The same as it is today.  I got that number from radiosonde.  A reliable site of global balloon measurements taken every month by nations all around the world.  This reliable global surface temperature measurement was online with detailed data until I published it with commentary in 2016.  Then it disappeared and you can’t find it. Nor can you find many of my discussions of it, on my blogs over many years. 

 

Why did inflation begin on 1/20/21?

Because on that date the new president, Biden, canceled all fracking on public land by Presidential Order. The price of oil went from $40 a barrel to $90 a barrel immediately.  Oil moves everything on the planet by truck, train, ship and air. It is in the price of everything.  As in 1973 and 1979 the price of oil determined the subsequent inflation.  I wrote about it here.

 

What single man created the modern world?

John D. Rockefeller who started with oil drilling and refining oil into kerosene in 1865, ended up by the 1890s producing 90% of the world’s oil.  He created refining and distribution methods to minimize the cost of oil and to make it the driving energy that created the modern world.

 

Did the Dutch army ever completely defeat Britain?

Yes, in November 1688. The Dutch army landed 20,000 soldiers and horses in Devon, off of 60,000 ships, and marched in fifteen days to London, defeating King James II’s army.  Surrounding central London, the Army demanded the installation of the Dutch ruler and his wife as King William and Queen Mary as the royal family of England, Ireland and Scotland.  The Parliament agreed. The Brits call that Dutch victory the Glorious Revolution.