Here is a text link:
Forbes
Here is an image + text link:
Monday, January 3, 2000
Sunday, January 2, 2000
Ask John a Question
Simply click on "Post a Comment" below, and leave a note. John will respond, below your comment. Also leave your email address if you want a direct response.
Book Review: Against Intellectual Monopoly
Anyone who has taken a seminar from me knows I attack “Intellectual Property Rights” (IPR) as a bad idea for small business. I draw on what I learned from the highly successful people I worked for long ago, and what has proven true being self-employed myself these last 25 years. As a practical matter far from harming my business, eschewing IPR gives me a competitive advantage when competing on design as opposed to monopoly or price.
I lay out this view in the morning session, and then follow up in the afternoon, while directly addressing contracting designers, with the views of a patent attorney by the name of Stephan Kinsella out of Houston. It was a delight years ago to read his critique from a patent attorney’s point of view, with which I concurred. He is more radical (and right) than another lawyer who is somewhat anti-IPR, Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford Law professor. I’ve developed my arguments over time to the point I was invited to spend an hour making my argument to 17 patent attorneys at a leading IP firm in Seattle last Fall. The IPR lawyers know change is coming, and are working to correct the abuses.
With business and law advancing arguments against IPR, that left academia to round out the condemnation. Washington University professors Michelle Boldrin and David Levine do just that in their book AGAINST INTELLECTUAL MONOPOLY. These are not some flakes being contrarian to get attention, they are regime intellectuals and their book is endorsed by three Nobel Laureates and Lawrence Lessig.
Business in USA is split between the Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian ethics, one loving fascism and the other loving freedom. Obviously with war and economic depression and shortages the Hamiltonians have had the upper hand, so it is very welcome to see a central tool of the bad guys in the USA economy, IPR, being taken apart both by law and academia.
Lawyers practice law and academics practice theory, neither of which seem to be very well informed about how business happens. In some ways their arguments are far more important, since they influence the thinking of so many people. Although it is unstated, AGAINST INTELLECTUAL MONOPOLY proceeds from the theoretical basis laid down by R H Coase as he has laid out in THE FIRM, THE MARKET AND THE LAW. At some point I will review that enormously influential book, but suffice it to say Coase is a Hamiltonian. Essentially, their guiding light is “does policy result in aggregate in a net increase in prosperity.?” By their analysis, the answer is no, IPR is a net deficit. For this conclusion, the book is most welcome, and should be read for the examples that contradict the “pro-IPR” arguments. Jeff Tucker at the Mises Institute has read the book and wrote a series of essays that might be a companion piece that you should read alongside the book.
AGAINST INTELLECTUAL MONOPOLY carefully takes apart the IPR regime as it is, but says nothing about what might be if we were to rid ourselves of it completely. You’ll be glad when you put the book down that you’ve been disabused of the notion that IPR is a good thing, especially the nonsense that we’d have no new medicines without patent monopoly to recover the up front costs. But what should we do? Coase was flexible on policies, because the acid test for his followers is the vague “net increase in wealth.” their solution is wishy washy.
That leaves the task of someone writing a book that rejects IPR from a free market point of view, laying out what we would have absent intellectual property rights, and give any startup competitor a road map for crushing those who want to compete by monopoly, doing good while doing well.
I’m working on it.
Martha Rules
Book reviewed: The Martha Rules: 10 Essentials for Achieving Success as You Start, Build, or Manage a Business
When I heard Martha Stewart wrote a book on starting a business while serving a stretch in the federal pen, I bought a copy. Her bunkmates inspired the book. Martha noted they all commonly spoke about what business they would start when they were released from incarceration.. How often do you get a world class success writing for the least among us (as is usual, a disproportionate number of her prison mates were poor black women) As I am writing a another business book as well, I wanted to see what Martha had to say. I believe if business advice is not true for everyone, then it is not true at all. Martha wrote a book for everyone.
I was delighted by what Martha has to say about passion, design, never take on debt and other points which are similar to mine. Indeed, sometimes I thought she must have read my book, but then, since everything I wrote I learned from others, it is more likely the points are simply universal, not original.
I’ve never paid much attention to Martha Stewart, only to admire her as yet another example of someone who experienced a problem and solved it for herself, and then turned it into a business. When I am pointing out the range of possibilities for success in business, I often refer to Martha Stewart as a counterexample to Bill Gates. The former became a billionaire making the kitchen table presentation better, the latter making routine calculations more accurate and cheaper (a definition of computing I once heard.) The idea is the realm of possibilities for new businesses are wide open.
One aspect of her presentation that struck me was her self-description of making house decorating and entertaining easier. I’ve always thought of what she does as making the home and entertaining better. There is a profound difference there, and an excellent illustration of passion versus non passion.
For Martha to say she makes decorating and entertaining easier is to assume what she offers is standard. Growing up with nine people gathering around a plank on sawhorses for dinner, decorating was certainly not standard. To Martha, decorated is standard, and she makes is easier.
This reminds me of another impassioned group, the La Leche League, promoters of breast-feeding. I made the mistake of trying to be agreeable and stating “I too believe breast-feeding is best for children.” That was a mistake. To the La Leche League, breast-feeding is standard, the normal and anything else is the result of some sort of problem that ought to be addressed. “Best” is something people are willing to compromise on, willing to settle for a little less if necessary. Hence the La Leche Leagues rejection of the appellation “best” for breast-feeding.
Is it so with all impassioned people? Do they see their offerings not as best, or better, but standard? And anything less is wrong? Something to observe.
Martha credits “comparison” as the key to developing one’s unique style. By constantly studying what is out there now and masking comparisons your own style emerges. I’ve referred to this in Hegelian dialectical terms, that is the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, but her reflection is more accessible. Surprisingly, Martha did not put comparison in the index, that section alone is worth the price of admission.
Martha starts with passion, goes on to problem to solve (she calls it “what’s the big idea”) and then she works through developing the business. She cautions her readers to avoid the debt trap, and to learn to start with what resources you have.
Here she beat me to the punch. As I teach I come across so many people that believe you must borrow money to start a business. The truth is wealth is based on saviings, not debt, a point so lost today that I intend to make the contra-argument a centerpiece in my next book.
There are a few miscast points in the book. On page 86 Martha says “When you have determined the time is right to introduce your business, you need to spread the word.” Well, that is exactly backwards. Martha just got through explaining how you carefully test your idea every way to Sunday, and talk it over with very many people, to the point of lining up orders in advance, and she even mentions sales reps! So what is with “spread the word next?” She has sufficiently spread the word to execute. No matter, just a fuzzy note in an otherwise pitch perfect song.
Now the reason perhaps martha is a billionaire and I am not is she is more conventional than I can ever be. She offers an example of a good mission statement. “We intend to create a chain of premier eldercare residential facilities, situated within the most modern and attractive surroundings, and offering the most innovative health care services in the midwest.”
Where is the customer in that mission statement? Where is the hypothesis and the test of the hypothesis? Most of the wealth in the United States is held by women on any given time. Since women outlive their husbands, and husbands leave it all to their wives, women control the vast majority of wealth at any given time. Knowing this, here is a better mission statement; “Bide-a-wee Eldercare will so pamper your mom, you’ll be glad she just leaves it all to us!”
A company I have on the back burner has for its mission statement. “Our mission is to lower the cost and widen the access to education while ever more improving student and instructor satisfaction.” Of course we’d have to benchmark the satisfaction level, but once benchmarked, we either do or do not take care of the customer.,
I of course was appalled at her prosecution and conviction for lying to investigators (stock fraud charges were thrown out), which struck me as another example of law enforcement gone amuck. One of the prosecution witnesses, a secret service agent, was charged with perjury for lying on the witness stand in her case, but naturally, he was cleared of any wrongdoing. She has bounced back admirably. It is disconcerting to realize one cannot know if someone convicted of a federal charge in USA is actually guilty.
Although being in gift and house wares I’ve long known the name Martha Stewart. My first notice of her came by way of a young women who denigrated her, which mystified me. The young woman seemed to model her life on a Martha Stewart sensibility, yet she had nothing good to say. Martha reaches millions such women each week (and in her book, she lets you know.) Martha is a billionaire for showing women what moms used to teach daughters.
I think Martha Stewart tapped into the conflict between housewife and working mom, resolved it, and encourages women to favor home over office. Having mastered the business world, she chooses family, without ever having given it up. It is a remarkable accomplishment. The key is lifestyle, of course, where a business is not about money but life. This of course is a key point in my arguments as well.
Martha is another one of those people who moves from specialty to mass market. Certainly she could have styled well-to-do at the small business level, but like Steve Jobs and Howard Shultz has elected to move into the mass markets through the initial public offering process.
In so doing, she is able to get her designs in the hands of the masses through such outlets as Target. As she tells it, she lost awards and speaking engagements for this, which mystified her, since to her mind she is merely bringing the quality mentioned above to the masses. Of course, Martha has it exactly right, and the pleased custoemrs to prove it.
Martha also gets into excellence and quality service, which I argue in my lectures is a standard, not a competitive item. I think if I got a chance to argue this with Martha, she’d agree the key is to compete on design.
Fooled By Randomness
If you have lost a lot of money in the current economic downturn, it is likely because your money was under the direction of superstars such as Bill Miller at Legg Mason. He had a 15 year unbroken winning streak, and this year lost it all. How come?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb has written a book, FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS, that explains among other things, something called "survivorship bias." Taleb is a probability theorist and investment adviser, an unusual combination.
Miller says "Every decision to buy anything has been wrong" Not quite. The word "decision" is really going too far in describing what is just a guess. When so many factors impact the world we live in every decision is just a guess. Miller is not smart or gifted, just lucky. Because his guesses turned out to be right for 15 years straight, Miller is fooled into thinking he is brilliant. So do very many other people, who then begin to turn their savings over to Miller. His fund gets huge, and he ups his fees. Very many people are fooled by his random success, and when the conditions that reward his particular thought processes change, he fails. Spectacularly. A Baltimore city pension fired him from managing their $2.2 billion fund.
Survivorship bias is no secret. Taleb explains how it is a fundamental process to selling Wall Street advice to the public. Did you turn your assets over to a manager based on his investment track record? (If you do not have direct control over your Retirement Account, then be sure the managers of that fund certainly did).
How does Legg Mason and Merrill Lynch and Fidelity recruit such superstar investment advisors? Each starts as a nobody, but each will cold call people and offer free predictions. Say the new hire contacts 1000 people and makes a prediction to half that the market will go up, and to the other half he predicts the market will go down.
In a month the newbie will call the 500 to whom he made an accurate prediction (say the market went up) and tell them 250 of them the market will go up again, and 250 of them the market will go down. In a month, he will yield 250 names of people to who he made accurate predictions on the market. Next month he calls those 250 people, and advises 125 the market will go down, and advises another 125 the market will go up. Say the market goes down, then he has 125 people for who he has been consistently right. In four months the fellow has a following of some 62 people for whom he is always right. Maybe 5 turn their portfolios over to him. Keep in mind he starts the process with a new group every month, so in a year he has dozens of clients.
Did you choose your investment advisor on this basis? The alternative is your investment advisor is simply lucky-for-a-while, like Bill Miller.
Now the reason I have not lost money in this market is because I read Taleb's book (and I handle my own retirement accounts, etc.)
The trick is not to find out who has been right, but to follow the arguments of people who are doing well today, and test their arguments. As I have mentioned, between Mish Shedlock, James Grant, Dr. Gary North, Jim Rogers, and Frank Shostak you can vector in on arguments that can guide you in these turbulent times. None of these people are mainstream of course.
The problem again is concentrating too much power in too few hands. Why do workers agree to pour their retirement savings into such huge pools that relatively few people manage? Even if these managers can avoid being scammed, they cannot avoid being fooled by randomness, at which people very many people suffer for the bad guesses of just a few.
We are all safer if we all do our own investing. In Ecclesiastes King Solomon advises to divide your investments into seven, even eight portions for you have no idea what will happen. Most people have all of their retirement savings in the market, indeed the rules rather force this.
What if we were all free to invest our savings as we thought best?
Duncan Reviews Something Really New
Book summary: 'Something Really New', Denis J. Hauptly
Three product types: appearance, novelty, utility - the book focuses on the latter. Focuses on starting with an existing product to create new ones. Gives a process for analyzing a task, and reducing and simplifying the steps involved to create a new product. Sets out the following steps:
1) Find out what the product is used for. e.g. Shower caps were being used as covers for food bowls – this spawned QuickCovers. Customers do many different things with the kitchen faucet.
Ask customers what they do
Observe customers
Example: Ask people to describe what they use a snow shovel for. Answers include 'shovelling snow from the driveway' (most), 'as a dustpan when sweeping the driveway', 'for removing ashes from a fire pit'. Possibly two new products are required to fill the gap where the snow shovel is not ideal. Then observe the customers, as there may be uses they don't mention. Also there may be tasks in each use case that can be made more efficient (a snow shovel with a deep curve is no good for sweeping up dirt from flat ground for example) – these pains are potential for new designs.
2) Put each use into a statement (one verb, one object) e.g. For a garden hose: water trees, water plants, attach sprinkler to hose, attach pressure nozzle and wash house windows, attach pressure nozzle and wash car.
Then ask can one product serve these uses best, or multiple products? For latter design 5 products, for former, condense the tasks to produce 1 better product, e.g.: water trees and plants, water using sprinkler, water using pressure nozzle. Then condense further still: water with attachment, water without attachment. This process has brought us from 5 uses to 2 or 3 possible products (depending on how much you condense). Be careful not to condense too much, if in doubt, ask the users.
3) This part is the main and most useful point of the book.
For each possible product, remove steps in using the product. Create a list of steps involved in using it. For example there are 20 steps to hang a picture, or for the hose (collect hose, attach to faucet, attach attachment, etc etc). Every verb is a new step, and involves only one object. By removing verbs (actions) we create utility. Each step is an opportunity to increase utility. Look for the sweet spot to combine a number of steps into one or remove a number of steps that produces the greatest reduction in work. How?
He defines net utility as combination of usefulness in achieving a task (how much easier/quicker/more enjoyable it makes it) and ease of learning/using or price. For often performed tasks learning costs and price can be absorbed and usefulness is important, whereas for rarely performed tasks learning costs and price are less readily accepted.
First remove steps that can be, then combine steps that can be choosing the 'sweet spot', the group comprising the highest net utility. For example, hanging a picture: you cannot remove nailing the hanger and erasing pencil lines, but you can remove collecting pencil/eraser/measure etc separately if we have a kit that includes these tools. But the pain is in the measuring of position, not in collecting the tools, so this is the sweet spot. You can imagine a device with a sliding bar and a hook attached that obviates the measurements (in fact there are several possible solutions), and this device reduces (combines) the steps from 7 or so to 4 or so. Consequently the steps are reduced by almost half, the most painful steps are easier and assuming it's not difficult to learn and not too expensive there is high net utility. If market agrees then you're golden.
4) Need to ask customers to see if these are good ideas. May be done by asking the retailers or end users, or as the author suggests a measure of net utility: Create a proto-type, mock up or Powerpoint presentation, present to the customer, then get a sample to fill out a table answering the questions 'This product would, in balance, make my life much easier', 'This product would look good in my house' and 'This product is unlike anything I have seen before' on a scale of 1 to 5.
5) Figure out the following tasks after using the product. Useful for revitalizing a commodity product, or to create a new market by adding to a base product the ability to perform a related task. For example there were bread kneading machines. Then there was a new market – bread kneading and bread baking machines. Observe customers to think of related tasks. Example: Previously you you would put ice in the glass and pour the drink (open the freezer, take out ice tray, take out ice cubes, fill glass with ice, return tray, fill glass)... now you simply use the ice dispenser on the refrigerator.
The book only focuses on products where the benefit is utility, so it offers no insight into creating products that provide aesthetic value. Also the process always seems to start from an existing product to show how it can be made better or spawn a new one. This seems to follow a lot of advice given elsewhere that entirely new products are rarely created, but new products are rather mutations/improvements/combinations to existing products. I suppose the same process could be applied to a task that involves a series of products instead, to create something entirely new. But then we are still creating something that people intuitively know there's a need for, rather than creating a product that solves a problem nobody ever thought they had... such as aeroplanes or televisions, which are the kinds of true innovation that according to some come about very rarely, and are not really fruitful grounds for trying to start a business. For the person trying to come up with new products to start a new business I think it's a good book and would recommend it.
Duncan
The Road To Hell
Book Review:
The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity
I’ve looked high and low, questioned everyone from Hong Kong factory owners to Congolese priests to Salvadoran campesinas, and haven’t found a clear explanation of how the exploitation works. I’ve been reading plenty of articles and the leading books on the topic. Who is responsible, how does it work? I bought Perkin’s Economic Hit Man, which I reviewed a few days ago, but that was not credible.
Now I’ve read THE ROAD TO HELL by Michael Maren. Finally, there it is. Everything from exploited child labor. The starving children. The war. The bloodshed. The horror, the horror. Who is behind it? Well, no wonder I could not arrive at an answer. I was looking in the wrong place. Michael Maren, was there, names names, dates, people. How it works. And who is responsible: the charities.
Yes. Save the Children. CARE. USAID. AfriAction. AmeriCares.. Christian Children’s Fund. Save the Children. UNICEF, and more. I am not assuming anything, he is most explicit, and the subtitle of his book is THE RAVAGING EFFECTS OF FOREIGN AID AND INTERNATIONAL CHARITY and that is exactly what Maren proves.
This is how it works in a nutshell. The USA shows up in a country, wanting a military base or something else. Our Harvard MBA’s work with their Harvard MBA’s to bring in something wonderful, like free food for the poor, for the children, to prop up and bribe off the leaders, most of whom are Harvard MBA’s or some such.
In the USA, a charity raises say 4 million dollars to “save the children.” At the same time, wheat farmers have their excess bought by taxpayers at inflated prices. The charity is given say $96 million dollars worth of wheat to distribute overseas to some country. $96 million in free wheat, plus $4 million equals $100 million. The charity spends every cent it took in cash donations on itself, locally, here in USA on limousines, caviar, private jets, etc for the charity leaders. (Does this start to explain those televangelists?) Then the charity boasts only 4% overhead, 96% goes directly to the starving, when in fact they blew every donated cent on themselves.
Maren gives several documented cases, cases of charities still operating! But first, it gets better! The wheat must be, by law, shipped on USA vessels, owned by the wheat farmers consortium, and the freight rates are three times the going ocean rates. More income for Archer Daniels Midland!
When the $96 million in wheat does arrive, their Harvard MBA’s begin selling it off to the highest bidder. Immediately, local farmers cannot compete. People move to the cities where food is cheap and plentiful. Dislocation breeds instability. A gang with pistols steals some wheat. The dealers get rifles. The thieves get rifles, and soon everyone has AK47’s and RPGs. In this milieu warlords emerge, and this is in essence the story of Siyaad Barre of Somalia, and countless others. Not all efforts go as bad as Somalia, most are rather mild. Usually the results are just chronic poverty, exploited workers and such.
But often enough it is a quick trip to the pictures of the slaughtersed, the starving refugees, the lost children, etc. The worst case scenarios. The scenes of mere exploited labor are merely better managed versions of this crime. It sickened me to learn many of the scenes of want are staged and coordinated with pledge campaigns.
Charities and NGO’s are mere conduits for USA surplus, the introduction of which causes disorder. And it isn’t just wheat. When your corporation overproduces, or produces something unsafe, “donate it” to a charity, they will unload it on the poor overseas, and you can take a tax deduction. One CEO was delighted with this plan since the cost to destroy the merchandise and send the packaging to a landfill here would be fairly expensive.
Maren gives examples from right here in USA as well, perhaps what your favorite charity is doing to your neighbors.
Maren is credible because he was there. He started in the Peace Corp, transferred to Catholic Charities and other outfits, and when his friend’s son was murdered in a horrifying way (another malcontent who was objecting to the way things are done) he began studying foreign aid and charity closely. I’ve read African writers who have outlined the same thiing, but never as thoroughly as Maren, what with Maren having superior access to inside information.
The complexity is laid out in detail, Maren tells the story well. It is a pretty outrageous thing to say the civil wars and attendant starvation and such is the fault of the charities and NGOs. What is worse, the people who run these organization are perfectly aware of the harm they are doing.
This book came out ten years ago, but I only learned of it last summer. The book has stood the test of time. Reading the Amazon reviews, a common theme is Michael Maren is an angry young man. (His picture on the end-flap looks like he’s been worked over by the mob). OK, but does anyone dispute his story? No, only some add-on tales by others. I got angry reading it.
There are some good guys in the field, but not many. Maren proposes a solution; an inernational body that qualifies NGO’s. But that won’t work, because we have it now. People this wicked will simply get around the rules, like they do now. The solution is to simply end all foreign aid. End all tax write-offs for charity. End all subsidies. Lift all restrictions. Cut taxes by that much. then let private individuals do what they can, what with more money in their pockets.
Anyone interested in how exploitation works should read this carefully, because if you wish to improve things, you’ll have to start with the way things really are.
Economic Hit Men
Book Reviewed:
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
John Perkins has written a tell-all regarding the wicked deeds of big business in international trade. This book has been widely hailed, translated into several languages, and has tremendous reviews from very many quarters. It is now the baseline for discussions regarding globalism. It should be read for that reason, but it should not be taken seriously.
The book maintains two tracks: one track is the documented evil deeds of big business that John Perkins engaged in, with his lies and duplicity; and the other track is the soulful torments and private conversations in which Perkins engaged. The problem is, whenever Perkins tells the tale of his personal wickedness, he is quite convincing. When he tells of meetings with big wigs, and earth-shattering encounters, when Perkins is struggling to be good, his tales are not credible.
The wickedness Perkins confesses is not much of a confession.. In short, Perkins “reveals” big govt backs big biz in overselling a foreign govt or entity on a USA development project. Well, we all know this. The project does not work out. The project goes bankrupt. We steal the income stream thereafter. This is his big secret? This is his confession? It’s like a used-car dealer saying he oversold his customers. A politician admitting he lies. We already know this!
Not only does big govt and big biz work together to do this to say Indonesians, they do it to USA citizens in USA as well. What do you think is going on when a student takes out a loan? He is overpaying for shoddy goods and is mortgaging his future. It’s worse if he joined the reserves for the educational benefits, because now he is in Iraq! Speaking of mortgages and war, what do you think the entire real estate boom has accomplished? Countless Americans are sitting ducks, waiting for the governments next move. A few facts: if a draft is called, the Selective Service Administration has the power to call all medical personnel, of either sex, and people up to 39 years of age. How come the new changes? Hmmm...? Banks cannot foreclose on active duty military personnel. If one family gives up one member to the military, and they quitclaim the property to that member, the family keeps the house. If we just had a bigger war, all of our problems would be solved! These new rules sound like a moral hazard to me.
But forget about predictions, let’s talk about now: one town in Connecticut has a program where elders can work off their taxes due by laboring for the city. In Moscow you see the babushkas sweeping the snow on the sidewalks. Is this our future?
Cities love the real estate boom. Taxes are a percent of property value. As property values rise, so does tax income. Do governments ever cut taxes? Never (only the rate of increase)! With more revenue, city managers can place more girlfriends in the parks department.
The govt hands out welfare checks and subsidizes corn, fat and salt... and makes Fritos food stamp staples. Obesity is the #1 health threat among the poor?!
If big govt and big biz does this to USA citizens, why not all the more to foreigners?
By staking out a claim against these exploitations overseas, Perkins is betraying his Republican paymasters. Overseas exploitation is a Republican gig, they being the party of intervention abroad. At the same time, Perkins lauds the Democrats, so he fails to note they do the same thing, only domestically. (Moderate believe we should intervene in both realms.)
At the same time, when Perkins argues redeeming features in himself, he is not at all credible. Perkins tells of his early years, and mysterious meetings, where he is groomed for bigger things. As he tells it, he does not quite understand at the time, but he is sure they mean big deals and big money, with sinister overtones. He is seduced into a world he ultimately rejects. None of these unverifiable stories sound real.
And the very idea he was somehow seduced into these evil deeds is incredible. Mr. Perkins, there are hundreds, if not thousands, perhaps millions, of us who are made the exact same offer. Almost everyone sees the offers for exactly what they are, and says “no.” The reason the Hondurans are suffering from USA exploitation is because people like you say “yes, gimmee.”
That he actually did wicked things is believable given his documentation, names, dates, places. It is verifiable. That he was no economist, in spite of fraudulently being sold as one to unsuspecting clients around the world, he proves as well. He still demonstrates no understanding of econ 101, but as he admits, he never studied it.
By page 233 Perkins tells us “Wandering around Ground Zero and Wall Street... forced me to take a hard look at the consequences of the things I had done over the last three decades.” The problem is about every chapter he is forced to face his demons, he just never does. Plus his tales of stricken conscience seem to be so much backfill, telling us he saw all this wickedness long ago, before any other.
One of the best parts is his tale of struggle to get the book published, how no mainstream big biz publisher would touch it, he feared for his life, such heroism! How he suffers for us! (His Publisher is Penguin Books, one of the biggest in the world. His devotees must be too obtuse to check the copyright page of the book they have in hand, and apparently he knows it.).
About halfway through the book, it is clear Perkins is writing a story to position himself for his next gig. On page 199 Perkins quotes Jim Garrison, head of State of the World forum “No nation on earth has been able to resist the compelling magnetism of globalization.” This is of course nonsense. Such countries as Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Cuba and plenty of others have resisted globalization, all places few people would choose to live. Nonetheless, his arguments are pure Al Gore progressive.
After finishing the book, I read some reviews on Amazon.com, where this is noted, and naturally, the pros and cons run along party lines. The right wing criticism and left wing applause was predictable, but there was a surprising thread. Some left-wingers were skeptical, even suspicious. Is Perkins just another scam artist, moving from overseas and ‘economic development’ to domestic and ‘global warming’ now that the Republicans have fouled their nest? My guess is the left-wing skeptics are perspicacious here.
I wanted to quit halfway through the book, but I struggled through to the end. I figured if this book is a standard reference now, I should at least have read it. The finale was worth the suffering. Perkins compares himself to Paul Revere, and now he will ride into the night warning all of us about the Economic Hit Men. OK.
But his summary on “what you can do” is a gem. He tells us that the institutions are fine, it is just the people running them(!). If people like Perkins and his devotees were in charge, Nike and McDonalds would be known for clothing the naked and feeding the poor. (They’re not?) So after regurgitating the Al Gore playbook, he gets down to it:
1. Offer study groups about his book at your local bookstore or library.
2. Send emails to everyone on your address books telling them about this book.
3. You should confess how you are wicked too.
(I am not making this up... check it out on page 262.)
He also offers eco-tours.
Now I must say I envy such chutzpah. Why don’t I think like that? I need to write a book like this, telling everyone the world can be a wicked place, and the solution is to buy my book. This guy is selling millions of copies, in countless languages, and I move maybe thousands a year. What a chump! I write a book that says, “how to...now go do it!” And then I give away follow-up advice!
In my next book, I will be a liar and a thief, I’ll cry like Oprah, I’ll warn you about all our troubles, and my solution will be make your friends buy my book. I’ll get rich!
Nah, that would be boring.
I might make the point that we have collectively benefitted from the exploitation of foreigners. What Perkins describes he did to others, we are watching foreigners do to us today, as Arabs and Chinese buy up bankrupt USA assets. Our leaders are doing to us what Peruvian leaders did to Peruvians. Perhaps this is just condign punishment.
This is not the book to read to learn how the world works, why there are the civil wars, the starvation, the horror, the horror of it all. You already knew what is in this book. My next book review will cover the book that does explain how it works.
STEAL THIS VOTE! - A Review of Andrew Gumbel's Book
Book Reviewed:
Steal This Vote: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America
I’ve got a couple dozen book reviews to share, and with the Iowa caucus finished, I decided to review a book I read last summer, STEAL THIS VOTE, by Andrew Gumbel.
I always had a sneaking suspicion something was wrong with our elections, but the how and why escaped me. Lyndon Johnson’s theft of a congressional office, Mayor Daley delivering the 1960 election to Kennedy, and other election frauds are legendary, but what about a plain old governors race, like the last one in Washington, where rampant fraud was found, and a judge finally decided the outcome?
Andrew Gumbel is a leftist writer who was alarmed at the fraud built into the software of the Diebold Voting Machines, a wicked Republican innovation, and set out to expose it. In the process of laying out the background and history of voting in USA, he discovers that the democrats are every bit as wicked when it comes to voter fraud as the republicans. It is a tribute to his integrity that he reports it all, and from this candid basis he makes sound recommendations. His book is timely, it covers even that Washington State gubernatorial race.
The entire book is fascinating, from the beginning on how we arrived at our voting system and its relation to slavery (how that wicked vice has so maladjusted our country!) early elections and innovations, and how every change led to adjustments in voting fraud methods.
Gumbel provides some classic lines, such as one republican, upon being caught red-handed in voter fraud, claimed it must be the will of God he take the office since he won the election without getting enough votes! I’ll be quoting that line the rest of my life.
The breadth and depth of Gumbel’s research tells me this will be another book that I lend out to someone and never see again. It’s that good. It could be an instruction manual on how to steal an election, and he arrives at the conclusion all elections are fraudulent. Convincingly.
I wanted to know how it is done, not that it is ALWAYS done. Now I have to adjust my thinking to include the fact that all elections are fraudulent. I already knew the world can be a wicked place, (and that is good to know), but I wanted at least a chance to vote on it.
Of course, I see every malpractice an opportunity for a small business to come in and do good while doing well. How about a new system, wherein we double or triple vote, placing the votes with differing private companies at the same time, and all three report the results? All right, obviously I do not have a passion for clean elections, but Gumbel does, and he inadvertently offers a few new business ideas for anyone who is.
Islam is the Religion of Peace - Khudai Khidmatgar and Nonviolent Resistance
Book Reviewed:
The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition and Memory in the North West Frontier (World Anthropology Series)
This is the first and last time you will ever see or hear the term Khudai Khidmatgar, although they were critical to the Indian nonviolent movement to throw the British out of India in the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s. At the time, the British controlled what is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Gandhi’s Indian National Congress would need the cooperation of the Moslems in the NW Frontier (now Pakistan) to drive the British out. Gandhi got the help in the form of a leader named Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, aka Badshah Khan, and his nonviolent movement called Khudai Khidmatgar.
In the PATHAN UNARMED, Mukulika Banerjee reviews a brief and shining moment of some 40 years, where the most fearsome warriors in Islam, the Pathan of what is now Pakistan, embraced nonviolence in the service of freedom, and joined ranks with the India National Congress.
Let me draw a distinction between pacifist and passivist. One steps in and pacifies an unjust and chaotic situation, like, say, colonialism. The other sits back and accepts colonialism. Gandhi pacified the British, destroyed their will and ability to fight, and succeeded. Tolstoy advised the Russians to learn from Gandhi, certainly Martin Luther King followed Gandhi’s game plan. Badshah Khan came to the same conclusion as Gandhi, at the same time, initiated a Moslem version of the pacifism, and arrived at Moslem rational for nonviolence, and called it Khudai Khidmatgar, grounded in the code of the Pakhtunwali.
Badshah Khan embraced the warrior culture of the Pakhtun, especially the premium put on courage. By one teaching his followers were not to carry even a walking stick, because it might deflect a blow from a policeman, and lessen the injury received. He extended the warrior ethic beyond the physical to the spiritual, and made jihad a matter of results gained from self-control in the face of oppression, and made mujahadeen synonmous with nonviolence. The philosophy and theology was strictly Moslem. It worked.
The story of the development of the philosophy and its spread, the recruiting and training is fascinating. Camps were set up, schools organized, much like the Indians were doing. Sadly the British were so doubtful that Moslems could conceive of nonviolence, they believed this was a ruse to raise and army of violent warriors instead of the nonviolent. The British cracked down on the Khudai Khidmatgar with a ferocity on par with the Nazis dealing with resistance. The way Banerjee, a Hindi, tells it, the Moslems suffered far more far longer than the Indians for their freedom. Yet in the face of horrific odds these nonviolent Moslems held to their convictions.
Today in Pakistan a US puppet has taken dictatorial powers, moderates are imprisoned, tortured or disappeared, and government soldiers are rooting out “militants” in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. The way Banerjee tells it, Khudai Khidmatgar and the Badshah Khan are still highly revered among the people. I heard about this book from a expert on Islam, tired of the cartoon caricatures of Moslems fed by the government-contolled media. Indeed, one would expect diversity among 1/4 of the world’s population. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to hear stories every day about the Khudai Khidmatgar freeing Pakistan from foreign control, again?
How To Manage Site Content
I include a series of "How-Tos" for managing the content of the site.
POSTS
BASIC POST INSTRUCTIONS
So to summarize, a checklist! When posting on hbhblog:
1. Apply a title (can be done even when you put multiple thoughts in one post, though only the first title will go into the field labelled "Title").
2. Choose an appropriate label (or more than one label, separated by commas)
3. If you refer to another post elsewhere on the hbh****, then put the hyperlink in to make it easy for the reader to find.
4. Breaklong posts into 2 pieces. Instructions are below, but it is self-explanatory in the body of the post. Look at the book reviews for an example.
-Paul
HOW TO BREAK A BLOG POST
>John,
>
>After our conversation today, Wednesday, I made a bunch of changes to hbhblog. Most will be obvious. One change that you will soon encounter in hbhblog, is that I put a mechanism in to break up each post into two pieces - the front (short) and back (longer). This is per your request.
>
>The mechanism is manual, in that the author must decide which part of the post is in which piece. Now, when you create a new post in hbhblog, you will see a template. Simply replace the "Here is the beginning of my post." with the first part of your post, and replace "And here is the rest of it." with the rest of the post.
>
>The reader will see only the short part of the post until they press the "Read more!" link.
>
>Pretty cool!
CONTENT STRATEGY
John,
Were you able to view the analytics data? Regardless, there is declining and tiny readership, following the WSJournal spike. As I have mentioned before, this is due to no emails from you that notify the mailing list of new content. I suspect that sending an email perhaps every 2 or 3 times you post, would be appropriate and not annoy people. As it is, trees continue to fall in the forest. This will bring in ~50 people each day.
However, the 4 billion people do not know you exist, because we are getting no google search referrals. That's the problem I am interested in solving. To work on that problem, I setup a feed from hbhblog, to google's search engine using what is called a site map. The way that works, and why you should care, is that it automatically detects a new posting, and updates the site map. Each time google crawls the site, it consults the site map so that it can find the latest content (otherwise google may not find it). ----> that is what will attract the 4 billion people.
Therefore, it seems logical that a strategy is on order. It might have these elements:
Be prolific as heck on hbhblog. Lots of posts, lots of content in each. That makes it more likely that people will find your content with searches.
Try to make the posts contemporary, referencing current events or at least topics that are current - searchers search now about things they are interested in, now.
- Paul
TRAFFIC ANALYSIS
Traffic from the World. The big traffic will have to occur by getting enough and compelling content out there to cause strangers to search for stuff and get one of your hbhblog posts in the search results. We are getting a small amount of that now (less than 10 hits, total). Except for the odd news article spike. The other and probably larger factor in traffic, is cross-linking with other sites. You are referring to lots of sites in your news roundup, which is good. What we are missing, is other sites linking to your content - that results in those sites' readers coming to hbhblog. Plug this into the google search bar: link:www.hbhblog.blogspot.com - you'll get nothing. That is very bad. No sites link to us.
Cross-linking can be accomplished by having you publish comments to content on high-traffic blogs, or by publishing posts on those blogs. So I believe you should also add that activity to your list. Find some sites that are interesting to you, and post a comment just like we are asking people to do on hbhblog. When you publish, it is critical that you include hbhblog.blogspot.com in your post, typically around your signature.
You may also want to consider putting in your posts, links to content on smaller sites with which we want to develop cross-linking relationships. BBC, for example, is never going to publish a link to us. But LewRockwell might.- Paul
BOOK REVIEW POSTING INSTRUCTIONS
Good, glad you like it. Maybe some step-by-step instructions are in order (you following this would minimize my rework effort, too).
Summary:
1 - John publishes backdated review in hbhblog, notifies Paul
2 - Paul installs Amazon ad, notifies John
3 - John publishes post on hbhblog (mandatory) referring to the review. Optional: publish post on hbhmain referring to hbhblog post.
Details:
1a - On hbhblog, John publishes book review in a post normally, except at the bottom, change the date to January 2, 2000, time does not matter.
1b - Send Paul an email that you are complete
2a - Paul puts up the Amazon ads, and connects them to the review.
2b - Paul connects the review, to the ad (the other direction)
2c - Paul sends John an email that he is complete
3a - John publishes normal post on hbhblog briefly describing the review.
3b - That normal post must provide a link to the review. Do that by opening a new window to hbhblog and using the archives, identify the January 2, 2000 post. Right-click on the post title and copy the address. Then come back to the normal post, type in the book title in a logical place, highlight the book title, then create a link to the review by pasting the address from the copy buffer.
3c- If you want, you can publish a news item on hbhmain that points to either the book review or the hbhblog item. Use same technique as 3b.
3d - John moderates the spiersegroup item that results from the hbhblog post (as per normal processing).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)