Starbucks Takes My Advice

Starbucks is opening "stelth stores" to save their business. Read this article, then read what I wrote on May 1, 2008.

It's a synthesis, and I expect them to eventually franchise Starbucks.

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Well, Google 411 is Free Too...

If we got rid of the USPS monopoly on first class mail, first class mail would be free, if you'd allow and ad on the envelope. 411 is very expensive, unless you use google411, which is free, just dial it. And Mickey D is giving it away too...

Free Directory Service for Cells

Cell phone companies are charging us $1.00 to $1.75 or more for 411 information calls when they don't have to. Most of us do not carry a telephone directory in our vehicle, which makes this situation even more of a problem. When you need to use the 411 information option, simply dia l: (800)FREE411, or   (800) 373-3411  without incurring any charge at all. Program this into your cell phone now. This is sponsered by MacDonalds.

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Thinking Through To a Solution

The Dominican Order of the Catholic Church is devoted to preaching and praying, and taking the Gospel to the streets. They are specially trained to argue, and they have, among many, a technique they use when in a discussion of some particular topic.

“Seldom affirm, never deny, always differentiate”

Do click the "read more" to read the rest...



In discussion (and negotiations) seldom affirm anything because the definitions underlying the words being used may be different to the parties in the discussion.

“Don’t you agree we should have death with dignity?” Sounds agreeable, until we get to what they mean. At the same time, defining terms bogs things down, and you may move ahead without defining terms. So seldom affirm.

Never deny anything. “Congressman, do you still beat your wife?”

Of course it is a mistake to say “no” because of the “still” and if you say “I never have, do not now, nor ever will” sounds like you protest too much. You sound guilty.

The proper answer is “You call that a beating? We call it foreplay.” or some other bon mot (And note in essence when differentiating, you get back to definitions)

It takes years to train the mind to react in ways that abusers cannot get in their trick questions, or to take apart the nonsense being laid down by those in the commanding heights.

Someone recommended a video clip to me of Bill Moyers interviewing the producer of the HBO series The Wire. As I have said before, the Marxists get their facts absolutely right, and David Simon, the Marxist producer of The Wire is acclaimed for getting the description of the inner city spot on. I agree.

But Marxists go badly wrong in the analysis of their facts, to wit:

BILL MOYERS: So, whose lives are less and less necessary in America today?

DAVID SIMON: Certainly the underclass. There's a reason they are the underclass. But in an area-- in an era when you don't need as much mass labor. When we are not a manufacturing base those people that built stuff, that made stuff-- that were-- that their lives had some meaning and value because the factories were open. You don't need them anymore.

Arrggghhh! See the anlysis, you value is as a worker, not as a human! He goes on to blame laissez faire (free markets) for this problem, totally ignoring the fact we are, and have been in since Ronald Reagan at least, a Fascist economy. But then implicit in his analysis is if we can just get the fascists to open factories here, these people will have meaning. See how convuluted and confused the analysis is?

We badly need all hands on deck, there are whole cities to rebuild (New Orleans) there are things to make (toasters) there is hair to braid, every one of these people is critically necessary, even from a fascist point of view. But more to the point, everyone has potential, from a human point of view.

Now lets go to Bill Bonner, he of Daily Reckoning:

“All over the world, consumer prices are falling. The world has too much capacity…too many factories…and too many workers. Too many, that is, for current demand. The “world’s mouth” – the USA – has gone on a diet. And if the United States reduces its intake, that means the rest of the world – especially China – must reduce its output. Otherwise, the whole thing will become unbalanced.”

...and...

“In the real economy, people are cutting back…with the inevitable results we discuss every day here. One major consequence of reduced demand is too much supply. The factories built in China to supply products to America during the bubble years now find they have no market.”

Bill, Bill, Bill... we have (and Bill knows this) misallocation due to malinvestment based on the distorted market picture that manipulating interest rates, credit capacity and money supply occasions. Prices are falling due to overcapacity, and capacity for things peole no longer want to buy.

The Chinese are in a much better position to reposition those assets to new markets, those markets where they are making friends all over the world. USA is not in a position to reposition assets because 1. the factories are older and ossified, 2. the entitlement culture of the workers means in USA workers will never step up to the plate and deliver. But then why should they, as they see today, anything they work for will simply be stolen in our fascist economy.

America’s workers are learning what inner city blacks have long known, why bother, they’ll just steal it.

USA has an ace up its sleeve. Violence. USA can always get in a general war, as fascists always do, to change the subject and regiment the workers. I believe it is where we are headed, but then that is just me.

But back to perfectly able workers choosing to live on the corner and deal drugs than make toasters.

Imagine for a minute, year 2009, a group of young blacks decide to open a toaster factory in Baltimore. The each kick in $500 they earned at McDonalds, and they find cheap pay-as -you-go rent on a warehouse. They try to get all of the licenses and permits, and believe they have (In USA one NEVER has all of the permissions.)

They come up with a pretty good plan, reversing the Chinese method to USA benefit. They order parts from China, to assemble here, giving the neighborhood some work. The Chinese work with the Baltimore lads on the design, and the lads get retailers to say “sure, we’ll try four.

They begin buying parts and assembling them, with a view to learning enough about toasters to begin sourcing the parts in USA, and eventually being a 100% USA toaster maker.

I am going to quit here, since already there are so many problems that we have entered the realm of impossible.

1. Employees. Once you have employees, the government becomes your partner, and the slightest unhappiness on the part of any employee leads to a crack down. The paperwork complying even without problems will overwhelm the management capabilities of the any managers, so this idea is stillborn.

2. Warehouse/factory. The codes for such a physical plant will run startup costs through the roof. Codes are written not for safety, but as political payoff to manufacturers for supporting and joining a fascist conversion of USA. Code has “Fire Exit” signs above the door, where they cannot be seen in a fire due to smoke rising. If “insurance companies” had not been co-opted and regulated into oblivion, free market insurance companies would cut losses by mandating building they insured had the “fire exit “ sign at the bottom of the door, where people usually are in a fire.

3. Once the fire martial and other inspectors catch wind of your operation, soon the shake downs begin. Corrupt government inspectors will feed off your operation.

4. Should you still make a profit, you local bank will go under taking all of your assets, as happened with so many inner city blacks who followed Magic Johnson’s association with Washington Mutual and bought up that stock before it went from $40 to pennies.

(How can banks be bailed out, bubt the inner city black who had had $100,000 saved in WAMU is wiped out? Because the philosoophical basis of the bailouts is USA is a half dozen major banks and insurance companies, too big to fail, and a half dozen people may decide for all of us. If the philosophical basis was USA is 150 million households, let them decide, then the results would be copletely different.)

5. Inner city blacks are importing switches, sensors, wires, metal parts and “making toasters.” How long before “Homeland Security” comes nosing around. (Beal Bank was investigated during the boom for not making the kind of crazy loans other banks were making. It cost them plenty to prove they were not engagiing in criminal acts. And these were white bankers.) How long before the FBI details assets to look into this operation, and send in a criminal who wants a reduced sentence to entrap this group into some sort of crime? (Pause for a second, and be truthful. If you saw young blacks going in and out of a building regularly, and asked them what they were doing, and they said “making toasters,” wouldn’t you doubt it?)

Of course, this is just an outside view. I am sure some entrepreneurial inner city black could come up with other problems. I am just laying out what a privileged white person would encounter in starting a business in USA.

Part of the destruction done during the boom times is while so many of our best and brightest were working for companies that ultimately provided nothing, if there was no boom some of these people who would have been pushing back as government made being self-employed harder and harder. These would be entrepreneurs now find self-employment near impossible in USA.

Forget about any business that will have employees, if you plan to hire people. Forget about having a physical plant if you plan to use space. These two exposures and compliance with recent (last decade or so) rules and regs will crush any business effort. Therefore, people go overseas where you can have workers and space on a rational basis.

Moyers and Simon have their facts straight, and recommend less freedom. But then, neither of them would have their positions in the commanding heights if they recommended more freedom as a solution.

So why not allow more freedom? There is a missing element in all of the discussions. There has to be a philosophical basis for the results we get. What is that basis? it needs to be defined. But wait, for these results, the philosophical basis must already be in place. This basis needs only be pointed out, and then substantiated. From there the facts can be laid out, and there can be a discussion of the policies’ bases

We are up against the problem of people electing to turn their power over to a tiny group, in violation of their natural rights, and then the lawlessness of this small goup of people who have taken the commanding heights given to them.

(Please understand I do not think inner city blacks are victims, any more than an army colonel or a busted bank president is a victim. We all have our resources, seen and unseen, and we all make our choices. I’ve never met inner city blacks who needed my pity or were not making rational choices.)

We need to know and understand their philosophical basis. I suspect we would find, like under pharoah, there is an exoteric philosophy and an esoteric philosophy. It is the esoteric the rulers hold, and it is hidden in plain sight.

Only entrepreneurs can recover America. We are in trouble siince all elements of society have been bought off. Academia, religion, business, labor, military, homemakers, wall street, hollywood, you name it, they have been bought and paid for. The group that can recover America must be one that does not exist, since all existing mediating institutions have been bought and paid for.

The new businesses that would be created in a free market do not exist yet, but would in a free market, and would recover America.

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