This is disgusting, and needs to stop. Airline security is a job for those who own airlines, not the government. Once you enter an airport, you no longer have rights. I've reduced my air travel dramatically because of the indecency, not to mention the raw criminality, of the people who work for TSA. It is all just make-work and theatre. Shame on TSA workers!
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Cote d'Ivoire... uh oh... Mexico
Like so many other countries, Mexico appears to be next in saying no to Uncle Sam. Not a word on this in USA press, but big news in the rest of the world. Balance the budget, bring our troops home.
USA Nuke More a Problem than Japan Nuke
While watching for Japan fallout, after an accident we get a jump from our own nuke plant, then the reporting quits.
The Richland WA readings jumped to 288... Then the station stopped reporting.
Meanwhile , back in Seattle, radiation continues at low background levels.
Dakota Place Park 5 cpm
My Backyard 6 cpm
Dept of Health Seattle Station (4/8 reading) 13 cpm
Importing something from Japan? Your products will get screened. Best to check levels yourself.
Recycling
Long ago when entering the glassware business, I visited a unit of Ball-Incon, a huge bottle maker and consumer of recycled glass. I tagged along with a group of 5th graders for a plant tour. It was eye-opening.
Among the tidbits offered was bottle makers can only use a certain percentage of recycled glass in a new bottle (I think it was 20%) for reasons having to do with physics, so the majority of a recycled glass item started from scratch, silica and potash. Also, glass is the only item that can be recycled back into itself. Everything else must be stepped up in hardness... light plastic recycled in heavier plastic, light paper into heavier... same with aluminum.
So then I toured the recyclers, in the mid-80s, when business was good and growing. Huge operations. USA #1 export in volume (not in money) is scrap: paper, aluminum, glass steel, you name it. China is the market. Mountains of the stuff is exported. "Wow..." I exclaimed to the tour guide, "all of this scrap will come back to USA as products." "No..." he laughed, "Almost all of this will end up in the landfill. There is not enough market, in fact the market for recycled materials is very small... we sort it out, and then ship most it off to landfills."
Well, that was interesting. You mean people get on their hands and knees and sort garbage every week, most of which will end up in a landfill anyway? Yep. Isn't that an incredible waste? Yep, but politics is about making people feel good about themselves.
Penn & Teller did an entertaining episode on recycling, but caution, they use a bad word.
We are conditioned to believe things that just are not true, like Saddam Hussein attacked us on 9-11, like only we can save the Libyan people. Twenty years after my tour of the recyclers my daughters, in grade school, were being dosed with the obligatory report on recycling. At this point the demand for scrap materials was at its zenith. I suggested, in addition to the reference materials and resources the teacher required they study, they also simply call the recycling company that has the contract to pick up recycling in out neighborhood, and ask them what happens to most of what is sorted for recycling. I introduced my daughters to the concept of the "public relations" department, and how they shared company information, and would be especially delighted to field a question from a grade-schooler doing a report.
My skeptical daughters called, and the receptionist answering the phone probed her young caller to better direct her call. Hearing my daughter's question, even the receptionist assured my daughter most of what is recycled is sent to landfills. PR confirmed it too. Even when top prices were being paid. It is no secret.
Too much trash begins with subsidies of packaging materials, which allows goods to be shipped farther, and thus concentration of production. If the true cost of a hydroelectric dam was figured into the price of electricity required to smelt aluminum into cans, if the true cost of logging our national forests was figured into paper, if the true costs of oil for plastics and transportation was direct assigned, we would have far less packaging, far more diverse regional businesses thriving, and far less packaging going to the landfills. If persons actually had to pay what packing costs, we’d have practically no landfills. The costs are socialized, as when banks are bailed out, so your children have less so bankers can have more.
Products would cost more, but indirect costs would be less... Beer 10 cents a bottle more, recycling a dollar less.
The solution gets to free markets, and underlying property rights. One natural law right is your property is what you can homestead and mix with your labor. The flip side is what you cannot work is no longer yours, it becomes homesteadable. Property law was change in USA in the 1800s that violated these principles, which led to many of the problems we have today. Government fostered the problem, and makes it worse with a policy of recycling. But then that is a pattern, isn't it?
If we cared about the environment, we would simply cut the subsidies to the packaging generators, and their raw material extractors. We'd let the free market sort out who bids up for what. And then we'd see revolution in "green" systems, based on markets and not on politics.
Among the tidbits offered was bottle makers can only use a certain percentage of recycled glass in a new bottle (I think it was 20%) for reasons having to do with physics, so the majority of a recycled glass item started from scratch, silica and potash. Also, glass is the only item that can be recycled back into itself. Everything else must be stepped up in hardness... light plastic recycled in heavier plastic, light paper into heavier... same with aluminum.
So then I toured the recyclers, in the mid-80s, when business was good and growing. Huge operations. USA #1 export in volume (not in money) is scrap: paper, aluminum, glass steel, you name it. China is the market. Mountains of the stuff is exported. "Wow..." I exclaimed to the tour guide, "all of this scrap will come back to USA as products." "No..." he laughed, "Almost all of this will end up in the landfill. There is not enough market, in fact the market for recycled materials is very small... we sort it out, and then ship most it off to landfills."
Well, that was interesting. You mean people get on their hands and knees and sort garbage every week, most of which will end up in a landfill anyway? Yep. Isn't that an incredible waste? Yep, but politics is about making people feel good about themselves.
Penn & Teller did an entertaining episode on recycling, but caution, they use a bad word.
We are conditioned to believe things that just are not true, like Saddam Hussein attacked us on 9-11, like only we can save the Libyan people. Twenty years after my tour of the recyclers my daughters, in grade school, were being dosed with the obligatory report on recycling. At this point the demand for scrap materials was at its zenith. I suggested, in addition to the reference materials and resources the teacher required they study, they also simply call the recycling company that has the contract to pick up recycling in out neighborhood, and ask them what happens to most of what is sorted for recycling. I introduced my daughters to the concept of the "public relations" department, and how they shared company information, and would be especially delighted to field a question from a grade-schooler doing a report.
My skeptical daughters called, and the receptionist answering the phone probed her young caller to better direct her call. Hearing my daughter's question, even the receptionist assured my daughter most of what is recycled is sent to landfills. PR confirmed it too. Even when top prices were being paid. It is no secret.
Too much trash begins with subsidies of packaging materials, which allows goods to be shipped farther, and thus concentration of production. If the true cost of a hydroelectric dam was figured into the price of electricity required to smelt aluminum into cans, if the true cost of logging our national forests was figured into paper, if the true costs of oil for plastics and transportation was direct assigned, we would have far less packaging, far more diverse regional businesses thriving, and far less packaging going to the landfills. If persons actually had to pay what packing costs, we’d have practically no landfills. The costs are socialized, as when banks are bailed out, so your children have less so bankers can have more.
Products would cost more, but indirect costs would be less... Beer 10 cents a bottle more, recycling a dollar less.
The solution gets to free markets, and underlying property rights. One natural law right is your property is what you can homestead and mix with your labor. The flip side is what you cannot work is no longer yours, it becomes homesteadable. Property law was change in USA in the 1800s that violated these principles, which led to many of the problems we have today. Government fostered the problem, and makes it worse with a policy of recycling. But then that is a pattern, isn't it?
If we cared about the environment, we would simply cut the subsidies to the packaging generators, and their raw material extractors. We'd let the free market sort out who bids up for what. And then we'd see revolution in "green" systems, based on markets and not on politics.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Non Profit Business
Business and charity do not mix. It is either a business, or a charity. If you wish to help people, do well in business, and then share the profits. Plenty in business do just that.
My visceral reaction is negative: if it is non-profit to help a targeted group, then the orientation is off, and all market signals are missing. How can you possibly ever improve the product and grow without customer-focus? Your supplier will be distressed to learn you are not directly customer-focussed. It is extremely unlikely he will be interested in supporting a charity with his business operations, (although he may be a prodigious contributor to charity from his profits).
Now I believe profits are just another business expense, something left over after all other expenses, and not particularly important to the entrepreneur (lifestyle is what motivates the entrepreneur.) So to designate an enterprise "non-profit" is uninformative, except for negative connotations.
Here is another counterintuitive point: rarely do we see a nonprofit wherein the leaders do not draw an exceptional wage for their services (Salvation Army excepted). Sure, all excess funds are plowed back into the org, but if excess is too consistent, goodness, that ends up as wages to the leader and staff of the nonprofit. We are told that these exceptional wages are required to attract the exceptional people who lead such organizations. I doubt it.
Are you thinking "if we do poorly, we can seek another grant..."?
Is it just another way to avoid serving customers, he scariest part of being in business?
Is it a sort of emotional blackmail as a marketing plan? (It's for the children!)
Far better to make a strictly business enterprise, and direct the profits to your favorite charity.
Indochina Menswear
Apparently online sales reached 12% of all sales last Christmas... love to see some hard data. But here is an interesting Canadian company, retailing mens tailoring online. It will be interesting to watch and learn from their experience.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Falling Prices - Good News
The powers that be fear falling prices above all else, deflation they call it, although not in every case is falling prices indicative of deflation. Deflation is a monetary phenomenon when currency (or money) is destroyed and it takes fewer units to buy the same goods. Inflation benefits the powers that be, so the work for it. Deflation punished the powers that be, so they hate it.
Anyway, I just received an email that indicates the price of private jets is falling... this is exciting news.
Dear Friends & Fliers:
Just checking in. Need not reply.
I have great wholesale pricing on Hawker 400's, Hawker 800's, Citation X's and Gulfstreams. If you happen to be doing any upcoming trips or holiday travel, please let me know and I will send you over a quote on a great aircraft with my wholesale pricing. As always, I guarantee that I will beat any competitor's quote that you furnish me with.
Also please ask me about our all-inclusive 25 hour card programs, at the best price points in the industry.
Please contact me directly at either of the below numbers or via email at bnelson@jets.com.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,Robert G. NelsonManaging DirectorJETS.COM
401 Broadway17th FloorNew York, NY 10013646.808.3712 (direct)718.708.0322 (available 24/7)888.426.5308 (e-fax)bnelson@jets.com
401 Broadway17th FloorNew York, NY 10013646.808.3712 (direct)718.708.0322 (available 24/7)888.426.5308 (e-fax)bnelson@jets.com
Exceptional Wealth and Free Markets
I found this comment at a free market blog:
"When markets first become more free that will unjustly impoverish some and enrich others. "
How can ending subsidies and regulations (that which unfrees the market) and allowing people to trade freely, unjustly impoverish some? Or enrich others?
1. That for some promised pensions and assured circumstances become null and void? If they did not consider the offer, and see its unsustainability at inception, they only experience condign punishment. That they did not discern that a violence-grounded transfer of wealth to them was unethical is not worthy of our concern.
2. Once their circumstances change, it changes in a manner that offers them the exact same opportunity that we mere merchants have: to serve customers. The impoverishment you imagine is the cessation of taxpayer-funded indolence. The poor babies will actually have to provide a value.
3. These welfare queens presently deny the rest of us the good of their genius and innovation. The fact that they congregate at the trough means they are not competing and widening the division of labor, adding to the myriad of goods and services that constitute the true wealth of a nation.
4. How, in a free market, does anyone gain exceptional wealth? Without government monopoly, subsidies and restrictions, freedom to compete surely militates against exceptional wealth, defined as lots of money. What happens is the mundane hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis, synthesis... people see a good profitable idea in action, tweak their own version until it recompenses satisfactorily, and at the same time someone is studying both successes coming up with another unit in the division of labor, with everyone trimming the profits of anyone enjoying excess, by serving a segment of customers more better cheaper faster. Yet, all are self-employed and self supporting, and the range of goods and services ever widening. More better cheaper faster. Think of telephones 1970, and telephones today. Unimaginable advances. Next, cancer cures, 25 bucks each, and profitable at that.
This isn't fantasy, we should all visit Hong Kong for a glimpse of the possible.
Militainment
Now here is an interesting study of Bill Gate's and GE's NBC channel, and it's pro-war, anti-peace policy. Microsoft and NBC rely heavily, well, completely, on government handouts, so they are obliged to follow the script.
From Rockwell, from Fr. Seraphim
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Anthony Is Concerned About the Dalton Minimum (?!)
It was a cold rainy night in the Emerald City...
Dakota Park Place 10 cpm
My backyard 9 cpm
Dept of Health Seattle monitoring station 10 cpm
Still at normal background levels.
UW also monitoring. Some interesting charts and graphs.
I'm now more worried about the Dalton Minimum and the global cooling resulting from it...
Social Cohesion
Much is being discussed in relation to social cohesion, and many policies are suggestd to advane this imperative.
Here is what wiki has to say in definition, with my comments interspersed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cohesion
According to the government-commissioned, State of the English Cities thematic reports, there are five different dimensions of social cohesion: material conditions, passive relationships, active relationships, inclusion and equality.
***Let’s just pause for a second... who is making the definitions, and how come? Well, the sociologists who populate government see that the prior generations of government planners have yielded terrible results: food, housing, clothing, security, justice, opportunity and finances have all gone south under the regimes in place. At least in USA, our only growth industries are war and prison. So now comes a review of the situation...***
? The report shows that material conditions are fundamental to social cohesion, particularly employment, income, health, education and housing. Relations between and within communities suffer when people lack work and endure hardship, debt, anxiety, low self-esteem, ill-health, poor skills and bad living conditions. These basic necessities of life are the foundations of a strong social fabric and important indicators of social progress.
***Indeed, wasn’t progressivism supposed to ameliorate just these problems? Decades of time and billions of dollars for programs devised by the best and brightest, and this is what we yield? What do we have more of? Big box retail built on socializing (lay it on the taxpayers) costs, tax avoidance and money laundering, as well as regimentation. The problems cited above will ameliorate when we remove the subsidies and regulations that benefit big biz. Just eliminate those, and small biz will flourish. You need no policy for small business, except “hands off.”***
? The second basic tenet of cohesion is social order, safety and freedom from fear, or "passive social relationships". Tolerance and respect for other people, along with peace and security, are hallmarks of a stable and harmonious urban society.
***Here is the paradox here, pound for pound citizens fear their government, for its chaos and harm, far more than they fear crime. When governments pre-emptively attack non-threatening countries, conduct warrantless searches of peoples communications, and when they travel, when we embrace torture and habeas corpus suspension, and bail out failed businesses in direct contravention of the will of the people, it is government that presses intolerance, disrespect, indecency and fear on people.***
? The third dimension refers to the positive interactions, exchanges and networks between individuals and communities, or "active social relationships". Such contacts and connections are potential resources for places since they offer people and organisations mutual support, information, trust and credit of various kinds.
***Yes, before government, and without government there are countless mediating institutions, with the twin marks of free association and freedom to contract. Government interferes at the level of definition of marriage, interfering with free association, and nulllifying freely agreed conracts. We need to roll this intervention back.***
? The fourth dimension is about the extent of social inclusion or integration of people into the mainstream institutions of civil society. It also includes people's sense of belonging to a city and the strength of shared experiences, identities and values between those from different backgrounds.
***When the civil rights movement was about “goodies from government” it had no traction. When it appealed to small business to repeal the government “Jim Crow Laws,” great progress was made. Small business was the change agent in the civil rights movement. Progressivism claims blacks have equal opportunity due to their program. Maybe, if blacks are not in prison due to progressives policies on crime and punishment. Blacks are 13% of the population, but 50% of the prison population. Blacks are no longer lynched, or not as often, but innocent black men are far more often executed by the state. There are alternatives to our criminal “justice” system.***
? Lastly, social equality refers to the level of fairness or disparity in access to opportunities or material circumstances, such as income, health or quality of life, or in future life chances.
***Opportunity is entirely a matter of a free market. Leave people alone, they will innovate, make their own opportunities, generate division of labor, and in turn make more goods and services available at a lower cost to more people. Freedom is the key here.***
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Alternative Marketing
A correspondent from India is toying with the idea of MLM for building a market. there are very responsible versions of this in USA, and largely unknown. Here are two that might spur some ideas:
How It Works: Yes We Can.
Mish Shedlock quotes and article today and then adds his comment:
“What I think is the lesson from this is that the Congress needs to clarify the boundaries of independent Fed credit policy,” Professor Goodfriend said. “There should be a mechanism so that the Fed doesn’t have to make these decisions on behalf of taxpayers.”
Boundaries are Not the Problem
The Fed does not care about boundaries or what is legal or not. The obvious implication is mechanisms to define Fed boundaries would be futile. We need to eliminate the Fed itself.
(Mish)
Now here is how it works. Shedlock is right. Prof Goodfriend likely knows and understands economics they way Mish does, but Prof. Goodfriend advises what the powers that be would like to do. Sincere people are perplexed as to how Prof. Goodfriend could be so obtuse. He is not at all obtuse. He knows there is a problem, and congress would like more power. So his advice is give congress more power. In the world of courtiers, the inevitable is the ideal.
When people who vote for change sit by docile as the agent of change just does the same, but worse than the last president, why bother pushing for a good answer, or even the right answer?
Confucius and Lao Tze both had ethical systems for the powers that be in China. Mo Tze thic was actually the ascendent system, until the ancient powers that be in China figured out of all the systems, the Confucian was best for the powers that be. In the realms of ethics and ideas, they way to succeed is to advise the powers that be what they CAN do, not what they should do.
When the fundamental organizing principle of the state is the monopoly on violence, it does not matter what they should do, what matters is what they can do. As they say “Yes, we can.”
The Fed does not care about boundaries or what is legal or not. The obvious implication is mechanisms to define Fed boundaries would be futile. We need to eliminate the Fed itself.
(Mish)
Now here is how it works. Shedlock is right. Prof Goodfriend likely knows and understands economics they way Mish does, but Prof. Goodfriend advises what the powers that be would like to do. Sincere people are perplexed as to how Prof. Goodfriend could be so obtuse. He is not at all obtuse. He knows there is a problem, and congress would like more power. So his advice is give congress more power. In the world of courtiers, the inevitable is the ideal.
When people who vote for change sit by docile as the agent of change just does the same, but worse than the last president, why bother pushing for a good answer, or even the right answer?
Confucius and Lao Tze both had ethical systems for the powers that be in China. Mo Tze thic was actually the ascendent system, until the ancient powers that be in China figured out of all the systems, the Confucian was best for the powers that be. In the realms of ethics and ideas, they way to succeed is to advise the powers that be what they CAN do, not what they should do.
When the fundamental organizing principle of the state is the monopoly on violence, it does not matter what they should do, what matters is what they can do. As they say “Yes, we can.”
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