Anarchy & Real Estate Part Two

Anarchists, as mentioned in part one, are essentially pragmatic people, grounded in reality, as opposed to the people wallowing in the delusion that the state provides some value of some sort.  We view reality and say, "The world can be a wicked place, and that is good to know.  How can we make a buck off it?"  While those who live to be ever more dominated by the state wring their hands repeating the mantra "if we can only get the right person in office, if we can only get the right person in office..." For state-queens, it's all about anxiety and the mantra.  For anarchists, it is all about, "Well, ok, this is tradable..."  As in the example of the real estate transaction in part one.

Now anarchists do desire a stateless polity, and have workable concrete plans.  And we know they will not be accepted.  We also know we can do better anyway, in certain concrete situations.  For example, the anarchists among those who founded the USA worked it so the federal government (called the general government until the 1950s) would be funded strictly by duties on imports.  And to drive home the point, the expressly forbid duties on exports from the USA in the US Constitution.  That'll show 'em!  If the rich want to raise taxes for big government, since what was being imported was largely luxuries, then the rich would have to pay for big government themselves.  Good idea, but it did not last long, because the hamiltonians overwhelmed the good guys.

Can we try something similar today, a structural means for keeping the state at bay?  Here is an idea, but first an observation.

Can anyone cite, at any time in history, a single instance when a government has owned land and used it profitably?  I don't think anyone can.  We can look at national parks, created to put a halo on stealing lands from the Indians, to city parks, to ocean beaches, to freeway systems, to vast swathes of wilderness today, or any other lands in history in which government ownership was beneficial.  If the land is owned by the government, we get wild politically-induced misallocation as a result of bribery, graft, etc.

Especially in hyper-progressive countries like the USSR, PRC and USA, pollution, which particularly annoys anarchists, is worse.  Government ownership is detrimental.

In natural law, property is owned when and to the extent you can mix your labor with land and natural resources.    Now, what if actual "ownership of land" was not possible?  What if everyone had to get along on what land there was.  What if all of the land was owned collegially, as with the concept of the first nations idea of man's relationship to land.  In the Seattle area, Sealth endeavored to make alliances with the immigrants into his territory, and so no doubt he would welcome some orderly system of leases on land, a immigrant innovation.

Given all of that, and the experience of on of the freest paces on earth, Hong Kong, where land cannot be owned (except for the Church of England) what if we were to set aside and First Nations territory where there could not be title to land, only leases.

If we were to set aside an autonomous region under a "one country/two systems" regime (and Michigan looks ripe) we might create a more prosperous, peaceful and just regime.

Where is your solution?

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Penn & Teller on HFCS

Very good points, very bad language, from Penn and Teller.


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Anarchy & Real Estate, Part One

We anarchists know from both theoretical and empirical evidence that free markets in land work.  And experience.  Here is an example. I was was negotiating for a piece of property on a urban island where nearly 1/10th the homes were waterfront.  Although waterfront is desirable, I though it foolish to own it because the taxes were high and the privacy was nil on the days you most wanted to use the waterfront.  As you want to enjoy your beach, you are treated to gawkers slowly cruising by in their day boats.  Ugggh.  Later I also learned, naturally enough, that waterfront means mildew challenges.

To my mind the smart thing was to own land higher up for the views, and across from a park for the beach.  That did not work out, but something better did.  It is common to have what is called "shared waterfront."  With shared waterfront say five homeowners together own a 30 x 300 foot stretch of waterfront, and in this case a 85 foot dock protruding therefrom.  The 300 feet heads inland and is contiguous with all of our respective properties.

Now that is the ticket.  All five homeowners own the shared property 100%.  This is legally important, since none of us has say so over anyone else, no one can act for everyone else.  No one is in charge. Anarchy.

(And 30 the taxes on 30 feet of waterfront split five ways is negligible, a lake is like a bathtub with the nasty things around the rim, so you want to swim out in the lake, off the dock, or further, from your boat.  And you can find privacy in the middle of a lake.  Much better deal than waterfront.)

Negotiating for this property, the real estate agent told us there was a problem.  There was no waterfront agreement.  Without an agreement there would be chaos.  Stories of bitter enmity among co-owners of waterfront property were legion on the island.  Examples ran from people not speaking to each other to violence.

Waterfront agreements dealt with issues such as maintenance, upkeep and expenses thereof, protecting from encroachment and the real challenge, who gets what space on the dock.  Since an 85 foot dock shared by 5 people leaves about enough room for 5 skiboats at 24 ' each max, accounting for shore slope, lake levels, dock configuration, space to maneuver, etc, it is fine if no one goes above limit.  (A 20 ski boat is probably all the recreational skier needs.)  Then there is the issue of slot, some slots are far more desirable than others, what with wave patterns, etc.  Next, skilled sailors are annoyed by wannabees who have no idea as to how the wannabees action make long term trouble.

And in this particular case, the son of one co-owner was docking his 35' Cape Hatteras year round of the dock, in the prime space.  Big trouble ahead.

I asked the real estate agent to research how long there had been no waterfront agreement among these five owners.  He was amazed to discover there had never been one.  For fifty years, ever since the parcel was developed with the five properties and shared waterfront, there had never been a waterfront agreement.  Although there had been several combinations of owners over the years, at no time did any agree to a waterfront agreement.  As is the case in such instances, if one does not agree, the others cannot outvote the one.  Sheer anarchy.  

And in his research he found even more horror stories to share, so he urged us all the more to make it a requirement in the purchase and sale agreement, and she recommended a good lawyer to draw up the concord, a fairly standard document that should not cost too much.  I encouraged him to pursue the agreement.

The seller's agent and our agent went to work on the other households and got no where.  This house had been on the market the year before at $880,000, then came 9-11, and 2002 there was a dip in real estate prices, no one new what was next, the price had been dropped to 720,000, agents were panicking, and it looked like this deal would die because of the other four families refusal to have a waterfront agreement.  Once the other families refused to agree, that was my signal to buy.  We offered $695,000 and the sellers were glad to get it.

Now as the real estate agents were working themselves into a panic, two things were plain from what the real estate agents had told us.  1. Wherever there was a legal waterfront agreement, bitterness, pettiness, confrontation and unpleasantness, and in some cases violence, reigned.  2. This unique group that had no waterfront agreement refused to discuss any changes.  Now, unhappy people want change.  Happy people do not want change.  Ergo, the people with no waterfront agreement were happy.  That's who I want to join, happy anarchists.

No one ever asked the obvious question:  if people were unhappy with waterfront agreements, and happy without one, what does that tell you?

A waterfront agreement becomes a legally binding document, legal in the sense of state-backed rights and responsibilities.  That brings out one view of the world, and as we see, the state always leads to chaos.  No agreement leads to order out of chaos, or anarchy.  That brings out another view of the world. Over fifty years, various combinations of people shared waterfront with all of the rights and responsibilities, and never a conflict.  Imagine that!  In fact, knowing that, and having the real estate agents drive themselves into a panic over no agreement, they accepted $25,000 less on the price.  Being an anarchist saves you money.  And this is not to say there is no government among the owners, that is just to say we needed no state intervention to govern our private affairs.

Had the others in this instance agreed to a waterfront agreement, I would have paid more and experienced the conflict the other shared-waterfront owners experienced.  (And I would not have bought.)  Lawyers, as government workers, agents of the state, bring chaos to where there is normally order.   We can do better.

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Welfare and the Fiscal Cliff

Mish has an article which states

Please consider Julia’s mother: Why a single mom is better off with a $29,000 job and welfare than taking a $69,000 job.
 
His article is a good read. The problem is that it is spending, not giving.  The article says earlier.

It's better to receive median welfare than median income according to a US Senate budget committee report Total Welfare Spending Equates To $168 Per Day For Every Household In Poverty. 
 
Well, that is what is billed to the taxpayers, not given to the welfare recipient.  Taxpayers may be forking over $168 per day for each person on welfare, but the welfare recipient is not receiving that.  Just like schools are getting $12,000 per year to educate a kid, but it is not going into the classroom.  Administration takes a huge percent of the amount.

When Bill Clinton ended welfare as we knew it, the end of the world was predicted.  But of course only a democrat can cut welfare, and Clinton did.  The world did not end, and the economy improved.  Imagine that.

A welfare fraud investigator once told me that it is impossible to live on welfare without engaging in fraud.  There is just not enough money in welfare to live.    The system has to be gamed, and the welfare offices acquiesce to being gamed.  They never want to solve the problem, or they too are out of work.

Defense contracts are welfare too, and they too are gamed.

We are in trouble because we have too much welfare and too little freedom.  The fiscal cliff is baked into the last election because politicians do not want to do the hard, right thing.    All of this "negotiation" is street theatre.  We will go over the cliff, and good things will happen when we have defense cuts and tax increases, because we'll be paying our bills and cutting expenses.  And the world will continue to like our dollar.  And gold and silver will fall.

But the we need to continue and also give more freedom and unregulate something, anything, so we can have another economic expansion.  Welfare is not what we can pay out to the poor and the rich, but every expanding range of goods and services ever more accessible to an ever wide group of people.  that is the free market.





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Remembering Kosovo

Remember the war in Kosovo?  You know, where we went to help out in a civil war?  During the Clinton Administration.  You don't remember?  The people of Kosova do.  The even put up a statue to Bill Clinton.

NY Times

Madeleine “Half million starved kids is a price worth it” Albright's Albright Capital Management, James W. Pardew, Clinton's special envoy to the Balkans are in state telecommunications.  General Wesley Clark is deep in the minerals sector.

The New York Times puts it well:

"So many former American officials have returned to Kosovo for business — in coal and telecommunications, or for lobbying and other lucrative government contracts — that it is hard to keep them from colliding."

See how it goes.  We conquer a country, and those who do the dirty work divvy up the spoils.  This is not America, but it is what you pay for.  This is one reason they hate us.

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Tim Ayles Awfully Wrong, Like His Target

Tim Ayles is getting good press on an article he wrote.  He is attacking the idea of the demise of the USCurrency.  He is right, it will not die soon.  His analysis is awfully wrong.

But to argue that government spending is all a waste and the money spent ends up being vaporized, is wrong. Government spending, even wasteful spending, is someone's income. Food stamps become the income of Safeway and Albertson's. Employees who work there get paychecks, and the shareholders get dividends. That money ends up being spent as well. Again, not fair to some who are productive, but also not a waste. If you run a productive business, chances are you too have received some of this "stimulus" money. If you are that against government spending, go to great lengths to make sure you don't let any of that money get into your hands, and then watch your business struggle.

Here Ayles forgets something:  where did the money come from?  Government spending is my income mulcted from me.  Why should I be forced to give it to Safeway for nothing in return?  Ot worse, to have Ssfeway give the benefit to someone else? Which causes that someone else to not produce, like a farmer paid not to grow.   It is far worse than Ayles perceives in his keynesian universe, I am denied the good of the creativity and productivity of those who simply have money transferred to them and on to Safeway.  Ayles misses both sides of the equation.

There is this funny little thing that keeps us from being truly free men. Taxes. Grocery stores don't have the luxury of deciding to exist on barter as some would have you believe. It's not that they don't desire such situations, but the government mandates they continue to accept paper money by force. The US Government has determined that taxes are to be levied on owners of property and services, and those taxes will only become extinguished in the form of paper dollars. Failure to submit to this monster will require time in prison. So under the motivation to not spend time in jail, citizens work tirelessly, offering labor and goods in exchange for paper dollars so they can feed the tax monster. I am not saying I approve, but it is the system in which we currently live. Thus, individuals and businesses who can create wealth are forced to figure out ways to obtain paper dollars. Capitalism allows a small carrot of incentive in that the more dollars you can obtain by productivity, the better lifestyle you can live, even though taxes go up with the higher income.

Or not.  A financial adviser reckons wealth in dollars.  Again, there is more under the sun that is dreamt of in his philosophy.  How about lifestyle?  But Ayles thesis, that contrary to Gloom and Doom reports, foreignors will keep accepting dollars is not because we are forced to pay taxes in dollars, but because the USGovt still has countless ways of mulcting ever more value, and rich targets at cutting expenses.  California’s situation is ripe for wiping out the debt by repudiating Gray Davis’ errors.  If it comes to protecting the dollar or taxing pensions 100% over $30,000, and 100% on the second pension, expect the tax.  The dollar will stand because the USTaxpayer can still stand so much.  Sure, the dollar will fall, if and when things get to Stalingrad-like conditions in USA.  It's goofy to think the system is sound, it is merely tradable.

I try to stay away from businesses who leech the system of wealth creation when I invest. Entertainment companies for example do nothing to create wealth in America. These businesses would not exist unless producers created wealth, which in turn allows that wealth to be spent on these types of businesses. I am a big believer of going through your portfolio and ridding yourself of the leeches. Spend money with the leeches, but don't invest in them. They do not create wealth, they take it.

Odd definition of wealth.  Entertainment companies are notoriously obscure in accounting and no doubt funny in reporting, but if they make money offering people options in entertainment, how is that not wealth?  Or again, is wealth only dollars, or ever more access to goods and services by ever more consumers, including entertainment?

It gets worse..

Take a look at any defense contractor such as LMT, GD, NOC and LLL.

They are all cash cows, and most all of them get over 90% of their revenues from government spending.

They spend money on stuff that kills people and blows things up. Not very "productive".

Yet, those businesses are gushing cash.

This is awful.  Who cares if a company gets money to kill people (including USA soldiers) and blow things up (police crash a drone into a police tank!) in pointless elective wars, as long as it “creates wealth?”  A theme I hit is progressive USA is essentially racist, and dedicated to the Darwiinian project of eliminating people who are brown or darker.  the right wing wants to do it overseas, the left wing in USA.  There are countless people in the commanding heights who promote it, and the casual way in which war crimes are accepted as long as it is “creating wealth” (if that is how you define creating wealth) it is ok.

Ayles goes on with a reductio ad absurdum argument about giving everyone $1 million, to suggest it would not matter.  Back to my first paragraph.  It would so distort the economy by redistribution of wealth, misallocation of assets, and denial of productive participation in the economy, by the recipients, we’d never recovery.

His price of a chocolate bar in time taken to earn it again misses on two points:  a chocolate bar not only costs more today if you account for the weight, it is no longer as wholesome as it was back then.  the deterioration is theft.  Better to take the example of a 1964 Kennedy half dollar (silver) which you buy you a motorcycle tank of gas.  Today that would cost you $10.00.  Or you could sell the 1964 Kennedy half dollar for $10, and buy a motorcycle tank of gas.  The point is, gas was 50 cents a tank in 1964 when money was money, but it is $10 when money is funny.  50 cents is not the same thing as $10, the difference is $9.50 wasted in reduced benefits so many places.  In a properly functioning economy, prices naturally fall.  

Ayles is simply describing the Soviet Union economy as a good thing.  By all means, go communist, but try China instead.  they seem to have a more lasting communism.  Of course our system will fail.  They all do.  The question is how an individual responds.  Rome was invincible, But Seneca and his crew knew better.  From Miss Stroup:

"Quid autem interest quomodo sapiens ad otium veniat, utrum quia res publica illi deest an quia ipse rei publicae, si omnibus defutura res publica est?" (Seneca, de otio, 8.2)

In this case, otium is time characterized by private/social reading/writing as opposed to public involvement (Correspondent’s explanation) Translation:

"But what does it matter how a wise man comes to otium, whether because the state is unavailable to the man or the man is unavailable to the state - if the state is going to fail everyone, no matter what? "  

Whatever Ayles track record as a financial adviser, one should keep in mind Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book on financial advisers and survivorship bias.



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Watch Your Mouth!

A Japanese Department Store seeks to entice English speaking customers.  The explanation offered is pretty funny.  Click through because it features the F word and this is a family blog.  Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.

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Why The Fiscal Cliff Is Unimportant

Are we afraid of the fiscal cliff for what it might do to the comforts for which we are accustomed?  Think of the very uncomfortable and destabilized world in 1794, and the activities of one Scotsman:

The manuscript of a 212-year-old dictionary written by a British polymath employed by the East India Company in the late 18th century has been traced in the British Library, shedding new light on the history of words in Indian languages.

The dictionary, titled "Comparative 

Vocabularies", was written in 1800 by Dr Francis Buchanan Hamilton (1762-1829), who was a surgeon to the governor-general Lord Wellesley in Calcutta (now Kolkata). The manuscript traced in the British Library by Rini Kakati, the London-based director of FASS (Friends of Assam and the Seven Sisters), is a dictionary of 10 languages, including Assamese, Bengali, Manipuri, Garo, Rabha Koch, Kachari, Panikoch and Mech,.

Kakati told IANS she was alerted about the manuscript by Raktim Ranjan Saikia of the Department of Geology in JB College, Jorhat, on behalf of Asom Jatiya Prakash, publisher of the dictionary. She said she was delighted to be able to trace the historic collection.

The book has 155 pages of landscape-sized paper. There are 18,000 words in all with 1,800 words in each of the 10 languages.

A Scottish physician, Buchanan-Hamilton is recognised for making significant contributions as a geographer, oologist, and botanist while living in India. The standard botanical author abbreviation 'Buch.-Ham.' is applied to plants and animals he described.

In 1794, he was appointed a surgeon with the East India Company, and explore Burma, Chittagong (1798), the Andaman Islands, Nepal (1802-3) and North Bengal and Bihar (1807-9), when he made detailed surveys of the botany, geography, agriculture, economy, social conditions and culture of these areas, preparing extensive reports which now form an important historical resource.

On the return of the mission, being stationed at Jjakkipur, near the mouth of the Brahmaputra, he wrote a description of the fishes of that river, which was published in 1822.

It is your passions that drive you to produce good things no matter what that last.


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Ann Fenton on Success

Ann Fenton measures success by a Chinese rug.  I've never heard of her before seeing her work in a museum.  I very much appreciate her sentiments, although this is really a 1977 Iggy Pop hit.   One necessary requirement to customer-employment (I no longer say "self-employment") is a sense of humor.  Ann Fenton has a tremendous sense of humor.  NB:  There is a bad word at the end.  But it is pitch-perfect.


Success-Web from Anne Fenton on Vimeo.


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How To Make Rural American More Relevant

Ag Sec Tom Vilsack laments rural America's decline in political power, measured by a failure to pass a farm bill.

For the first time in recent memory, farm-state lawmakers were not able to push a farm bill through Congress in an election year, evidence of lost clout in farm states.

The Agriculture Department says about 50 percent of rural counties have lost population in the past four years and poverty rates are higher there than in metropolitan areas, despite the booming agricultural economy.

I recall a conversation at a break at a seminar I was giving in Spokane, in which a farmer lamented all of the regs he had to face.  I countered he rich in subsidies and he shot back:  let me use my land and you can keep your subsidies.

We have a crazy farm policy summed up by Nixon's Ag Sec, "Get big or get out."  It is working.  The big get bigger, the small get out, and every decade or so we lose another generation of farmers. At the same time, I meet countless young people who want to farm (are they sure?) but those they see struggling to get ahead just get nailed by USDA and FDA.

We see with marijuana liberalization we get more better cheaper faster.  Forget the commodity, marijuana, and just look at the process.  If we want to see more and better cheese, liberalize the market. Get rid of the pointless restrictions on cheese that apply only to good food (small farms) and get rid of the GMO subsidies.  We'll have a renaissance in food.

Rural America is losing relevance but not Big Ag.  It can still get what it wants, they portion is booming, since they have no competition within USA.  Their success overseas is due to heavy subsidies.

The grown-up conversation the Sec recommends should be on the topic of farm subsidies and regulations.  Free up the markets.

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Better Consumer Protection

I drive a 1997 Cadillac STS, z-rated.  For a decade now, I've refilled the 20 gallon tank, and there are so many measuring and warning gauges I know the car well enough to time pulling up to the pump with the point the engine is running on fumes.  It is a 20 gallon tank.

So I pull up to a gas station I've never used before, in the University Village area of Seattle.  I am sure it has its regulars of upscale customers, but with the shopping center next door featuring and Apple store, it gets countless one-time visitors as well.

So I fill up the tank, and the register sails past 20 gallons.  Now this is interesting.  How far will it go?  Well, it clicked off at 22 gallons.  The measuring gauge on the gas pump does not work right.  It is registering 10 per cent more than it is delivering, delivering 20 gallons and charging for 22.

What did I do?  What almost everyone does, I am sure.  That is to say the extremely few who notice.  This occurred at the time of the price hikes up to 4 and 5 bucks a gallon.  Since they've got my payment automatically, I took my receipt, jumped in the car, drove off vowing to never use that station again.

What do you think I should do?  Walk into the office and complain to the $6 an hour clerk?  Over a $10 overcharge?  that would be like volunteering to call a Microsoft help center.

Who knows, maybe the clerk was instructed to rebate 10% to anyone who complains.  But it's not worth my time to sort it out.  I am just gone, no doubt like the other busy people who notice.

In poorer neighborhoods where the average sale is say $7 because "enough to get to work" is common, it's the money in, not gallons in that is being closely watched.

So this cheating is easy.

Call the department of consumer affairs?  And then what?  They will investigate?  No doubt there is a reasonable explanation.  So they fix the gauge.  No way to trace the overage charged, the delivery receipts are well forged.  So nothing will happen.

"If we just had enough enforcement officers..."  Sure hire more people to drive around and check on registers.  Add to government expenses.  Is that going to work?  And hire more FDA inspectors.  And hire more transit inspectors?  And hire more...  it simply cannot be done.

I recall the Washington State Patrolmen who lectured in our drivers ed class in High School.  After all the standard arguments, he summarized by saying, with emotion "I wish we had one state patrolman out for every driver."  Even at 15 this sounded absurd.

No, by far the better plan is to get rid of all inspectors and regulators.  They are not there to protect the consumer, or they would.  I was not protected.  And here is the thing: since everyone falsely assumes someone else is protecting them, too few of us bother to protect themselves.  How would we do that?

If there was no department of weights and measures, there would certainly be a sort of yelp that announces where someone is cheating.  Apps wold steer gas buyers away until the malefactor is corrected.  Then in fact we do have one regulator for every transaction, and that is the customer himself.

Cheating in weights and measures is an ancient problem, but the state "solution," standardizing weight and measures is no solution, since it is impertinent to the problem.  The standardization is about taxing business, not about protection of consumers.  So let's get back to consumer protection, by eliminating the state regulation.

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Elephant Poop Coffee - Chang Poo Joe

Inspired by the ancient cat poop coffee, some entrepreneurs in Thailand are experimenting with Elephant poo joe.  Hmmm... sounds exotic.  Hey, the Thai word for elephant is "chang."  Chang Poo Joe.  Nice ring to it.

Running coffee through an elephant apparently takes out the bitterness.  But I like bitterness so much I drink cafe du monde coffee ($12 at Metropolitan Markets, $5 a Lam's), which is cut with chicory, a technique learned during the War of Northern Aggression when there was a coffee shortage in NOLA. No thanks on Chang Poo Joe, but here is cafe du monde, if you like it bitter, and black, like my heart.






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Michigan As the Next Hong Kong?

As we see Detroit descend into the chaos that follows government intervention, we have an opportunity to allow spontaneous order out of chaos that occurs in anarchy.

One contribution to chaos is government unions, with which Michigan is overwhelmed and the people are voting down.  The auto-unions are also subject to "right to work" rules hereafter, but their power is base don the health of the auto industry.  Intellectual property rights and distribution restrictions ruined the USA auto industry, and labor unions followed the auto industry down.  Addressing unions rules is rather impertinent.  Michigan needs freedom, not different rules.

I come back to Hong Kong, which has practically no unions, of course.  Free people do not need them. And also Hong Kong has the curious element that no one can own property, just lease it.

Now the Manifest Destiny policy of Jemmy Madison meant the Indians had to die, so their property rights could be abrogated.  Aside from being wrong, disrespecting property rights is foolish.

"But there was no way to have progress and Indian-style property rights at the same time."  How would we know, it has never been tried?  On the other hand, we see it works in places like Hong Kong, Monaco, Vatican... O! Goodness, all free indefensible peaceful and prosperous places.  How about that?

As I look at a map of Michigan, which is going through a little revolution, I note its geographic situation:

Geographically it is ideal to be its own city state. Now compare that with a map of Indian reservations in Michigan.  They are spread around, and I bet a little digging would demonstrate their rights were violated.  Perhaps a settlement could be the indians own the land, and they lease it out on 99 year terms in a free market, like they had before we showed up.  Best of both worlds, win win.

Michigan is fantastically well situated to be a new Hong Kong.  It has waterways that reach the atlantic, and rail lines tying into the entire country.  It has a workforce ready, willing and able to produce.  And a darned good University.

I think secession is a non-starter, but a two-countries, one-system autonomous region on that peninsula would be a great experiment in freedom and industrial recovery.  I could move to Michigan.

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Father of Open-Sourcing, Anti-IPR Ben Franklin

I was listening to a fellow on the radio talk about his book, Poor Richard's Lament, a biographical novel on Benjamin Franklin.  One point he made about Franklin was he spent his first 42 years getting rich and the last 42 giving it away.  Franklin was a world-class inventor, but he open sourced his designs, such as the lightening rod and the Franklin stove, two inventions widely used to this day.  In spite of his friend Thos. Jefferson's belief that intellectual property would help the little guy, Franklin would not go along with that regime.

We pretend the world is so much more complicated and those people too backward to be relevant today.  No, the problems today are the same as back then, and the solution the same.  Open source it, eschew intellectual property rights.



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