Saturday, October 5, 2013

On Private Currencies

Comes a sincere questioner:

If private banks issued currency, rather than central government banks, how do we keep such a currency system from being corrupted? More competition? 

***Who is "we?"  Right now "we" have an unspeakably corrupt monetary system.  With privately issued currency, it is up to the immediate players (those who issue and those who use) to keep it clean.  And yes, competition, a choice, would effect discipline.  Right now not only is there no competition, it is a crime to use a competitor's currency.  In anarchy, you are the cop.***

How can the integrity of a private currency be maintained? 

***  This is the funny thing.  The market did maintain the integrity of private currencies.  As soon as someone began misbehaving, the market punished that actor severely and quickly.  Eventually the state stepped in with a huge solution to a tiny problem, a usual tactic.  Now, the state makes legal for a few what was once punished quickly by the market.  This is why the standard of living is dropping for more and more people.***

How do you get people to maintain their long-term life savings, IRA's, etc., denominated in a private currency with confidence if their are competing private currencies? 

***That question is mired in assumptions.  What makes you think anyone else wants what you want?  Why should everyone else be forced into a system that you think best?  Who wants lang term savings?  Who wants it denominated in any currency?  And if not, "confidence" is moot point.  Vast swathes of humanity want what savings they have to be fully invested on productive activities, which afford a more sure security, they want to fade away actively, not rotting away on some golf course community where both the weather and the people are in the 80s and 90s.    Those people worry about a system that benefits them, which necessarily is at odds with those who prefer to fade away engaged in multi-generational family activities, in which the work is passed on.  The retirees depend on the destruction of the productive to keep their system going.  It will end badly, like in Rome.***

People think that an all powerful government can maintain law and order, and including the integrity and value of the currency - which obviously has people wondering about this as well these days.

***Indeed, it is disconcerting to be writing in criticism of some idea and to find that you are coming around to the idea under scrutiny.  You know in your heart of hearts any life savings, one way or another will be taken away.  You are hoping against hope the system from which you personally benefit (but most people do not) can somehow be reformed.    

No, it cannot.***

I do think that a private currency system would be better. (MMT merely describes the US money system that is in place now, but many people (including academics, politicians, and other commentators that should know better) do not understand it.) 

***Yes, that is what I have been saying about MMT, it is descriptive, and its touts offer a prescription, which sounds attractive.  It is like patents, sounds good on paper, offers much hope for personal benefit for acolytes, but it is inherently wrong, because it does damage.  To whom?  The other side of the policy.  But as I have said before, bad policies win out when states decide what to adopt.***

As the article says, there are some places that actually have a private currency system. 

***Mostly Celtic... the last hope for mankind.  I tremble...***

Emerging market economies that adopt a private currency system could have a competitive edge compared to developed first world countries that still adhere to a government fiat money system.

***Hong Kong.***

Maybe our national debate should not be so much on focusing on the US dollar, national deficit, money printing, etc., but rather on allowing a private currency system to develop, rather than maintaining a government fiat currency? Just scrap government fiat currency altogether? This issue is something that I have not thought of before I started reading this blog.

***Well, to be sure, as we saw with deregulation lite of telephony, airlines, trucking, shipping, beer, we go more better cheaper faster and economic recovery.  (Banking was not deregulated, only a new set of regulations, which turned the wolves loose on the unsuspecting.)  We could have a full economic recover in less than two years if we deregulated just one thing...  medicine, education, banking...  anything, it does not matter, only one thing would put us so far ahead of the rest of the world... (and it can even be de-reg lite, it does not take much to out class the Germans, Chinese and Japanese)  and getting rid of the FED would be a subset of banking deregulation. 

But the powers that be can depend on one thing, first played out (recorded anyway) in 1 Samuel 8 (and then doubled down in 1 Samuel 12)...  

But then, sometimes, along comes a Jimmy Carter, who truly makes things better.

Update:  An all-day seminar in Los Angeles.

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Friday, October 4, 2013

A Curious Contradiction On Copyrights and Plagiarism

We have in the USA state control of the media, and as a Soviet once told me, in USSR you can go to prison for what you write, but in USA you can write what you want, but if it is contrary to the party line, it will not get distributed.

Many believe the internet freed ideas, but it is now clear that the powers that be own the means of production: Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, etc.  The lies about the wars in the middle east are spread in this putative free market of ideas. Feinstein wants to define "reporter."

We have copyright laws to keep people from stealing ideas.  Plagiarism can cost you your career, unless you are a regime member, like Joe Biden or Delores Kearn Goodwin, but it is not a crime.  Note that excellent example of anarchy in action:  copyright violation is something you can litigate and settle, but plagiarism is punished by the community, in the measure people assess your offense.  NO court will hear a plagiarism case, it is dealt with in the court of public opinion.

So here is the curious contradiction:  The regime touts copyright law as a bulwark of our system, yet their media outlets all reports the exact same thing at the exact same time.  For the vast majority of what is distributed as media in USA, the content is canned wonder bread.  The regime depends on plagiarism to keep the USA on topic, everyone copying everyone else, slapping their ByLine on one Press Release.  Why does a regime that so despises originality so tout copyright law?

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How To Handle A Crisis

This poor fellow is quite put out, like a jilted lover.  He spent over a decade making friends in 40 countries telling them about Microsoft Privacy, and no doubt convincing the gullible and willfully ignorant.  Now he says...
"The public now has to think about the fact that anybody in public life, or person in a position of influence in government, business or bureaucracy, now is thinking about what the NSA knows about them. So how can we trust that the decisions that they make are objective and that they aren't changing the decisions that they make to protect their career? That strikes at any system of representative government."
Yes, I've said the same thing here a few times.  How else to explain Diane Feinstein's life for the last few years?  How else to explain how "the will of the people" is regularly ignored?

So what do we see as we look around.  Universities starve the classrooms as they jack up rates to pay for treadmills.  Treadmills.  When I took a sabbatical from work to earn a bachelor's degree, I walked the mile from my apartment to my classes, a couple of times a day.  Was never healthier.  Medicine is ruined in USA, since we no longer have mutual aid societies providing medicine, the way we excelled. Labor is the handmaiden of the state, and often, the state. Housing is now Soviet in all respects. Food has gone Frankenstein, people dress like children. The law introduces chaos wherever it is consulted.  And the religions are calling for human sacrifice, in a Mayan resurgence - the right wing for people to die in war, the left wing for kids to die, but in both instances under the Mayan ethic that others must die so life can better for the rest of us.

But there are signs of hope.  The big, bad Catholic Church has a Pope who is talking to atheists and telling Catholics to get on with it, don't look for leadership from sold out bureaucracy.  Some kids are eating pork fat and salt and finding health improves.  Medical tourism and "cash only" doctors are allowing some improvement in "health care."  Scholars are branding themselves instead of allying with the Medallion Universities.  Tailors are finding work.  The unions look desolate, but perhaps an independent trade union movement will re-emerge.  The pendulum continues toward insanity in housing, but eventually it will swing back.

Nothing good can happen as long as our politics are under the control of secret courts, and people forced to cooperate must remain silent.  Even congressmen can't tell us what is happening.

Truth commissions, our only way out.

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Thursday, October 3, 2013

On Money

There is a troll who asks sincere questions but promotes a dubious source on money theory.  that source has gotten more than enough exposure here, but I do want to answer the sincere questions:

How do you create demand for a money without taxes? 

***Money, properly defined, emerged before there were governments, let alone taxes.  Why would anyone ever want to create a demand for that which they will lose, through taxes?  The premise of the question is unregenerate.***

Why do people prefer one money over another? 

***If you are defining money correctly, by definition they do not.  If you define money incorrectly, as currency, they have preferences due to their desire to game the system.***

Why do other countries peg their currencies to the US dollar? 

***To game the system.***

Interesting comments here: http://xxxxxxxxxxx/contact/ 

***To be interesting, something has to be different.  This is greenbackism, nothing new there. Boring.***

And metals-backed money has its own problems, 

*** Since it is inanimate, it can hardly have problems.  It's used is by people, who introduce problems, and when the people involved can force you to participate in their problems, that is where the problems arise.***

remember the panics and depressions throughout the 1800's? 

***No, wasn't there, but history tells us they related to currency and fraud, not money.***

Doesn't a growing economy need a growing money supply? on How Government Shut Downs Work

*** If the actors in the economy thinks so, then they will produce it.  See Spooner on that softball question.  Among people who actually do business, they extend credit when money is short, so there is never a lack experienced in a free market.  Your guru wants the state to have a monopoly on credit (he calls currency money, which is ignorant) when business actors are more than ready willing and able to provide it themselves.  Solving problems that don't exist is an ancient game among statists, and you are becoming expert in this field.  Why don't you start a business, instead of study how to get on the oppressors side of the game.***

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Von Mises Institute, Comfort to 'Shroom Dealers

FBI, TSA, DHS and so on cannot catch a Boston Bomber, let alone the Kenya Mall Ten, but they spare no expense at tracking down a Magic Mushroom dealer.  And they get some guilt by admiration:
Among them, according to the viewing history, was economics. In particular, Mr Ulbricht's account had "favourited" several clips from the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a renowned Austrian school of economics.
Now, little if any of this story sounds likely, and the use of English is atrocious, so it is probably a planted article, meant to show us all of this spying pays off.  All of that time, effort, creativity to track down very talented and smart people trading dope online.

I am much influenced by Austrian School of Economics, except for its tolerance of usury (no school has the whole picture) and a school that has no use for drug laws would of course be of interest to drug dealers.

We are being treated to 24/7 Government as Theatre in USA.  Nothing is believable.  We are in the Soviet System where we check in on the news to see what the "Line" is, and not what the facts are.

I can see no other way out except truth commissions.

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Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Fair Trade Fraud

Although I tend toward organic/non-GMO foods, and I am a member of Puget Consumers Co-op, I have been an opponent of "Fair Trade" since its inception, since it is, to my mind, a scam built upon a false dilemma.

Theoretically, with Fair Trade, you are paying a bit more for better quality and more money in the farmers hands.  Neither was possibly true, but what became clear fast is the Fair Trade plenipotentiaries occupying the Fair Trade heights in USA were cleaning up.  Later I learned at the farm level it was pay up or get out.

Around that time when Starbucks announced they will always have Fair Trade coffee brewed and ready for sale, I found this not true on my travels, but in every instance the clerks said they would brew it if I ordered it, but they don't brew it ready because it is rarely ordered.  How come?  "It tastes bad."

That's what you get when your program is designed to scam delusional liberals.

Now, fast forward to October 13, my deliriously leftist food cooperative has an article in their monthly newsletter.    Seems they realize they have been had.  It appears the main fair trade org has sold out to the big boys, the plan all along.  Well, that was inevitable.

And so a new org has been created, which is newer and better.  Good luck to them, only time will tell.

My advice would be to forswear the term "Fair Trade" because you cannot build a marketing campaign on emotional blackmail.  None of these people need white folks in USA to come to their rescue, they need freedom in their own countries to form contracts without force or fraud, which is protected by governments against small business.  In cases where people are free from force or fraud protected by the state, they can rely on free trade to get just compensation, not something cooked up called Fair Trade.

They make good products that would be esteemed elsewhere, and they could turn a profit if allowed to.  But in most of these countries, once they have something making money, it will be stolen from them.  Heck, we are heading that way in USA.

I hope these people get to free trade, and beyond fair trade.

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Seminar at San Mateo College

On Oct 12 I will be delivering an all-day Seminar At College of San Mateo...

Importing as a Small Business  Start 10/12/13
Saturday, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm; 1 session starting October 12, 2013, ending October 12, 2013  Location: College of San Mateo (CSM)  Tuition: $99.00  Materials Cost: $0.00   Instructor: Spiers    Please read: CSM, Bldg. 14, Rm. 117

Sign up here...

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Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Test Your Business Idea

Here are a couple of things I've written down and posted on the inside of cupboard doors so that I review them often.

Dr. Gary North on writing advertising:

"Who says? So what?"

In any advertising, endorsements are golden.  But the endorsement must relate to a benefit your target wants.  This is a tricky combination

Joe Girard on sales:

"What can this customer have that no one else gets?"

Each customer ought to feel unique.  What can you do to achieve that?

(I forget who, maybe Girard...):

"How is our product (or service) worth more to them than their money?"

This can be tested in the sales process.  All of these should be called out whenever you are marketing.  Good luck!

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How Government Shut Downs Work

It is all theatre:  we are supposed to believe things will not get done, people will go without, bad things happen when the government shuts down.  If we actually shut something down, we'd save some money.  But that is not what happens.

The Washington Mall is closed, but all costs associated with it, including the employees there, continue.  The employees ostensibly have no job, but in fact they will be paid.  The "non-essential" employees will get their pay, they just get a few days or a few weeks paid vacation.

What we can expect, is those who are called essential will find this unfair, and they will need either more paid vacation or some sort of compensation in their paycheck.

Where the people actually want something from the Feds, like a park, that they shut down.  Wars will continue.  Vacations for "non-essential.."  Hmmm... "non-essential..."  makes one think...

There is only one crisis in government, that moment when, say Wu Sangui opened the gates at the Shanhai Pass.  Now that's a crisis, when the people chose anarchy over chaos.

We are in a long slow slide down and out, elections cannot matter, the "new leaders" are just as venal as the old "new leaders."  The Romney/Obamacare crisis is designed to fail and bring us single payer medical care, and then total control over our lives.  The bad guys will win that one, because the only workable alternative is to deregulate medicine in USA, which will not happen.  No one is calling for that, or no more than 2 or 3 dozen people in the country.

Free $#!^.  It's why democracies do not work.

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Monday, September 30, 2013

Seminars At Cal Poly, SLO

If you are in the Los Angeles area this weekend, I have an exporting food seminar Friday afternoon and and all day importing seminar Saturday at CalPoly, San Luis Obsipo.

Here's you chance to get an intensive introduction to either topic, or both, in lovely San Luis Obispo.

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MIT on Entrepreneurship

Peter Drucker said you can tell when information is obsolete, the Universities make it core curriculum.  Just under 30 years after Drucker pointed out innovation comes form customer feedback, and MIT professor shares this:
The reason,he said in an interview with the MIT Sloan Management Review, is that "surprisingly often, ideas for new or improved products come first from users who develop improvised versions to serve their own needs. Manufacturers then may discover, polish, and capitalize on user innovations--particularly if those innovations begin to catch on." 
You can pay $120,000 for that at MIT, or you can attend any of my classes.

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Sunday, September 29, 2013

Windows 8 and the End of Microsoft

Microsoft exists because of its sales to the state.  It only grew due to sales to the growth of the state. Now that the state has stopped growing, Microsoft is actually sliding backwards.  Wait wait... if the state is not growing, how come our budget is growing and the deficit rising at an ever more alarming level.  Because money for war and for bank bailouts is not growing government, and with no growth of government, no need for computers to keep employees distracted.  No growth in the number of govt workers, no need for Microsoft.

Microsoft has tried to get into the serious work of empire and crushing USA, but with a company so boring the founder has lost interest there just isn't anyone who cares to work with them.

The Gates family has worked tirelessly to crush small businesses with the estate tax promotion.  Their billions are compliments of the taxpayers, and since they never put a dime into securing email, they have billions left over.  How about a tax on  "charitable trusts" to pay for getting rid of spam?  $28 billion sounds about right for the task.

A young fellow once told me "Microsoft was his religion..." such was his estimation of the brilliance of the company.  Microsoft was and is just another welfare recipient, living off taxpayers.  The sooner it folds, the sooner it can release its employees to more productive pursuits.  After retraining.

What do computers and air conditioning have in common?

The both work fine until you open windows.

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