Shut Down Theatre: A Gentle Reminder

Reading the comment sections on articles on the shutdown and Romney/Obamacare, one sees battle lines being drawn.  As the economic conditions deteriorate, people get nastier.  One might even surmise this is on purpose, under the ancient ruling tactic of divide and rule, something every schoolboy once knew as Divide et Impera.

But that was in the days few boys went to school.  Today all boys go to school, but they are not taught such things, because they would see nothing new, and see in "Fast and Furious" that the USGovernment was arming preferred criminal gangs in Mexico, in another version of Divide et Impera.

Romney/Obamacare is extremely divisive.  And it is designed to fail. which will cause more division as worse comes on down the line.

But step back and observe.  We are in an economic crisis, in which we are obliged to sequester funds, and we are debating something that we cannot afford and will not work.  There is also the debate over state spying on individuals, an exceptional violation of the constitution.

And there is more.  People are perplexed at the cruel stupidity of National Park Rangers.  How could they go along with such petty instructions?

Say, how about those Detroit Tigers?

American Exceptionalism means that what happens elsewhere could never happen here.  We are an exception.  Except we are not.  Park Rangers are no different than you and I.  Given the range of perks and salary, and the power, they do what they do.  So would you and I.  The trick is never allow anyone to get in that position.  How?  No Park Rangers.  No National Parks.

What?!  How awful a proposition!  Not really.  The National Parks were formed by taking what was left of Indian Lands as the coup de grace of those Nations.  Return them.

Yesterday I spoke of coopertivization.  Coop the parks.  We don't need huge intrusive Government, we need effective cooperation, in structures we've already seen work.

We don't need to throw the bums out, and put people like me in office, because I will be just as bad.  We need to end the role of Government as we now have it.  Through an expansion of business, properly understood as voluntary associations.

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MOQ FOB is Huge Success

Which is funny, because it is nothing new.  It is clear we lost three generations of entrepreneurs to the banking, dotcom and real estate debacles of the last 40 years.  We'll spend at least the next 30 paying for those debacles, and one cost is re-educating people as to how to do business.

Read these testimonials from people who have discovered MOQ FOB, all in the three generations I mention.  And KUDOS to HKTDCC.Com for rediscovering and promoting this fundamental small business and new business discovery tactic.

Quotes:

‘’Our stores located in hotels and we only sell products that are unique and not common in our market’ said Ms Aliyeva. ‘I don’t mind to pay a bit higher on the unit cost. Instead, if the product is rare, it allows us to mark up higher for higher margin.’ 

“Small order quantity is specifically important with LED products because the technology itself is improving in great pace while the price is coming down very quickly. We don’t want to order in big lot and get stuck with old technology and high price. Buyers have to be more cautious with the economic situation nowadays so that their business won’t be exposed to high risk,” explained Mr. Zohs.

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Privatize The US Postal Service, Like the Royal Mail?

In the USA, we mean "crony capitalism" when we say privatization.  I've moved from corporations as a legitimate business to co-ops, for reasons discussed elsewhere on this blog.  The United States Postal Service is on the ropes, and right now the Brits are looking at "privatizing" their version, the Royal Mail.

This, along with forecasts of instant profits, appeared to have led to the strongest demand since the big state privatisations of the late 1980s, when British Gas and other state industries were sold off. City experts calculated that the average retail investor applied for £5,000-worth of Royal Mail shares. Yet such was the demand that the number of shares on offer would leave them with an average of only £737-worth of stock each.

So let's get terms right first, and then look at a solution.

The corporation was formed so "the men of Devon County" could pool resources to build a bridge across a ravine that would benefit them all, and perhaps charge a fee for others to cross it, for money for maintenance.  Early court cases said the men of Devon were immune from lawsuits over the bridge since the plaintiff would have to sue the corporation, which was judgment-proof for being impoverished.  You can see where that went over 300 years.

It is hardly privatization when anyone in the general public can buy stock, so what they mean when they say privatization is corporatization.  And we do not want corporations, let alone corporatization.

So how to handle a failing USPostal Service?  Co-operativization.  Exactly what the Royal Mail is doing, but in two parts:

1.  Announce the US Postal Service will lose all of its monopolies in three years (maybe phased out: media, 2nd class, 1st class, etc).

2. Deed all USPS obligations (including the pension liabilities)  and assets (land, rolling stock, equipment, foreverstamps) over to the employees and the  retirees.  The in year three, they are all on their own.  As a coop each can sell his membership (ownership), or keep it, or whatever.  The accounting rules would shift to reality-based.

At the same time, competitors are forming, corporations who are at a disadvantage up against the efficiency of a co-op.  WE'd get more better chaper faster.  Companies would fight to deliver your mail for free, if you let them put their ads on you outgoing mail (and who knows, incoming mail too.

Take the State out of mail delivery and we'd get more better cheaper faster.

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And China on Small Farms

And then on the other hand, contrary to the USA farm policy of get big or get out, Chinese Agricultural Policy is Get Big or Stay Small.  Personally I think there should be no agricultural policy except property rights, but if there has to be a policy, then one that looks for a balance is better than one that explicitly targets small farms for elimination.

Sun Zhonghua, director-general of the department of rural economic systems and management of the Ministry of Agriculture, said that along with a sustained and massive migration of young and middle-aged farmers, rural areas have seen their labor force grow older, more female and less educated.

So same problem as in USA.  Yet different policy:

After years of reform and improvement in rural areas, the nation has established a system for agricultural operations, where family farming lays a foundation and multiple production entities co-exist.
There are 226 million farming households, including 2.76 million major grain growers (defined as those with more than 3.3 hectares of land), 600,000 registered farmer cooperatives, 110,000 large agro-industry enterprises, emerging family farms and a variety of social service organization for agriculture.

Different policy in China, policies to aid the small family farm.  Advantage China.

Competition is a good thing, it comes from the Greek "to strive with."  A runner alone does not where near as well in his time as going against another runner.  Both do better.  I am chagrined when countries make policies that disadvantage themselves, and ultimately, their own people.

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China Wheels In a Trojan Horse

"Intellectual Property Rights" is a concept alien to Chinese culture, and why not, since the concept is misanthropic, contrary to natural rights.

Reading Patry, we see that there are no property interests in statutory concepts, such as trademark, patent and copyrights.

Further, just as traceability trumps trademarks in the markets, Chinese legislators up the ante on trademarks:

In cases of infringement, compensation of up to 3 million yuan shall be paid to the holders of trademark rights, according to the draft amendment to the Trademark Law, tabled for a third reading at the ongoing bimonthly session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature.

Much of USA's economic decline can be traced to our "intellectual property rights" regime.    Just as it is ending, China is ramping it up.

It is sad to see such an avid competitor self-inflict disability, and adopt wholesale a regime that is contrary to Chinese ethic, and contrary to "modernity with Chinese characteristics.

Would that China will roll this Trojan Horse back out of their country, and resume their ancient practice of creativity and innovation, that gave the world so many good things.

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Dangerous New Sport: WingSuit Diving (or Flying)

Innovation is not limited to creating new products or services, it can be activity too.  Of course there is no end of innovations to support the new activity, for example, the new activity of jumping out of an airplane, flying around like a squirrel, and then getting back in the airplane, at 5000 feet.  Sounds dangerous?

It said the organisation would "conduct a thorough review of the events that lead into this accident and adopt any appropriate changes".
The sport is highly dangerous, with about 20 people dying annually around the world while jumping.

Yep.  It is called wingsuit diving.  You've never heard of it, but of the few who play it, 20 a year die?  The mind boggles.   In this case the fellow expected to eventually parachute to the ground, but sadly his shoot did not deploy.  He should have gotten back in the plane.


The fellow in this video, and others, their fates:

On 31 October 1997, French skydiver Patrick de Gayardon showed reporters a wingsuit with allegedly unparalleled safety and performance.^[21][22] De Gayardon died on 13 April 1998, while testing a new modification to his parachute container in Hawaii; his death is attributed to a rigging error that was part of the new modification, rather than a flaw in the suit's design.^[23]On 5 October 2003, Dwain Weston, an Australian skydiver and holder of the 2002 BASE-jumping world title, died after hitting a railing while attempting to fly over the Royal Gorge Bridge near Cañon City, Colorado.^[24][25][26]On 14 August 2013, Mark Sutton, a British stuntman who had earned fame by parachuting into the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremonyas a James Bond character, was killed when he hit a ridge while wing-diving near Martigny, Switzerland.^[27] He was participating in an event sponsored by Epic TV, and a wingsuit expert stated that he appeared to have miscalculated the gradient of the ground he was flying over, meaning he hit the ridge as the land flattened out.^[28]On 23 August 2013 Álvaro Bultó, one of the best Spanish wingsuiters, died because of a failed wingsuit BASE jump in Switzerland, the days before he and his team mates did some other difficult and more technical jumps, this one was the first one that day but because of an unlucky movement he hit the cliff and he didn't start the horizontal flight and he also didn't open the parachute.

But not to worry.  It is possible to land without a parachute.



As I mentioned, the activity is innovative, and the money part is supplying the activity.  For example, this might be useful to the participants.

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USA Creditworthiness

At some point in the game, there will be another adjustment, as in 2008, there is no getting away form it.  The USA Fed "shutdown theatre" will have nothing to do with it, but we'll be treated to blaming ad nauseum.

In the midst of this was a gaffe by President Obama.  A gaffe is when a politician accidently speaks the truth.

See here:

Obama told a news conference that the United States has a lot of debt obligations beyond paying its Treasury bond holders and that the government's failure to pay other bills would also hurt U.S. creditworthiness.

Now, the "credit" in creditworthiness is sheer fiat-based, meaning there are no assets backing the credit. The next aspect is how con artists work: the "con" in con artist is short for confidence artist, which almost everyone knows, but few realize the "confidence" the con artist installs is in the mark, not the con artist.  When YOU believe it will work the con artist can scam you.  (This is also critical for when you get ripped off, you tend to keep your mouth shut, for feeling so stupid.)

So the game is that the victims (investors and beneficiaries in USA creditworthiness) at some point will realize they've been had, and then it comes tumbling down.  There will be many 2008s, in which there is a short rush for the doors, but only one Rome, 476.    There were plenty of 2008s between 190AD and 476AD, so to speak.

Nobody knows when the end will come, when enough people say "i don't believe it."  Right now plenty of people say "It is tradable.."  meaning they think the system is rotten, but there is still money to be made trading, knowing it is perverse and rotten.

We could restore peace and prosperity by deregulating banking, and treat interest payments the way we do gambling debts in law, and that is they are unenforceable contracts.  I know, I know... it is never going to happen.  But if you wrap your brain around that reality, then you can live an authentic life as the regime crumbles around you.

The people who will be the most bitterly disappointed in all of this are the preppers, who organize their lives around 'the end', only to find it never comes.  Prepping gets so boring so fast.

The powers that be have no idea when the end will come either.  But just to be sure, in these unsure times, the powers that be keep appointing Jews to the post of Fed Chairman.  After having Arthur Burns take USA off the gold standard (lite) all Fed Chairmen have been Jews, just in case (except for G. William Miller , who tried to do the "right" thing and was canned).  When this goes bad, and it will, the powers that be will escape blame by doing what they always do, blame the Jews.

Keep your mind on how your confidence in the system is the problem, not the powers that be who offer you an internal contradiction upon which to place your hopes: fiat currency usury.

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Gov't Shut Down Theatre

In every previous "gov't shutdown" all govt employees received full pay.  They ultimately simply received a paid vacation.  Now does that mean those non-essential who are working through get paid double?

Anyway, see the Park Rangers standing guard to keep people out of an open space because, due to the shutdown, there are no guards for the open space.  Except extra guards needed to put up fences because there are no guards... even though we are paying them anyway...  could we possibly be more ridiculous?



The media trots out stories about babies and cancer and the notorious liar Clapper says we we are going to have more terror attacks and the CDC says flu will get out of control, all because of the mass paid vacations.  Well, if those on "furlough" are non-essential, why would essential things be at risk, even if this was not pure theatre.  The fact is no one is going without, there is exactly zero difference under "shutdown" than otherwise.  Yet, we'll be treated to untold stories of problems "due to the shutdown."

This gets back to an important point.  It is not the hand you are dealt, it is how you play the cards.  And no one should judge a man by how he plays his cards.  But those Park Rangers, who are taking part in a ridiculous charade, should not ask us to believe they are anything more than street clowns.  And the intelligence services, the CDC, all theatre.  That's fine if they want to play their hand that way (who am I to judge?), but asking us to play along and take them seriously, that is going too far.

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Monsanto Grows!

Monsanto forked over nearly a billion in cash for a company that can tell farmers...  well you read it..

Monsanto said it was paying $930 million in cash for the company, whichlooks at data like historic rainfall and soil quality to help farmers predict crop yields. Monsanto hopes to apply the Climate Corporation’s data analysis insight across the company, to create what a Monsanto executive called “the next level of agriculture.”
“A farmer should be able to grow on farmland square meter by square meter, for lots more yield, planting seeds at different rates for each meter,” said Kerry Preete, Monsanto’s executive vice president of strategy. “We’re a data company at heart, breeding seeds and helping farmers optimize yields and manage risk.”
Last year Monsanto paid $250 million for Precision Planting , a company that enables farmers to plant seeds in various depths and spaces, almost by the square meter, so different parts of a farm can get different treatment. Mr. Preete said Monsanto saw this as a first step in developing two-way farm machinery systems that took up and receive data, giving farmers better sense of what to plant and how much water and fertilizer to use.

Once "we can know," that is Monsanto can tell you, how much seed to grow where, and how much water to use, it is only a matter of time where their advice becomes public policy.  We already have the USSupreme Court making rulings specific only to Monsanto, with the science behind them, Monsanto becomes irresistable.  Especially when no one else can crunch the numbers like they do.  The danger is too few people making decision affecting too many people.

I wonder where Monsanto got a billion to blow on a weather service?  Anyway, before we go much farther, we should think about the preferences and subsidies in our policies....

Earl Butz18th United States Secretary of AgricultureIn officeDecember 2, 1971 – October 4, 1976
For example, he abolished a program that paid corn farmers to not plant all their land. (See Henry Wallace's "Ever-Normal Granary".) This program had attempted to prevent a national oversupply of corn and low corn prices. His mantra to farmers was "get big or get out," and he urged farmers to plant commodity crops like corn "from fencerow to fencerow." These policy shifts coincided with the rise of major agribusiness corporations, and the declining financial stability of the small family farm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Butz

“Food is a weapon...”

“To think of food as a weapon, or of a weapon as food, may give an illusory security and wealth to a few, but it strikes directly at the life of all.
The concept of food-as-weapon is not surprisingly the doctrine of a Department of Agriculture that is being used as an instrument of foreign political and economic speculation. This militarizing of food is the greatest threat so far raised against the farmland and the farm communities of this country. If present attitudes continue, we may expect government policies that will encourage the destruction, by overuse, of farmland. This, of course, has already begun. To answer the official call for more production -- evidently to be used to bait or bribe foreign countries -- farmers are plowing their waterways and permanent pastures; lands that ought to remain in grass are being planted in row crops. Contour plowing, crop rotation, and other conservation measures seem to have gone out of favor or fashion in official circles and are practices less and less on the farm. This exclusive emphasis on production will accelerate the mechanization and chemicalization of farming, increase the price of land, increase overhead and operating costs, and thereby further diminish the farm population. Thus the tendency, if not the intention, of Mr. Butz confusion of farming and war, is to complete the deliverance of American agriculture into the hands of corporations.”
? Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

Now note the Federal Policy is not "We want everyone to get big" (bad enough), but "get big or get out."  That means if you are small or medium, you are not wanted.  That has been the policy for the last 40 years.  What has been the result of that policy?  Monsanto is one result.  Time to rethink this?

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Swiss Welfare & Interesting Reform Ideas

You may have read this article about an initiative in Switzerland to offer a guaranteed SF2500 per citizen:

Some 120,000 Swiss signatories have put their names to a petition demanding a monthly minimum wage of $2,800 (2,500 Swiss francs) for every single member of the working adult population. Enough names have been collected for a government vote.

Now note that is a minimum wage law, a terrible idea in its own right, but interesting in that the taxpayers, not the employers will make the contribution.  If you want to guarantee everyone has a living wage, guarantee everyone has freedom.  But that is for another day.

This initiative is a terrible idea, but one that offers interesting ideas.

What if we were to reform welfare in this manner:  We take the entire population of USA, divide it by all money spent on welfare programs including medicare and social security, we end up with about $6500 each person a year.  Now, I don't know if when they say "money spent on welfare" they mean the overhead costs too...  that is to say if we spend a billion on some program how much gets into the hands of the beneficiaries and how much gets into the hands of administrators.  But let's say the $6500 is $6000 beneficiary and $500 admin, for sake of argument.

Now, how do we define welfare?  Do we include "free" education?  Military?  I mean, the provision of "defense" is a form of welfare, no?   Here they say all government income in USA in 2014 will be about $6 trillion.  All right, so depending on how your define welfare, spending is somewhere between $6500 and $19,500 for every man woman and child in USA.

 In any event, let's say we come up with a definition.  And then we take that total amount and divide it by all USA citizens.  Let's say it is $12,000.  So what we do is we scrap every program, send all these unessential workers home, and simply mail out checks to every man, woman and child, to do with what they want.  We cut out the overhead of "programs' and each individual decides what to do with the money in hand.  People who don't want it can send it back to pay down the debt, of pass it off to someone else or a charity.  Sure, some people will blow it, but that happens now anyway with welfare. Who knows, some may pledge it to the army or whatever they want to do with the money.

Now, you might say decisions to collect and distribute money in our system is up to congress.  Yes, but clearly we are to big and too complex to leave such issues to congress.  By having 250 million people decide how to spend 1/350 millionth of the budget each, it is cheap, fast and effective form of democracy.

But then what about congress?  Well, they can continue to be pointless, as they have been for so very long.

OK, don't like it?  What is YOUR plan.  Everything else on offer is ridiculous.

Here is another idea.  When it comes to welfare, the real money goes to welfare queens like Boeing and Archer Daniels Midland.  Their existence assures poverty since they monopolize categories and crowd out innovation and small business opportunity.

So, start by taking the biggest welfare programs for business, and end the subsidies or specially-pled regulations.  And what those companies disappear, and, say in the case of Boeing, 100 new airplane companies emerge where there was once just Boeing.  (Boeing is really just a dozen K Street Lobbyists and 3000 subcontractors, so if you doubt the reality of this scenario of 100 companies replacing the one in the slightest, then you have no idea how business works in USA.)

Now, as the massive welfare queens deflate for lack of Cheetos and Pepsi (corporate style), new jobs are opened by those who are now finally allowed to contribute to wealth creation in the USA.  And here wealth defined not as how much money one person has, but weal as in commonweal, the range of goods and services affordable to the widest group of people.

So as we work down from top to bottom, getting rid of welfare, by the time we close the last SNAP office and shut off the EBT funds, the people whose only possibility was welfare will have businesses begging them to come to work at thriving wages (if not limitless opportunities to start their own companies.)

This is a good, workable idea, but we have government for government's sake, and those who ascend to the commanding heights are motivated by libido dominandi.  They will not relinquish poser, and they are supported by vast swathes who cry out "we want a king to fight our battles for us..."

Here are our politicians giving a standing ovation to the police who killed a woman who panicked in the confusing capital labyrinth.    Notice also the congresswoman of some African heritage standing to applaud the execution of a woman of African heritage.


Steny Hoyer applauds the idea of human sacrifice, people who die so his life can be better.  This is all so Aztec.  the only question is which culture actually kills more: Aztec or American?  Let the scholars debate the point.

The Tuskegee Experiments were also peopled by researchers of African heritage.   Now this is not to single out people of African heritage, for all nations experience people selling their own down the river, never in history has it been otherwise.  Currently Irish politicians are selling the Irish down the river.

What the powers that be can always depend on, is people selling their own down the river.  The trick is to never give anyone else the power to sell you down the river.

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$500 Gold

Here is a excellent essay on buying gold, that is thinking like buying life insurance, betting that you'll die young but hoping you never win.  He says you buy gold betting it is going to $10,000 but hoping it goes to $500.

What would a world with $500/oz gold look like?
It would be a world with a strong USD brought about by a surplus in federal / state / local government budgets across the country.  Where the government debt is slowly shrinking instead of growing by leaps and bounds.
It would look like a country with full employment in good manufacturing, mining & agricultural jobs that create wealth for everyone.
It would look like balanced trade with the rest of the world instead of a staggering trade deficit that keeps getting larger.
It would look like a Federal Reserve with a much lower profile that doesn’t conjure up $1 trillion / year out of thin air.  (Maybe no Federal Reserve at all?)

Just so.  But that would assume the game is to get it right, when it is not.  It is to play it so close to the margin that you sheer the sheep but do not slaughter them (Tiberius).

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My Blog Hacked

My post yesterday, and who knows how many others from before, has been hacked, to include a very crude phrase that I did not write, nor would I.  It was inserted where it would appear I was being extremely insulting to the person to whom I replied.  It does not even sound like me.  I removed the offending phrase.

Not sure what to do about it, but I came to someone's attention who

1. Is a coward.

2. Has technical capabilities to hack google.

3. Does not like what I say.

That of course could be any one of many people.

My blog is where I rough draft ideas, and I make plenty of typos, but with nearly 5000 posts, I've never, nor would I, say something like that.

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