Indiegogo Roundup

Since the democrats are the puppets in power presently, it falls to them to manage the destruction of all that is good.  As I have blogged here before, they are targeting crowdfunding with a satanic vigor, since it is loans without usury, or just plain charity, both events requiring pernicious response from the powers that be.  Here are a mere three of many excellent initiatives being sponsored in the free market:

1. A fellow with autism, a by-product of our collectivization of medicine, finds hope in beer.  I can relate.  I also find hop, which manages my alopecia, which no doctor, east or west has been able to address.  I thank God for Pyramid "Outburst" which has returned my hair.    Thank you God, and Pyramid Brewing Company.

2.  We in the United States have destabilized Syria, with our Al Qaeda proxies and their criminal poison gas attacks,  for oil, leading to the decimation of Christianity in that Middle Eastern country.  A Pope goes there this week to attempt to undo some of the damage the USA has done.  In spite of our overwhelming violence, the creativity of individuals inspires free people everywhere.  A group pretends to be a wedding party to escape the violence, and meet humanity every step of the way, proving our targets in our war on humanity is ill-directed.    People see a wedding party and regain their humanity.  Bellissima!

3. Killer Bee Honey.  What we hysterically call Killer Bees, and scientists call Africanized Bees, are merely a bit more aggressive and far more disease resistant and productive than the wimpy european disease-prone strain.  Naturellement, if one is more productive and disease resistant, especially if African, why, that is a threat!   Although they need no special equipment as far as producing and harvesting honey, they do need hives not yet commercially available.  Hmmm...  I wonder if the hives into which people of African ancestry are concentrated in USA is contrary to their productivity?  Well, we may never know since people ancestrally African in USA are excluded from going into architecture as a profession.  (Hey, if the left and right relies on Edwin O. Wilson to advance genocidal views, turnaround is fair play.)

Being an American means the rest of the world depends on you to hear the plea for freedom from USA hegemony.  The most revolutionary act an American can make is to start a business.

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Econ Tectonic Shift

When a Franklin left his printing press, a Washington or Jefferson his farm, to serve a short term in government, it was on the Greek citizen-state model.  The city of Cincinnati is named after George Washington, who like the Roman dictator Cincinnatus, returned to his farm after a benevolent turn at dictator, sorting out a national crisis.  Further, people were not afraid to use proper terms.  Geo Washington was a dictator, for a short while.  Lincoln was a tyrant.  The reason for using words properly is clarity, and with clarity people's actions are on notice.  It's harder to be a dictator when people are calling you one, as well it should be.

Today we have "leaders" who have never held a job.  Their entire career is "government" or big business and may have authority, but never responsibility.  They both get bailed out no matter what. The words they speak have no meaning, and they expect their "narratives" to be believed.  Their experience is lacking, their stories are empty, their terms are nonsense,  and they have great power with no consequences.

And this is the set that produced the China/Russia entente:

After 20 years of difficult talks, Russia and China had just signed a huge deal that called for Russia to export  38 billion cubic meters of gas worth some $400 billion to China. The agreement begins in 2018 and will involve one of the globe’s largest engineering projects that links Russia’s remote gas fields to China’s pipeline system.

One problem with fascism, and USA is by definition fascist, is all that potential is siphoned off into big government/big business to where it lingers, does not grow.  Working with nonsense narrative and terms, these janissaries make the #4 mistake in life, believing your own PR.

Sanctioning Russia because the Crimea voted itself independent was nuts.    The default position, "we can always go to war" has never paid off.  USA keeps getting defeated by farmers.  (Which recommends as a matter of national defense, the USA end its "get big or get out" national policy in relation to agriculture.)

What we can always do is make a deal, do business. And free trade, voluntary association and exchange, produces good results.  The East Coast of North Asia has been relatively undeveloped for fear of tempting belligerence.  But Russia and China are trading voluntarily at the fundamental energy level.  I expect over the next fifty years the region to transform into a prime economic center.  Capital moves where it is treated well.  The Ukrainian gem the USA has picked up is a center of corruption and welfare. Europe is bankrupt, with liabilities greater than assets, and a refusal to let assets grow.  USA is going to frack middle-American so we can keep unemployed 40 year olds in Europe comfortable while they live with mom. At least they will vote right (or is it left?) North East Asia just became the new wild west.

I see it at trade shows: Eastern Europeans, Asians, South Americans somewhat, and Africans, young and doing business.  And a lot of these young people are agents for Europe and USA mega-businesses.

The most revolutionary act an American can perform is to create customers, as Drucker would put it.

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Mag Lev and Warehouse Operations

Just as we went from trains to cars in mass transit, we are moving from trains to pod in Mag Lev.  As Google moves us closer to Mag Lev with the driverless cars, here is a warehouse management company that has automated the pick and pack.  Having run warehouses, there are some delighted aspects.

Don't send the picker to the shelves, send the shelves to the picker. The fetch pod goes and gets a rack that has an item an order wants, and brings it to the packer.

Although not mentioned, there are no SKUs.  Unthinkable!  But someone thought it.  The inventory is spread all over the warehouse, with goodies of all sorts on one rack. RFID, GPS etc.

Whole lotta traffic to be dealt with, all computer controlled.  This is a great test case for mag lev, having controls ever improved on 2 MPH pods, we can work up from there.

The fetch pod goes and gets a rack that has an item an order wants, and brings it to the packer.
We have vast sums dedicated to State provision of roads.  After blowing $200 million on studies, Oregon/Washington have canned a plan for another bridge across the Columbia River.  Instead of $200 million bridges to know where, just blow the $200 million and forget the bridge. Seattle has spent over a billion dollars on a 24 foot hole in the ground.  Ka-ching!


Reflect at how Amazon can now deploy warehouses all over the world without having to worry about cross-cultural concerns.

If $15 an hour minimum wage is coming, then eliminating humans is economical.  Amazon owns the tech and will sell it everywhere, and expand its commercial fulfillment division, to the detriment of minimum wage and entry level folks everywhere.  As distribution becomes more centralized, control of goods gets easier.

At the same time, those associated with the State continue to direct resources to campaign contributors who earn $200 million to talk a few years and draw pictures about a bridge.  Small business is starved of profits as taxes are mulcted to fund re-election campaigns.  Markets are distorted as the range of goods and services in demand by the 1% are called forth, they of a false economy.

News is some 320,000 Fed employees owe $3.3 billion up 2.6% from last year.  I was looking for this figure because my informal study says whole lotta people experienced tax hikes this year, but not a peep from Republicans.  Fed employees are actually better are compliance than the general population with 3.2% delinquency v 8.7% for the general population.  (Within the govt, the range of which agencies have what delinquency rates is telling.)

What is odd that they pay taxes at all.  Tax collection is expensive, and Fed employees are paid out of taxes.  Why not just pay them a net and make their jobs tax exempt?

All of this State nonsense militates against progress, indeed, we are surely too far gone to correct.  The problem is lending credit at usury, in which there is no rational limit.  There will be an irrational denouement, because that which cannot go on eventually stops.  Crash.  $200 million dollar no bridge?  Who cares?  Great grandkids will pay! But when it goes down, we'll need to remember all of these positive efforts and build on those.

Update:

I know people think my assertion all of these super-successful dot.coms are USA intel ops is a little out there, but here...

"Headquartered in the small tech hub of Burnaby, on Canada's west coast, D-Wave has raised upwards of $100m in venture capital from the likes of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)."

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27264552


Sheeesh... another update...

"On Feb. 14, 2013, the CIA awarded the contract to Amazon.com (AMZN). The e-commerce company, a pioneer in offering cloud computing services to corporate customers from Nokia (NOK) to Pfizer (PFE), had persuaded the spymasters that its public cloud could be replicated within the CIA’s walls. Amazon had been bleeding IBM for years—its rent-a-server-with-your-credit-card model was a direct threat to IBM’s IT outsourcing business—but this was different. Amazon beat IBM for a plum contract on something like its home turf, and it hadn’t done so simply by undercutting IBM on price. IBM learned that its bid was more than a third cheaper than Amazon’s and officially protested the CIA decision."

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-22/ibms-eps-target-unhelpful-amid-cloud-computing-challenges

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Free Market In Medicine

This is what we need to see: doctors moving away from the State System.  Now, we cannot have this in Washington State, (and I think about 34 others) for to open any medical facility of any sort one must gain a "certificate of need" in which a panel of five communists (or capitalists, I can't remember, but what's the difference?)  decide if the State should allow any more competition.

Right now medical tourism is big business, but it would be nice to travel only to Oklahoma to get needed surgery, not available in Washington State, as opposed to Thailand.

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USA will Fail for Exactly the Same Reason as Soviet Union

For an inability to know prices.

Prices signal the markets to attend to scarcity.  But prices must be in money, and in USA we use little if any money, just as they did in Soviet Union.  Currency is issued, but it has only the most tenuous relation to money.

Through regulations and subsidies, we have access to a tightly constricted range of goods and services. And in every sector, overall the quality is dropping as the price is rising: food, clothing, housing, medicine, education, tools, even religion and entertainment (if for no other reason on the latter two that religion is becoming entertainment and entertainment a religion.)  I say overall, for contrary to the masses, there is an elite who have access to first rate in those categories, due to their exceptional personal wealth.  Here again, all this was true of the Soviet Union.

The United States saved the Soviet Union by extending it credit, by means of the ExIm Bank, in essence taxpayer-backed vendor financing.  Capitalists love that sort of thing, keep the profits, socialize the losses.

History: EIBW established under DC charter by EO 6581, February 2, 1934, to assist in financing U.S. trade with the Soviet Union.

What could go wrong?  At worst a Soviet Union saved by the taxpayers could go to war with the USA, and then the capitalists would win again.  The Human face to all this support of communism was Armand Hammer. Armand Hammer was the go-between for Lenin & Stalin and the USA powers-that-be, with a particular friend in the Gore family, of Tennessee.  But Armand Hammer's big political contributions were to Republicans like Nixon, etc.  Like opposing lawyers milking clients dry, the capitalists and communists worked closely together.  Jimmy Carter, my favorite president after Grover Cleveland, knew well what he was saying when he declared we had "an inordinate fear of communism."  Carter was not allowed to elaborate.

Just as the USSR depended on USA State credit, so USA industry is depending on USA State credit to continue operations.  GM is a failed corporation, with 30 recalls so far this year, some on lethal defects, and plans on losing 400 million next quarter.  GM has not had a profit in Europe since 1999.  yet it is kept alive by the USA taxpayers.  Our banks at the end of every business day go to the FED for another bailout.  Big Ag, Med, Ed, etc are all on life support, but life support for enterprises arrayed on the capitalist model.

All of this "credit"  (it even fails as credit since it has insufficient asset to back the nominal credit extension) distorts all other prices.  By limiting through regulation and subsidy what medicine, housing, food, education, clothing, religion, entertainment you may have, inevitably we end up paying more and getting less quality.

By extending credit to favored asset classes, we get asset class-specific inflation: housing, medicine, food, education, equities.  Overinvestment and malinvestment proliferate.

It all gets down to price signals, in money.  Think of a disaster like Katrina, in which fuel and water were most in demand.  Merchants instantly raise prices to what the market will bear, and when the signal goes out the prices for bottled water or gasoline are rising fast, wholesalers redirect truckloads of both to outlets in the disaster zones.  Ft. Wayne does without a 7 day supply while New Orleans gets urgent needs met.  The Red Cross buys water for $100,000 a truckload for the poor and needy, COD and ever more trucks turn South on the news.  The rich also pay the price.  This is price signal in extremis.

But the State outlaws this, never mentioning the top price lasts about ten minutes, and soon enough when supplies reach a weeks reserve, prices start to drop below wholesale as johnny-come-lately would rather unload at a loss in NOLA than take a bigger loss bringing the load back to Ft. Wayne.

We make "gouging" illegal (price signalling) while subsidizing monopolies, which in turn truly gouge.   While regulations and subsidies jack up the price on that very narrow range of goods and services we are allowed to buy,  just as in the Soviet Union. And likewise, it makes cost accounting impossible, no company can possibly know where they stand.  With assets wittingly not marked to market, all valuations are whimsy.

At some point there will be those cascading cross defaults of which Greenspan warned.  be ready to trade on asset backed credit and know what money is, and what it is not.  Just as with the Soviet Union, the functionaries have no idea where we are.

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Peace Rocks

Capitalism creates massive distortions of the market by aggregating more and more in ever fewer hands.  In free markets, we have "creative destructionism" in which innovation eventually leads to more better cheaper faster.  Capitalists despise free markets because free markets militate against the exceptional levels of solitary wealth only capitalism advances.

Capitalism with its "creative finance" destroys what is good.

Capitalists always resort to violence to change the topic when their destruction goes too far.

So we have China getting into "territorial disputes" with most of its neighbors.

And we have a million and a half 16 - 24 year olds unemployed, and countless more with unbankruptable student loan burdens.  War is their way out.  A command economy is the capitalists' ideal.

The current Vietnam contretemps is over the Spratly and Paracels, which back in the 1960s was well known to be the reason USA had invaded Vietnam, to get the oil there.  The Vietnam war was about oil.  As I understand it from private conversations, there is not enough oil there to be worth fighting over, how come the Chinese are trying to position a billion dollar rig there?  Maybe they did not get the word?  The Senkaku Island dispute with Japan is also over oil.

So let's not go to war. Let's do the decent thing.  An international convention in which these places are developed and exploited and the money funnelled into international aid.  All of these countries fork over billions in foreign aid, just earmark the net from development of the rocks to foreign aid, and call the disputed lands Peace Rocks.

I know that is not going to happen.  Sometimes shoving matches turn lethal, and that is probably what we will get here.  We need more Hong Kongs so people of good will, merchants, can proceed to peace and prosperity, in spite of the madness to which capitalism drives some.

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Capitalism v Free Markets

David Stockman reports well -

Now thanks to Washington’s eternal conviction that debt it the magic elixir of economic growth, first time buyers are few and far between because they are buried in student debt—-about $1.1 trillion to be exact. Each graduating class has more students with loans to carry forward, and in higher and more onerous amounts. Fully 70% of the class of 2014 has student loans, and they average of about $30,000 each. Both figures are triple what they were just a decade ago.

Capitalism has failed.  The free market lost 2 or 3 generations of entrepreneurs to FIRE: Finance, Investment and Real Estate, and all based on credit.  There is a reason all religions make usury a capital crime, not because someone says so, but because of the damage it does.

47% of unemployed have given up looking for work. The root of the word prosperity is "hope."  Capitalism destroys hope.  10 million claim to be disabled, and on disability (not counted as unemployed.)  Get big or get out has crushed small business in USA. Yes, it is harder now to start a business, but they are exponentially more valuable.  The most revolutionary act you can make in USA to overthrow capitalism is to start a business.

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King Credit and Tombstone #3

At about page 110 in Author Yang's Tombstone, the story of the great Chinese famine of 58-60, the Cult of Personality, referring to Mao emerges.

If one will step away from the ideological nonsense around one -ism is superior to another, the parallels are amazing.   A leadership that knows nothing of economics, punishment for truth telling, all assets being aggregated into ever fewer hands, omnipresent surveillance and unspeakable violence, what is of value is exported and empty stores are reckoned overflowing.  News black-outs. Anything Yang mentions we have our version over here.

We are careful not to have a Chairman Mao, yet, but one can see all of the elements in place where a Mao could emerge.

Estimates are rough, but some 30 million people are said to have starved to death those years.  Probably 100 million had a very hard go of it. That leaves about 450 million who got along just fine.  And that is the problem with these things, the vast majority gets along just fine.  Problem?  What problem?

USA has been all about collectivization the last 70 years, and especially the last forty.  Get big or get out.  Well, I advise getting out of the collective.  Members of collectives had it the worst in Mao's China.

Make business. not quota.  Expand production, and invest profits in the means of production, but have zero debt.  You will be paid in credit, not money in USA.  So convert what you believe to be "retained earnings" ie, money, into expanding means of production, so when the crash comes you don't have you financial assets wiped out (because you have none.)  Rent, don't own for now, because land prices will fall, and when they do, it will be easy to buy dirt cheap.  And if you can, warehouse out of the cities for now.  Have zero debt, because when credit fails debt payment taken in credit will be demanded in money, in which your credit will be denominated.

Right now farmland is "worth" more than can be made on it.  Bad food crowds out the good.  Few farmers will pass on the farm to the family, but inheritance tax will wipe out any attempt anyway.  So older farmers sell out for 5 million, and watch a millionaire tear down the farmhouse and build a tax-deductible winery.

Mao assumed the lead in a system where an elite lived exceptionally well while masses starved.  We have all of the working parts in place, and paltry check on state extremism.  Just add Mao.

Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962

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Lawlessness - Polio Vaccine

A libel against Islam is their fear of science and medicine, odd that since most of our advances in medicine from the middle ages on were compliments of Moslem doctors.  The fact Moslems resist Western vaccination programs, for fear of sterilization campaigns or worse, is held up as proof of perfidy.  And what do we have?  News the CIA used vaccination teams to sniff out Osama bin Laden.

In Pakistan, where polio has never been eliminated, the C.I.A.’s decision to send a vaccination team into the Bin Laden compound to gather information and DNA samples clearly hurt the national polio drive. The question is: How badly?

The article tells us Western Powers have succeeded in getting many Moslems leaders to endorse their work.  I would advise otherwise.

1. USA has a history of using medical treatment programs for nefarious ends.

2. The stated means is to work through religious leaders.

Much better to stop making war on Islam and peacefully trade wherein Islamic business people will trade in legitimate and wholesome medicine.

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China Bans Windows 8 - IPR Fail

Following the lead of sane people everywhere, the Chinese government has banned the purchase of Windows 8 by any government agency, in order to not end up with an unsupported version of software someday, like with Vista.  Advantage Linux.

Former Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer reportedly told employees in 2011 that, because of piracy, the firm earned less revenue in China than in the Netherlands, even though demand matched that of the US.

USA taxpayers have forked over close to a billion dollars to "fight piracy" of Microsoft products in China over the last 30 years.  And for what?  Why not let billionaires cover their own expenses?  End  IPR in USA now!

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Chinese Spies!

There is a point where a bureaucracy gets so big it neither fears nor obeys the elected politicians.  Whatever they want, they will get, even if they have to come back.  When Poindexters's Total Information Awareness was shot down, the CIA set up shop in Silicon Valley and Google quickly emerged, a young and hip version of TIA, with the motto, "Don't be evil."

Dr. North's essay on Snowden and the NSA has disappeared, but in essence he made this point:  Snowden made the world safe for the NSA by exposing the NSA, because nothing has been done to reign in the NSA.  I've made the same point, Snowden himself let slip in an interview he still sees himself as a spook.  Just so.

So when comes along a brand-new NSA-proof email service, well, hmmmm...  why believe it?  Once exposed, would not the NSA get busy making up such stories and putting out alternatives that they in fact control?  Mish takes it apart.

Cisco asks for clarification from the White House on news their products are hacked before delivery.  Bad for sales, which are dropping.  That is a good cover story, consistent with being innocent.

And to add to the whimsy, the FBI has put out wanted posters for five Chinese spies.  Here is a an example of the crimes alleged:

In 2010, while Westinghouse was building four AP1000 power plants in China and negotiating other terms of the construction with a ChineseSOE (SOE-1), including technology transfers, Sun stole confidential and proprietary technical and design specifications for pipes, pipe supports, and pipe routing within the AP1000 plant buildings.

Wait, what?  A spy took plumbing plans for a proposed factory in China?  On a building Westinghouse was building with the Chinese Government? Ummm... don't those have to be filed with the building permit dept anyway, as apart of the permanent public record?

The PR angle here is USA spies, naturellement, but only in national defense, but the Chinese spy for economic advantage.  (Never mind collecting your every internet activity is part of "national defense" spying) Ergo, our poor economic performance is because the Chinese know our plumbing schematics for buildings we build in China.  And we would never spy for economic advantage.

In this way again, we can blame the Chinese for our own problems.  That will sell in USA. We excel at blaming others.

But there is a new aspect, uncharted territory.  Dissent was once against the government, implying dissenters believed things could be fixed.  There is little dissent any longer.  The elected politicians are doing nothing to make the USA a better place.  Few really care if the NSA has gone rogue and false flags abound.  The permanent bureaucracy neither fears nor obeys the elected officialdom.  The few who still care, whistleblowers, are targeted for prison.

Credit is expanded, the checks go out, no one believes in the system anymore.  We need to restore an organic economy again.    I'll say it again.  If USA business people were free to trade, if we got rid of capitalism, we'd run circles around every other economy in the world.  We know free markets work.  But perhaps there is a price to be paid for crimes committed, something metaphysical going on.  How else to explain the madness?

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Dead End Research

Importgenius, Zepol, PIERS, all access steamship line manifest to see who is importing or exporting to and from the USA.  I’ve made my arguments against these services here, and I’d add that they do not track, cannot track, Canada and Mexico. USA’s #1 and #2 trading partners!  Further, anyone and many do exempt themselves from being reported upon, so the info is of dubious value to begin with.

Nonetheless, these services make good money.  Recently I received and email from a Zepol rep who picked up a shipment of mine (who cares?!) and would like to sell me info on others.

It was an opportunity to inquire further.....

***

On May 15, 2014, at 11:01 AM, Jennifer wrote:

Hi John,

I’m reaching out to you because your shipment information came up in a demonstration of TradeIQ last week.

TradeIQ is a database with more than 130 million shipment receipts of imports into the United States since January 1, 2003. This includes receipts of shipments imported by your company, and your suppliers. 

If you would like to look at free trial of our database just respond to this email. 

Best regards,

Jennifer

Account Executive | Zepol

Jennifer.***@zepol.com | 

www.zepol.com

From: John Spiers [mailto:john@johnspiers.com] 

Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 1:07 PM

To: Jennifer 

Subject: Re: Web Demonstration

Hey Jennifer,

Thanks for your email.  If I took advantage of your free trial, what information would I get, and what would I do with it?

John

From: jennifer.***@zepol.com

Subject: RE: Web Demonstration

Date: May 19, 2014 11:50:37 AM PDT

To: john@johnspiers.com

The trial would give you access to our Import and Export database. It will show you what’s coming in and out of the U.S. via ocean.

It will give you full bill of lading detail telling you who imported the product, supplied the product, what was on the shipment, ports used, weights, measurements, etc.

Would you like to take a look?

From: John Spiers [mailto:john@johnspiers.com] 

Sent: Monday, May 19, 2014 2:06 PM

To: Jennifer 

Subject: Re: Web Demonstration

Hey Jennifer,

All of that info, except for the names named, is available from the USITC.gov.   So what is special with zepol is the actual names of who is doing the importing and exporting.  So I hope I am not being dense, but what would I do with that unique information, the names of who is importing and exporting what and when?

John

From: jennifer.@zepol.com

Subject: RE: Web Demonstration

Date: May 19, 2014 12:12:35 PM PDT

To: john@johnspiers.com

Our clients use it for various reasons. Competitive Intelligence, lead generation, supplier sourcing, market research, etc. Those are just a few.

***

So if you will not loquacity is the inverse of opacity here.  The closer we get to the point, the less to be said.  Not even the courtesy of a sign-off.

Let’s go down the reasons given for using Zepol, etc: 

competitive intelligence - that tells me nothing.

lead generation - that means I could use the names to pitch my products for sale.  So let me think about that.  As an importer, I could try to sell to other importers?  Hmmm...  That does not make sense.  Does Lowes try to sell to Home Depot?  As an importer, I could examine my competitor’s sources?  But mine are better, why would I care about my competitors sources?  This does not make sense either.

Lead generation on exporting?  As an exporter, I could see which of my USA based competitors are selling to whom overseas at what price.

Right now at no cost I can find what all USA exporters sell what at what price to all importers in a given country.  With this, I can see trends over the years to spot which countries I should target for export development.

Now let’s delineate between conservator and innovator, mas producer vs specialty.  The mass producers compete on price, so if my job was to replace on USA exporter as a supplier to a customer overseas with another, namely mine, by means of lower price, then I suppose this might make sense.  But, problem here is, at the big biz level, the prices noted are not ahem reliable, what for all sorts of “programs” plus the overseas buyer will simply make the USA seller prove he has a bona fide offer of the same thing at cheaper, and the overseas customer will simply squeeze that price out of their present supplier.  This is a dead end game.

If one is a specialty products exporter, and I see my export competitors and to whom they are selling,  well the price does not matter since my kombucha is different than my competitors, so no price comparison there.

In this instance the importer overseas may very well test mine alongside their present USA supplier’s Kombucha.

In an case I can find these names faster and cheaper (no cost) by simply googling trade show exhibitors to find the few active people with whom I need to enter discussions.

Is zepol.com an advantage here?  I don’t think so.

Supplier sourcing - To be sure, alibaba etc are abominable sources of info on suppliers, a firehose of wastewaster when you only want a sip of clean water.  So Zepol is a step up, way up.  But at the specialty level, one assumes a leadership position, not a followers position.  I very well may not end up with the same supplier as my competitors, for mine being superior.  If I start out with approaching my competitor’s suppliers, I may end up there, a follower.  In any event, I can find the names of the best suppliers in any given country starting with superior USITC info anyway.

Here again, is zepol.com an advantage here?  I don’t think so.

market research -  again, that tells me nothing.

I wish it was easy as they propose, but it is irrelevant info.  Not worth the time or money.

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Food Safety Improves

I've long advocated getting rid of the USDA and the FDA reasons for which you can search this blog, but primarily two part:

1.  The regulators are always captured by the regulated.

2.  Like the TSA, they are theatre, going through motions with no effective benefit.

Now comes a reason to eliminate both.  Indiegogo has a crowdfunding item up, a food poisoning detector.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/peres-smart-way-to-protect-you-from-food-poisoning

Pre-collectivization insurance once was the proper way to manage risk, and the state regulated that industry away.  Now from industry comes another better means, everyone can be an inspector.  While this is going on, congress works relentlessly to destroy crowdfunding.

Let's hope invention outpaces regulation.

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False Economy - Automobiles

Update:  Already debunked.  Let this be a lesson to you.

But the fact is I did see at least several hundred new cars all at once, certainly far more than the University can use.  It would be good to get an accounting of how many cars are out on promises to pay as opposed to sales.

Also, the point that it is 2009, not 2014 pictures tells us how it will be this time... last time was not as bad.  Bad example of an important lesson...

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Last year there were a couple of thousand new cars lined up in the University of Washington parking lot with no license plates.  Slowly they were licensed and painted with UW livery and parked elsewhere.  It was clear UW got a deal on cars.

Now comes zero hedge with a photo-essay on newly made cars worldwide.  Someday someone will write and expose on the new car business, especially the imported car business, and how come we shipped the industry overseas and now GM stands for Government Motors.

This much I know: circa 1980 the Dems wanted to raise taxes on imported cars to protect the dying USA automobile industry.  Not grant it freedom, put it on life support.  The repubs won the 1980 elections, and instead of taxes on imports, they imposed "voluntary restraints.  What happens when you have less of something?  The price of what does come in goes up.  So the Japanese got more money for doing less work because of voluntary restraints.  And Japanese corporations made the extra money, not the USTreasury.  Either way, the USA consumer got screwed.  And Ronald Reagan, upon leaving office, first thing, boarded a jet for Japan where he made a $3 million dollar speech.  Ka-ching!

This is all due to lending credit, for which there is no rational limit, only perhaps, we run out of places to stack cars.  Look at those cars, they are your pension plan funds.  Cars will get very inexpensive just as you need to eat.

In capitalism, we keep people working at pointless jobs, no different than communism.  On the other hand, for those of us who pursue self-employment, there outsized value in the measure we are so few.

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Your Credit Line

In essence, your pension, savings, 401k, IRA and any other financial reserves are a line of credit, to be drawn upon under certain rules, or suffer a penalty, and able to be withdrawn at any point.

No, no you say.  A line of credit has to be repaid, and my financial reserves are all savings of some sort.

No, you have it exactly backwards.  For your efforts along the lines of what has been asked of you, you were compensated against a line of credit.  None of those corporations or governments had or has money.  They have been operating ever more since the 1970s on borrowed credit, and asset-less backed credit at that.  So when they added to your tallies of compensation, they simply assigned some of their credit to you.

In the measure the economy is false, the idea has always been someone will produce something later, and your compensation, in the form of credit, will be traded for actual value someone will later provide.  The apotheosis of this arrangement is social security.  Tomorrows kids will work so you can have a forty year retirement, after a forty year career in which you possibly really produced nothing.

Perhaps it is time to take that credit line and start a business so when things are marked to market you have something that will actually be more valuable than your line of credit based-pension.

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Putin and Queen Elizabeth I

The other Queen Elizabeth.  Although we are treated to Russian reserve as perfidy, it is plain to see it is world class statesmanship.

On Wednesday Ukraine's interim prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, dismissed Putin's call to postpone the referendum as "hot air". Later the Ukrainian foreign ministry on Thursday said it was the "absolute priority" of the government of Ukraine to hold "a full-scale national dialogue with the participation of political forces, regional representatives and the public." But it declared: "Dialogue is impossible and unthinkable with terrorists."

Poppycock as the Dutch would say. (Yes, Yatsi, impossible to negotiate with terrorists, but who are the terrorists?) Just as Putin is declining to be lord over breakaway Ukraine, so Queen Elizabeth I refused to become Queen of the Netherlands.

The English queen, however, in her instructions to Leicester, had expressly declined to accept offers of sovereignty from the United Provinces while still demanding of the States to follow the "advice" of her lieutenant-general in matters of government.^[220] Her ministers on both sides of the Channel hoped she would accept the situation as a fait accompli and could even be persuaded to add the rebellious provinces to her possessions.^[

When will we have such leaders in USA, not interested in conquest?

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You In Hong Kong This November

I have two qualified buyers of beef in Hong Kong with whom I became acquainted while doing research for course content.  They both want bids on USA trade, and why not, exports from the USA increased over 750% 2013 YOY over 2012.  USA is the place to go.

I am not trading in food, I am working on ski sweaters.  But I am teaching, writing and consulting on tools and tactics (and attitude) an small business int'l trade of food and beverage which is being very well received.  It pains me to see demand go unmet.

Beef exports are big business, and being trapped on the buyers' side in Hong Kong dealing with big importers is disadvantageous, hence the interest in small business beef exports.  I have not figured a way around the non-tariff barriers yet, but in time I will, or better yet, someone who is a beef maven.

A point I should make is "sufficient is the evil of the day."  I encounter people who complexify an export deal in some vague hope that if it is difficult they will not run into competition.  ugggh...  don't do that!  This is trouble enough:

USA: exceptional beef producer.

Hong Kong: Exceptional beef consumer.

Put those two together.

Anything more than that is unwanted, far too complex, not necessary.  You get paid for solving problems.  There is so much low hanging fruit in food int'l trade right now, that taking on anything complex is simply unwise.

Food export from USA has been under the "get big or get out" USA policy regime for the last 50 years, and so small business int'l trade in food is way under-served.  Let's change that...  i have another iteration of my 4 week online class (with email follow up) starting next Tuesday, check it out here, and enroll here.

You need to find out if you have customers within four weeks, and if you should be manning a trade show booth in hong Kong this November.  Check it out...

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Take Down!

David Gordon is a quiet titan of thought, and a meek deliverer of lectures.  I love his work.  He subscribes to the anarcho-capitalist school which I think is an internal contradiction,  but it is the term his school uses.  He is also a voracious reader and comes up with great reviews. He here reviews an author who takes down the Ayn Rand objectivists:

But must not Oliver overcome an objection? The standard response of Objectivists to anarchism is that there cannot be a market in law and defense. To the contrary, the free market presupposes the existence of a fixed legal order, not subject to competition; and this only a government can provide.[1]

The objectivists suffer from the idea that because we have government, we have a market. Indeed to have a market we need government.  But wait wait, obviously there were markets before the Government, so as an imperative, Government is a non-starter.    The bible records some 400 years of no Government, yet peace and prosperity.

Now, markets give rise to wealth and no end to the diversions and deprecations to which people will get up, all manner of vices, including Government.  

Oliver not only answers this difficulty but turns it against the objectivist defenders of the state. It is entirely true, Oliver says, that the free market presupposes objective law; but the requirements of objective law are fixed by human nature. Far from requiring a state, objective law correctly understood precludes its existence. “There is no need for a legislative process. Law is inherent in the nature of things — including man’s nature. Thus, discovery of law rather than the fabrication of law is called for.”

Just so, just as all of the laws relating to fire can be found in fire, so all of the laws of the free market are found in the free market.  Some may catalog the know laws of fire, but anyone can quickly also learn for themselves, but it does save time and money to read up on fire before using it yourself.

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Zero Commission Trades

Mish is reporting on the Robin Hood service that will offer zero commission stock market trades.

Plenty of people are excited about $0 commission trades on Robinhood. The app is still in beta test phase, but nearly 340,000 people have signed up on the company's website to gain early access.

Yikes, 340,000 is a big start for people who want to trade on their own.  But trade what?  False economy equities?  Time spent moving deck chairs around, methinks.

Those who trade frequently will be among those who benefit the most. And ultimately, this will cost Schwab, E*Trade, Scottrade and others some business. In response, commissions will drop everywhere, even if not to zero. Increased competition always leads to lower costs. And that is a good thing.

Sure, lowering the cost of moving deck chairs is good, is suppose.  Less net damage.  But the ship is still going down.

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