Analyzing Trump On China

Deng Xiao-ping, circa 1979, when he finally overcame the Maoists, toured USA, then visited with Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, some Hong Kong Billionaires and others and consulted on how to play his hand.

Brilliantly! USA was in the early but irreversible stages of lending malcredit at usury and the hollowing out of USA industry, small manufacturing first, then big manufacturers was well underway.  It would be merely a few years before USA needed massive new factories and management to COPY what USA makes in state of the art new factories.

The great roll-up of the family-owned USA small business occurred over the 1980s, with the capitalists and the communists co-operating in the collectivization of the USA economy.  Get big or get out is the stated economic policy of the USA.

For those unemployed new welfare programs were created, students loans could be given to create the impression of advancement, and Starbucks became the new hiring hall.  Whoever you are, no matter your circumstances, the Man can make up some life-support system for you, and simply put it on the tab of future generations, since there is no rational limit on malcredit.  If and when a culling is necessary, why, we have Obamacare ready.

Now comes comments from Trump:

And I'm not angry about China, in fact I respect them, I made a lot of money with China... I'm not angry at China, I'm angry at our leaders for being so incompetant that they allow it to happen. 
And I said this as part of my response to the Wall Street Journal when they just called.
I said, in the history of the world, this is the greatest theft ever perpetrated by anyone or any country, what China has done to us. 
It is the greatest single theft. They have taken our jobs, they have taken our money, I mean I see the empty buildings all over Staten Island... I see them all over... Really really sad. That's not going to happen anymore with me... 
The truth is, we have all the cards.

So he starts off right, merely stating knowing the score, he too played his cards right.   He also notes the problem is the USA, not the Chinese.  Just so. The he switches "...what China has done to us."  But Trump, they played their hand to the objective detriment of USA just as you did, so by the same token, you condemn yourself.  This of course is lost on the crowd cheering Trump waving red meat of blame China.  The Chinese see what he is doing, telling the Chinese Trump understands perfectly well what is going on, AND Trump is waving red meat in front of his adoring crowd, who haven't a clue. China gets Trump, helps him by objecting to him, and are no too worried that USA will ever be a viable threat.

China has as many empty building as USA, and as many problems.  But China can say to its youth, "go west, young man!" with its Belt and Road initiative integrating Beijing with Berlin.  Indeed, an ancient fairy tale "Journey to the West" is getting multi-decade continuous play in China.

USA has no such West, unless you mean analogously "war."  That is all USA does now, and that is not working out so well as an economic policy.

We do hold all of the cards, since China still copies and we can get creative.  But under capitalism, with our banking system and IPR, it is not possible in USA for good ideas to move forward.  Mag Lev comes up, it gets crushed by "self-driving cars."  New medicines and cures advance, Big Pharma shuts them down.  People try to protect nutritious food, they are thrown in jail for patent infringement.  Countless creative people have fallen through the looking glass of their smartphones, likely never to return.  People with smartphones have no idea what they are missing.

Sure, if we were to deregulate banking, medicine, education, and get rid of our IPR regime, we could be free, just, prosperous and peaceful.  But no, check out this youtube.

Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder saw all this long ago, at the beginning:




And of course...


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Is Blockchain the Tool for Small Business Renaissance?

Bitcoin had all the elements of fraud from the beginning, and I am glad to see my hunches proven right so quickly.  But as improvisational theatre work teaches, the first idea is rarely good.  Skip that, and see what you think of next.  Bitcoin was based on something being called blockchain, whatever that means, and the next ideas based on blockchain look promising.  Check out this article on something called Ethereum, touted as a new internet platform.

From a business point of view, although I once wavered, I am now convinced the internet has changed nothing, and if anything, it is a net deficit as far as human progress goes.  As one who recalls vividly a world of interest-free finance, and content-rich existence, unmediated human interaction, I wonder at the applause for a pixel-mediated existence.  And to say discos are superior to twitter is severe condemnation indeed!  (And here again, like google and amazon and indeed even the airline industry, twitter has not turned a profit either.)

Internet marketing is a zero-sum game, it is at best self-service checkout for commerce.  From a business point of view, the internet has only widened access to communication and research, but at a cost too high when considering the quality of the results is no better, or worse.

Back in the day families could have a business that afforded a lifestyle from middle class on up, and the tech level was no nationwide UPS service, let alone Fedex, no internet, only telex, catalogs and phone numbers at libraries  (and most corporations had private libraries with well-paid librarians; your library collection was a trade secret since its content would reveal your thinking.)  Sure things took longer, and were more expensive, but access to content was merit based for the expense, and the product was much better.

When everyone paid a couple of bucks for a phone service, now everyone pays around $60 for the ability to send value-free content around the world.  And to be fair, taxpayers must pay for the indolent to join in as well.

Deregulating telecommunications, and hooking computers up to telephone lines was a huge opportunity. We might have had a lowering of cost and a widening of access to communication and research, but since we went off the gold standard lite in 1971, mal-credit poured into this vacuum and we have a dreadful mix of spam, porn, psy-op addictive gamification and privacy violation.

With the USA policy of get big or get out, family run gas stations are gone.  Who needed GPS when you could stop at any gas station for accurate directions and a map?  Today we have people clueless as to where anything is, but we pay an astronical amount to self-report our location to the unaffordable security state, so we are "safe."  Except this security state that searches me at the airport cannot spot the San Bernardino killers (or find the third shooter) or prevent 9-11, or track violent ex-con Islamic extremists related to previous killers who gathered bomb ingredients unnoticed.  But I get searched at the airport.

If we muck out the barn, will we find some gems?  Well, there is Adobe .pdf, truly a gem.  But if keep finding UBER is what peer-to-peer rideshare becomes, if self-driving cars are preferenced over mag-lev, if bitcoin is money, then no other gems, just horse...

End corporate welfare.  Yes, cut every dime of corporate welfare before you cut a dime of personal welfare, but end all welfare.  Give it back to the religions.  End corporate welfare and prosperity will obviate the need for personal welfare.

Let's escape to anarchy.

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What Happened to Mag Lev?

I love Google.  If Google was a wife, it would be perfect.  It lies to you by telling you exactly what you want to hear, it anticipates your every desire because it actually listens to you, and if you are busy doing something else, Google will never bother you.  And in my case, Google is working 24/7 selling my books for me.  Maybe someday there will be Google Sex, but for right now Google is working on something men care more about than sex, and that is driving around.

Now, as I have pointed out here before, the hegemon only adopts bad ideas, because good ideas make the hegemon less powerful.  Think democracy, protestantism, capitalism, Rawls, Chicago school, the FED, common core... goodness, one could be all day at this. And anyway, most people would rather be oppressed than free, so the hegemon adopts bad ideas to give people what they want, oppression, good and hard.

Libertarian bristle at Romans 13, which says you must obey the hegemon.  Libertarians try to impeach Paul by noting the hegemon executed both Paul and Jesus, and countless other people of good will.  But God, with whom libertarians often disagree, would disagree.  As to who killed Paul, if the witness of God is to be relied upon, God killed Paul.  Finally in Chronicles the mystery of who killed Saul, the ganymede, the archers, the Amelikite, or even suicide, God stops the speculation by stating "I did it."

This is scandalous, offensive to the mind of a freedom-lover.  But the fact is, whether you believe it or not, God decides who lives or dies, within the greater framework of eternity.

So the hegemon knows most people want to be oppressed, and the hegemon is doing what God allows in oppressing people.    The first job is to advance the worst ideas.  The people love that.  Heil Hitler!

Admiral Poindexter promoted something called Total Information Awareness, which was presented as an appalling idea and was widely rejected.  Shortly thereafter the CIA set up shop in Silicon Valley and then came its first offering the young, hip Google, whose meme was "don't be evil" an example of ever there was one of our rules revealing our weaknesses.

Google founders were out of the same crop of Johns Hopkins summer camp that produced Lady Gaga, Zuckerberg and Brin and many other packaged goods for mass consumption, and O! how the mass has consumed these packaged goods.  People who are utterly insignificant, except for front man value.

This all comes to mind as I see the idea of mag lev transport fading away in lieu of self-driving cars.  Self-driving cars may be the ultimate in bad alternatives to mag lev, we'll see.  But mag lev is going down the memory whole, as the minions clamor for more oppression.

Washington (AFP) - Google, Lyft and auto industry executives urged lawmakers Tuesday to help create a regulatory fast lane to help the deployment of self-driving cars.
In testimony at a Senate hearing, representatives of General Motors and auto-equipment maker Delphi touted numerous safety and environmental benefits of autonomous vehicles.
Chris Urmson, who heads the Google self-driving car project, said a consistent regulatory framework is important to deploying those technologies, and that conflicting rules in US states could limit innovation.

Mag lev vs self-driving cars.  Could there be a worse alternative as an example of hegemonic malice?

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Bad Ideas Win Out

There is a great idea that many have been working on for decades: Mag Lev Transportation.  Government never moves forward with a good plan, they always wait for the harmful idea, so they can stay in power, ruling in hell rather than serving in heaven.

See here:

“Yet the smarter machines become, the greater the likelihood that the space remaining for uniquely-human skills could shrink further,” Haldane said. He said what was previously unthinkable even a decade ago is now reality, like a driverless car.

I was in a junior high school civics class recently when I first heard this. The groupthink assignment was, with driverless cars, should we be programming to die or kill?  That is to say, a driver instinctively will turn away from a colliding car to save his own live, with the result far more often passengers present are injured or killed in wrecks than drivers.  When programming driverless cars, should we program them to act like humans, or to save the optimum amount of people (utilitarianism).

This is a classic false dilemma, and of course the kids don't even know that word today, let alone the term.  "Driverless car" is not the answer to the risk, waste and cost of transportation.  Mag Lev is the answer, but apparently in the last few months that came off the table as a full frontal movement toward "driverless cars" is afoot.

When did they shift from MagLev to "driverless car"?  Who knows?  But Mag Lev means no oil, no tires, far fewer moving parts, faster, safer cheaper, more efficient.  And if privately provided, then confidential as to who is moving where...

With Mag Lev, central computers sort out in advance who is going where by what route safely.  There is no human last second decisions, no wrecks, no waste, no risk.  The model is more like data along fibre-optic cable, not driverless cars.

Mag Lev is savings, efficiency, safety... robotizing an internal combustion engine is nuts...

As usual, the hegemon hijacked a great idea and replaced it with a terrible one...  so now, as usual, the question for policy makers, Aztec priests all, is who dies?

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Mag Lev Lexus Skateboards

This blog has for years advocated Mag-Lev as a solution to pollution, energy costs, foreign dependency, police abuse, transportation inefficiency and a host of other problems.  Now come Lexus with a working solution:

Before we get to that, here's a brief description how it works: Lexus’s hoverboard uses magnetic levitation, or maglev, to achieve frictionless movement. Liquid nitrogen-cooled superconductors are combined with a magnetic surface to essentially repel gravity. Maglev technology itself isn’t new, and this isn't the first hoverboard to use it. American startup Arx Pax raised over half a million dollars last year through a Kickstarter campaign to fund its Hendo Hoverboard.

Note these are private company efforts, the hegemon is merely getting in the way.  And indeed, if we want to see a revolution and economic recovery as grand as we saw with telecommunications when Carter deregulated phones and Al Gore gave us the internet, then we need to deregulated transportation so private companies can raise equity on real assets and build out a mag lev system, where China is ahead of us already.  To make this happen, the Hegemon has to relinquish power, as Carter (my favorite president) did when he eliminated the ICC.  (Carter did the heavy lifting, the right thing, and Reagan got the credit for the massive benefit to the economy.)

Usually such technological advance goes from the general to the specific: the railroad steam engine for mass use drilled down over time to the internal combustion personal locomotion, the auto+mobile.  We still use the word "car" (from an individual train car) to refer to a individual transport unit.  But this time it seems to be going from the individual (the skate boarder) to the car, trucks, railroads.  The country that is the least regulated and most free market will win this contest.

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The Unseen is Better than the Seen

Fifty years ago I got a 8 transistor battery operated radio.  I saved up.  It was awesome.  Something like this.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Zenith_8-transistor_radio.agr.jpg

I could ride my skateboard and listen to KJR 95 Seattle, how cool was that?  It was pretty expensive, but I had to have it.  The price had come down to the point I could get one with my own money.  Sure they would get cheaper, but who cares, I wanted one NOW!  On/Off, and a dial for maybe seven radio stations, two I could listen to.  And a 9 volt battery as a consumable.  Eight transistors!  Wow!

Today?

The chip on your iPhone that's the size of your thumb holds 2 billion transistors. And that isn't the most powerful chip — there are chips with 8 billion transistors....Fifty years ago this week, a chemist in what is now Silicon Valley published a paper that set the groundwork for the digital revolution.
You may never have heard of Moore's law, but it has a lot do with why you will pay about the same price for your next computer, smartphone or tablet, even though it will be faster and have better screen resolution than the last one.
..."It had kind of doubled every year — two, four, eight, 16, 32," says Moore, looking back. "So I said, 'OK it's gonna double every year for 10 years — go from 60 components to 60,000 components on a chip.' "

Moore published his prediction in Electronics Magazine. It was as much about science as it was about the economics of the growing electronics industry.

"I wanted to get across the idea that this is the way we're going to make cheap electronics. The nature of the whole industry is the more stuff you can put on a chip, the cheaper it is per unit of stuff," Moore says.
...The point is you keep getting smaller and inventors and entrepreneurs will find uses — and so it has been for the past 50 years. The question is, how much longer can this go on?

"I think we're running out of gas here with Moore's Law," Spicer says. "Because no physical process can continue doubling every year forever — it's physically impossible."

You may never have heard of Moore's law, but it has a lot do with why you will pay about the same price for your next computer, smartphone or tablet, even though it will be faster and have better screen resolution than the last one...."It had kind of doubled every year — two, four, eight, 16, 32," says Moore, looking back. "So I said, 'OK it's gonna double every year for 10 years — go from 60 components to 60,000 components on a chip.' "
Moore published his prediction in Electronics Magazine. It was as much about science as it was about the economics of the growing electronics industry.

"I wanted to get across the idea that this is the way we're going to make cheap electronics. The nature of the whole industry is the more stuff you can put on a chip, the cheaper it is per unit of stuff," Moore says.
...The point is you keep getting smaller and inventors and entrepreneurs will find uses — and so it has been for the past 50 years. The question is, how much longer can this go on?

"I think we're running out of gas here with Moore's Law," Spicer says. "Because no physical process can continue doubling every year forever — it's physically impossible."

Moore published his prediction in Electronics Magazine. It was as much about science as it was about the economics of the growing electronics industry.
"I wanted to get across the idea that this is the way we're going to make cheap electronics. The nature of the whole industry is the more stuff you can put on a chip, the cheaper it is per unit of stuff," Moore says.
...The point is you keep getting smaller and inventors and entrepreneurs will find uses — and so it has been for the past 50 years. The question is, how much longer can this go on?

"I think we're running out of gas here with Moore's Law," Spicer says. "Because no physical process can continue doubling every year forever — it's physically impossible."

"I wanted to get across the idea that this is the way we're going to make cheap electronics. The nature of the whole industry is the more stuff you can put on a chip, the cheaper it is per unit of stuff," Moore says....The point is you keep getting smaller and inventors and entrepreneurs will find uses — and so it has been for the past 50 years. The question is, how much longer can this go on?
"I think we're running out of gas here with Moore's Law," Spicer says. "Because no physical process can continue doubling every year forever — it's physically impossible."

"I think we're running out of gas here with Moore's Law," Spicer says. "Because no physical process can continue doubling every year forever — it's physically impossible."

 It's not physically impossible, because logic 101 tells you it is possible to either divide in half or multiply by two ad infinitem.  What is happening is we've applied so much time talent treasure blood sweat and tears to micro electronics we have gone beyond what we could possibly want at the consumer level.  (Industry can keep at it for a very long time). There can be improvements, but directions, entertainment, information, communication, creativity, health monitoring, time, you name it, you can have it on your smart phone.  The mass of apps available surpass what the human in time can use.    We've come a long way from the 8 Transistor Radio.  And maybe each new thing is too specialized to warrant production.  Diminishing returns?

So now they are just loading crap on, and there is a widespread suspicion Apple is building in time-bombs that crash your product about the time they introduce something new.  I doubt that, but collectively there is lots of conflict of interests between customers and promoters.  I've been wanting far less on my computers, and I still use a flip phone, for I haven't seen anything in a decade that makes me want to trade up.  I truly want less, not more (or Moore's).  My laptop is five years old, and on its last legs capability-wise.  I used to get a decade out of apple products.

One of the big beneficiaries of the credit inflation and lending credit and subsequent misallocation and malinvestment was the dot-com industry.  Thus its bust way back when, and its too-big-to-fail players now.  Recall when there were 25 search engines?

But my point is what we saw in electronics, a plethora of more, better, cheaper, faster, happened undreamt of in the field of electronics  Moore wrote his article wondering "where would it all lead?" OK, now we see, so far.  Probably too much.  But Moore nor anyone else anticipated the competition lite in telecommunications, the opening of the super-secret WWW to the public, and the connection of computers to the telecommunications system.  And then who would imagine Al Gore would invent the information superhighway?  Who saw that coming? And to this day everyone give Ronald Reagan credit when it was Jimmy Carter who got the laws changed in the face of opposition in law, commerce, and science.  Jimmy Carter introduced deregulation lite of transportation and communication (and brewering, as a matter of fact.) No one saw the internet nor craft beer coming.

With this stupendous achievement, and if there are diminishing returns, why not turn to something else in trouble, and why not expect unforeseen stupendous results?

Deregulate banks - and get unimaginable benefits?  Like what?  Well, that is just the point, who knows?  It cannot be worse than we have now, can it?  Without deregulation, we already have crowdfunding (although the rent-seeking lawyers have already planted time-bombs in the works, with early legislation and let the IRS rules precipitate a crisis).

Deregulate law.  Have separation of law and state, and adopt the Lex Mercatoria where answering a summons is voluntary.  If anyone were to study Mosaic law carefully in writing, and then again in human practice, you'd see it is far superior to the mish-mash of false prosecution we have in USA today.

Deregulate medicine.  Listening to a USA physician and thriving medical chemical business owner who just opened a cancer clinic.  In Mexico, Tecate.  You can always do chemotherapy, but how about mass doses of vitamin C first, and see if the science that shows favorable results will work for you too.  Not allowed in USA.  Actually, doctors can do anything they want.  But if it is not by the book, then the lawsuit can be devastating.  I just buried my doctor, so now the stories can be told of things he did, lives he saved, laws he broke.  "O! If he was saving lives why didn't he write it up in the medical Journals?!"  He was saving lives because he read of science from overseas medical journals.  Medicine in USA is social engineering.  Today medicine attract social engineers.  "Vaccinate!"  In spite of the settled science that says don't vaccinate.  (The problem is not lack of vaccination, the problem is war.  War lowers immune systems, and once you are there, if you have vaccine for one, then another will get you.  USA has massive participation in war.)

Deregulate transportation.  Hong Kong has cheap and world class transportation, all in private hands. Communist China has mag lev transport, and is expanding it.  Do we need to go Red to get progress?  Obviously capitalism can't do it.  But free markets will.

What would you deregulate and welcome the unseen benefits, on a stupendous scale?

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Don't Touch Your Car!

A kid in one of my classes shared how the Toyota Corolla has 24 CPUs all set to the lowest common denominator, and how there was good money hooking up a laptop to the car and resetting those CPUs for better gas mileage, or in tandem with a better carburetor programming for 0-60 faster and so on.  Sounds to me just like the kids in the 1950s who souped up old cars.  A fine American tradition.  And these kids make good money souping up modern cars, competing on design.

But apparently not for long.  Anthony sends this in...

You can't tinker with your own car because there is a copyright on it.    You really don't own your car.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/automakers-say-you-dont-really-own-your-car

Yes, I know, you can pay through the nose for your custom auto,  but I would like Open Source autos to do for the automobile industry what Uber has done for the taxi industry.   I'm hopeful open source cars will crush these old dinosaur car companies once and forall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_car
It would be nice to return to coach design being separate from chassis and engine design.   We need new versions of coach builders like Fleetwood or Pinifarini or Duesenberg.   Yes, I want to drive my open source LaGrande Torpedo.      

Long ago the big three became the only three when they pooled their patents and made it impossible for anyone else to get into the business.  When an insider like John DeLorean designed his way around them, they simply set him up on some outrageous coke deal.

When we bailed out FORD, GM Chrysler (YES! Ford was bailed out too!) in 2008 we should have done so at the price of open sourcing all of their patents.  Now, we taxpayers are presently, every day, bailing out the auto companies again in anticipation of the next crash.  The FEDS are pushing subprime auto loans to people who can barely raise a fog on a mirror can buy a new car.  It does not take much to qualify as an UBER driver, but if you qualify, you are automatically approved for the purchase of a new car.  Kicker: weekly payments direct from Uber to the loan company, up to 30% interest.  So even the critical article misses, literally, the money shot:

In theory, this has been good for Uber (the company gets more supply of the one commodity — drivers — it needs most). And it's good for drivers (they get access to vehicles they might not be able to finance otherwise, and at lower prices).

Yes, the prices are lower than you can get yourself with shot credit, but not lower than you can get with  cash.  So here we are again, when this goes bad, we'll see credit destruction and thus credit deflation. Those people are working for the finance company, not themselves.

I think we need to go one better: mag lev transport, privately owned, in which the basic pod, like the inside of a telephone, is the same in all instances, but you can customize your "body by Fisher" to ride the mag lev rails.  Leave internal combustion for off-roading.

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Mag Lev and Unemployment

Previously in USA history, as disruptive technology came along, there was non-regulation or deregulation to accomodate people adapting to the changes and finding work and jobs.  All those people trapped in careers at Ma Bell in the 1980s, we able to quickly learn how to thrive in the new alternative after being fired from Ma Bell.  Buggy whip makers began to wrap leather in steering wheels for Ford Motor Company.

We no longer have that.  The rules, the regulations, taxes,  etc now compel innovators to outsource the new jobs, and the welfare state traps the unemployed.

Mish has a series on a topic dear to my heart, and that is driverless trucks, a step toward mag lev.  There is no need for drivers any longer, and this will work well if the Hegemon is not allowed ot participate.  We only need to look at electric cars to see the most recent mess they make of things, of everything.  They can't do their basic job, keep attackers out on 9-11, keep ebola out today, get currency right, manage the borders, etc.  Why would anyone think they could manage or contribute anything in mag lev and smart roads?

 But an even more basic problem is as all these truckers and taxi drivers become unemployed, there will be no new industries opening to which they may migrate.  The telephone monopoly break-up was attended by telephone deregulation.  No end to the work there.  There is no longer any deregulation in USA.  More welfare prisons ahead.

Deregulate something.  Anything.  Banking, medicine, roads...  food, anything.  The survival of USA depends on it.

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Robot Valets

Mish covered this but I have a different take...

Travelers at Duesseldorf airport in Germany can soon leave the job to a robot valet.
An airport spokesman says the robot, nicknamed Ray, starts work Tuesday and can be booked using a smartphone app.
Thomas Koetter says all travelers need to do is leave their car in a designated area and confirm it's empty and ready to go.

Eventually, we'll go to mag lev for personal transport and you'll get out of your carpod at your destination, and the computers will move your car to a parking slot... so machines like this are transitory, like a 8 Track Tape Deck.

http://www.usnews.com/news/offbeat/articles/2014/06/23/robot-valet-to-park-cars-at-german-airport

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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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Your Tax Dollars at the EPA

You can complain all you like about regs killing business, especially designed to kill small business, because the reg makers simply will never listen.  Like the old monopoly phone company, "we don't care, we don't have to."

“Rather than recruit someone with the requisite experience, Brenner sought out Beale in what appears to be a decision based solely on their personal friendship rather than any experience or credentials,” said conclusions of the report by Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

The Republicans want good government?  So when yet another scamster is exposed, we are told this person, the highest paid, really had no effect...

“The standards followed the routine open, transparent and public process, providing opportunities for public and interagency review and comment prior to their finalization.”
Republican investigators said Beale “took ownership” of the EPA 1997 national air quality standards, though much of the underlying data remain secret.

So a process can be transparent while the rationale is secret?  Never mind, nothing will change. The problem is people actually have to live under these regulations.  You cannot get clean air by regulation. You get it by law.  The automobile is an invention.  It can be improved to be zero emission.  It can be replaced with mag lev.  Both would occur if property rights were enforced, with its bundle of rights.  Instead we get an agency where pollution is codified and made permanent.  Only anarchists can keep the air clean.

Why throw the guy in jail?  Set up a truth commission, and let him name names and tell tales, and as long as he tells all he'll be free.  In time, so many people will cross-rat out each other that we'll all have a better idea of reality.  Throwing people in jail shuts them up.   After losing so much money on some one, why throw good money after bad.  Let's 'em sing.

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Trillion Dollar Madness & Minimum Wage

The reason usury is wrong is not because someone said so, but because it does damage.  I am one of the rare voices who says clearly what we call "interest" today is usury (the sophist arguments to the contrary do not stand).

There is something going on that is unprecedented in size, and that is the lending of fractional reserve based (asset-less) credit at usury.  With no gold standard there is no rational end to how much can be lent, there is only one dollar too much and down comes the system.

So far we are at $100 trillion and nothing to show for it, except payment obligations unto the third and fourth generation.

The $30 trillion increase from $70 trillion between mid-2007 and mid-2013 compares with a $3.86 trillion decline in the value of equities to $53.8 trillion in the same period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

When equity values go down as debt goes up, are you getting any signals yet?

When I say nothing to show for it, please name a single aspect of life on earth that has improved since we went off the gold standard.  Wages?  Health care?  Law?  Housing?  Education? Food?  Clothing?  Religion? Please tell me.  If you subscribe to the idea of wealth as personal accumulation, you may look at the 1% and find much satisfaction.  But if your idea of wealth has the integrity of etymology, then wealth is the degree to which the widest assortment of goods and services is available to the widest group of people at prices they can afford on their own.  In this correct understanding of wealth, no one has exceptional wealth, but everyone has access to more than the uber-wealthy have today.  Think Henry VIIIs assortment of goodies, and anyone else today.  We in the West have killed progress with capitalism.

Let me give you an example of how it works:  Seattle voters reject repeatedly a 4.25 billion dollar  (before overruns) tunnel.  A mayor (lawyer, see Kant on why USA must fail) is elected on the platform of no tunnel, never.  Within a year a bi-election is held on the topic and a result is bought and paid for, maybe $150,000.  Now we have a $4.25 billion dollar two mile tunnel project.  In mud, along a waterfront, and currently stopped cold at 24 feet out of two miles.  No one has any idea why the boring machine will not move forward.  Perhaps the God that warned sins are unto the 3rd and 4th generation  has halted the destruction that would be billed to a fifth generation.  Who knows?  All other explanations right now are grounded in belief, not facts.

In the meantime, $4.25 billion is a lot of debt to splash around, and one one side of the ledger we have debt assigned to people who actually produce something in life, and credit to people who screw everyone else, because the laws protect them.  The actual means is the capitalist lending of fractional reserve based (asset-less) credit at usury.  $4.25 billion is a designated amount that productive people must divert from their hopes and dreams to a one percent.  For their $4.25 billion dollars, these people get a 24 foot hole in the ground.  Even if the tunnel is ever completed, like the mass transit light rail boondoggles, they cannot ever cover their costs.  If we had a free market, and not capitalism, we'd have cheap and plentiful mag lev.  But the problem is the 98% of the 99% who beg the abusers for ever more abuse, by demanding entitlement over freedom.

Now multiply pointless, stupid wastes of effort all over the world, and you have a false economy and debt now at the ten trillion dollar mark.  No idea how much higher it can go, we only know two things:

1. At some point it will crash.

2.  The longer that takes, the more horrible the results.

The other pointless waste of credit is our wars, which create huge tallies for a few.  It is sort of condign punishment that the government house "unions" who did not resist the fascist adventures overseas, find their pensions spread all over the ground in the Middle East.  See the Taliban for you retirement checks.

So what we have is a one percent who have a tally of asset-less backed debt, to which almost all people  bow down in awe.  Among that one percent is some very unhappy and fierce balance envy, where a Soros envies a Buffet who envies a Carlos for having more balance than the other.  They experience a libido dominandi, where personal accumulation is how scores are kept.  None of them understand survivorship bias, or at least think they are exempt.

Offer for change comes in the form of progressives' demanding $15 minimum wage, a coordinated protest marches around the USA on March 15 for a $15 minimum wage, with the rallying cry "because the rent won't wait."  The solution to income inequality is to up the minimum wage so you can give it to the rich?  Brilliant.  Warren Buffett loves the idea of taxpayers transferring more money to the poor so he can end up with it.  Buffett sure as hell has nothing to offer (insurance, candy, banking, construction etc, all subsidized industries) anyone who actually produces anything in life themselves, so he has always depended on welfare transfer payments to come out on top. His #1 holding, Geico, is the Government Employee Insurance Corporation.

So party on progressives!  Keep demanding more money for your abusers so you can be miserable and poor sitting on a bus and staring into the iPhone, at nothing.

Or not.  The most revolutionary act you can perform is to start a business.  And a good corollary is to eschew any debt.

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Drone Ocean Freighters?

Ocean freight is already a dirt cheap way to move things...  what if we cut operating expenses almost in half... by getting rid of the crews?

The computers would also be constantly analyzing operations data to improve efficiency and save money, he said. Cameras and sensors can already detect obstacles in the water better than the human eye.

Now, it only takes a crew of about 12 people to man 3000 TEU ship 24/7/365, so we are not talking about a lot of job loss, and these ships will still need to be "conducted" worldwide.  We would have is remote pilots manning ships carrying cargo.  As the article notes, piracy would rather disappear, since there would be no one to point a gun at, so security on ships would be unnecessary too.

The savings would be tremendous, and no doubt encourage us to lower costs on airlines (face it, the airline pilots today are simply hostages to safety, no one can actually fly these new jets) and then we can get to automobile travel, mag lev.

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Mag Lev Getting Closer

I've been banging on the idea of mag lev transportation here for years, and it is good to see the precursors of mag lev showing up in practical applications. The car is 1880s technology and mass transport is a bad idea. With computers we can have mass customization of travel, and mag lev allows that to happen.  But we have to have deregulation of transport first.

(I had to delete the actual embedded Bloomberg video because it slowed down the loading of the page woefully, and led to my browser crashing.    I dread going to "news sites" aside from Drudge for the simple reason their pages are so full of junk and flash that I am pretty much guaranteed a bad experience.  When will they learn?  here you go...

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/attack-of-the-pods-bite-sized-capsules-of-luxury-YYs7uzC_TbabEy__4tJ2LA.html

)

mag lev is in your future, somewhere...


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Money and Industry

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "We Are Living And Dying for The Banks": 

I don't understand how these above business examples, e.g., coal, natural gas, etc., would not exist in a free market. 

*** The companies that trade those are creatures of the state.  In a free market, ther are no businesses thata re a creature of the state.  No doubt there would be coal and oil sold, but not by creatures of the state.  The creatures of the state crowd out free market traders.***

Did you mean mag-lev wind turbines?:

http://inhabitat.com/super-powered-magnetic-wind-turbine-maglev/

*** No, mag lev transport.  The auto companiesa re creatures of the state, so they crowd out fre market transport.   In Hong Kong, mass transit is privately owned.***

Also, federal reserve notes are essentially "money"?

***No, not even close...***

 - these notes are susceptible to government malfeasance and mismanagement (e.g., deflation or hyperinflation, currency devaluation)?

fed. res. notes (U.S. dollar paper money) = an object generally accepted as payment for goods:

***Right, but they are not money.***

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

*** The wikipedia article is wrong...  money is a medium of exchange, and as store of value. It extinguishes a debt.  today only gold and silver does that,   Federal reserve notes are fiat currency that can easily fail to extinguish debt, as have all other previous currency, eventually.  Believing otherwise is risky.***

You lost me with the last paragraph regarding the use of credit and not taking money out of a business (?).

*** go to http://hbhblog.blogspot.com/search?q=money   and click through on the various pages...

John

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Price Calculation, Pensions and Credit

Von Mises, Doyen of the Austrian School of Economics, identified the lynchpin of all socialist and communist states: price calculation.  In planned, command economies there is no possible way to ascertain the price of anything.  Therefore, the economy grinds down as money and credit is misallocated and malinvested.

My mind ran to the trade fairs in the 1970s in Canton China where we from around the world sat on one side of the table while the Chinese traders sat opposite.  To my left Danes and Brazilians, to my right Germans and Nigerians.  The Chinese would quote prices, each according to his nationality.

USA prices quoted were always highest.  How come, I asked.  "USA has the most money."  Aha.

The Communists had absolutely no idea what anything they made cost them, but being good Marxists they knew the going prices of their items in every market in the world.  Their price books reflected what they learned from objective, empirical observation.

Being a good free trader, realizing that, for whatever reason, China gave Hong Kong the very best prices, we would place our orders with Hong Kong compradors and even with their stiff commissions our net prices were running only 3/4ths of what the Chinese quoted us directly.

China has introduced relatively free trade.  But in USA we no longer know what things cost, so fraud is rampant.  In Japan, the make mag lev for about $220 million a mile.  In China, they do it for about $60 million a mile.  The difference is largely waste fraud and abuse in a too controlled market.  In USA we cannot even install 1880s technology for what Japan, with generous blandishments, does maglev.  If we want to know what something costs, we need only ask what the Chinese would charge to do it.

The trick to sorting this out is to pit the bondholders against the pensioners.  As our economies sink, repudiate the bonds that supplied the ability to hoodwink the productive class into paying $240 million a mile for 1880s technology.  "We cant pay the bonds, because of public employee pension obligations."  The bondholders wittingly scammed us during the boom, and the public employees facilitated the scam.  Let them fight it out over the dwindling reserves.

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$239 million a mile.

The Seattle Times is reporting that a new extension of light rail is being installed for $383 million dollars for 1.6 miles of rail.  That has to be some kind of record.  That is some $239 million dollars a mile for 1880s technology.  It is not about mass transportation, it is about lining pockets.

There is no possible way that a 1/3rd billion can be recovered from the revenues.  Who cares, it is the thought that counts.

China gets mag lev for about $63 million a mile.   We cannot have modern technology in a kleptocracy.

Update: It gets worse...

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Pettis on China, Part Three

Continuing a review of Michael Pettis' essay on China.  My comments are in between the ***  ***

Internal improvements

The second element of the American System was internal improvement, which today we would probably call infrastructure spending. Proponents of the American System demanded that the national and state governments design, finance and construct canals, bridges, ports, railroads, toll roads, and a wide variety of communication and transportation facilities that would allow businesses to operate more efficiently and profitably. In some cases these projects were paid for directly (tolls, for example) and in other cases they were paid for tax revenues generated by higher levels of economic activity.

***If only it worked this way.  In fact the process of state involvement in “infrastructure” was so fraught with fraud and graft, embezzlement and so on, it often failed.  In his book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” John Perkins explains his role in financing “infrastructure overseas to advance imperial power.

This is the same thing we see domestically.  Student loans is the most common experience people have of this and an excellent example.  pat too much for poor quality and then stuck in debt for life, since student loans cannot be bankrupted.  What France did to Haiti, the state does to American Students.***

It is easy to make a case for state involvement in infrastructure investment. The costs of infrastructure can be very high, 

***If they are wildly out of scale, and pumped up with fraud. graft, embezzlement, union featherbedding, etc.

And here again, Pettis looks at the disastrous short term and finds it good.  If we stretch back to ancient Greece and Rome, with public works that stand to this day, it was private or community efforts that made those wonders of the ancient world.  We are in the habit of saying “Rome built” or Greece built” when it was in fact individual who built these “public works” for their own eternal glory, but built them they did. Without recapitulating what is well know to the classicists, there is simply no need for state involvement in “public works.”***

while even if the benefits are much higher they are likely to be diffused throughout the economy, making it hard for any individual company to justify absorbing the costs of investment. In this case the state should fund infrastructure investment and pay for it through the higher taxes generated by greater economic activity.

***Well, what happens is when the state creates bonds and uses usury to finance gigantism such as the interstate hiway system, in its wake comes the WalMarts and Tyson’s and Holiday Inns that destroy viable small businesses that cannot compete.  Next comes the lowering of quality and increase of production, so that for the first time in the history of mankind, we have a country where the poor people are fat.

Gigantism can be beat by small business, as I daily demonstrate, and there is a symbiotic relationship between large and small business if the large is not state preferred.  But the objection to gigantism is the death and destruction in its wake. But to be sure, gigantism is tradable, short or long.***

For me the interesting question, especially in the Chinese context, is not whether the state should build infrastructure but rather how much it should build. 

***How about zero? That would be really interesting. In a country where “face” still matters, let their richest create the railroads, mag lev systems, bridges etc.  China has a terrible problem with dodgy public works, and if no doubt experiencing tired trigger finger dealing with the malfeasants.

Someone organized enough to pull together billions in China should be creating the roads from here to there.  Immediately people will claim nationwide systems need central planning.  Sure, if you want bridges to no where and empty cities.  People need not central planning but close cooperation.  If there is anything the wealthy are good at, it is close cooperation.

The ancient world saw public works as individual efforts, or in medieval times short term corporate work.  If any place on earth could today revive the economical, efficient and rational delivery of public works, it could be China.  And again, just look to Hong Kong where its national airline and railway system and the famed Star Ferry were privately developed (the last by a Zoroastrian no less).

Never mind Mercantilism is inherently wrong.  What Mr. Pettis is advocating is a degree of mercantilism to which he can wrap his brain, and thus gauge what is tradable.  Not too much, not too little, just enough for him to get rich.

Better Mr. Pettis forget about the money, and open a business.*** 

In fact this is one of the greatest sources of confusion in the whole China debate. Most China bulls implicitly assume that infrastructure spending is always good and the optimal amount of infrastructure is more or less the same for every country, which is what allows them to compare China’s per capita capital stock with that of the US and Japan and conclude that China still has a huge amount of investing to do because its capital stock per capita is so much lower.

***Concur, faulty analogizing on the part of the bulls.***

But this is completely wrong, and even nonsensical. Infrastructure investment is like any other investment in that it is only economically justified if the total economic value created by the investment exceeds the total economic cost associated with that investment If a country spends more on infrastructure than the resulting increase in productivity, more infrastructure makes it poorer, not richer.

***Correct, such as we have in the United States where so much infrastructure is devoted to what is pointless, and beyond recovery when you consider the USA spends more on the military than all other nations combined.***

In China we have problems with both sides of the equation. First, we don’t know what the true economic cost of investment in China might be. In order to calculate the true cost we need to add not just the direct costs but also all the implicit and explicit subsidies, most of which are hidden or hard to calculate.

***”We?”  The point of the exercise is to assess risk and discover what is “tradable.”  But there is more to life than what is in it for me.  If China adapts the USA system, well, never mind “if” since it already has, then China will yield fairly similar results, as Pettis catalogs in this selective history.  

Better than to wish the inevitable destruction on the Chinese as they follow a well trod path, with quite predictable results, (and don’t investors love predictable results?) why not advocate China, which is in a position to do so, return to its Tang golden age by resurrecting the freedom that was the hallmark of that era?  Modern, with Chinese characteristics.

In USA we have disaster all around and exceptionally uninformed people at the commanding heights.  We will not get out of this with any of the policies on the table, nor the standby plans A, B, C ...

What USA needs is a competitor in freedom, not in Hamiltonian mercantilism.  We all love a system that works for us, and mercantilism does work for those who love what we have in USA: war, malnutrition, bailouts, brutal medicine, chaotic housing, subpar education, and so on.  But hey, we have more billionaires than any other country!***

The most important of these subsidies tends to be the interest rate subsidy, and this can be substantial. If interest rates in China are set artificially low by 5 percentage points, for example, which is a reasonable estimate, an investment of $100 million receives an additional subsidy of $5 million for every year that the loan funding the investment is outstanding – and loans are almost never repaid in China. Over ten to twenty years of outstanding debt this can add 30-40% to the initial cost of the investment. This means that the recognized cost of an infrastructure project is much lower than the true economic cost, with the difference being buried in explicit and implicit subsidies.

***Yes.  Now, do you see why all major religions and the Catholic Church to this day strictly forbids usury (interest?).  ***

But the bigger problem is in the value created by the investment. We can think of the value of infrastructure primarily as a function of the value of labor saved.

***There it is, the labor theory of value.  It’s where Karl Marx went wrong.***

 In countries with very low levels of productivity, each hour of labor saved is less valuable than each hour saved in countries with high levels of productivity. For this reason less productive countries should have much lower capital stock per capita than more productive countries.

***Too broad.  Every Chinese businessman complains about labor shortage.  China and an economic unit is roughly Africa wrapped around Europe.  Building infrastructure in Berlin is different than infrastructure in Benin.  Referring to China as a less developed country is misleading.  Europe would be “less developed” if it included Africa.***

This should be obvious, but it seems that often it isn’t. When analysts point to high quality infrastructure in China whose quality exceeds comparable infrastructure in rich countries, this is not necessarily a good thing.

***But of course we have the problem of calculation in socialist economies like the USA, wherein we simply cannot know how much airport to make or of what quality.  Nor do we need to bother with such triflings, since the game is the maxxing out of the airport district's credit card.***

 It might just be an example of the amount of waste you can achieve when spending is heavily subsidized, when there are strong political (or pecuniary) incentives for expanding investment, and when there is limited transparency and accountability.

***As we have in USA. Where did the bailout money go?***

Other things matter too. If a country has low levels of social capital – if it is hard to set up a business, if less efficient businesses with government connections can successfully compete with more efficient businesses without government connections, if the legal and political structure creates problems in corporate governance (the “agency” problem, especially), if the legal framework is weak, if property rights are not respected, if intellectual property can easily be lost – then much infrastructure spending is likely to be wasted.

***An excellent survey of the challenges facing USA businesses in USA, although the intellectual property riff is out of place.  We can do without IPR in USA.***

***

In fact it turns that it may be far more efficient to focus on improving, say, the legal framework than to build more airports, even though (and perhaps because) building airports generates more growth (and wealth for the politically connected) today. Weak social capital becomes a constraint on the ability to extract value from infrastructure, and this constraint is very high in poor countries with weak institutional frameworks,

***Once upon a time in the USA, if and when people went to court is was to get an answer, just about any answer, since regardless of the answer, once the answer was known, all could proceed in a rational basis and all would flourish.  This was back when we were common law based and before we became mercantilists and positivists.  Common law is private law in essence, like the Lex Mercatoria and the UCP of the ICC.  Now in USA, we have the state seizing private property to transfer to other private paprties and no end to chaotic rulings.  It is no longer possible to get an answer from the courts in which all parties can proceed and thrive.  Now it is just picking winners and losers on the most whimsical bases.  (It’s a fine, not a tax!)

In USA we are at each others throats because your victory necessarily means my defeat.  This is likely intended, under a divide and conquer strategy.

If Pettis is wishing private law such as lex mercatoria on China, I could not agree more.  If he is advocating damning the Chinese to the USA result, then I’d object.  China can do better.  We did better, but now we need help.  We need competition from the Chinese.

If you want a critique of Chinese law you could not do better than this by Laszlo LaDany:

***

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If We Owe It To Ourselves...

I keep hearing deficits do not matter, and the national debt does not matter (two different things), because we owe it to ourselves.

If we owe it to ourselves, as I queried, what is it we pay back?

And if we owe it to ourselves, as in "The People," collectively, then why do we have to pay interest on what we "owe ourselves" to private companies?

And exactly what do we have to pay back?  Money?  No, because the debt is denominated in bonds and other instruments, what we borrowed was "credit" not money.

And to whom to we pay it back?  To ourselves?  I think our CPAs would find this concept befuddling, As a practical matter.

And if we forgive ourselves this debt, then how will the IRS view it?  As income?

Can it be paid back? That would be nice, but it is actuarially impossible. Our kids will be paying real money to clear the paper debts. We enjoy whatever it is we are getting on credit, for example:

1. Wars.

2. The surveillance state.

3. The most extensive prison system mankind has ever known.

4. EBT fund cards for frankenfoods.

5. Frankenfoods.

6. Roads and so on.

Now, we have these things, and for better or worse we are married to them.  But if we owe it to ourselves, then surely we can repudiated the debt to ourselves, with no ill effect.

So why don't we?  Because those private companies who earn interest on the credit-based debt would no longer have the income streams to pay off the politicians who support a system in which credit is extended at interest and some of the interest is shaved off to get politicians re-elected who in turn support a system in which credit is extended at interest and some of the interest is shaved off to get politicians re-elected who in turn support a system in which credit is extended at interest and some of the interest is shaved off to get politicians re-elected who in turn support a system in which credit is extended at interest and some of the interest is shaved off to get politicians re-elected who in turn ad infinitem.

And if we did not support this system none of us would get any free stuff.

Nothing bad would happen if we just repudiated the debt, like Iceland.  Those billionaires who are on top of this system would simply make $120,000 a year, and be taxed, not 500 million, untaxed.  We'd stop buying things on credit at interest, and we'd have all the good things we have now, we'd just not have

1. Wars.

2. The surveillance state.

3. The most extensive prison system mankind has ever known.

4. EBT fund cards for frankenfoods.

5. Frankenfoods.

We'd have mag-lev transport with its non-polluting and energy efficient aspects, so no roads as we know them, just as 30 years after telephone deregulation we no longer have telephones as we knew them.

And then I hear trade deficits matter.  They do?  I have a trade deficit with Whole Foods.  I buy far more from them than they buy form me.  In fact, Whole Foods has never bought a thing from me, and I am pretty sure they never will, but I keep buying from them.  Where is the problem.  Is this bad for me?  And Amazon.com has bought incalculably more form me that I could ever buy from Amazon.com, so somehow this is bad for Amazon.com.  If so, please do not tell them.

In any event, none of this will change.  Down we go.  The world can be a wicked place, and that is good to know.  Because you can know where we need to struggle, and where it matters for you personally to struggle, and in that passion know the joy of working on a solution.  Raw goat cheese.  You are part of the solution!  Raw wool sweaters.  You are part of the solution.  Alternatives to the "criminal justice" system.  You are part of the solution!  An so on.

Get customer-employed and be a part of the solution.

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Solving Global Warming

There is no scientific basis to support the idea of global warming or "climate change"  as a problem one way or another.

There is a nasty problem of pollution, which is undoubtably affecting the environment.

When Marxism folded, the Marxists needed a raison d'etre, so they jumped on the dormant ecology movement to host their predator lifestyle.  They became Greens.

By making the problem of pollution metaphysical, they were able to pose the problem as one needing all of the solutions of Marxism.

The solution to pollution is property rights.  One is not able to spoil unused parts of the planet, nor allow anything to cross over to other's property.

In anarchy, the sanction would be shunning, and any Monsanto strength pollution would no doubt be met with lethal indifference to the pleadings for health and welfare by Monsanto operatives.  It is the state that gives Monsanto a pass to pollute, just as it was the state that gave Jim Crow a pass to create racist laws.  In a truly free market, pollution is suicide to a polluter.

If property rights were respected, then automobiles, an invention, would include other inventions that collected all effluents to be packaged and sold on for industrial uses.  In short cars would be clean.  Or more likely, we would have moved away from cars and 1880s technology of mass transit into clean, non-effluent mag lev.

The state creates huge solutions for tiny problems, and then charges too much.  By making pollution into a boogie man of "climate change" the progressives assure they will have a sinecure managing cap and trade style "solutions" that serve to make pollution an eternal problem and the progressives' sinecure eternal. Remember, cap and trade institutionalizes pollution.

Read all about how it happened.



To believe we can fix this if we can "just get the right people in office" is self-delusional.  Step away from the false dilemma and act as though pollution matters.  Stop pretending if we just make it permanent it can be controlled.

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