U S A Airports

Some thirty per cent of applications for business visas to the USA are rejected, and those who do come here, even in transit, are subjected to unwarranted indignities that are repulsive:

You step off the plane and make your way to the immigration hall, which as always is packed to capacity. After standing in line for more than an hour, you’re photographed and fingerprinted before finally being released into the baggage claim and customs hall. (Or maybe it takes even longer: after docking at the gate, airline station personnel inform you that due to extremely long lines at immigration, all passengers are being asked to remain aboard the aircraft for the time being.) Not to mention, if you’re coming from a country that’s not on the U.S. visa waiver list, you’ll need to have obtained a visa in advance just to begin this process, no matter if you’re only passing through.

And there is a result...

Two years ago in a CNN poll of 1,200 overseas business travelers who’ve visited the United States, twenty percent said they would not visit the country again due to onerous entry procedures at airports, including long processing lines. Forty-three percent said they would discourage others from visiting. Separately, in a copy of Air Line Pilot magazine, U.S. Chamber of Commerce counsel Carol Hallett stated that “the United States risks falling behind Asia, the Middle East, and Europe as the global aviation leader.”

When you are a criminal regime, you fear even when no one is pursuing you.  Our security state reflects this, making everyone a criminal suspect.  Even people just passing through max security airport lounges.

Then this:

There’s not much we can do about geography. 

O yes there is!  You can stop invading other peoples' geography to steal their natural resources to fund our welfare programs.  You can order the governance of your own geography in a way that is not repulsive to honest, productive people.  You can behave in a way that does not cause a critical mass of people to say "let's find an alternative to the oceans that lead to USA, and instead work this eur-asian land mass that already connects 80% of the worlds population.  Let's just stay away from the USA."

Nice work, progressives!


We need a Hong Kong in USA where american can be free, and no one has to be killed so we can have our freedoms.

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2015 Agenda - Deo Volente

Stepping away from blogging helped give me some perspective - plus time to prepare another book.  Books are funny things, not like a pregnancy where you can get pretty close to a due date, but like a Frankenstein, not sure when it will work, and not sure what you will get.  I do believe, and am driven by, it will be the right book at the right time for anyone engaging in small business in USA today.  I am finished writing, now I am editing, and there is much more to do.  So to answer the question, when?, all I can say, is when it is finished.

As to blogging, this blog anyway, I've decided to focus where I am unique, and I have three agenda items to work on this year in blogging: 1. Money and credit.  2. Small Biz int'l trade. 3. A New Hong Kong in USA.

If it does not relate to these three, I won't write on it... and anyway there are better sources who cover other important topics - may I recommend -

David Stockman

Mish

Pepe Escobar

China Daily

Cobden Center

Lew Rockwell

If it is important, these guys are talking about it.

Now, these people are commenting on news from their perspective. If you are developing a business, you need to be doing the same thing.  You need to create your own news roundup - collect and distribute original content.  In so doing, you will emerge as a leader on your topic (your business).  How?

Well, here is a short video on how to do this.



I'll be reading those sources linked above too, and where I disagree, I'll blog on what they say, sometimes.  But on to my agenda:

1. Money and credit.  Our problems are arising from ahem, "errors" in our economic system, the patterns and practices that we have selected and we call "capitalism."  In the raging debate, a pox on both houses, the left and right wing.  There is a well documented alternative, called free markets, but almost no discussion on the topic for the simple fact the bad guys on both sides of the debate will not (or cannot) define terms correctly.  As Pynchon noted, all you have to do is get them to ask the wrong question, then their answer does not matter.  Define the terms incorrectly, and you cannot even formulate the right question.  It is an unlucky world in which it falls to me to be the one who defines terms correctly and asks the right questions.  But it is the biggest problem out there.

2. Small business international trade in general and food in particular.  This is my main topic, and I teach write and consult on this on the side, as in this blog, as well as trade on my own account (self-employed, or as I prefer, customer-employed).  As lecturing, I don't have to work much on this since the only thing I have to do to prepare for a lecture is to check my zipper. As to food, the pendulum is swinging back from "get big or get out" to "small is beautiful" so my small efforts have outsized results when I help food traders.  As a part of this, I'll emphasize selling, something of a lost art. Again, all small business int'l trade as usual, just a side-emphasis on food as well.

3. Truth Commissions.  There is so much criminality at every level of the USA we need some means of wholesale rectification.  Truth commissions, in which the defendant is immune as long as they confess all before they are indicted, is a good way to get it all out on the table and let the delusional see how their country actually works.  Gotta start with the truth, and even include capital crimes.

4. Trade shows.  I did not realize until attending a few trade shows recently in other peoples' booths how far down we have come regarding creating and working trade shows.  Such waste and wasted opportunity.  I'll present corrections.

5. A New Hong Kong in USA.  Hong Kong and USA were formed at the same time with the same idea.  Hong Kong pretty much stayed the course, USA has veered wildly off into totalitarianism in general and fascism in particular. That may sound provocative, but the proper academic term for big business and big government being one is fascism.  And see those brass icons to the left and the right of the flag?  Those are adopted from the Roman Senate, they are called Fasces, a bundle of rods around an battle ax.  Bound tightly together, it cannot be broken.  We don't need fascism, let's get at least part of the USA territory back to its roots.  Radical comes from the word meaning root.  Yes, I guess that makes me an American radical.



Who knows how come but I received a last minute contract to present on small business food exporting to the Indian Agricultural Council (as in American Indian) in Las Vegas in mid-December.  Vegas terrifies me, but the seminar was delightful.  I have long imagined that if capitalist USA is to ever have its own Hong Kong, just as communist China has Hong Kong, then an Indian reservation would be the place, and almost necessarily a port city.  Well there is one, the Puyallup own most of the Port of Tacoma, or enough to take it over.  Their reservation is technically huge, and would include McChord Air Force base, given them their own international airport as well.  The Indians across the country are rethinking their relationship to Uncle Sam, and Uncle Sam would do well to give its biggest critics an opportunity to escape to anarchy, as did Communist China: a Hong Kong.

President Hillary Clinton will be the kind of leader who would negotiate such a treaty, so she could have a freer hand to do what she needs to do.  Jeb will run only to keep the people yearning for the Bush family leadership, being groomed for the 2024 elections.

Go Hillary!



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Niall Ferguson On USA Economy

Just when I was worrying that I may be too "out there" along comes establishment thinker Niall Ferguson with a bracing review of USA and a call to action.  In particular, this:

The rule of law? For a real eye-opener, take a look at the latest World Economic Forum (WEF) Executive Opinion Survey. On no fewer than 15 of 16 different issues relating to property rights and governance, the United States fares worse than Hong Kong. Indeed, the U.S. makes the global top 20 in only one area: investor protection. On every other count, its reputation is shockingly bad. The U.S. ranks 86th in the world for the costs imposed on business by organized crime, 50th for public trust in the ethics of politicians, 42nd for various forms of bribery, and 40th for standards of auditing and financial reporting.

Now property rights are little understood in USA, especially as to how they limit excess and forbid pollution.  But also curious is USA rates highly on investor protection.  I'd say check again in a couple of yers and see how protected investors feel.  Also, that 3rd party protection is paid for by a 4th party; the first party being the investor and the 2nd being the securities dealer.  That security is inherently unstable.

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Hawala

Since Abram roamed the Levant, a banking system for transferring money existed today called hawala, and such an agent is a hawaladar.  A California lawyer explains it, as does wikipedia.  In a free market, banks do two things:  1. Store money (usually gold or silver) for a fee, and 2. transfer money, also for a fee.  A hawala performs function #2. Charging interest, if defined as making money on lending money, is not part of a hawala.

In essence, Abdul just made $1000 in Seattle he wants to send to his mom in Addis Ababa.  He could try to do this through bank of America, or he could go to a hawaladar.  With a hawala, he gives the hawaladar the $1000, and the hawaladar contacts another hawaladar in Addis Ababa who gives his mom $1000, less fees.  Here is the trick: no money is transferred. Hawala send and receive money transfer orders from all over the world.  The Seattle hawala puts the $1000 with all of the other money "transferred," and uses it to pay out incoming hawala transfers.  Should an inbalance of payments form, then money is moved en masse to effect a balance.  In any event, no records are kept of who moves what money to whom, only records of what each hawaladar owes the other.

This is another example of the free market in action: voluntary, no licenses, no reporting, trustworthy and dirt cheap.  If you use a bank, with all of its reporting overhead and fancy offices, you have to pay a huge fee to move money.  A hawala you meet for coffee in the front of one of those Somali bodegas that offer halal groceries, travel arrangements, fax service, tailoring, tax advice, goat milk and pizza.

I know what you are thinking: but terrorists will use that system to move money for terroristic activities.  Sorry, the money for 9-11 was transferred to Sun Trust Bank of Florida, where they duly paid it out.  A Hawala, being in a free market, relies solely on reputation.  They would never cooperate with criminals, since criminals say "crime does not pay," as in criminals refuse to pay.

Just think of a hawaladar, with some tens of thousands at hand, considering the prospect of a meeting with a terrorist or other criminal.  if not robbed, the hawaladar will never work again.  Since a livlihood depends on a hawaladar's reputation, a hawaladar cannot work with terrorists or criminals.

Nonetheless, in spite of the fact that Sun Trust was easier to use to transfer money for 9-11 than a hawaladar,  the government cracked down on hawala after 9-11.  In Seattle, as part of a nationwide assault, Maka Mini Mart and Halal Meats was raided, ruining their business.  There was no evidence of wrongdoing, but the US Government lashes out from fear, not warrant.  To his credit, US Attorney John McKay was displeased to find the FBI and other agencies had raided such clearly unlikely 9-11 participants.

Now, once where there was a legitimate, useful and law-abiding business, which was terrorist proof, there are people out of work (and on welfare) and others with no means to support their families back home.  Imagine escaping the government in Somalia only to be oppressed unjustly by the government here.  (Note to USA citizens planning to bug out overseas - what makes you think they will love you overseas?  What makes you think Uncle Sam will continue to send money to you?)

If we can carve out a New Hong Kong within the USA, the first "banks" should be hawaladar.

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How Democracy Fails

Hans Herman Hoppe is the go-to anarchist on democracy, and can elucidate how we got to the mess we are in now.  Little noted is the USA was not created as a democracy, but a republic.  There is a big difference, the founders knew the difference, and there is a reason they made their choices.

In Washington state, there is the strange prohibition era anomaly in which the state distributes the booze.  Waste fraud corruption high prices blah blah blah.  I buy my booze in California, since I buy good stuff and its at least  1/3rd off.  Stolichnaya I can get for some 60% off.  I had a talk with a pilot who had a nice little side business running rum into Oregon.

Costco, Safeway and other heavy hitters backed a citizens initiative to repeal the laws, and make a freer trade in booze in Washington state.  It polled favorably.  It lost.  The numbers show state workers voted to retain state jobs.  Union solidarity and all that.

In-house unions are anathema in the labor movement.  Govt unions are in-house unions.  I am a free market anarchist, but I have no problem with free market unions.  No problem at all with workers organizing to advance their agenda vis a vis the management.  I abhor govt unions, but love a free market union.  Bbut, of course, the govt interfered with the free market unions, and they want bad.    Jimmy Hoffa fought govt interference, and was railroaded into prisons.  Nixon pardoned Hoffa, and Hoffa went back at injustice, so he ended up six feet below stall 311 in shopping mall parking lot.

I asked a govt union worker, a friend, why she voted against the initiative, in spite of the fact she enjoys a high quality tipple herself. Solidarity of course.  But doesn't she know that voting for govt is just making a worse mess of the economy?  Yes.  Doesn't she know that these bailouts and all other plans just kick the can down the road and make things worse.  "I kick the can down the road."

If structurally we cannot, in a democracy, rule ourselves, how can we do so in anarchy.  We cannot.  In a big country, it is always easier to vote for someone else to pay.  This is why freedom seems to thrive only in small countries, say about 5 million people, Switzerland, Hong Kong.  We need  Canton Helvitica, a New Hong Kong, within USA.

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Munger Says Watch Me Eat Cake

They say the bank bailout was necessary because the banks were too big to fail.  What is not made clear is that A system would have failed.  Just one of many system we could pick, a system we happened to have.  I say the bank failures were too important to skip.  Their failure would have ushered in a clearing of the decks and a starting over, a reset of the system, that would have benefitted us all.  Bankruptcy of the bankrupt is important in any system.

Certainly people like Charlie Munger would have suffered, if his system failed (well it did fail, that is why Charlie Munger had to be bailed out.).  He is a billionaire, and likes it.  We all like a system in which we happen to excel.

Charlie Munger is sharp as a tack and very familiar with the term and concept "survivorship bias."  We tend toward what we see as success, and then we are biased toward it, which leads to us organizing around it.  Those yet to succeed assume that is the path to success.  This in part explains such horrors as Nazi Germany.  By tolerating power grabs by ever smaller groups of people, such as with the hated bank bailouts, we invite the horrors that follow from concentrated power.  Munger knows this too, but he pulls out the Hitler card to trump those who do not think Munger should have been bailed out.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the probability theorist and market advisor has a wonderful book called Fooled By Randomness in which he uses the example of the good dolphin.  Throughout history there are stories of dolphins carrying drowning swimmers to shore.  The few dozen stories stories of such rescuees, being saved by dolphins from drowning, give us a warm and fuzzy feeling about dolphins.  What we do not hear about, are the drowning humans who hitch a ride on a dolphin, a dolphin that takes them out further to assure the victim drowns.  We never hear of the evil dolphins, since their victims tell no tales.  We do not take them into consideration.

The victims of the bailouts are posting murderous comments under the articles on Munger's statements.

Since Munger is successful, we wish to identify with him, and agree with him, in a desperate hope we can be successful like him (although we have no idea what his lifestyle is like, but we can project what we would do if billionaired.)  Never mind a system that fosters excess wealth hoarding necessarily also keeps the pie relatively static.  A system based on freedom would have a pie that grew with peoples' needs and desires, but would make it hard to accumulate extraordinary wealth, and in any event, never more than one generation.

People like Munger and Gates and others have huge followings, merely for their wealth, a function of survivorship bias.  In our system, in which the rich get richer and the poor poorer, someone will be "richest."  It is a matter of survivorship, and there will be a bias toward such survivors.

Our system violates natural law. Natural law is a truth that is accessible through reason. If truth was not accessible through reason, then our free will would have no purpose, for if we could not come to a point where a choice is to be made, then what is the point of free will?  To what purpose would we have a free will?  A choice when unaware of options is not much of a gift. The great choice in life is between good or evil.  Reason leads to a belief in a prime mover, and revelation is God's introduction of Himself.  Religion is how man organizes his response to revelation.

Atheists and Believers alike celebrate the wealthy, although it is unworthy of them given the gift of reason.  By reason alone we can know the system is wrong, and needs to fail.  We can do better. We can have free markets.

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The Center Is Not Holding

Check out Gary North over at lewrockwell site, on the worries of the powers that be.  On the same page, a fellow has listed 15 recent statistics about poverty in America...  The two go together well.  Foreignors will support USA indolence as long as we are transferring technology that is more valuable to them than the money they are sending to us.  When that ends, it will get very ugly very fast in USA.  There will be no more foreign support, and no imperial power, we will produce a strong leader, he (perhaps a she, remember... Margaret Thatcher immediately got the UK into a war...) will lead us into more oppression and war, but we'll lose, in one big action like the Russian empire went down in the straits of Tsushima in 1905. And then we'll slowly sink into the dark ages that ex-empires sink into... and settle, somewhat broken up, into a tourist playland, like Italy or Greece.  Gee whiz, we'll say, we really weren't any different than anyone else.

This country will need a Hong Kong like China needed a Hong Kong. Loyal and independent.  USA Navy would put a cordon sanitaire around this territory, and USA/New Hong Kong relations would be conducted through New Hong Kong leaders and the Admiral in charge of this base. Since all policies would be unilateral, there would be no need for any foreign office.

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