Business Start-up and Expansion, with an emphasis on International Trade
Who We Are
This journal serves a community of small businesses worldwide. Here John Wiley Spiers addresses topics on business start-up and expansion and reports relevant daily headlines.
Fully 66 percent of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of an economy managed by the government while 58 percent have a negative view of socialism. Only 21 percent reported a negative opinion of free markets but nearly double that, 38 percent, have a negative view of capitalism.
Seems fairly correctly defined, depending on what demographic is answering:
Several forces could likely be at play. First, young people don’t know what these words mean. The fact that they are more favorable toward socialism than a government-managed economy, which if anything is socialism-lite, demonstrates this. Second, young people like free markets and the technology, products, and wealth it creates, but they also want to feel confident the poor have access to what they need. In their minds socialism might simply connote a social safety net rather than government ownership. Third, individuals often trend left in their youth, but may change as they age. Fourth, this cohort of young people may be systematically different from older generations in holding a preference for both markets and government activism. It remains to be determined how this young generation will make the trade-off when markets and government action are at odds.
So the potential is there and other parts of the analysis suggests a pretty sophisticated understanding of the differences. Capitalism and communism are both unmitigated evils, but at least communism had the good graces to die out.
Thanks to Richard for the link.
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Here is a edifying 2011 video, although I have my reservations. It is a good survey of the problems we face. It is an oddity: progressives recommending the gold standard! Two million views and 19 world wide film awards.
I'd say all of these people are of good will, but here is the problem, each is a progressive. Several are ex-IMF, certainly a facilitator of world economic degradation. Although John Perkins, the econ hit man is interviewed, there are no confessions of who did what. I would settle for their prescriptions, which are no good, but vastly better than where we are now. But here is the problem, not a single one of these people, renowned all, has not already sold out, in the pursuit of becoming renown. Nor is there a single self-employed interviewed. Is there not a single progressive on earth who has not sold out for a sinecure? Would it not be foolish to expect the leopard to change sports?
They present the false dichotomy of classical and neo classical economics… there is more under the sun than is dreamt of in their philosophy. They all claim to be capitalists, but I suspect just a progressive version of that.
About 1/2 way through, in fact, they identify the outlook as progressive, and by then had already hinted at maluthisian and darwinian outlooks.
Does this not sound like "hire me, I know the problems, and want more sinecure mouthing platitudes"? We all love a system that works for us, even if only in the role of jester.
They call for worker ownership of mean of production, good, if you have a model. Better to have co-ops, which are customer owned? Who wants employees in charge of anything?
The speak of "regulation fantasies… deregulation" Wait, nothing was deregulated, regulations were merely changed. before the change, the regulations had one set of winners and losers, after the change in regulations, another set of winner and losers were picked. Those complaining about deregulation are simply the new losers. The problem is regulations, not "which set."
The topic of consumption tax over income tax... But wait, why have any tax? And income redistribution? O dear, who decides? More winners and losers…
Instead, how abut de-legalize usury? And watch income redistribute, with land, along meritocratic lines.
They make the claim that the medium of change is freedom of the internet. Are they kidding? It is 98% intel gig. If you think the net will contribute to freedom, you don't know your spooks.
No one will ever try the unknown. They regret income inequality, hint at property redistribution, but those path lead to blood. Better to de-legitimize (not illegalize) usury, and watch the land be pitch perfect redistributed.
But know, rather be on board on the side of the next Mao, eat drink and be merry, while criticizing the hand that fed them.
And here again, the analysis labors under the mis-definition of money. They cannot get to better from there.
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So, rēs in latin and ray in sanskrit both mean wealth or physical goods originally. Res publica, where republic comes from, originally meant "state treasury," literally the "state wealth", and from that it later came to mean simply the state. What's interesting is that both these words, res and ray, come from an indo-european root meaning to give, to offer. Sanskrit even still has a verb rā meaning to give. So there was obviously a heavy link between giving and money in those times: the word for wealth meant "something you give." In Sanskrit culture in general the importance of giving is key- generosity is king, and the best way to show off wealth is by giving it (although, only to those who deserve it - no throwing pearls to swine could have been an indian proverb!).
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Validity gets to, in essence, "test what you are testing." Reliability is when the test done by others gets the same results. Science is quite actually hard to achieve, so in USA we have dumbed it down so everyone who plays gets a trophy. This from China:
Researchers at China’s Agricultural University have concluded that testing on transgenic rice has so far brought no abnormalities. The results came after 90 days’ of tests to see if the genetically modified food had any health affects.
Well, hang on. If you are testing for abnormalities, 90 days is not likely to cut it. Therefore, this was not a test for abnormalities, so it is not valid.
Now, it is likely others who repeat these tests would get the same results, so it would be reliable, but not valid.
China has many USA trained scientists. I hope those scientists did not study at Monsanto financed schools.
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We'd be at the exact same place we are today if Romney had won the election, and that Rose Garden damage control session would have occurred anyway. Sometimes there are omens in these events, like the young woman who fell ill during the news session.
Now the young woman made herself a public figure by participating in a political event. She is promoting a particular agenda, and that is state-medicine programs rammed through congress late at night, in which no one has read the law.
Whether or not she was one of the three people who the White House managed to enroll of the thirteen examples of enrollees, she is all for the system.
That system is presently treating her, as one can see as she faints. See what is on her left arm?
I am sure some doctor can identify the medical device on her left arm. Again, she is in public, at a publicity event, the device is not hidden whether or not she fell ill, so I don't think I am being invasive.
The question is, it would be interesting for her to offer herself as a case study (which in effect, she already has). Is she in fact better served by Romney/Obamacare, or by a free market in medicine.
We are not having a conversation about alternatives to solve the problem of medical care, we are arguing whether Romney/Obamacare is good politics.
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Chemical attacks are hated and condemned even in war because their killing is indiscriminate, not to mention horrible. In spite of that, this is how the game is played:
Say there are 100 poison chemicals that are effective in war, we in the West make all 100.
50 of these are "red line" warrants for regime change. We sell all 50 of these forbidden chemicals to countries (well, they are dual use, you know they can be used in low dosage for killing bugs, high dosage for killing people.) For example, Sarin.
The other 50 are not on any list, and we do not sell those. We make them and use those in battle, but we do not sell them to the other side.
Technically speaking, napalm is “a mixture of naphthenic and aliphatic carboxylic acid”. I don’t know about you, but “a mixture of naphthenic and aliphatic carboxylic acid” sounds awfully “chemical” to me, and yet this weapon has been liberally used by the US army to incinerate soldiers (and luckless civilians) in many recent wars, including Gulf War 1.
Get it? When we use our nasty, indiscriminate 50 chemicals in an attack, no problem. If any else uses the 50 that happen to be banned, regime change. It all depends which list of chemicals you draw from. The ones we sell you, that you cannot use, or the ones we will not sell you, that we can and do use.
We have chemicals we use that we are not supposed to, but hey, mistakes were made, time to move on. Here is Razia, whose village was not obedient enough to the USMilitary. The situation called for phosphorus, both illegal and not sold to the other side. The lucky ones were the other villagers who died.
Don't worry. Our military hospitals have given her the very best care. But the lesson to learn is if you just submit absolutely to American Authority, you have nothing to worry about. Razia's injuries are all Razia's fault, you see, if you believe the USA politicians.
The USA is an active user of deadly banned-in-military-use chemicals, on our own people. But it is always the fault of those who suffer the consequences, never the fault of those deploying the gas.
Although described as a non-lethal weapon for crowd control, many studies have raised doubts about this classification. As well as creating severe pulmonary damage, CS can also significantly damage the heart and liver.[11]Domestic police use of CS is legal in many countries, however, as the Chemical Weapons Convention prohibits only military use.
This technique of banning one thing for others while allowing its equivalent for ourselves is a technique we see time and again. In USA there is crack and cocaine, both used for purposes of self-medication, and each starts out from the coca leaf. But in USA, Crack is distributed almost exclusively in the poor inner cities. Cocaine is almost exclusively sold in the wealthier neighborhoods.
As an aside, a Narc friend of mine surmised Crack was designed for the inner cities and welfare: highly addictive, fairly cheap ($10 a hit), with the curious effect that crack heads can go comatose for three days and not die. They arise from the dead to take another hit. From his experience, it did not matter if you were a welfare mom or a billionaire, it took every cent you have, and then your welfare payments forever. His hypothesis could be tested forensically because under ex-CIA director and then Drug Czar VP George Bush, Crack showed up in late 1984 in New York and Los Angeles ghettos simultaneously. It was an instant hit. Arrest records and tracing back to the origin could be found out. But that is an aside...
So, given how popular the drug is in the ghetto....
The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 increased penalties for crack cocaine possession and usage. It mandated a mandatory minimum sentence of five years without parole for possession of five grams of crack; to receive the same sentence with powder cocaine one had to have 500 grams.[26]
One form bad, one form acceptable. "They" must be punished for using what we sell them, "we" give ourselves a pass. So if you are a "black" inner city dweller, the penalties for self-medicating are 100 to 1 times more severe with crack than coke. So the wealthy can go on to be president of the USA after a coke bust, but an inner city "black" will go pick cotton on a Texas Prison farm after a crack bust.
Or, another way of looking at it, a personal quantity of Crack can earn you a mandatory spot in the picture above, while a dealer's quantity of coke can be pled away. And you'd always been told the reason the "black" population of prisons was so high was because the "blacks" did a higher percentage of crimes. No! They are in prison because you believe "blacks" do a higher percentage of crime.
In a way, this is still a chemical attack on a population, isn't it?
"They" shop at Safeway and get stuffed with GMO and chemical-laden foods, "we" shop at Whole Foods and get gmo-free organics. They get sick and have Obamacare inflicted upon them, we get an exception to RomneyObamacare, which is just the Tuskegee Experiments on steroids.
See the pattern?
None of this is secret. Problem is we have competition, Thirty-five years ago under Deng Xiaoping, China decided to compete with USA. Jimmy Carter was president, and said bring it on. Then came Reagan, George Bush as Vice-president. Then it all changed. We were once excellent competitors, but it seems we've elected to go into a downward spiral.
Today, USA tends to sell weapons to the bad guys, while China tends not to do so. Part of competition is to develop moral authority, and that is expressed from the commanding heights. Name a single instance of anyone in the commanding heights of the USA calling for restraint in the USA plans for an attack on Syria. Not in media. Not in Medicine. Not in religion. Not in labor. Not in academia. Not in politics. No, we had to hear it from Communist China. Former Communist Russia. The Vatican.
Our foreign policy for the last 35 years has been isolationist, and it actually unified Communist China and the Vatican! When a USA president says he will attack another country alone if he has to, to the applause of all in the commanding heights, then that is the apotheosis of isolationism.
Time for USA to do self-criticism, as the Communists would call it, or repent, as the Vatican would call it. But we need to stop making war on other people, and stop making war in the form of chemical attacks on our own people.
Then we can get back to being competitive, and no longer isolationist. I want to trade with Syrians, not the al-Qaeda terrorists USA wants to put in power. I think the Christian churches established by Apostles should be unmolested as they have been under al Assad, not exterminated as they are under the USA allies. I want to trade with Razia's father, not set his daughter on fire.
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I was thinking about the word prosperity when it dawned on me the root of the word was Latin for "hope." Interesting if true, so I tried to look it up on the internet. Again, I find why it is absolutely necessary to have your own library, because of the relentless ignorance of such websites as etymology online. Thier best effort tells me prosperity comes from the French word prosperite, and so on. Nice use of technology, fellas. I've got an American heritage dictionary on my shelf that takes me back to the indo-european root in about 5 seconds. This is the best I could get on the net in 5 minutes...
Well... now the that caffeine is kicking in, I'll get back on track.
The root of the word prosperity is hope. When 101 million American get a check from the government, they have given up hope. When you read of all the people dependent on this and that, the demand for Romney/Obamacare, these people have given up hope. None believe that their fellow amn can work it out with them. Violence and theft are born of lack of hope.
People have an excellent sense of reality, so false hopes do not sell. If in fact opportunities did open up, the economy was getting better, even if good times had not arrived to any given individual, any genuine hope would be the foundation of prosperity.
If you are an employee, you may be working, but that nervousness about the future? That's lack of hope. Lack of prosperity.
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I've been saying for years the most likely explanation for the downing of TWA flight 800 was that our weapons systems got hacked. I thought this when the Russian sub Kursk sank itself after launching a torpedo.
Wouldn't it be wonderful for all of us to find out that none of these terror weapons systems actually work independently, that they can be taken over by hackers at any time? For example, when two of our drones in a row were landed in Iran?
That no country has real offensive war power? And we've never been invaded, that all of this money on weapons and security is just very expensive theatre?
And defense of the USA meant that USA citizens armed was the best defense of the USA and we needed no standing military? And so we needed no domestic spying looking for foreign threats? And our relations with the rest of the world were based on how we trade with people around the world, like it was in Tang Dynasty China and the early 1800s USA? And we no longer related to the world by our military might, which leads to USA being isolated in the world?
And would that not be terrible for the standing militaries around the world?
Here is what an Irish legislator had to say about the Obama's recent visit to Ireland:
Nothing like an Irishwoman...
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I eat two meals a day and I do not snack. For my metabolism, that is enough. I exercise vigorously regularly. I tend toward good food, and avoid GMO like the plague it is. My sleep pattern is something like 3 3 4 5 1 8 that is the numbers in bold my sleeping, and the plain numbers awake and working or whatever. There is nothing standard, but then none of us is standard.
Now comes news that they want to make obesity a disease. Well, outside the rare medical condition, obesity is a matter of not chewing your food. Chewing blends saliva with food as a predigestion function, and chewing breaks down the tougher fibers.
If you wonder how most of the world can (literally) live on a few dollars a day, in large part their food is more wholesome, they chew it properly, which means better nutrition at a fraction of the cost. They eat less because less is needed to live. The starvation only comes in to play when the local markets are destroyed by mega-food dumped in their markets.
I am not comparing myself to the obese, because I am pretty sure in their situation I may end up the same way. But when I was at a point where I could have gone down any path, there were so many other paths open. I am very sure that many people quit for being discouraged by the lack of opportunity that is the goal of progressive politics. Look at the options: Ikea for furniture, McDonalds for food, Section 8 for housing, Safeway for groceries, Macy's for clothes, RomenyObamacare for medicine, the state for education, and government owned religion and media. Sure, you can still opt out, ironcially, if you have one of the $200,000 a year contractor jobs for the NSA. (Talk about opting out!)
Subsidized foods like McDonalds and KFC are robbed of food value in processing then topped off for instant gratification. When you bite into a KFC chicken, the mmmmmm is in the coating, and the chicken itself quickly has no flavor, so one swallows that rather unchewed. Take another bite to get the satisfation, and so on. As subsidized food, you get a lot of "food" to gulp down, and you get little food value, and so more and more one eats, and gets obese. Same with soda pops. It is no secret the welfare/foodstamp system allows this food to be charge by the poor to the taxpayers. it is a great racket.
When obesity is a disease, then all of the means to reduce obesity become under FDA control. You'll have to see a doctor to lose weight. And the doctor will have some new drugs for you, to prescribe.
Now, also comes news that 70% of Americans are on prescription drugs. Talk about a racket -
Mayo Clinic researchers report that antibiotics, antidepressants and painkiller opioids are the most common prescriptions given to Americans. Twenty percent of U.S. patients were also found to be on five or more prescription medications.
Where to start? Antibiotics #1? No wonder MRSA is the #1 killer in hospitals. We can beat that with bacteriophages, but we cannot have those in USA. Antidepressants? You do not feel happy? Did you know that passion means "to suffer" and joy is a by-product on solving what causes you to suffer? If you take a pill to avoid the suffering, you deny the rest of us the good of what you would joyfully produce if you contributed your efforts and sought the solutions we all need. Painkillers? some of that is abused, some of it is legit. For the legit, we need to open up the markets to more natural things, like opium.
Huxley wrote Brave New World in which everyone would be stoned into submission. Orwell wrote 1984 where we would be under totalitarianism. The big question 50 years ago was which one would win? We learn today both did.
One step toward freedom would be to deregulate medicine completely, and we'd see a dotcom boom sized economic recovery. About the state, I think only truth commissions will work.
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I was spellchecking the above essay when Google highlighted these two words. Curious I clicked on them to find Google recognizes neither terms in the English language.
Sheeesh. That explains a lot.
Keynesians cannot admit there is any possibility of either occurring. If they ever show up in a dictionary, the picture next to misallocation should be of government-provided transit. Malinvestments's picture would be Seattle's fourth major league stadium (or it is fifth now?)
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If by improving one's reality, he means to acquire the circumstances in which one is happy, then that is still a struggle. We know what lowering expectations means, which is never happy.
Happiness is curtailed by the misery we see around up, most of for which we pay taxes to assure it continues. But of course there is joy in working on problems that make the world a better place, which I suppose is improving ones reality. Tricky business, happiness.
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Well, that is what is billed to the taxpayers, not given to the welfare recipient. Taxpayers may be forking over $168 per day for each person on welfare, but the welfare recipient is not receiving that. Just like schools are getting $12,000 per year to educate a kid, but it is not going into the classroom. Administration takes a huge percent of the amount.
When Bill Clinton ended welfare as we knew it, the end of the world was predicted. But of course only a democrat can cut welfare, and Clinton did. The world did not end, and the economy improved. Imagine that.
A welfare fraud investigator once told me that it is impossible to live on welfare without engaging in fraud. There is just not enough money in welfare to live. The system has to be gamed, and the welfare offices acquiesce to being gamed. They never want to solve the problem, or they too are out of work.
Defense contracts are welfare too, and they too are gamed.
We are in trouble because we have too much welfare and too little freedom. The fiscal cliff is baked into the last election because politicians do not want to do the hard, right thing. All of this "negotiation" is street theatre. We will go over the cliff, and good things will happen when we have defense cuts and tax increases, because we'll be paying our bills and cutting expenses. And the world will continue to like our dollar. And gold and silver will fall.
But the we need to continue and also give more freedom and unregulate something, anything, so we can have another economic expansion. Welfare is not what we can pay out to the poor and the rich, but every expanding range of goods and services ever more accessible to an ever wide group of people. that is the free market.
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As I study Islamic finance, all roads lead back to a book entitled Scholastic Analysis of Usury written in 1957 by an American lawyer named John Noonan. Islamic scholars compare and contrast their laws against the development of Christian laws, as told by Noonan. It appears Islamic scholars near universally believe the Church changed its teaching on usury, and Islamic scholars are concerned that their faith might follow the same error. Well, not to worry, the Catholic church still condemns usury. But more on that another time. As I read Noonan I am perplexed as to why anyone would arrive at the conclusion that the church allows usury. As I read on Islamic finance, I can understand how Islamic scholars might believe so. Islam consults the Koran and its saints and theologians to arrive at Shariah. So far, usury is forbidden. Islam has no pope to declare for all time and places an infallible truth. Well, Noonan cites the Bible in passing but he is heavy on saints and theologians to arrive at a change in church teaching on usury. Hence, the Islamic scholars, I suspect, are observing Noonan's sources and analogizing them to Islam's path to Truth. Problem is, Noonan's citing of theologians and canon law does not trump the infallible teachings of the Church. Usury is sin.
What a comparison! With no pope, as in Islam, the Truth is maintained. With a pope, the Truth is widely ignored.
I will write more on this later, but I want to mention arguments in writing, especially by lawyers. As I read this book, Scholastic Analysis of Usury, I am astonished at how often Noonan is using rhetorical tracks and shifting definitions to make his case. He is truly a gifted writer, but has no one who cites him noticed the games he plays? Perhaps having grown up among lawyers I was tipped off to such tactics. And I do credit a book called the Art of Cross Examination which lays out the most powerful scams lawyers advance.
Curiously, back to Noonan and Scholastic Analysis of Usury, for such an oft-cited book, it is not available on Amazon.com, in spite of the fact that the author is living and still producing books. Alibris.com has no copies either. Further, there are only 445 copies, among all 11 editions, available in libraries around the world. For the book to be rather unavailable, it takes the efforts of the author. Another curiosity, for a book relating to faith and morals, written by a "staunch catholic" back in 1957, to not have a nihil obstat and an imprimatur is odd, expecially one so verses in Canon Law:
Can. 823 §1. In order to preserve the integrity of the truths of faith and morals, the pastors of the Church have the duty and right to be watchful so that no harm is done to the faith or morals of the Christian faithful through writings or the use of instruments of social communication. They also have the duty and right to demand that writings to be published by the Christian faithful which touch upon faith or morals be submitted to their judgment and have the duty and right to condemn writings which harm correct faith or good morals.
Noonan went on to become a federal judge and write more books, his most recent published in 2011. Why is his first so difficult to find? Perhaps I am not the only one to realize that Noonan's first book is rather disingenuous. I'll write more on usury and Islamic finance later, but I wanted to mark the curious source document for the idea that the Church permits usury. Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
Answer: Because so many people depend on the (airline, banking, media, agriculture, shipping, military, education, insurance, medicine, religion, housing, etc), and no one depends on you.
How come so many people depend on your business and not mine?
Answer: Because we crowded out all of the competitors with rules and regulations that benefitted us. In turn we support the people who made us, the powers that be.
So the only way out is to unregulate all of the above?
Answer: Yea, sure... go ahead...
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-In economics, private and state capitalism bring about an unjust distribution of wealth, for the profit motive guides decisions. Those in power live off the sweat of others' brows, while those without power are robbed of a just return for their work. Usury (the charging of interest above administrative costs) is a major contributor to the wrongdoing intrinsic to this system. We note, especially, how the world debt crisis leads poor countries into greater deprivation and a dependency from which there is no foreseeable escape. Here at home, the number of hungry and homeless and unemployed people rises in the midst of increasing affluence.
--In labor, human need is no longer the reason for human work. Instead, the unbridled expansion of technology, necessary to capitalism and viewed as "progress," holds sway. Jobs are concentrated in productivity and administration for a "high-tech," war-related, consumer society of disposable goods, so that laborers are trapped in work that does not contribute to human welfare. Furthermore, as jobs become more specialized, many people are excluded from meaningful work or are alienated from the products of their labor. Even in farming, agribusiness has replaced agriculture, and, in all areas, moral restraints are run over roughshod, and a disregard for the laws of nature now threatens the very planet.
--In politics, the state functions to control and regulate life. Its power has burgeoned hand in hand with growth in technology, so that military, scientific and corporate interests get the highest priority when concrete political policies are formulated. Because of the sheer size of institutions, we tend towards government by bureaucracy--that is, government by nobody. Bureaucracy, in all areas of life, is not only impersonal, but also makes accountability, and, therefore, an effective political forum for redressing grievances, next to impossible.
--In morals, relations between people are corrupted by distorted images of the human person. Class, race and gender often determine personal worth and position within society, leading to structures that foster oppression. Capitalism further divides society by pitting owners against workers in perpetual conflict over wealth and its control. Those who do not "produce" are abandoned, and left, at best, to be "processed" through institutions. Spiritual destitution is rampant, manifested in isolation, madness, promiscuity and violence.
--The arms race stands as a clear sign of the direction and spirit of our age. It has extended the domain of destruction and the fear of annihilation, and denies the basic right to life. There is a direct connection between the arms race and destitution. "The arms race is an utterly treacherous trap, and one which injures the poor to an intolerable degree."
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I warned my mother not to go into the "old folks home" and argued with my siblings and took what actions I could to forbid it, but ultimately it was her choice. After she went in, my efforts switched to making it as comfortable as possible for her. She was in probably the best "retirement home" in Seattle, but it does not matter. You cannot make a fundamentally flawed idea good.
The first couple of years were as advertised, but lonely for my mom inasmuch as once esconsced, the most vociferous of her children urging her commitment to the home began to find less opportunity to visit. Further, all old folks all the time can be pretty dreadful, even if you are one yourself.
What few sociology courses I took for my masters degree detailed how intergenerational interaction is crucial to raising the well-rounded person, and elders live longer and better if they are in inter-generational settings. We deny our young the opportunity to be all they can be if we ship our elders off to concentration centers, and we deny our elders the best situation at the same time. We may have the power to violate these human standards, but not the right.
The facilities were superb and the staff the best in the
business. I am not being coy when I say the orderlies who actually do
the heavy lifting etc are interesting people from far off lands. What I liked is they seemed genuinely to respect and care for my mother, something I doubt would be much present among my countrymen doing the work.
After a couple of years her health deteriorated and I came back from a trip to find she had been committed to the hospital part of the home, which is often a one way trip. I was astonished at how far she had declined in what was less than a week. She was in and out of consciousness and the first thing she said when she did recognize me was "thirsty..." My mom was
fading fast. Much worse off than when she was brought in. She had no
appetite, extensive bruising, and of course thirsty.
I spent a lot of time the next few days finding out what happened, but the problem is what with the state rules on medical records, one cannot know what is going on with mom. Now let me pause and note, that even in the very best of facilities, there is only so many people to deal with so much need. If no one cares about the old folk, then neither can the staff, much. Once I had showed up, and begin making firm inquiries and attending to my mother myself (she was always thirsty) the staff responded with far more attention. I and a brother formed a sort of tag team.
My mom began to rally, and I took a few moments when she was clear and rational to make an end run around the system and have my mom get her medical records in front of her for me to read. There was terror in the management's eyes, but resolve in mine. They had to give in (although I was reported to my siblings.)
I can see why it is in the state's best interest to keep anyone from seeing your medical records. It has nothing to do with privacy and everything to do with complacency and complicity. My mother was being loaded up with Aricept, a taxpayer-funded anti-alzheimers drug.
Now this was curious. My mother worked in the medical labs at the University of Washington for years, doing science. So in the mid-1970s a call for volunteers for a cohort study of alzheimers was made, my mom signed up. Twice a year she would meet the doctors who put her and her cohort through tests to look for alzheimers symptoms. To the day she died, never a symptom.
So I inquired as to how come she was being given Aricept when she did not have Alzheimers. "O, we do not know if anyone has alzheimers truly until after they are dead and we can autopsy the brain to find the disease." Very good. But if she had no symptoms of Alzheimers, why was she being given a drug to treat the symptoms of Alzheimers? "O, alzheimers shows a collection of symptoms that can be different from person to person, so we never really know." OK, but if for forty years she has been examined by the leading alzheimers doctors in the world and never showed any symptoms of alzheimers, why was this being prescribed? This was a trickier question for them. The Aricept dosing stopped immediately. My mother recovered her appetite quickly. She was strong enough to get her own water. The bruises went away. The side effects of Aricept are lack of appetite and widespread bruising. If you do not eat and are denied water, you slip into a painful unconsciousness.
The thirsty part is just from lack of giving water. Withholding water is specifically called for in the legally approved "care"protocols. I fast and know that after day three hunger goes away so to die of hunger is not really painful, but it can take a month. But to die of thirst is quite horrible and only takes a few days. Withholding water is a critical part of euthanasia, and in practice it takes about a day and a half to finish off someone who is very ill. In the UK it kills about 130.000 people a year.
You do realize that if I had not asked that 2nd and 3rd question, the Aricept would have continued. And no doubt it does, all over the country, right now, for people who have no Alzheimers.
And of course, while all this is going on, we taxpayers pay for state workers who show up and "inspect" the records and patients to assure nothing untoward is going on. Inspectors inspect what the state calls "health care" and finds nothing amiss in that regard.
For the years afterwards, my mother and I would have long conversation on many topics, she filling me in on strategies for dealing with and economic crisis and depression, meaning of life and suffering, and tales of long ago. I found her counsel terribly useful. She also developed some insights that were astonishingly clever. My mother changed more in those last few years than in her previous entire lifetime. It was fascinating to watch. I won't criticize my mom, but I'll just share a quick clip from a man whose work she previously found delightful.
When she was on the receiving end, she had reason to rethink some of her tastes. Her generation loved the plays that supported this man's views.
If anyone is going into such care, and again no one has the right to require or volunteer for such "care," just make sure lots of family is around with lots of attention to signal this parent is not here to be killed.
No doubt plenty of people will find this offensive. But I find euthanasia offensive, and the truth ought never be offensive and euthanasia ought always be. To say there are some circumstances when it is necessary to place a person in such intensive care is a false dilemma. First hard cases make bad law. Second, there is nothing wrong with an elder, or anyone, dying at home, as part of life.
But there is a business opportunity, the point of this blog, coming up. But first, let's note we are all (except me, because I am exempt) now in the system for which my mom volunteered. The republicans will never repeal this law, any more than Obama would ever end the wars. Let's look at the first line in the Obamacare act, which the Bishops generally support. The first sentence is a lie.
This Act puts individuals, families and small business owners in control of their health care.
You have no control when anything is mandated. We are born with control over our health care, which is diet and exercise. But the act is using health care to mean medicine, and on two levels this is a lie: one is you cannot pick what medicine you want from whom you want, nor have USA citizens been able to do so for about a century, since the state has taken over the definition of medicine. Second, what the state now calls medicine is no such thing. Aricept is good medicine to the state. The state gradually eroded peoples control over healthcare, and the act ended it. I find the farther from state control, the better the medicine, and happily I can still go overseas if I want good medicine.
So what is the business business opportunity? Most wealth in the United States is concentrated in the hands of women, because they outlive their husbands. As women age, and they live in larger houses, someone should set up a website to match elderly women with young families. The young families move into the home of the elderly women, and for free rent integrate the elderly women into the family life. Mom lives better longer, the kids get intergenerational benefits, and the young family is motivated to keep mom as hale as long as possible to keep the benefit of the arrangement in place. It is also a sort of benign redistribution of wealth as the equity in mom's house is in effect to some degree transferred to the young couple who is saving money while living free with mom.
The Catholic bishops are worried about their "rights" and missing the point that what they support is not medicine. But as the Vatican keeps telling US Catholics, "You are on your own." And helpfully they list small business on par with hospitals and schools in doing good in society. So solve this crisis with a small business matching mom and young families.
I was the last person to talk to my mom, and the last person to see her alive. She was scheduled to be moved the next day to the brand new retirement home highrise with a view of the bay, something she was promised when she signed up, a fabulous state of the art facility. I was flying to Hawaii the next day. We chatted about her big move and how in the morning we'd both be in paradise.
When I landed at Kona I got a call from my sister mom had died. Funny, that last conversation.
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You will recall the bible story in which the babylonians tried to build a tower so high that God was obliged to strike them unintelligible to each other for fear they would consider themselves omnipotent.
Rabbi Lapin (I always want to say Levine, his predecessor as to peripateticism in the Seattle area) wrote a on the tower of Babel, an extended sermon to edify the contemporary mind.
Anyone who approaches the field of economics quickly learns that there too, all is babel. There are no set definitions of money, rent, profit, loans, credit, interest, corporation, banking or even "value." This is a field with pretenses of being science.
Economics as a separate field emerged about 250 years ago, as the restrictions on usury were relaxed. Moral Philosophers, who began to replace theologians as the public intellectuals, headed off into brave new worlds where usury was not a crime. Devoid of that one restraint, thereafter there was no restraint. Specious definitions abounded, sophistry carried the day. No one economist could quite communicate clearly with another. It is as though once mankind had decided with economics there were no limits to the heights they could hit, they were again struck unintelligible to each other.
Disaster followed disaster.
Let's examine one tiny, specific controversy from 250 years ago, free banking. First, we must understand at this point there was no definition of either "free" or "banking." The controversy centered on whether one could issue more currency for circulation than the amount that represented what money (defined as gold and silver at that moment) the bank had on deposit.
Feelings were extreme on this point.
People against this practice called for free banking. People for this practice called for free banking. You read that right, both sides called for free banking.
Up to this point the practice of issuing more currency than you had backed by gold and silver was often forbidden by law, so people who wanted to do it wanted the "free" in free banking to mean free of govt, and free to practice what we call fractional reserve banking, where you issue more currency than you can redeem. The wanted to be free of govt forbiddence.
Now at times government did allow it, and so the people against it also called themselves "free bankers" to get away from government allowing it.
So we have people at opposite ends of an argument using the exact same terms to advance their opposite agendas. It actually is even more complicated, and you can read details here.
Who knows if we'll ever be able to carry on a sensible conversation about economics. Maybe if we forswear usury, we'll begin to understand each other again.
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Here are a half dozen or so lessons taught in business schools and MBA programs that simply are not true. I suppose it does not matter if you are going to work for a company that will be bailed out anyway, but I encounter people starting businesses who have these ideas inculcated, to their detriment. So let’s sort them out.
1. Money is green pieces of paper with dead presidents. No, that is just a tally, and probably debt. Money is a commodity used as a medium of exchange, while retaining its property as a store of value. Today it is gold and silver. Everything else is some version of a tally, as part of some cosmic balance sheet. It matters if at any point you need money and all you have is tallies. When the state seized citizens gold in 1933 and forbid its ownership, an exception was made for international traders, since that was still money, as it is today.
2. The only basis upon which one can compete is price. Not true. There is also design as a competitive basis. Monopoly is by definition not a competition.
3. Service is a competitive advantage. We can sell products and services, but “service” as in “service level”, the other sense as an attribute a company may hold as an organization, is never a competitive advantage. All industries have a service level. Walmart has a service level, similar to ToysRUs. Saks has a service level similar to Needless Markups. Service is a standard item on offer, not a competitive item. Your job is to match exactly the service level of everyone in your industry.
4. The same with quality. Quality is an atribute in relation to the good or service you sell. Quality is never a competitive item. All industries have a quality level. Walmart has a quality level, similar to ToysRUs. Saks has a quality level similar to Needless Markups. Quality is a standard item on offer, not a competitive item. Your job is to match exactly the quality level of everyone in your industry.
5. Free trade agreements help. Talk about oxymoron! No one has to “agree” to free trade. Free trade is voluntary and unilateral. The moment one says “agreement” it is no longer free trade. “Free trade agreements” are where the violence of the state is ordered to the end of making life easier for crybaby billionaires who do not want to have to compete.
We have free trade between Oregon and California. It takes a whole paragraph to explain it in the US Constitution. Nafta started out at 14,000 pages, and an army of eunuchs add to it constantly.
Free trade is always voluntary and unilateral. And it always makes a country stronger. But no state entity uses the term honestly.
6. Cheap labor is a factor in international trade. No it is not. There is no evidence of that, nor could it be in fact or theory. The idea of cheap labor is entirely a matter of social conditioning, a false dilemma to keep USA labor on the ropes. The lie hides the real reason for most international trade, which is tax avoidance and money laundering.
7. Comparative advantage is the theory that some countries naturally have an advantage over others in some particular area of production. The upshot is you can use this knowledge as you reckon market possibilities. The fact is in reality comparative advantage is unworkable as an idea, since state intervention ruins any natural advantages a country may have. As long as there is a state to intervene in a market, comparative advantage will never obtain.
Tell me what you learned in business school that turned out to be not true in the real world.
john@johnspiers.com
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The United State of America is the only country in the world with a constitution that still explicitly provides for slavery, and not just any slavery, the slavery we all learned about in grade school. This is the real America, the one we see around us, the one Louis Farrakhan understands when he warns blacks that when they sit down to negotiate with whites, they have no idea who they are up against. Just so.
If you want to understand how the USA works, follow Farrakhan. I understand he is very much widely hated, but please name one thing he has said that can be refuted.
And if you do not believe slavery is still alive and well in USA, read Oshinsky on worse than slavery. Farrakhan says blacks do not understand who they are up against. Do you know who the blacks are up against?
This ain't no party... this ain't no disco... Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
