Farrakhan: USA's Best Orator

And probably the smartest man in USA.  Here he is addressing a group noting, as Jesus and Pogo did, the problem is us.  I've read the classic orators, listed to MLK and others, nobody comes near him for wit and delivery.   Listen to his riff on Jesse Jackson's embarrassing comment about being glad the footfalls behind him were white kids, not black kids.  The delivery is riveting, he's upset his audience, and then he goes in for a brilliant plot twist.  And of course is is generally right. The guy is absolutely the best.




Excerpts form this speech are being selectively highlighted on racist websites.



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Enrollments and Entrepreneurs

Anonymous checks in -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/05/u-s-businesses-are-being-destroyed-faster-than-theyre-being-created/?hpid=z5
"The American economy is less entrepreneurial now than at any point in the last three decades."  

John, I was just curious, is your course enrollment (both off and on-line) increasing or decreasing over the years?
I think think that people believe a lot of persistent misconceptions about entrepreneurship. They think it's too risky, need a lot of money to start, they need a really big idea, etc. 

Noncredit enrollments have been decreasing as the enrollments in credit programs are increasing.   The people who would be taking classes are now taking credit classes.  Java coders are learning to be roofers, roofers are learning to be java coders, and they are graduating with 20k, 40k, 100K in debt and no job prospects.   And they cannot bankrupt a student loan.  Trapped!

This is not accidental.  Capitalism needs war when it fails, and it fails regularly.  A dispirited, trapped people need a strongman to lead them into war.

Yes, the misperception that business start-up is risky is social conditioning... the idea of risk is a part of business is very recent and western, it can be traced to the legalization of the crime of usury, in which bankers could lend credit as "money" with no logical limit, so they had to introduce the idea of risk to sop up all that excess credit.

The other odd idea is health insurance must be, and it must be paid for by an employer.  In spite of the relentless efforts of big biz, big govt, labor, religion, academia and so on to socialize medicine in USA, there are still plenty of options if one is struck by malady.

We have been socially conditioned to fear inconvenience or set-back.  Odd that, since set-back if self-employed has so many more options then set-back as an employee.

Entrepreneurs take no risks.  They get rid of risk.  People believing they are avoiding risk by getting a degree find themselves unemployed and heavily in debt, with the military as the only option out. Ironic.

Yes, enrollments are down, but the students that are enrolling are a tad bit more realistic and driven I think.  We'll see in time.  They are fun to work with, and a main reason I teach is to keep on the cutting edge.  These people are keeping me there...

All those people going to school could be starting up businesses with no resources and no debt.

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End USA Isolationism Now!

The Pope brought up the problem of unemployed youth.  One reason we have so many unemployed youth is we had the last three booms, all now busted, and they siphoned off at least two generations of entrepreneurs into fake economies.  Mish reports having an education does not matter as to whether or not you are employed.

We also now have a generation of retiring baby boomers are expecting to be supported by a generation that cannot support itself.  The generation that made sure the present generation cannot work expects to be supported by that generation.  Are those chickens coming home to roost?

There is a very simple solution to this, deregulation: medicine, banking, education, housing... the more government involvement, the more benefit.  It does not have to be all, only one would do the trick.

But that is not what will happen.  When the USA was formed, one thing for sure was we would have no standing army.  Because with an army, the founders knew, all economic problems are solved by war.  Today we say wars are because of religion, but the fact is wars are because of armies.

Since the USA has the largest military in the world, the rest of the world has militaries.  Because USA has soldiers in over 200 countries, USA is more and more isolated from the people around the world.  There are so many countries where ordinary Americans cannot go because the USA has destabilized the countries.  When we cannot trade, we become isolated.

On the other hand, there is such a long list of countries we once could not speak to, but now we are building relations.

We make celebrities out of soldiers. The recruiters tell young people they will be celebrities if they join, knowing full well a military works only if individualism is crushed and you are are blended into a uniform whole.  For this reason you'll see and hear people saying to any person in a uniform, or even claiming to ever have been in uniform "thank you for your service."  No one makes any distinctions, because they cannot, all military is all celebrity, all the time.  But for the people who were told they would be celebrity and find out they are uniform, there is a conflict.  Among these "celebrities," active and veteran, there is a Sandy Hook number of suicides ever day.  Do a study.

This is passing strange, for before the enlightenment, never before in history were soldiers celebrated. They were universally feared and hated.  And very strange is right-wing Christians who reverence these celebrities they created and then give them praise.  It's idolatry. 

We can make friends, we can deregulate, but we will not.  Because we have a standing military.  Given our problems, the easiest thing to do is go to war.  Poverty, unemployment, isolationism.    Thank you for your service?  No, let's end the isolationism, lets make peace and prosperity, let's deregulate the USA so all of our soldiers have plenty to do when we declare victory and bring them home.

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Why We Will Not Have Prosperity

The problem with prosperity is it cannot be perceived in advance.  As mentioned earlier, the root of the word is Latin for "hope."  We think of prosperity as the house, the car, then bank account, stock portfolio, the club, the vacation when in fact it is prospective:  open opportunity for what is good.

The hope-root of the word is a theological virtue, this captures the sense of that:

1818 The virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness which God has placed in the heart of every man; it takes up the hopes that inspire men's activities and purifies them so as to order them to the Kingdom of heaven; it keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude. Buoyed up by hope, he is preserved from selfishness and led to the happiness that flows from charity.

It is all prospective: aspirations, inspirations, expectations, happiness.  Bastiat did a modern turn on this in 1850:

I mean Foresight. For this purpose I shall examine the consequences of certain economical phenomena, by placing in opposition to each other those which are seen, and those which are not seen.

As Bastiat demonstrates in a series of examples, we cannot see what good would occur in freedom.  And freedom is like that.  Unimagined good comes from it.  A recent example of this was the deregulation of telephones by Hero-President Jimmy Carter.  There was no foreseeing the economic advancement of computers tied to phones and cell phones getting dirt cheap when he made The Move.  No one saw it coming.  But the temporary pain opened up to much good for many.  (I recall telephone company employees calling in talk radio descrying deregulation and the inconvenience to their careers.)  No Jimmy Carter, no Steve Jobs, no Amazon.com, no email, no internet.

The choices we have right now are -

X. Murder Afghanis for their natural resources so 20 year employees can have 40 year vacations

or

Y. Deregulate medicine.

94% of those who vote pick X.  In a democracy, the 94% is actually a minority, but as Thoreau lamented

the war to be “the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool.” 

Thoreau was talking about the Mexican war, where Southern farmers stole territory from Mexico to plant cotton crops that had depleted US farmlands.  And General Grant said the US Civil War was Divine Retribution on the South for their war on Mexico.

The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war.  Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions.  We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times.

Indeed, we can read headlines and see actions, which assure those who depend on plan X.  "We Bomb Yemen (Vacation Continues Unabated)" The vote is rigged to keep plan X the course that is elected, but that is no excuse, since we all enjoy what paltry returns we get from plan X.

Lack of imagination, lack of hope, leads to plan X.  Democracy thrives on lack of imagination, for it allows the few to look and around and decide what to steal.  That does not take much imagination. We did it in 1846, and by 1860 we were paying the price.  So let's see... 2002 plus 14 is 2016.  So whoever the next president is, expect real war.  We never learned our lesson.

If we only deregulated medicine, we could avoid war.  We'd have prosperity.

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Does An Education Guarantee Unemployment?

For many this is true.

Mish has an good article on college graduates going delinquent on their student loans.  Employers as a matter of insurance requirements check the credit history of prospective employees.  To note that someone is delinquent on a student loan is to disqualify them for employment.  That is scenario one in which an education results in employment disqualification.

Another scenario is say you "invested" $50,000 in an education.  The cost of the education, as financed, must be amortized over the life of the worker, in this case at 5% (I know, too low) at 30 years working, is $268.41 every month.  And not so fast, that is after tax.  Before tax dollars, that with which you are nominally paid, is more like $400 a month you must command.  In many instances, the $400 extra you require is too much for the employer, or in any event, there are similarly qualified people who do not need the extra $400.  And note, the more you make the more taxes you drain off, so paying you an extra $400 costs your employer at least an extra $30 in SS contributions every month!  It just doesn't quit.

Now normally if you malinvest the problem is solved by bankruptcy.  If you discharge the debt, then you do not have the sunk cost to amortize.  But welcome to capitalism, you cannot discharge student loans in a bankruptcy.

Now, I disagree with Mish that a English degree is pointless.  Mish is a raw talent, but he does not have the whole picture.  My three daughters are happily employed at what best challenges their minds largely because I forbid they get a "voch-tech" education at college.  So one has a comparative religion degree, another is graduating in Latin (she snuck in an apparel AA while in high school, the rebel) and the last in English. What more could a parent hope for? An education is about developing the human mind so it can see alternatives and be a lifelong learning machine.  Any parents who advise their kids to get a business, pre-law or pre-medicine BA should be criticized, and ratted out to child-protective services.  Let the master's degree be the voc-tech degree. Never waste an opportunity to get an education!

An education does not cost as much as they charge, they just charge that much because there are "loans" disguised as free money to be sopped up.  I know from kids in college all that money is not going into the classroom, it is going to admin triple dipping in wages and pensions and gold-plating smoothie machines.  I see a new student dorm with exercise machines.  "What?! You want exercise?!  I'll show you exercise...!?  Today we are going to learn to dig a latrine. Start swinging that pick and you will not notice the cold. Meet my teaching assistant, associate professor Bull Whip."

IN any event, it is not necessary to take a loan to get an education.  Another requirement I gave my daughters was "no loans."  Loans do not make an education possible, they just make it easier at the front end, but at a cost that society cannot bear.

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Eileen Fisher and Business Start-up

I was sent a link on an unrelated topic which took me to a background site for the retailer Eileen Fisher.  What a beautifully laid out presentation of the company.  While I am most interested in how a company does what it does, there is some reference there to the company's charitable acts, which center on "empowering women and girls," which I am not sure what that means.  In the Eileen Fisher case, it is grants to worthy projects, no doubt all perspicacious choices.

At the same time, I have a I received a missive from Rabbi Daniel Lapin.  You can too.  But to wit:

A poor, impoverished widow approached the prophet Elisha for help. (II Kings 4:1) He asked her what she had in her house.  Ancient Jewish wisdom indicates that he sent her to search her house several times until she finally discovered a previously overlooked tiny bottle of oil.

The next requirement necessary for a miracle to occur, said Elisha, was that she should borrow many containers, which she did.  He directed her to pour oil from her small bottle into the large drums. 

Miraculously, the oil continued to pour from the miniature bottle until all the borrowed containers were filled with oil.

We know that Elisha wanted to help the widow and that he could summon Divine aid--a miracle.  So why did he force her to search her home repeatedly until she found the tiny bottle of oil?  Once he was going to use a miracle, why didn’t he just make oil flow from a tree or other source?

 Furthermore, why make her borrow containers?  Couldn’t the same God who supplied plenty oil also have supplied many containers?

We study Scripture to extract specific life-lessons we must learn from each story.  These seven verses teach us two things about miracles. 

First, in order to trigger a miracle that can transform your life you have to find within your ‘house’ which is to say, within yourself, some small reserve of resources.  Maybe it is one last bit of energy and optimism.  Perhaps it is the last bit of capital you still possess.  You have to search until you find your tiny bottle of oil.

Second, you must have ‘containers’ into which the blessings brought by the miracle can flow. 

Imagine a man praying to meet a woman with whom to share his life.  But other than prayer, he takes no steps to trigger an encounter.  Furthermore, he has no job and no home and is nowhere near ready to get married.  He has violated the rules of Elisha.  He has failed to find within himself even a small catalyst for transformation.  Even if God brings him the woman of his dreams, he isn’t ready to do anything about it.  He has failed to have ready ‘containers’ for the blessing.

We want so many things: love, financial security, health, abundance, fulfillment and more. Yet, too often, we fail to reach deep enough inside ourselves and offer even more than we think we possibly can. Sometimes, we forget to ready enough containers so that our blessings don’t go to waste.

Now, this story has me thinking too.  Here again, a woman is the subject.  This woman is afraid.  She has reckoned her material wealth accurately, and decided this was all there was to reality.  Yikes, down to a small bottle of oil!  And the creditors will enslave my kids. (Since women could not form debts, her late husband left her in this situation. How often do women find their families threatened by the failure of men in our society which has abandoned women in law and culture?)

I see the tiny bottle of oil as the one thing the woman has.  She has decided it is not enough and implored Elisha for help.  Elisha goes straight to the one thing she has, the oil.  He tells her to borrow vessels.  Now think about that.  She is in such dire straights that she is about to lose her sons (and her future) and she is supposed to borrow from others?  Loans at this time carried no interest (usury) but they were voluntary.  Containers were hand made.  Loaning vessels to this woman may result in loss of vessels.  She is in a jam, she must be even more vulnerable.

Here is a hard lesson: being self-employed is also personal transformation.  Yes, you may go bust, but the failure has meaning.  Not some trite "learning from mistakes" but changing because you failed to use your talents properly, in particular, to serve others with your talents.  It is scary, and even harder to do when the system you are in makes you money.  Why change?

In our epoch men have abandoned women and children in law and culture.  "Empowering" women and girls is a response.  Eileen Fisher is empowering women and girls.  Elisha empowered (by the grace of God) a desperate widow.  

In capitalism power, and the illusion thereof, is ever concentrated into ever fewer hands.  This power, or sense thereof, corrupts.  The first bonds to loosen are family relationship bonds.  Perceive yourself powerful, and perceive yourself entitled. Women and kids find themselves on their own.  E. Fisher and Elisha do what they can, by the grace of God.  Men can stop seeking power, stop supporting illegitimate regimes, and get to work providing a value in the marketplace.  Then the normal act of women in business would not be mischaracterized as an act of empowerment, in the face of economic disadvantage.

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Start-Up & Personal Transformation

But John, what if I just want financial independence just enough enough money to stop worrying about it. Can you be little more specific about the lifestyle echo? 

The plaint reveals the problem. "But" is a reservation.  "I" is orientation.  "want" is self-referential. "independence" is lack of responsibility.  This anonymous question reflects a well-indoctrinated American.  This person is trained to be a tax-paying drone.  No wonder he wants out.  But he is heading the wrong way.

What are you thankful for today?  All the good things are the result of people who indeed did start with a problem they themselves experienced, but then related it to the world around them.  Solving problems not only for oneself, but others too.

Easier said than done.  The big challenge in life always comes from within.  So personal transformation is key to success.

I am not in the personal transformation business.  It is more than I can handle just looking a the process of start-up.  But I do understand that integral with start-up is personal transformation.  But that topic is well covered by so many others.  Publishing has Houses devoted to the topic, every book store has a section on it, and what is religion except a format of personal transformation, with Truth claims?  My best advice on picking this important component is "we are obliged to respond to the religion to which we are called."  Especially atheism.  As part of this effort, get a personal transformation regime in place.  if so, then that in part is also lifestyle element.

Money is a medium of exchange, and in the measure it is also a commodity, a store of value.  It is only there to pay for things.  Love of money is the root of all evil.  If you worry about money, something is wrong.  If that is your focus something is wrong.

A lifestyle has to be paid for, but most of life is exchange of some sort, obligations formed and discharged.  Donuts and coffee are no charge at fellowship after church service, but you are expected to  meet and greet.  To sweep in, grab a donut and coffee and flee is to violate the implied obligation.  (Nothing is really free).  If you order a Starbucks, when you pay your debt is cancelled.  No further obligations.

In both instances, it is about a cup of coffee, and relationships.  At church you are developing relationships with like-minded souls, for support.  At Starbucks you are availing yourself of a caffeine jolt so you may love the morning.  In both instances you got your coffee.  But each represents a very different lifestyle.  I make no recommendations, just to illustrate differences, two options within an infinity of options.

It is adding your own unique contribution, which no one else can, that creates the + 1 to all known options available.  It starts with you and it relates to all others. or as many as you are able to reach.  There is a feedback loop.  Do this, please more people.  See computers, Apple.

You have to work, no matter what.  Without customers, you've got nothing.  An employee has a customer, his employer.  The employee provide vendor financing as well, working a week or two before being paid, extending credit to the employer, in violation of biblical teaching, and worth hundreds of billions to industry every year.

Employees work to get money to pay for lifestyle.  They work to make someone else's hopes and dreams come true, and then go home, cook dinner, watch TV and go to sleep.  Weekends they do laundry and run errands.  What little time is left for living they desperately borrow money to approximate a life.  They need money to pay for things that say to others "Man, am I living!"

The shift to self-employment is "Here is the problem I am working on.  What do you think?"  With everything oriented around that, the question of money does not come up.  To be short a few C notes is just life, so go unload some containers on the docks.  No doubt you needed some time in the fresh air.  After you've done that, get back to work.  With everything oriented toward the problem you are solving, everything else becomes secondary.  Where you live, what you eat, how you dress, what you read, what you call entertainment, who your friends are.  Self-employed see a nice house with a pool and think "debtor's prison."  Now the irony is the self-employed make so much anyway they pay cash for a house just to shut the wife up.  All kidding aside, when I hear founders complain about no time to sail their yacht, ski out of their chalet, or whatever ever else,  I understand it is their choice, they run the business, they prefer the work to the money.

To say "I want just enough money for financial independence and to stop worrying about it," well, that is why we have places like Google and Boeing.  That is just living for the city.


But that ain't livin.  Life is about seeing the problems around you and responding to them, and finding joy in that.  Money can be A problem in life, but it is not THE problem.  There is meaning in suffering, that's the paradox.



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Experience Is The Best Unemployment Insurance

Mish Shedlock has a expose on the explosion of employment which is not covered by unemployment insurance.

133% of the jobs created since January 2009 are not covered. Employment rose by less than 5 million while uncovered employment rose by over 6.5 million.

An observation Mish does not make, but I will, is that is a whole lotta people who are working without unemployment insurance.  People are going to get used to that.

Mish notes that in his state he must pay for unemployment insurance but he is not covered since he is self-employed.  Here in Washington I am not covered by unemployment insurance but the self-employed are not taxed for it either.

Being self-employed, over the years, there are times I find I need to get some work to make some money, or at least not blow through savings.  Consulting and teaching are two means to that end.  Both depend on experience.

I've also worked on once-in-a-lifetime projects like a major Chinese art exhibition where again my experience recommended me.

The experience comes from work.

Look at your job right now.

1. Do you do something that others would pay you to do?

2. Are you passionate about what you do (suffer in that good way)?

3. Does your work give you joy?

If you answer no to any of the above, you need to get self-employed.  You probably are probably covered by unemployment insurance, but that will run out at some point if and when you need to draw on it.

Eligibility for unemployment insurance, and disability insurance, and social security is sure to be tightened in the next four years, one way or another, as sure as taxes will go up.   One way or another, hoping in the state will lead to unmet expectations.

Get something going now, anything, the opportunities are wide open, get passionate, find that joy, and develop the best unemployment insurance possible: experience.


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Tolstoy On Anarchy

After 25 years of teaching on the side, I am more convinced than ever self-employment is also about personal transformation.  That transformation is best advanced in proportion that there is no state.

Tolstoy:

In the 1900 essay, "On Anarchy", Tolstoy wrote; "The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without Authority, there could not be worse violence than that of Authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require the protection of governmental power ... There can be only one permanent revolution—a moral one: the regeneration of the inner man." 

It keeps coming back to 1 Samuel 8.

¹⁹ But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. ²⁰ Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”

As long as you want someone else to fight your battles, you are trapped.  As long as you want a state, you want others to fight your battles.  This is a distortion of the free market, in which others gladly provide for your needs, for which you trade your skills.  But with a state, there is no need for personal transformation, and we are all denied the good of your native talents.

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Self Employment & Self-Actualization

Regulations are designed to keep some people out of a given field, and to herd people as customers into those providers.  It is a discouraging system, in which very many people default to "finding a job."  From there they are living a series of compromises, a narrow range of choices that in one way or another contribute to the hopes and dreams of someone else.  So what?  Doesn't a merchant do the same thing?

Work both unifies and creates.  If you take a job, you are necessarily tasked with a narrow range of activities that serve the purposes of an employer.  Whatever your range of capabilities, your employer does not want you to do your own thing, set your on schedule, and use your own judgment in meeting the needs of the customers.  You employer wants you to know the product line and the policy manual, and stay within procedures.  Even within a company like Apple or Google, your freedom is woefully constrained.  Your creativity is compassed, and your ability to fully engage in the needs of those whom you encounter is narrowed to the product range of the business for which you work.  I will say businesses pay employees a very high wage for so very little of what you have to offer.

With self-employment every fiber of every aspect of your life, your body, your mind, your spirit is taxed to the breaking point as you being all you have to bear on the problem your customer is experiencing.  Self-employed,  you unite with your customer and create what is needed.  And self-employment is a process in which your work is the medium where you ever improve your ability to create things that ever more please customers.  Change is constant as you get better at pleasing a wider range of people.

Self-improvement is a popular category in publishing, with whole sections of self-improvement books, quotes self improvement, improvement quotes, and so on.  There is no better situation in which to pursue self-improvement than in self-employment given that all improvement is in relation to your ability to relate to others, and business is about unifying and creating in service to others.

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All Hail Stephen N S Cheung! 張五常 所有冰雹

A chief crafter of the econo-legal school of Ronald Coase is one Stephen N S Cheung.  Both Coase and Stiglitz cited Cheung in their Nobel Prize acceptance speeches.

Cheung is another one of that crop of Hong Kong born adepts who rose through the ranks on merit, crowning his achievements with a phd from UCLA.  There is a federal warrant for his arrest in the USA, or anywhere in the world where he can be nabbed, for failure to appear.

But there is also one for Marc Rich, another fellow who worked against state policy and benefitted the American economy to no end.

Not only is Cheung a brilliant economist, he also made money in business, something not seen since Thales. He had two gigs that I know about, one an "antique" store and another was the serially launching of restaurants that he would then flip for a tidy profit.  The federal warrant is on a tax-evasion question, but he is notorious for the antique store, called Thesaurus, although as part of a settlement he was dropped from any suits.

Now, for one whose second language (perhaps fourth or fifth, I don't know) is English to name a store selling fake antiques "Thesaurus" is to demonstrate a wickedly funny command of the English language.

A year or two before the "fraud" was exposed, I had wandered into the store and was delighted to see very good copies of ancient art selling for $30,000, such as a Tang tricolor horse.  Since I tend to find the best sources in the world, I had the same thing in my house, but I paid about $75.00, retail.  I asked the clerk, a kind woman, how come the price was $30,000 when I can get them for $75.00.  She earnestly assured me they were antiques.  I believe she believed it.

One of my favorite lines to hear as a buyer is "one of a kind - how many do you want?"

I want to pause and note an interesting phenomena.  Grass is slang for marijuana.  Selling marijuana is illegal in USA.  Some people offer "grass for sale" meaning marijuana.  If the police catch someone selling marijuana, regardless of what they call it, the police will make an arrest.  It has happened that a person has offered grass for sale, and the police make an arrest, only to find it is in fact grass, that is, lawn trimmings.  The fellow offering "grass" was perpetrating a fraud on stoners.  It can be risky business, but the courts have ruled that selling grass, at any price, no matter the implications, is not illegal.  But note, the activity on the part of the wise guy selling "grass" as marijuana to stoners is clearly intentional fraud.   Cops and courts don't care.  Keep that in mind.

The antique thing is so confusing at times.  The Code of Federal Regulations requires new armoires built from old wood be identified as antiques for Customs declaration purposes.  And then, they are duty free, since they are antiques.  Well, no one would call such a thing an antique, but such a designation requires that the Chinese Antiquities Export Bureaus stamp documents and affix their wax seal on new furniture of old wood to be exported from China and imported into USA.  I have a Mongol armoire, of my design, so marked up, in my living room.  Whole lotta antique importing going on.

When I was importing rugs, the Chinese wove some new rugs thin and of old designs and washed them in tea, and called them "imitation antique" rugs.  Just so.  And I saw some gwailo retailers selling the same for $10,000 when $1500 was a fair price.  Don't blame the Chinese, they marked the rugs proper.

I was in Gump's admiring another Tang horse copy, and the clerk earnestly assured me it was an antique.  In this case, it was the fair price of $75.00, as is my experience at Gump's where everything is fairly priced.  So there was no financial "fraud" going on, just a clerk who was somewhat uninformed.  I merely pointed out that an antique going for $75.00 was unlikely, plus China was not allowing real antiques out of the country.  I left it at that, assuming he would seek clarification from a buyer eventually, and be fully schooled.

But back to Stephen N S Cheung.  As I understand it, the fellow is obliged to remain in China, as Marc Rich is in Switzerland, for fear the US Feds will nab him from some compliant country.  For what?  Some dispute over taxes?  At 76 years old, I can imagine he has better things to do with his time than fight the Feds.

But to me where he is most interesting is in his experiments in retail fraud.  I mention in a free market that excess wealth is very unlikely, what with competition and no support for usury.  It is possible to become a billionaire legitimately at the small biz level, as Ty Warner did selling BeanyBabies, but then one has the problem of keeping it.  Gandhi recommended the "one-generation industrialist," that is one who is so talented ought to give it all away, rather than burden his bewildered children.  (Our laws on charitable organizations permit the impression that "it is all given away" when in fact it is kept in the family: Rockefeller Foundation.)

The free market will redistribute excess individual wealth soon enough anyway.  Right now we have 5th & 4th party taxpayers mulcted to support a vast army of 3rd party "law enforcement" to involve themselves in disputes between 2nd and 1st parties, such as an aggrieved Microsoft millionaire who got taken for $30k while trying to acquire an antique at a retail store.  Why not let that 5th and 4th, who are now obliged to pay for the 3rd parties, decide for themselves if they care?  I suspect they would not.  By paying $30,000 for a $75 dollar horse figurine,  the excess wealth of the Microsoft centimillionaire is being distributed far and wide as he pursues imagined entitlements (I should own Chinese antiquities).  It seems to me that $30,000 is about the right price to learn that Chinese antiquities, indeed all antiquities are most valuable in situ, so they can be related to all of the other finds in situ.  Once removed, fantastic knowledge disappears.  Sure, buy a good copy, but incalculable harm is done when the real thing is carried of to grace the coffee table of some millionaire.

Let me argue Cheung was teaching the world about the harm done by the antiquities trade, as he was redistributing wealth. Talk about multitasking!  Now my opinion matters only as far as my pocketbook, but the opinions of all pocketbooks collectively would be condign punishment for Cheung, even if it came to be no one cared about the Microsoft centimillionaire's plight.  It would be about as controversial as someone selling lawn trimmings to stoners.  If upon revelation of his selling fake antiques, far and wide in Seattle people proclaimed "All hail Stephen N S Cheung!" so be it.

Under a free market there is also the very real possibility the Mr. Cheung would find himself so shunned by the rest of us he could only find relief through settlement with his aggrieved customers.  This is along the lines of the law of Moses, familiar today in Sharia law.

Sure is cheaper than the crazy system we have now.

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Unemployment is Voluntary

One matter keeping the USA from economic recovery is our labor laws and minimum wage laws, but another is the idea of labor theory of value.

While communists absolutely subscribe to this theory, and Catholic social teaching seems to do so,  the anarchist website also seems to endorse the labor theory of value, 


The labor theory of value says something is worth the amount of time it take labor to make it.  The free market says the value is what a customer will pay for it.  Which makes more sense?


Marx also conflated free markets and capitalism, when in fact they are enemies.


The labor theory of value is emotional blackmail economics.  "I worked hard!" cries the school teacher.  


From this error many more flow.


Happily I am not obliged to subscribed to the views of some anarchist name Davey. 


In anarchy customers call the shots, not labor, any more than the bosses call the shots in anarchy. Value is subjective, and subject to marginal utility. The labor /management conflict is a false dilemma. In capitalism, the capitalists want to abuse the consumer.  In socialism the workers want to abuse the consumers.  Each has a state whose patterns and practices support whomsoever it is abusing the consumers. In anarchy, you serve others without the transaction costs imposed by the state.


So one reason we have so much unemployment is people expect that, under the labor theory of value, they should be paid a living wage, whatever that is.  So people wait to be paid what they are worth.  And while they pay for food with an EBT and collect unemployment and welfare, the rest of us are denied the good of their contribution in the form of innovation.


The primary reason why all unemployment is voluntary is that anyone can start a business.  This is something neither the catholic church nor the communist party seems to apprehend.  There is something called "self-employment."  Islam assumes this, what with Mohamet being a merchant.  One would think that as a carpenter Jesus was self-employed, but how often do Christians take seriously Jesus?


Now, I've already talked about behaving as self-employed if you are employed.  So how to get employed quickly if you are unemployed?


The first thing to do is to find the lowest level paying work you can.  Get down to Home Depot and take day labor.  Get out to the orchards to pick fruit.  Get yourself in between unemployment and demand for production.  Then work for your ten or 12 bucks and hour.


What happens is those who are paying very quickly spot who is worth what, and make offer based on that.  You will find yourself working for nothing, but you'll be working where things one way or another are being produced even if it is just cutting lawns.  And from here, you will rise to where you are most productive.  If the person paying you is not right in their assessment of your value, you can compete.  


But in any case you are not unemployed.


I picked fruit one year with a view to getting into exporting ag and it worked out pretty well.  I got a lot of insights and experience.  Now, one fellow I worked with had a racist theory of value, he paid me more than the Mexicans because I was white, although I had no chance of being as productive as they are.  Jesus said the laborer should not object if the master pays the latecomer the same as the one who worked all day.    Miguel said "We work it out in unemployment insurance."


I say the world is a crazy place, but if you are not working you are not living.  And all unemployment is voluntary.  If the market says you are not worth very much, the work your way up to more value.  Personal transformation is a big part of self-employment.


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Self-employment As A State Worker

To expand on the idea of personal transformation to self-employed from employee, let me now concentrate on the government employee.  What cannot go on will eventually stop.  The system that feeds you is defunct, and if you depend on a government pension you too will find yourself short, like a Soviet pensioner.  

The election in Wisconsin is presented as greedy union folk getting upset about a tiny adjustment to their contributions. How you are abused on right-wing radio. Indeed it looks like it by the numbers, but that is not the point.  If the state can trim a bit at the edges, there is no rational limit to what they can trim.  Although this controversy can get people worked up, it is all street theatre for the USA, but serious business to the powers that be.  The rest of the world sees that in USA one huge obligation on the USAs balance sheet, that is pension liabilities, is as good as gone.  Country’ll grow.  There is no rational limit to the cuts.

I touched on Coase and the Chicago school because it represents a rational basis for "limited government."  By eliminating property rights, and subverting the rule of law, there is a way for the state to govern with far smaller state apparatus.  The means is in place.  We know have with Facebook, Google, Oracle and so on, total information awareness.  The powers that be who control the state can now manage far more with far less resources, just as Boeing and Safeway can.  No more armies invading lands, we have hit teams.  We have  Stuxnet.  WE have drones.  Country'll grow.  Who needs health inspectors when Twitter can ascertain three people puked within minutes after eating at Jimmy's drive in?  Jimmy gets an email saying shut it down until further notice.  All by computer.

This is no brave new world. In capitalism, it is about credit, and leveraging power.  Our competitive advantage is in USA we figured out how to get people to self-report at their own expense, and then submit to the authority of the Google search results.  Who needs all these people working for the state?

This is no new trend.  I believe Hoffa was murdered in the 1970s because he saw what was coming and tried to protect union labor.  The Reagan broke PATCO in 1981, and in 1982 I was on management side negotiating the Longshoreman's west coast master contract. (I am a also a longshoreman, and paid teamster dues,  but I can be soooo mercenary!)  The strike issue was "unfunded pension liabilities." Two longshoremen were murdered.

Then came trucking deregulation and the busting of teamster pensions.  And then the airline pilots got it.  Wave after wave of private pensions were gutted, with no blood in the streets (after the early murders).  They have not come after state employee pensions first, they came last.

Tax revenues, the purpose of the state, can only be paid from productive labor. All taxes are paid by the ultimate consumer.  If you buy a Hershey bar, you are paying all of Hershey's taxes.  It is simply not possible in theory or practice to derive taxes from anyone but the end-user, no matter where in the process you collect the tax. Further, all taxes are derived from productive labor.  Only labor can pay taxes, for everything else is ephemeral,and won't count. If you work for the state, you do not pay taxes. Yes, I understand your take home pay is less than your salary because there is a deduction for "taxes." If 100% of your wages comes from taxes, then any percent paid in taxes is just laundering taxes.  It was productive labor paying taxes that paid your salary and taxes. This is the cleverest innovation yet, to mime paying taxes with money you gained from taxpayers.  This is why you are being targeted: not only do you not pay taxes, you represent a pension liability.  The free markets can repudiate its debt to the banks, or the state can back the banks and refund the banks by repudiating the state obligation to you. Take a wild guess what the decision was.  Country'll grow.

Look on the bright side, by not paying taxes, you actually have not contributed to the wars, genocide, gitmo, domestic spying, war on drugs, false imprisonment, genocide, etc... the elite always exempt themselves from taxes.

The economic landscape was hit by a tsunami, and those toxic wastes are sitting in rickety storage.  Wisconsin was just nibbling at the edges. With this minor tweaking, SEIU lost 30% of its dues paying members.  Expect this to snowball.

You can complain it is not fair, but the worm has turned the die is cast, it is over.  You may commiserate with the person who lost his home because the SEC is corrupt.  The world can be a wicked place, and that is good to know.  It is not the cards you are dealt, it is how you play the hand.

Now, to be fair, FDR warned everyone what a state union would look like, and in labor relations a house union is no union at all (and all state unions are house unions).  You had constructive notice that your pensions would not be funded.

I've dealt with individual wealth vs communal wealth here. Exceptional wealth can only occur when there is a state.  You can get rich working with or against state policy.  Bill Gates got rich computerizing the State, working with policy.  Marc Rich got individually wealthy by working against public policy, and lowering the price of gasoline in USA, all by himself.

Now, as a state worker, you have a unique perspective, an esoteric view.  You know the reality of the state.  You have ideas for accomplishing the goals of your agency which are rational and no doubt workable and efficacious. You know how it can be done better for less, the entire mission or just one part.  But you learned long ago such ideas are not welcome.  The state solves problems that do not exist, or offers huge solutions to small problems.  The powers that be are looking to cut costs to keep their role in the world. Work with the policy.  Leverage that into an income to replace the lost benefits.

If you believe your welfare is in trouble, you are sitting on a goldmine in your government job. (If you think there is no problem, then you hardly need ot think up a solution.) You already know you have countless great ideas that the your superiors reject, for systemic reasons.

And you know that if you were to act all entrepreneurial in government work, as opposed to doing so in a private business, you’d get in trouble.  But you also know you can never be fired.

But the gig is over.  Work with the new state policy.  Figure out a way to replace whatever value there was in your agency, but in the free market.  Your office may have had a budget of 200 million, but you know it can be done for $50,000 and you could likely yield $250,000 for your services.  Get crackin.'  If not you, someone else will do it.  Stake out your territory now.

Now, one thing I will not recommend is “privatization” for 2 reasons:

1, When they say privatization they mean corporatization, which is capitalism and a dreadful thing.

2. Having Republicans waste people and treasure on Republicans as opposed to the state is no improvement.  Set up something that is within your means so you own it, and contributes to communal wealth rather than individual wealth. Or do so with a group, as described in the case of REI in the same article cited above.  Isn’t that what you originally, ideally thought you were getting in to with state service?

Don't think for a second that this is only the wascawwy wepubwicans. The democrats are every bit as committed to this change.  It is about power.  This will only accelerate when Hillary is president.

It is no secret to people outside the government that there are people who hope to move up inside the government by “pushing the envelope.”  Those people in the Ag department who run raids on raw milk farmers with swat teams, those department of education people who order shotguns, are all hoping to rise up the ladder with the bad guys in state government.  The people willing to make “hard choices.”    You see prosecutors put countless innocent people behind bars to make a name for themselves.  I am not talking about that.

That stuff is expensive, so what do we see?  We see cops, prosecutors, jailers all taking constant disrespectful treatment.  We are being socially conditioned to disrespect them so it is easier for the powers that be to dispossess them too.  Wisconsin exempted police and firefighters from the changes.  Divide and conquer.

Here is an idea: a key mechanism in our freedom is the warrant.  Make a database of judges and the warrants they issue.  Load up police reports on warrant service.  Then load up the outcome of the case built in the warrant.  The result is objective data on the perspicacity of a judge.  Get kickstarter funding.

I am talking about seeing an opportunity where you were told no.  Instead of county health inspectors, create a org that self-polices a restaurant association.  Who needs state health inspectors?  The restaurants at casinos on Indian reservations are not inspected by the city country state or feds, and they have served billions of meals without a single case of food poisoning.  But people do want 3rd party assurance of cleanliness.  You do it.

Some rules:  Do not break the rules of the law.  Keep people informed.  I bet your supervisors will help if only to see how you do.  You are a pioneer reporting back form over the hills.

I recall a small town USA mayor who took an official exchange trip to China.  His report on his return, “Why, the problems in communist China are exactly the same as here!”  Precisely.  Maybe the international trade angle is consulting on change.

What workable ideas do you have that will never fly in government?  Share them here and will let them be critiqued, and get advice on how to test them out.  Let me know so I can share some with your peers.

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Anarchy & Property Rights

I’ve given quick definitions of anarchy before, if only to guide people away form the “bomb-thrower” image the name conjures up, and toward a right definition and thus an appreciation for an idea one might otherwise miss.. 

Here is a website that does dismiss the bombthrower image, and explicates the views of very many writers on anarchy.

Although this site is generally very good, it seems to cover some aspect from different points of view, and they have Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Chomsky among many others.  In some ways it gets some elements wrong, but maybe that is just being comprehensive in reporting.  I’ll break this into several critiques.

What happens in capitalism is by means of usury always and rents sometimes is exploiters aggregate enough money and power to buy the commanding heights and establish patterns and practices in laws that ever aggregate more power unto themselves.  Just so.  Given this, the bugaboo for socialists is property, rents, profits (which I'll deal with later.)

I think there are some elements that must be in place when discussing an alternative in patterns and practices to what we have now, what generally call capitalism.  If one is to suggest an alternative, it must be something working right now, or is well documented as to having worked at some point.  It must not require a new man, or some men being eliminated.  And it must no require force or fraud.  With that in mind, let’s look at property under anarchy.  Here is a definition:

This is also the case with individualist anarchists whose defence of certain forms of property did stop them criticising key aspects of capitalist property rights. As Jeremy Jennings notes, the "point to stress is that all anarchists, and not only those wedded to the predominant twentieth-century strain of anarchist communism have been critical of private property to the extent that it was a source of hierarchy and privilege." He goes on to state that anarchists like Tucker and Spooner "agreed with the proposition that property was legitimate only insofar as it embraced no more than the total product of individual labour." ["Anarchism", Contemporary Political Ideologies, Roger Eatwell and Anthony Wright (eds.), p. 132] 

This definition is not so much prescriptive, as descriptive.  It is the line at which the community will defend your ownership, because it is the line at which your ownership benefits the community.  Your home, your workshop, what land and resources you have mixed with your labor, is defended by the community because it benefits them that you "own" them.  Your restaurant makes a mean corned beef and cabbage.  You are loved enough to where you are secure in your property.

Rents are an interesting problem.  Say I develop a business renting sailboats on a sunny day. Most days people do not want a sailboat, on sunny days they do.  Few people want to own a sailboat.  So they are happy to rent one on a sunny day.  In this way the community will back a sailboat owner of 200 boats who rents them out on a sunny day.

Now take a landlord with 1000 units.  He is not renting to “frictional” homeless, people who are in transition and just want a place for a few months, or an inn, he is building long term housing, renting it and aggregating power slowly but surely.  

Now some people stop paying rent.  The begin to adversely possess his property.  Since there is no state, there are no laws against people not paying rent, and this fellow cannot depend on you and I to pay for a sheriff to help this landlord with his problem.

So the landlord appeals directly to you and me:  help me evict this person who has not paid rent.  You and I consider the aggregate wealth of this landlord, and should we decide we are uninterested in his plight, the landlord will lose his excess ‘wealth” by adverse possession, a means we have alive and well in our law presently.  Presto land reform, ongoing, incremental, constant.  The build up of exceptional wealth and exploitative power is checked in natural law.

Well how will we ever get the economies of scale to get the mass purchasing power of “big biz” commodities?  People will combine their private property to create co-ops.  It will be impossible for one person to own 1000 coffee shops, because he cannot possibly mix his labor with 1000 stores, but it will be possible for there to be 1000 coffees shops, or a co-op with several hundred owners.

I am a life member of PCC and REI, both co-ops, and I would be a member of group health if it offered medical care, but since it has signed on to the capitalist definition of medicine, I don't thing there is anything within its walls that could benefit me more than the alternatives widely avaialble.  Credit unions have been regulated into corruption.  But in spite of the disease of capitalism that permeates our economy, we see clear working examples of businesses big enough, without exploitation, to serve our needs.  All of the members of REI own REI,  All of the members of PCC own PCC.  both are voluntary organizations.  A natural elite rises to lead the org, and the rest of us just ruminate on our organic groat cakes and wash it down wih kefir.

We see within capitalism anarchy is already in place.  We just need to clear away the wreckage and let a more natural economy arise.

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Note To Employers - Save Your Business

Note to employers whose employees are now acting like vendors, not employees, like you are not an employer, you are a client.  Thank your lucky stars.  Let me explain why.

The debt load you took on in boom times cannot be supported by the lower sales volume and tighter margins you have now during the bust.  So you are cutting employee costs, rebalancing inventory, renegotiating the lease, and cutting overhead.  Everyone has a different weighting in these areas, so its all about judgment.

If you are like many businesses you’ve by now fired your high priced, boom time help and replaced them with low priced help.   You’ve cashed in your 401K and paid the tax and penalty to make up for the loss of the bank line of credit.  You await the promised economic recovery, when you can replenish your stores.

If you own a restaurant you have at least one chef working for free.  It is called staging.  For the restaurant to be open, and minimum wage paid (and not just work for tips) someone has to work for free.  It is the poor bastard who has a chef degree and a student loan, who is working for free hoping somewhere, sometime a chef drops dead.  Since working for free is illegal, these chefs move on, pretending to be "guest cheffing."  

As you know "interning" is quite widespread, but the politicians made it illegal about 3 years ago.  And they exempted politicians and lawyers.  I am not making this up.

In any event, you are doing what you have to do until the economic recovery comes.

There is no economic recovery coming.  We are in year five of a 30 year rolling disaster, which will get far worse.  There is simply no way, for lack or perspicacity AND concern, that any public policy will address any aspect of the economic crisis.  This is not to say your business cannot do better. There is business out there, but you need to change to get that business.  And you need good people to make it happen.  Such people are hard to find, or impossible, it would seem, to afford.

If you are looking at other people in business as your competitors, you are looking in the wrong direction.  They are in the same boat you are.  He who will eat your lunch has not yet started a business.  He will beat you because the workers will all be owners, their rent will be dirt cheap, they will have no debt obligations to service, and they will likely get vendor financing for customers they serve with better product at a lower cost. They will not be flogging dead inventory.

This competitor may be working for you right now.  Your impulse may be to fire this person when you find him going all entrepreneurial on you, treating you like a client, but you may be better off listening and working with this person.  Listen to the person’s ideas, and between the two of you you may pull your business out of the death spiral.

Now, you may look around the low priced help you have, or whoever you have on staff, and say, no such person here.  And creative, smart aggressive energetic people are too expensive to hire right now.  Right?

Wrong!  Again, you are stuck in old thinking.

Your business like all other has a series of posters on the wall outlining how the state, as a matter of public policy, has interfered in the rights of employers and employees to negotiate any deal they like.  Public policy is meant to curb the excesses of the capitalist system with rules and regulations.  Never mind that if a system engenders excesses we should dump the system, get rid of capitalism, but no. Keeping capitalism alive is necessary for progressives to have something to do.  It may not have mattered when the economy was growing, but it is counterproductive right now.  Public policy no longer fits within economic reality.  The economic reality is we cannot afford any playing at "public policy."  In any event, the trick is to not be duped into confining you thinking within the limits of public policy.

Public policy is for employers to be a welfare agent for employees from cradle to grave.  Your parents’ employers took care of you from the cradle, and your employer is to care for you to the grave.  Of course people change jobs, but laws such as COBRA provide for seamless transition.  It is all so out of touch with economic reality.  A huge solution to a tiny problem.  Costs on top of pointless costs.

A new conception of "employee"  (ick... I don't like the word...) may prove to help align production with reality, but may also be one heck of a competitive advantage.  A network of associates who show up for an hour and earn $1000 to produce $10,000 in sales is better than a full time employee who costs $5000 a month and produces $40,000 in sales.  You get better performance from the former and there is a mountain of management costs for the latter. Full timers tend to equate time with entitlement, and an idle mind is the devil's workshop. 

If so, where to farm new recruits?

There is massive unemployment out there, even when people who would be working are hanging out in school or otherwise diverting themselves.  Uncertainty alone may forbid hiring.  Inability to contract on terms mutually agreeable makes sure you do not hire anyone new.  Forget about them.  They want to be employees and cannot help you.

I once wanted to learn about ag exports so I spent a year in Wenatchee picking, sorting, storing, packing fruit in Wenatchee, and then consulting with a couple of big outfits on ag exports.  The farmer I initially worked for told me the Mexicans ask for a certain wage, and his reply was "it's not in the fruit."  The meaning being, there was only so much he could make off the fruit, and that determined what he could pay.  At some point, it was better to lease his 30 acres out to big bad Dovex who got its money cheaper and was big enough to rock the subsidies.

Paying employees in your business is not in the plate or the furniture or the clothes.

There are some people stepping outside the box.  You’ll see them appearing to compete with you, either inside your company or out.  Or they may have other gigs in which they are more interested in than yours, but their creativity may serve you.  Bring them on as consultants, or in a way that you get your $10,000 in sales, and they get $1000, but only for one hours work.  Match the personnel to the opportunity.

These people do not want bennies, they dread mandatory "health care."  The thing is a literal killer on many levels, but in short, they don't want to pay for something they will never use.  They made separate arrangements for "health care" to stay healthy.  They want no retirement because it would not occur to them to retire.  They will never collect unemployment because it would not occur to them to be unemployed, which is always a voluntary circumstance.  When you are talking to people, listen.  Don't wonder if they would be a good employee.  Wonder under what conditions they will work WITH you.  The employee is over.

Competition means to strive with, not fight against.  How can you work with these lives wires in a way that benefits you both?

One final thing.  Most people are out of business before they realize it.  Get cold blooded about your situtation.  Have your CPA advise you when your liabilities grow to the point where you can go bankrupt and end up with nothing but $125,000 (what you get to keep in bankruptcy)  If you get there, go no farther.  Cash it all in.

Reflect on this.  What if you had absolutely no obligations, knew what you know, and had $125,000 to start over?  No worries except the business you want to build, from scratch.  The other people in the business, who have not gone bankrupt will remain shellshocked, dispirited, struggling full of woe.  You will be trim, fit, tanned and ready to rock.

The people you are really up against, the ones who will eat your lunch, are right there,  absolutely no obligations, no worries except the business they want to build, from scratch.  They are trim, fit, tanned and ready to rock, except for the experience and $125,000.  You have the advantage of experience and cash.  Doesn’t that sound pretty good place to be?  It is an option, study it.

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An Education Now Means Unemployment

We've crossed the line when the majority of the unemployed also have college education.  And it is accelerating, because the community colleges are packing them in, and forming waiting lists.  So it is a simple fact that in the majority of cases and education equals unemployment.

The cost is not what an education costs, the costs reflect school spending, which is wildly out of control. The second largest reason California is in trouble financially is likely its college system.  The first is its prison system. The first arrests people for smoking dope, the second arrests dupes for trying to be not dopes.

Now the schools are not expanding to meet need because they must suppress demand for education.  But by charter the community colleges must accept all registrants. How do they manage these conflicting goals?  First, they keep the classroom size small, so fewer people can actually take the classes.  The result is it takes more years, approaching 3 and 4, to get into all of the classes necessary to get your AA degree.  Second hire gypsy instructors to teach at $30 an hour.  These are people with PHDs, but never got tenure, and to whom it has not occurred to find other work.  Why only gypsy instructors?  They never get enough teaching load to qualify for bennies, so the state can keep the cost down.

Some of these teachers go all entrepreneurial on the system like they think they are self-employed or something, and manage to get a full load, three courses in one quarter, by picking up one contract to teach one class at Community College district A, another contract to teach one class at Community College district  B, another contract to teach one class at Community College district C.  The three districts are independently managed, but all within driving distance of each other.  After three quarters of this, the scheming instructor shows up at the State Community College offices to enroll himself, as required by law, onto the benefits rolls.  Ka-ching!

Now the schools make gypsy instructors sign affidavits that they are NOT teaching anywhere else.   I will say though, having had a daughter who just blew through an AA degree and then went into an major university, she said she often found community college instructors superior to the university instructors.  A full phd teaching 30 students at a community college can be far superior to an ABD teaching 300 students at a university.  Since I come from a family of academics, and happen to have an MA in Ed Admin, the stories she tells me reveal that the politicians are making the shortfall felt in the classroom where the students are.  It is standard operating procedure for state, when faced with budget shortfalls, to point the knife at the heart and not the fat.  With the knife poised at the heart, the state tells people, "raise taxes or we cut the heart out, there is no choice."  Never, ever, do they say, "well, we can cut some fat, like the EXIMBank."  Never.  The reason is the voter never catches on. Never.  They ever fall for the false dilemma.

Student loans are feeding the "private colleges" so the colleges are flush keeping people off the unemployment lines.  If you are in school you are not unemployed.  A very self-serving way the state counts things.

Mish Shedlock offers a five-point plan for reform.

   1. Kill federally funded student loan program entirely. Student loans do nothing but drive up the cost of education. 

***Great investment advice.***

Anyone can get a student loan because the loans are guaranteed and cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. The beneficiaries of this horrendous setup are teachers and administrators, not the kids receiving loans.

***Poor analysis...  teachers and admin have eaten their seed corn, and the granaries are empty.  They face a grim future as the very politicians who so readily sold the gullible taxpayer down the river will now repudiate the debt.***

2. Kill state aid to colleges as well

*** Great investment advice.***

3. Increase competition by accrediting more online universities, even foreign universities. This will drive down costs immensely.

***Lousy policy advice.  They already have accredited more online universities and foreign schools, and this made matters far worse and costs far higher. Accreditation is the Berlin Wall of education.  A four year liberal arts degree superior to anything Harvard of Stanford offers would cost no more than $24,000 over the four years in a free market.  Therefore no accreditation is even needed to parse out to whom taxpyer slush may flow, and studenmts need no loans since anyone can come up with $6K a year for education.***

4. Public unions are a huge part of the reason for driving up teacher salaries, so collective bargaining (collective coercion actually), must end.

*** Yes, PUBLIC unions are house unions, and house unions are to labor what naked short selling is to the stock market: criminal self-dealing that is accepted in practice.  I think a teachers union would likely be necessary if there was a switch to the free market in educaiton, but since the state would be out of education, a house union is not feasible.  Problem solved.***

5. High school counselors and parents must educate kids that there simply are no realistic chances for those graduating with degrees in political science, history, English, art, and literally dozens of other useless or nearly-useless majors.

****Arrrrgggghhh.. dead wrong!  Mish seems to have the evil state conceit that the point of education is to get a job.  The state is relentless in this becaise it wants drones paying taxes. The point of an education is to be happy, to live a fuller life.  I have three daughters, each faced my wrath when they suggested getting an educaiton that would lead to work.  The eldest has a comparative religion degree, the middle is a latin scholar, and the last is an english major.  All three are employed and have standing offers for work, while their peers, with their business, science and computer degrees are unemployed adults paying for food with their EBT cards.  And sweating student loan defaults.  My children have no student loans, another suggestion that meets with my wrath.  Parents ought to go ballistic is a child suggests they want to waste 4 years preparing to work.  Those years should be spent learning about the bigger world, so the life of the mind grows ever more large and wealthy.***

If we deregulated something, anything, all those people would be employed instead of contributing to the downward spiral of our economy and society with it.  Deregulate education, medicine, wall street... anything.

I have two .pdfs I am happy to send to anyone.  One is a biz plan for a billion dollar business that would reform education.  Feel free to steal my ideas and make a billion.  The second is an an outline on how to teach and write your way to paid publication, that is to distinguish yourself as a teacher and a write.  You do not need a degree to teach noncredit classes at the college level, and the pay is about $100 per contact hour.  Email me if you want more info.

Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.

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