Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, War Commentary

Er Ist Kein Bewohner Von Berlin

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Or should I just say, “Er ist kein Berliner”?

An uncomplimentary British review of The One’s latest blather in Germany:

In stark contrast to that of his presidential predecessors, Barack Obama’s message on Wednesday was pure mush, another clichéd “citizens of the world” polemic with little substance. This was a speech big on platitudes and hopeless idealism, while containing much that was counter-productive for the world’s superpower. Ultimately it was little more than a laundry list of Obama’s favourite liberal pet causes, including cutting nuclear weapons, warning about climate change, putting an end to all wars, shutting Guantanamo, ending global poverty, and backing the European Project. It was a combination of staggering naiveté, the appeasement of America’s enemies and strategic adversaries, and the championing of more big government solutions.

In other words, business (or lack of business) as usual.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Destroying Business

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…with government regulations:

A big part of our success are the hundreds of parents — both consignors and shoppers — who voluntarily work brief shifts to help set up before the sale starts. In exchange, these parents get to shop first with more choices and better merchandise.

In January, though, the Department of Labor noticed all this cooperation going on. Months later, investigators concluded that volunteers are “employees” under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

This means paying the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, filling out IRS paperwork and complying with who-knows-what other rules. And all for a pop-up business that lasts days.

Think about that for a second. I’ve offered regular parents the same opportunities that eBay gives independent resellers. When I do it in the real world to recycle used clothes, the Department of Labor says no way. That’s bunk. My volunteers are not employees or independent contractors. They’re customers.

By this dreadful logic, Build-a-Bear Workshop employs child labor when it lets its young customers assemble their own teddy bears.

Unfortunately, as my situation shows, too many new ideas are being held back by rules that are stuck in the past. When the Fair Labor Standards Act was written in 1938, nobody was imagining a collaborative, social business like mine. And I’m far from the only entrepreneur stifled by outmoded dictates from a world I never lived in.

You’re not allowed to freely cooperate or exchange without the permission of the State, citizen.

[Update a while later]

Tocqueville would have been saddened, but perhaps not surprised:

Tocqueville would not recognize America today. Indeed, so completely has associational life collapsed, and so enormously has the state grown, that he would be forced to conclude that, at some point between 1833 and 2013, France must have conquered the United States.

…[He] also foresaw exactly how this regulatory state would suffocate the spirit of free enterprise: “It rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces [the] nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.”

Except the government is not a shepherd — it is becoming the wolf, against which we need sheepdogs.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

General Kaus

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He takes the lead in fighting this stupid bill on “comprehensive immigration reform”:

It’s time for the ants to swing into action. The Gang of 8 bill can still be stopped. But there are not many days left to scare away the fence-sitting senatorial swing votes. Again, it’s not that they don’t know what the issues are. It’s not that they don’t have a pretty good understanding of what the polls say about public opinion (voters are split on the idea of reform, but they overwhelmingly want border enforcement to come first). It’s that they are insufficiently scared that a vote for the Gang’s complicated mess-whatever they think of it – will bring them punishment at the polls.

They need to be scared. Here are two ways to do it.

Go read it all, and get off your butts.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

Syria And Egypt

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They can’t be fixed:

Sometimes countries dig themselves into a hole from which they cannot extricate themselves. Third World dictators typically keep their rural population poor, isolated and illiterate, the better to maintain control. That was the policy of Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party from the 1930s, which warehoused the rural poor in Stalin-modeled collective farms called ejidos occupying most of the national territory. That was also the intent of the Arab nationalist dictatorships in Egypt and Syria. The policy worked until it didn’t. In Mexico, it stopped working during the debt crisis of the early 1980s, and Mexico’s poor became America’s problem. In Egypt and Syria, it stopped working in 2011. There is nowhere for Egyptians and Syrians to go.

That first sentence could apply to us, on the route we’re on. If we allow the Democrats to remain in charge, it will be our fate, and sooner than later. We just have to hope that we’re not there already. And then there’s this:

This background lends an air of absurdity to the present debate over whether the West should arm Syria’s Sunni rebels. American hawks like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, to be sure, argue for sending arms to the Sunnis because they think it politically unwise to propose an attack on the Assad regime’s master, namely Iran. The Obama administration has agreed to arm the Sunnis because it costs nothing to pre-empt Republican criticism. We have a repetition of the “dumb and dumber” consensus that prevailed during early 2011, when the Republican hawks called for intervention in Libya and the Obama administration obliged. Call it the foreign policy version of the sequel, “Dumb and Dumberer”.

Except it’s not funny. At all.

Business, Economics, Philosophy, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Gardening The Universe

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A few weeks ago, I was invited to a gathering to hear the latest from Howard Bloom in downtown LA, but I had a conflict. But David Swindle attended, and has a report. (I did talk to Howard briefly a few days later, in San Diego.)

This –>

It became apparent again that I was the odd man out in the room. Most of the questions were phrased in explicitly secular terms.

Afterwards as Howard and a group of us sat around discussing, I raised my objection to the soulless, materialist focus. I drew a parallel between the groups who had sought to explore and settle the North American continent in the 1600s and those who should now seek to place their mark on the Moon, Mars, and the earth’s orbit.

I reminded Howard and the others that people came to the New World for varying reasons — capitalists eager to make money, the Crown eager to maintain power (primordial corporatists), science-minded explorers eager to discover what was out there, and one group unrepresented at the talk tonight, save for yours truly: the fanatical religious radicals wanting to live free of persecution as they built a godly, happy, counterculture community. It was this mix together that enabled the American experiment to begin and succeed.

People of faith — whether they interpret the Bible through Jewish, Christian, or mystic lenses — are called by God to transcend nature and rise upwards. The earth is not holy; it’s not our mother. As I’ve blogged about before, inspired by Glenn Reynolds’s An Army of Davids, the earth is just a rocky death trap. We can grow a better one ourselves.

To the degree that I have a religion, that’s pretty much it.

Business, Political Commentary, Technology and Society, War Commentary

An Internet War

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Has the US started one?

More than passively eavesdropping, we’re penetrating and damaging foreign networks for both espionage and to ready them for attack. We’re creating custom-designed Internet weapons, pre-targeted and ready to be “fired” against some piece of another country’s electronic infrastructure on a moment’s notice.

This is much worse than what we’re accusing China of doing to us. We’re pursuing policies that are both expensive and destabilizing and aren’t making the Internet any safer. We’re reacting from fear, and causing other countries to counter-react from fear. We’re ignoring resilience in favor of offense.

This may end badly.