Read more »

A continuation of my thoughts expounded yesterday on America and its relationship with Big Business.

When Adam Smith was forming seminal thoughts on markets, the business of business was producing better mousetraps more efficiently than competitors.  Since then we have grown into the most affluent society the world has known.  There is so much money sloshing around our economy that one can become rich exploiting human psychology by convincing people they need to own your product, even when they really don't.  Pet rocks are but a minor example of this.  The "science" of exploiting our psychology in order to generate sales is called marketing and it was birthed along with the advent of mass communication.  Marketing began with the rise of newspapers, but it really took wings in the 1940s and 1950s with the rise of the radio and television industries.

I've often thought that if you want to increase sales, you need to appeal to three basic human desires:  sex, wealth, and the wish to be physically attractive.  One need only peruse the articles and magazines in any supermarket check out line to grasp the veracity of this.  If I ever write a booklet to be sold in supermarket checkout lines, the title will be "How to Improve Your Sex Life, Make Money, and Lose Weight" ©. It has a certain cachet, and I suspect it will be a moneymaker if I can only come up with enough blather to fill its' pages.  Perhaps even you, erudite TPM reader, are perusing this blog as the title aroused your own curiosity, and in the end who wouldn't want to be richer, thinner, and have better sex?

Marketing stuff we don't really need has resulted in basements and garages across our country that store hundreds of thousands of 'home exercise systems' which have been used on average about 5 times before they were moved to the garage and listed for sale on Craigslist or Ebay.   Marketing has produced the pocket fisherman for those who might want to cast a line during a stroll through Central Park, but don't want to advertise their intent to the cops by carrying a full rod and reel.  Billy Mays and numerous over the hill athletes have made second careers from selling Americans products that they ultimately had little use for.  It's a big factor in why almost 70% of our economy consists of "domestic" spending. It may also account for the large percentage of credit cards that are cut up by bankruptcy courts each year.

Read more »

The Republican Party has been known for some time as the party of businessmen and business in general.  They have championed the deregulation of markets and the reduction of corporate taxes as well as reduced taxation of the wealthy in America with increased vigor in the last 28 years.  Now as we see Max Baucus & Co. doing their song and dance on Capitol Hill, we are beginning to see how the Democratic Party has come to be a protector of big business's interests as well.  The power of business is money, and business's financial resources are vast.  The lobbyists representing corporate interests in Washington D.C. know precisely how to administer it in order to get the wheels of democracy to turn if ever so slightly in the direction Big Business wants.

Today, the real opponents to reform in our country are likely not to be Republicans per se, nor the Democrats for that matter.  The real powers arrayed to subvert sound public policy that will benefit us all are the corporations, and more particularly the very large corporations.  Every law we write affects the status quo and the existing revenue streams staked out by big business as it navigates our labyrinthine tax code and public policy in search of financial enrichment.  These revenue streams are guarded with no less self interest than were the privately owned ferries and toll roads of yesteryear and we are not invited to cross before payment has been extracted from us.  One need only look at healthcare for which we pay twice as much as the rest of the world, and the corporate resistance to the kind of sweeping change our healthcare system so clearly demands.  It's worth taking some time to know an adversary that challenges any change to policies which might adversely impact corporate profits,  while instead favoring policies that further corporate self interest even at the expense of the public good.  If we take the writings of Sun-Tzu and Machiavelli at face value, we would be fools to do otherwise.

Proponents of Business's philosophy will make the case that America's own interests lie in conjunction with Business's interests.  It is true that we benefit from a strong economy in which business is expanding, and our system favors innovation in the marketplace which is all good, however the interests of business are not synonymous with the interests of Americans or those of mankind.    Business is at its' heart amoral, and it is only through the force of the personalities conducting business that it can ever be otherwise.  The recurring refrain we hear "that business is first and foremost accountable to its' shareholders" should be of concern to all of us not vested in these corporations as well as those who are shareholders.  Some of our largest corporations conducted 'business as usual' with the Nazi regime up to and even after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  Morality was not a consideration of this support born of ideological disdain for Communism which business feared worse than the Nazi regime that brought us the Holocaust as well as up to 71M other deaths worldwide.  Business's products in general and armaments in particular have a way of finding their way to any and all conflicts and to all political factions regardless of moral or ethical position.  Unlike water seeking the lowest level, business's products seek all levels, as business is not bound by political, moral, and ideological apogees or perigees.  If there is money to be made, business will explore the avenues in which it can be made without concern for ethics or regard for social altruism.

Read more »

Among the friends I've visited this week has been an old friend of mine and my family.  He's one of the smartest and funniest people I've had the pleasure of knowing.  With an I.Q. of 180, he helped write the software that made the Apollo space program a success, and then went on to a successful career in academia.  Whenever I have visited him over the years, he has been a font of information, displaying broad ranging interests from literature to electronics, to machining, to architecture, to home building.  His garage was home to oscilloscopes and milling machines.  He rebuilt autos and modified them with little regard for accepted mechanical protocols or social prejudices.  A generous man, he bequeathed to me one of his cars when I went to university, which lasted me till I got my first job following graduation.  I think he is as fond of me as I am of him.

He appears physically healthy, although, he now resides in a nursing home, a sufferer from Alzheimer's disease.  His fecund mind did little to stave off the encroachment of beta amyloids in his cerebrum which have in turn diminished his short term memory.  For the most part our conversations now consist of his asking questions of me as I try to find new ways to answer them honestly, but differently from his previous identical queries, which too often transpired only a few minutes before.  I was dismayed when we first enacted this parody some years ago.  It bothers me less now and I strive to rephrase my answers in ways that will add more information for him while challenging my own verbal abilities.  He is a kind of temporally disjointed Bodhisattva.  Always cheerful, and happy for my companionship, while simultaneously being adrift in time, like Billy Pilgrim, immersed inexorably in the here and now, yet sadly absent a sense of the continuum  the rest of us naturally impose on our experience to help us make sense of our lives. 

Read more »

Read more »

The number of people without health insurance coverage rose from 45.7 million in 2007 to 46.3 million in 2008.

Read more »