If You Believe in Staples, Clap Your Hands
When Staples founder Tom Stemberg took a star spot at the Republican convention last August, the weakness in Mitt Romney’s message should have been obvious. The retailer’s price already had fallen by a third since March; a month later, Staples announced a 15% cut in its floor space and 3,200 layoffs.
I don’t mean to diminish Bain Capital’s biggest success story, but Staples belongs to the wave of entrepreneurial success that ended in the 1990s. The last two waves of American entrepreneurs, in dotcoms and real estate, were carried out in body bags. What once was a disruptive business idea — office superstores selling at low prices — is now past its best-used-by-date, as Amazon offers cheaper prices for the same merchandise online.
Romney’s message centered on one great idea: the revival of entrepreneurship. The presidential election shows that Americans don’t believe in entrepreneurship any more. There’s a reason for that. No-one has seen much entrepreneurship of late.
America no longer has a tech sector as such. We have so-called tech companies that walk, fly, and quack like mature consumer franchises. Here’s a simple way to look at it. Back at the peak of the tech boom in the late 1990s, the volatility (standard deviation of daily returns) of the S&P 500 Information Technology sub-index was a multiple of index volatility. Emerging companies with disruptive technologies are riskier (more volatile) than mature companies, so that is just what one would expect. After 2008, though, the volatility of the tech sub-index converged with the overall index. Tech companies, in other words, traded like staid, solid, mature franchises.
Volatility of S&P Information Technology Sub-Index Converges with Index Volatility
Source: Macrostrategy LLC
The last wave of entrepreneurship is long since gone, and there is nothing in the pipeline to replace it. The startup sector of the U.S. economy is dead in the water. In past recoveries, firms with 500 to 1,000 employees were the biggest job creators, as the successful few became big companies. This time around, firms of this size lost the most jobs. Venture capital is doing terribly. Three-quarters of venture capital firms lost money during the past decade, and the sector performed well below publicly traded indices. Once the poster-child for edgy entrepreneurship, Apple has transmogrified into a would-be monopoly that relies on its legal team more than its engineers to suppress prospective competitors. That’s distasteful, considering that Steve Jobs started out by stealing the idea for GUI from Xerox.
In a recent report for Macrostrategy clients, I examined the profitability of 680 publicly traded tech companies. The top 50 firms (by market capitalization) had an average return on investment of 10% as of the second quarter of this year; the bottom 630 had an average return on investment of negative 15%. Tech startups have been a money-losing proposition overall — not surprising in a global market where products are standardized and profit margins are thin. And the much-heralded next new thing, namely social media, became the stock market’s headline disappointment with Facebook’s post-offering plunge.
There are a lot of reasons for the slow extinction of American entrepreneurship. Globalization raises the threshold for success. Successful startups must be global from the outset, with deeper pockets and broader management than ever before, as an important new book explains. Obama is not to blame for all of the problems, but the plethora of regulatory obstacles and financial burdens exemplified by Obamacare made an already challenging situation much, much worse. Mitt Romney might have turned the situation around. Now we face a downward spiral.
No innovation, no returns: the monopoly rents generated by America’s established franchises will diminish over time. Apple eventually will turn into Sony. The unprecedented expansion of welfare and entitlements with which the Obama administration bought the election will keep trillion-dollar deficits coming indefinitely, and the deficits will require massive tax increases — first on the “rich,” and than probably a European-style value added tax. Asset returns will remain miserably low, and pension funds will fail to earn enough to pay out defined benefits. As America turns into a “nation of takers,” as Nicholas Eberstadt put it in his new book on welfare dependency, America’s residual entrepreneurial impulse will be smothered underneath a pile of new taxes.
There are a lot of other things to be said about the state of the electorate in 2012. When Reagan beat Carter, the median age of the Baby Boomers was thirty. The middle class had capital to invest after home equity tripled over the 1970s (and rose by 40% after inflation). Today the median age of the Boomers is sixty, and the average household lost 40% of its net worth between 2007 and 2011. Thirty years ago we were young and affluent; now we’re older and poorer, and a lot of us are dependent on the fast-expanding welfare state.
But it all comes down to the simple fact that most Americans stopped believing in the American dream. God help us; we no longer seem to want to help ourselves.
****
Image courtesy shutterstock / DM7
Lyrics for ‘Taps’…
Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills, from the sky;
All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.
Fading light, dims the sight,
And a star gems the sky, gleaming bright.
From afar, drawing nigh, falls the night.
Thanks and praise, for our days,
‘Neath the sun, ‘neath the stars, neath the sky;
As we go, this we know, God is nigh.
Sun has set, shadows come,
Time has fled, Men must go to their beds
Always true to the promise that they made.
While the light fades from sight,
And the stars gleaming rays softly send,
To thy hands we our souls, Lord, commend.
This sums it up. All things, good and bad, run their course. The United States has seen its halcyon days. Now it will see its degenerate decades before it breaks up into small regional polities. Igor Panarin had his timing way off, but the essential reasoning for an eventual break-up of the U.S. under economic pressure and political ineptitude is sound.
Panarin has it more or less on the dot, give or take a few years. The denouement may well be precipitous and abrupt.
Now for something totally different, with Bob Dylan:
Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it
“But it all comes down to the simple fact that most Americans stopped believing in the American dream. God help us; we no longer seem to want to help ourselves.”
It’s just in slumber. We’ve had tech booms in the past, from railroads to automobiles and telephones, to computers and the internet (being a blog comment and not a college course, I’m cutting corners here.) All of which increased economic efficiency and led to booms with necessary busts. right now we are dealing with a post computer/internet boom/bust to a new normal, efficiencies have been realized and there is no new technology to excite. 1950s – 1970s were essentially the same, with increasing, but modest economic gains over time. That’s where we should be now, except that part of our political class wants to keep a jackboot on our economic neck.
Dig in, hunker down, go as Galt as possible, better days will come again.
Did you not read the article? We didn’t have so many people on the government dole back then. Once on welfare, people turn into very different people. The type who’s the least likely to be innovative.
For the next 25 years the name of the game will be to hunker down and preserve whatever wealth one has managed to accumulate. There are a lot of lessons the electorate will need to learn the hard way. Or potentially not learn them at all like Argentina.
Or, we could be slouching towards Sarajevo.
Ahh, the Bosnian Muslims, a/k/a the local branch of al Qaeda whom the Clintons helped to set up a permanent stronghold in the Balkans. Seems more likely that Sarajevo is slouching toward us these days, considering that just about every Islamic terrorist operation seems to have a Balkans link.
As far as I know it, America is about being better, not bitter.
Define better.
The majority just did define better by re-electing President Barack Obama to a second term. The GOP got their clock cleaned. Unskew that …
Welcome back, C.W.
You disappeared right after the first Obama-Romney debate.
I commented often on your absence.
Urgent personal business, perhaps?
Lmao!
On other news -unrelated, I wonder where is Myra Adams
Don’t feed the Troll!
In my home town, a drug dealer/hustler is called an entrepreneur.
El Gordo – If you’re not able to define better for yourself, you’re really better off with the Grand Leader from behind who’ll define it for you.
Now go on yelling “Post-America Hu Akbar!”
Battle of Unnumbered tears … which way to Gondolin?
Aure entuluva!
Thanks. I’ve read Children of Hurin (after reading our host’s review) but Elvish is a bit beyond me.
I think I get your drift so I’ll answer with these favorite rally cries “This we’ll defend!” and “chazak v’amatz !“.
I disagree, which is probably the triumph of hope over experience. I suspect, looking at the preliminary results, that America is becoming ever more bipolar in economic outlook. I live in a state that has 5.4% unemployment. It went for Romney. Minnesota has had 9% unemployment since long before the recession; it went for for Obama. I suspect we’ll see collapse come on a state-by-state wave.
On the demographic level: I’m 23. I have a job, and I voted for Romney. My friends who have jobs, all voted for Romney. My unemployed friends? Not so much. It doesn’t matter, though. The birth rate is dropping because most people are, even if only subliminally, responsive to economic incentives.
The future belongs to those who show up? Hey, fine by me. You can only have a a kid if you’ve got money, subsidised or otherwise. And once we drive over the cliff…well. That will be a different story, won’t it?
They are unemployed and they vote for the first President whose policies made high unemployment permanent, and not a passing storm as in many past recessions? You did talk to them, do you? Do you think they will eventually learn? Do you think you will stay friends?
Will they eventually learn? Hard to say, honestly. I would try and explain basic economics or appeal to their better nature re: citizenship, but it’s like talking to a brick wall. People who already “get it” are out working and making something of themselves; people who don’t…live with their parents with 80k of debt. You can keep a pretty good quality of life if you are shameless and your parents are saps, so I suspect real life isn’t going to impinge on them until their parents’ quality of life collapses – which is a terrible thing to happen. A 25-year-old dumbass still has better options that a 60-year-old with no savings.
As for the future of our friendship…probably not. Leaving aside the political and philosophical differences: living and working on your own creates a whole different attitude towards life, and it’s a whole different level of maturity. I have bills to pay, responsibilities to my co-workers – I’m not going to blow off work to screw around. Some of my working friends have gotten married. They don’t have kids yet, because they’re young and just starting out, but once they’ve built up some savings/paid off their debt, I suspect children will begin to arrive.
And again, if your outlook changes once you start working for a living, it changes even more once you marry and have children. Your friends change a lot too. So I don’t expect to remain friends with them if they don’t catch up with the rest of our age cohort. But again, some people gotta learn through experience – I don’t think that’s going to happen unless there’s a serious collapse in their quality of living, their parents/community begin shaming them for their poor work habits.
Also, the higher education bubble needs to pop.
Soon, Elena, soon.
Tuition is too high, the professors are barely literate themselves and more interested in their liberal agendas and protecting their union paychecks, the waste is sickening, and as long as the mommies and daddies agree to pay, the educational sector will have no reason to change. Until, it prices itself out of the market. Of course, that’s one of Obama’s sops to the Head Count: the promise of college. In exchange for being a foot soldier in the brownshirt corps, of course.
I was thinking about enrolling in an online degree program, but 11k is pretty high for no brick and mortar and pre-recorded classes. Likewise, my son, who is twenty, is unwilling to take on a mountain of tuition debt on a shaky hope and prayer that he might be able to actually make the loan payments later while working at the local McD’s or drug store. Not to mention, neither of us is interested in the liberal arts indoctrination courses that are required, and we are not about to sell our souls to Obama. We’ll wait it out.
Elena, if you are waiting to have kids because of an uncertain future, please understand that none of us were ever certain about our futures when we had kids. You should have as many kids as you want because you are intelligent enough to raise good people. You will always find a way to support them. In my opinion that is what this life is all about. Excuse me for butting in but I am old and my perspective is on the other end now. My kids are the best decisions I have ever made and have given me more of a sense of well being than anything else I have done in my life.
Elena, I knew a man who had several children, one with terrible live long arthritis. The child required special medical attention, etc. and this was well before any medical insurance (I’m talking of Canada). Well, with 4 other children, and being right after the War (II), a wife at home, this man went ahead and built a very large and successful business, one that it likely he would not have made if he hadn’t hat the NECESSITY to support this family of his.
Necessity and a sense of responsibility will lead to amazing achievement.
So, don’t put off having children because of economics. You may be surprised at what you don’t ‘need’, and at how wonderful children can be.
Another story: a lady in a tiny trailer, whose husband was a truck driver, and gosh they were poor. They had 4 kids (all boys). In a very tiny trailer. The trailer only had 4 chairs around the table. She told the youngest that no one could sit at the table until they were tall enough to see over the table. They did fine, over the years. And then, there were the other family, also in a very tiny trailer, 5 kids, and mom and dad… the girl slept in the bathtub, and one of the boys slept in the car. The mother collected rocks, which she stored in the washing machine (which was itself the large kind with a wringer attached) That family turned out very well also.
For those who read Seth Godin’s books, you’d recognize that these types of box store, commodity, factory-style businesses are the businesses of the past, since they make average goods for average people. Hyperniched is where it’s at for small and micro-businesses of the present and future.
That is good, Former Student. Are you hypernyched now? That is a new word that I have never even read before. I am afraid I am falling behind on my business school jargon. Please enlighten me on this.
Coming soon we will go from “You didnt build that” to “YOU DONT OWN THAT”
“If you have a house, its built on dirt. That dirt was put there by God. You dont own that”
As my close friend just said. Makes us glad we dont have children
That won’t make much difference. The way local taxes are going, I don’t feel like I own my house anyway. It’s already as if I am just renting it from the government.
+1 on that, middledan.
“[T]he volatility (standard deviation of daily returns) of the S&P 500 Information Technology sub-index was a multiple of index volatility.”
You used to write about important ideas: Christianity cannot exist except in symbiosis with Judaism.., to which one might add that Europe’s determination to destroy its Jews was not just an act of genocide, but of suicide. European Christianity did not survive the regression back to the bloodline of the nations during the middle of the past century. Only in a new nation conceived in the spirit, that is, in ideas, and free of the taint of pagan birth, could Christianity truly flourish, I have argued in the past; and although Rosenzweig never wrote about America, I believe this assertion is consistent with his views.–Spengler
What went wrong?
Jobs arent important unless you dont have one.
Touche!
A man must eat before he can think deep thoughts. And the ratio of deep thoughts to reflections on the practical application thereof must necessary be small. The presuppositions and axioms are the foundations of a worldview. I say we should love both the building and its sure foundation. Spengler, you are my hero. Give me your big thoughts, little thoughts, and everything in between!
My little thought for the day is that with the S&P earnings yield around 7 and the economy looking poor, I would rather own preferreds paying close to 6 pc than common.
You’re kidding, right? You have seen his archives in Atol, yes? Half his appeal as a writer is his command of both the moral/philosophical issue and the nitty-gritty economics issue, which are basically synergistic. Hell, I think his first column was talking about the fundamental uselessness of the dotcom bubble!
Don’t forget about music and German literature
I meant this as a compliment by the way. I enjoy his works everywhere I come across them – Asia TImes, First Things, Here. Once I am finished with Grad School and have more time on my hands, I will read his book.
Don’t forget about music and German literature
re: “That’s distasteful, considering that Steve Jobs started out by stealing the idea for GUI from Xerox.” DG
Bad history here. Apple actually paid a royalty to Xerox for use of the GUI. Apple came up with overlapping windows something Xerox had not mastered as they used tiling of windows. Many of the people at Xerox’s PARC actually joined Apple to implement their ideas as Xerox lacked the foresight to do it.
Dan Kurt
Apple came up with overlapping windows something Xerox had not mastered as they used tiling of windows.
Strange, I must have imagined using overlapping window windows systems on Lisp Machines in 1979 and then the Altos Xerox donated to MIT in 1980.
While I’m not familiar with the history of the Lisa, the Macintosh was developed by a famously small team (which Jobs burned out, one of the reasons serious follow ons took so long), and the big PARC names including Alan Kay I seem to remember joining Apple after the Macintosh became a big success.
To twist the knife a little more, Alan Kay, despite being an Apple Fellow from 1984 to 1997, can’t get the current version of Smalltalk, explicitly developed to make subsystems that are accessible to children, into the iOS ecosystem, that’s the operating system for iPhones and iPads. Turns out using them to program is verboten, Apple’s main efforts are now in systems for consumers of content, with the traditional Macintosh systems now enjoying the status of a red-headed stepchild.
A far cry from the original Apple II with it’s build in BASIC … and not an ecosystem that’s going to nurture a new generation of entrepreneurs.
Apple didn’t “steal” these ideas. After Xerox showed Jobs what it had, Steve said “You’ve got a gold mine here!”, or something to that effect. Apple gave Xerox about a million in Apple stock for the rights to use this technology, then Apple went far beyond what Xerox had done. Xerox soon after sold that stock. (Not so smart after all.)
Xerox has a long history of not exploiting its technological achievements. Postscript got its start there, but it was Xerox alumni that created Adobe. Networking got its start there, but it was only advanced by folks like 3Com.
As to Apple attempting to defend its innovations, look at Android phones before, then after, the iPhone. Now try to tell me Google didn’t steal.
The first Obama term has alarmed many of us, from the beginning, and even before he came to power. We have tried to stop the downward spiral, and we have failed this time, gravely underestimating the strength of the progressives, who have enjoyed the benefit of experience in cultivating the vote, fairly and otherwise.
Now we are exposed to the rigors of a long economic winter, resulting from the demolition derby we are watching in horror, and is only getting worse. Would that open opportunities for new entrepreneurship? For instance, the education industry could go bankrupt, because its performance is dismal, and those who will manage to offer quality on-line learning may well become successful.
Are we condemned to bitterness, fatalism and cynicism? That’s still not for the government to decide, and our comparatively amateurish efforts so far do not have to stay that way. Cuba is a good example of an economy that has been devastated by the worst of statism, but we can find there individuals who have rejected despair, and express their high spiritual aspirations by crafting wonderful music, because that’s the only channel left.
We are not quite that deep down the hole. Economic and financial distress are symptoms of cultural decline. If we are to recover, spiritual recovery comes first, and the primacy of economic issues over social issues will be seen for the fallacy it has been all along in this cycle.
The fear, of course, is that progressive constituencies won’t be allowed to fail. They will simply suck ever more government-mandated resources into the vortex (of higher ed, in your example). The potential wealth-destruction is vast.
Of course, that fallacy hasn’t stopped libertarians from coming out of the woodwork to blame social conservatives (Akin being this year’s Christine O’Donnell). But you’re right, culture trumps economics and politics.
Professor, go to the Treasury web site: US Treasury debt to the penny. Enter the last day of the fiscal year, 9/30 for each of the past 20 years. Post to an Excel spreadsheet. Now, make a debt chart. Look. You will gag.
The rate of debt increase for the past six years has a run rate which is simply astronomical. Unsustainable. The country is loaded with people, many foreign-born, who run to the welfare office every time they get a new birth certificate for an infant. Over 70 million people on Medicaid, just under 50 million people on Food Stamps.
Game Set Match Bankruptcy.
Synergistically enough, I just finished “How Civilizations Die (And Why Islam is Dying Too)” last week. Very well done.
And, these are the thoughts I posted today:
Remember, Life is Beautiful All the Time. This is not the end of the world as we know it…
Well, maybe… not…
Americans have simply demonstrated that the original ideal upon which this country was founded, is no longer all that important.
The original settlers to America were Christians fleeing a European Christianity where one’s relationship to G-d was defined by the Church or the State.
The United States was founded upon the ideal that each individual citizen had their own personal relationship with G-d.
Apparently, a majority of Americans no longer believe this…
It would seem that a majority of Americans believe that Submission to the State is a higher form of worship…
Hmmm…. Submission – that might be a clever name for this new religion…
“Submission” is the essential teaching of Islam, only in that case it is submission to God, not gov……
“Submission”as a name for the new religion? Sorry, that’s what Islam means, literally (but not co-incidentally).
Just out of curiosity, why do you stick a “-” in the middle of “God”? The way you use the word indicates you are neither an atheist nor a secularist, but this misspelling would seem to be an act of shame. If you believe, you have no reason to conceal it nor to feel shame. The shame is on those who cannot tolerate your belief.
It’s supposed to make him look pious. But even Chabadniks say it’s unnecessary.
Jewish people do that out of a belief that it is disrespect to write the name of God. Coincidentally (and probably only because they come from the same region, and the Arabs copied a great deal of Judeochristianity) the same is true in Islam.
“The original settlers to America were Christians fleeing a European Christianity…”
Actually no, the original settlers were perfectly happy with the Anglican church. They came to Jamestown seeking prosperity for themselves and their families. Lucky for them they didn’t have some twit saying “You didn’t build that” as they turned a little land along the James River into the foundation of the United States.
Hayek called it serfdom. A damned coyote is born with more liberty than a human being and gets to live with more dignity and self determination on this planet. “Beam me up Scotty. There is no intelligent life down here.”
Well, they can steal and kill with relative impunity. Is that your model?
Did you actually think that was my model? Back to your corner until you start using your head for something besides a hat rack, Dwight. Sheesh.
It’s not my fault that YOU made a goofy statement. You introduced coyotes, which, of course, have a lot more freedom than any human. Therefore, your point, was, er, somewhat blunted.
Dwight, you make it seem like you WERE trying to be an asshole. That would make more sense than would a collectivist actually trying to argue with a different opinion. I think you did understand what I was saying because it easily revealed you be a collectivist as well as an asshole. Darn it. As soon as you manage to get euphoric over the re-election of the free cell phones President, somebody had to go and show you something you never wondered about before you voted for him. It is not an accomplishment to have voted in the majority in an election. It would have been more to brag about if you had understood the ramification of that vote.
1) Venture Capital – They are smart people. They have have backed the alternative energy companies because the government through subsidies guaranteed the backers wouldn’t fail even if the company did. They are also lemmings who have made most of their money in internet related companies that although have been successful, really do not “make” naything earth shattering: Facebook, Zynga etc. I was involved in VC years ago when these financial companeis backed all kinds of innovative companies. Now they crowd into very small spaces.
2) Regulation and government growth is where it is at which of course is totally backward. A boom awaits the demise of large goverment. Our impending national bankruptcy should take care of that – 2016/2017 or so.
3) Here in our county in Montana, however, we have the most innovative firearms manufacturing companies in the US. The money, talent and manufacturing expetise is local. It is at least one business that Obama has caused to do well.
Check out:
http://www.proofresearch.com
http://www.nemoarms.com
and if you think airplanes should look like they have for the last 100 years years check this local company out:
http://www.synergyaircraft.com
A lot of this stuff is beneath people’s radar. It won’t be forever. People still have a desire to innovate despite the jackasses in government.
No, regulation and large government are not an asset to anyone to any looking to build a business or find a job.
Quote: 3) Here in our county in Montana, however, we have the most innovative firearms manufacturing companies in the US. The money, talent and manufacturing expetise is local. It is at least one business that Obama has caused to do well.
Innovative? The last innovation in firearms occurred about a thousand years ago when rifled barrels became the norm. Everything since has been refinement, not innovation. What is innovative about using unobtainium to produce a rifle which no one who works outside of Wall Street can afford? A $5000 rifle? It won’t make anyone a better shot. A Remington 700 30-06 is far better value for the money. Now pretty, well, yes, it is that, but nothing else.
As we write these comments, Obama and his comrades are working overtime with the goal of destroying them. I hope they are innovative enough to turn out a new product that they can sell pretty soon.
Appreciate the financial perspective. Moral views are becoming increasingly relevant for distant posterity, because they are increasingly irrelevant now. Everyone has or wants to have a gay best friend and a multiracial child, but no one talks about politics or religion in public. Image and status matter the most, and Republicans accepted this and gambled that “conservatism” would be the default ideology in a poor economy. They lost. The poor economy hit a critical mass and they didn’t notice.
The right wing’s base is being destroyed on a genetic level due to exploitative divorce laws. Women are collectively abusing the good will of men who do not understand force, and so become the targets of force. Single moms with 5 children from 3 daddies are the future of the country, because religious idiots are obsessed with being non-judgmental and docile to a fault. They do not understand where their own people come from. They have no social capital. Gays do.
The US can’t vote its way out of this one, at least not with the current playing field. It has crossed the Rubicon. It’s going to need something of a de facto reverse “coup” (it’s not truly an overthrow if the government doesn’t enforce its own laws) from the bottom up. Secular conservative militia types will kick-start it. What will happen, is that the rule of law will recede and the friction, the deadweight losses, of governance will snowball. People will learn to treat the state the way the state treats its own borders.
“….The right wing’s base is being destroyed on a genetic level due to exploitative divorce laws. Women are collectively abusing the good will of men who do not understand force, and so become the targets of force. Single moms with 5 children from 3 daddies are the future of the country, because religious idiots are obsessed with being non-judgmental and docile to a fault. They do not understand where their own people come from. They have no social capital. Gays do……”
When piles of people are making same or similar observations, it’s time to give this state of affairs some credence. Kicking the queer dog for the horse leaving the matrimonial stable after you left the door open strikes most people as pointless and mean spirited. The same ol’ bugbear pesters facile and superficial Christians all of the time; it’s not who you are, it’s what you DO……
* Second sentence; I think you meant ‘irrelevant’ both times…..’>…….
It was lost because we failed to appreciate the poor judgement and now almost innate ignorance and superficiality of much of the American electorate. 2 generations of watered down, lowest common denominator socialist higher education meant even the elites did not have the intellectual tools to analyze the trajectory of where Obama was taking us.
Add that to the dependency engendered by Obama’s policies and you have your answer.
These factors will be there in 2016, only more so.
It was nice while it lasted.
Well, there is some small consolation:
Gays do not propagate in wholesale numbers, so if it is nature, not nurture, as they claim, Darwin wins.
Despite our best efforts, the female of our species chooses to commit wholesale infanticide. It doesn’t matter how long she lives, a female who kills her own young is contrasurvival. If she never propagates at all, her contrasurvival tendencies die with her. Darwin wins.
A surprising number of libs choose not to propagate, or self-destruct in other inventive ways. This is not accidental; they are far too self-absorbed to devote any part of their attention to another human being. The Hollywood crowd and the OWS bunch are perfect examples. Darwin wins.
The coasts seem to be the gathering place of choice for most of the imbeciles in this country. If they even believed half of what their junk science global warming chicken little experts were spewing, you would think they would be fleeing the coasts in droves, right? Likewise in Cali. I wouldn’t live there for love nor money, but apparently no amount of seismic activity can convince any of them that maybe living in a state whose most significant geological feature is a major fault line might be detrimental to their health. I figure eventually both coasts are going to get it, one with water, the other by earthquake. Inherently stupid people won’t leave the slopes of an erupting volcano, and even after seizing on Hurricane Sandy as proof of their “science”, you just see them doubling down and staying. Darwin wins.
It might take a while for this generation of idiots to enhance the breed according to Darwin’s rules. We must hang tough and see to it that they don’t destroy us along with themselves.
Footnote: sadly,it takes only one Octomom to undo the Darwinian selection of fourteen terminally stupid people.
Actually, the northeast, far enough inland to be away from storm surges, is a much safer place than the extreme weather including tornadoes of the heartland. It gives us the semi-maritime climate without the San Andreas fault or the months and months of 90 degree plus weather of Texas etc.
Precisely the reason that liberals always need moronic voters to win elections. Natural selection is no longer a cure for stupid.
One thing I mus agree with is that American businesses have become fairly unethical in their practices. Take Staples…
..In 200-2001, I worked for a major financial management Co. here, and they managed all of Ton Stemberg’s (founder of Staples) business affairs. I had access to his voluminous files. He and a group called, “Beacon Capital Partners” basically conspired to drive all mom-and-pop florists and dry cleaners out of business, and supplant them with large chain stores owned by the aforementioned.
And they largely succeeded.
You would know these chain stores as “Kabloom” and “Zoots.”
This actually happened, and I saw the direct evidence.
The point is, businesses and business owners can present themselves to the Left as EXACTLY the kind of evil bastards that they keep saying exist. That doesn’t do a service to our cause.
I have never ever heard or seen of the chain stores “Karbloom” and “Zoots” before.
Where exactly do these chains operate, and how successful have they been in destroying the competition as claimed by an earlier commentors? Thank you.
I agree with you Bronx Native. I have been in the floral business for around 10 years now and I have never heard of kabloom until today.
I suspect the next big blow to entrepreneurs will come either through executive order or by act of Congress to restrict Internet competition. No doubt the media conglomerates believe they are owed it for helping Obama win. Of course it will be disguised as Internet security, but for all of us who have used the Internet to build our varied brands of creative endeavors the result will be the same.
I personally think that government regulation is the biggest hinderance to entrepreneurship is government regulation at every level. Local, state and federal regulations make it so difficult to start, much less operate a business that many potential business owners as well as current owners are just too frustrated to bother.
Until we take back control of our governments, we will continue this downward spiral to the trash heap of history.
Apparently, it has even messed up our ability to write sentences. Your first one is a doozy.
Another cute remark, Dwight. Again, there is no discussion of how you would have expressed the thought more succinctly.
An excellent article. But I think your pessimism does not come from the fact that entrepreneurship is not doing so well, a situation that goes through many ups and downs, as from the fact that the Communists are doing whatever they can to keep entrepreneurs in a low spot.
2012:
1. Republicans turned out their base, the base was not as big as theirs.
2. Non-affiliate voters couldn’t decide whether to get a job or get a disability/welfare check: one is iffy, the other a done deal; one requires you to get up in the morning, work your butts off, net you less than what you would get from the “govt.” — no brainer here unless you are quaint and judgmental to believe working for your living is better than having a life without working.
3. Occupiers won (1/32 Cherokee illegally lawyering woman), Teapartyers lost (Mia Love).
4. Rev. Wright’s god damned America, most Americans didn’t give a damn.
Predictions:
1. A lot more closings of small businesses that one didn’t build, a lot less new businesses: better to save one’s money and do some life enjoying than work 20 hours a day to meet pay rolls.
2. More people take a disability check, work for cash, no traces, no taxes; more bartering to live under the radar to stave off Obama’s dirty little hand from one’s pocket.
3. Less civility, why the hell should one help that sob who is getting one’s taxes from the govt. anyways.
4. America becomes a psuedo-Euro country with the rots and no historic hundreds years old fairy castles, and sidewalk cafes to break the monotony of watching reality tv re-runs.
5. The Middle East blows up, nobody cares; the Israelites duck for cover from incoming missiles courtesy of the American Jews, nobody gives a damn.
6. Chinese economy collapses, Putin gets his flexibility to defang the Great Satan.
7. 2016′s rotten economy is Bush’s fault.
8. We are a nation of Obamas, no one is held responsible for one’s decisions or actions.
9. The decays come fast and furious, the MSM cheer the death of American Exceptionalism.
Good post. Staples was the antithesis of entrepreneurship, as was Bain Capital. In the case of Staples, it was about establishing a dominant (monopolistic) market position and crowding out all smaller players. How many thousands of small and mid-sized businesses did Staples force out of business over the years by exercising monopolistic control over suppliers and the market? Sure, Staples is cheap, but are we better for it? Bain Capital was also never about entrepreneurship, it is about gaming the financial and tax systems to generate profits at the expense of the companies it acquired or invested in.
A reduction in regulations, access to affordable individual health insurance (how many people are stuck in jobs simply because of health insurance?), and yes, government support in the form of preferential tax treatment and organizational support (expansion of the SBA), are all necessary for the entrepreneurial spirit to revive.
Maybe we to learn from FormerStudent about getting hypernyched before we hyperventilate about the monopolistic ambitions of office supply chains, Brutus.
Our enemy is within. Social Conservatism = Statism. Just as invasive. Just as contrary to our founding principles.
Social Conservatives (anti-choice/anti-gay marriage) are almost proud that we lose elections because of them. I see their comments here, and they flaunt their cavalier disregard of our losses because they are hanging tough. They accuse non-evangelical conservatives of being lightweight poseurs.
Bull, I say. We have lost the last two elections because of you. Why? Because every liberal I talk to hates Republicans for one primary reason, and that is evangelicals.
It’s not our personal responsibility. It’s not our fiscal responsibility. It’s not our liberty or lack of dependency. You see, there are plenty of libs who value those goals too.
But if I were a Lib on the fence, Todd Akin would seal the deal for me. Every lib I’ve talked to since the election has told me this.
I grew up Mormon. I’m agnostic. None of it has a damn thing to do with the politics of our country. Maybe you evangelicals could get your noses out of people’s personal lives long enough to understand that the concept of Liberty goes both ways, and when you decide your views are superior you’re just another statist progressive scum.
Give a listen to any of the Wallbuilders podcasts. They represent the perfect synthesis of evangelical religion and politics. David Barton and Rick Green go to incredible lengths to twist their interpretations of the Bible and the writings of the “founding fathers” into commentary on current day politics (Jesus hated labor unions and the Federal Reserve!). They come just short of calling for a theocracy.
Sorry,
Nihilism never built a damn thing.
Actually values and principles did. Judeo-Christian in this case. Look up Max Weber’s “Christian work ethic.”
But alas…keep promoting your foolishness, it’s part of the problem, and you are too stupid to realize it. You are only moderately less destructive than a dyed in the wool Marxist.
Todd,
Your anger is quite revealing. Have you considered however, that _every_ law has a moral basis that underpins it?
- Rape
- Murder
- Theft
- Contract law, requiring people to keep their word/promise/agreement
Why should these be outlawed and/or enforced? Don’t they involve cramming morality down someone’s throat?
fortibus85 -
“Have you considered however, that _every_ law has a moral basis that underpins it?”
Absolutely, and that is a great way to sum up the controversy.
However, that argument goes both ways, doesn’t it? Many conservatives believe social issues should be left up to the individual. A concept called “Liberty”.
We lost a vital election that was handed to us on a platter, and more and more I hear that Evangelicals let Romney twist in the wind.
If this is the case, Evangelicals’ childish, short-sighted behavior makes Liberals look like geniuses. In fact, I think it did.
Todd,
I’m a social conservative. I gave over $1500 to the cause this last year, more than all elections combined in the last 30 years of my adult life. I got on a bus and spent a weekend in Nevada walking precincts for Mitt Romney. I donate _monthly_ to 4 social and political conservative groups on family issues, fiscal issues, rule of law issues. I attended several tea party rallys (who are neutral on social issues) and helped plan another and manned a booth there. I did more in this last year than in all my adult life combined for this election. (To be fair to myself, 25 years of that were active duty military and I was precluded from active participation).
I have yet to meet one single social conservative who is happy about this election. In fact the ones I know are absolutely sick about it. Not temporary sick, but “things will never be the same” sick, and “what do we do now” sick.
I can tell you that I had several conversations with libertarians on facebook, who knew we needed a Romney vote, and with glee and shameful joy _announced_ their intent in front of Republican audiences how they would not vote for Romney. The only glee I have seen was intentional, and pre-meditated, by libertarians. So we each have our own experience of feeling betrayed by people _who should have known better_.
Somehow we are all blaming the people who _should have known better_. I am guilty of it too. I am angry at people of any persuasion who didn’t vote, and any of those folks who complain to me about tyranny or taxes or governance, are going to get a finger in the chest butt chewing. That includes libertarians, Reupublicans, social conservatives, anyone who should have known better.
But the real truth is that _everyone_ should have known better. If people stayed on the sidelines, shame on them. But people who actually voted for this evil man with blood on his hands, they deserve the blame! Obama voters, who wanted free stuff, are using social conservatives as an excuse. Don’t fall for it. I don’t plan on figuring out how to “be nicer” to them. They can’t see reality. They can’t see evil. They can’t see chaos. They can’t see insanity. (Or they do see, but they don’t care). So would any words from me make a difference? No. And don’t you believe for a _moment_ that it was about social issues. Do rational people send their country to destruction because they are worried about the rights of gays to marry, or women to kill their unborn children? No. There is nothing rational about it. They wanted what they wanted, and will use any excuse to deflect attention away from their own pathetic narcissism. Remember that when you talk to a liberal. If they can’t fathom basic reality, or don’t care about reality more than their own needs, why would their stated reason that “it’s because of the social conservatives” be given any weight. They say it, because some people are willing to believe them.
The problem with the church is that is isn’t social enough in the first place. My wife and I are leaving our church and moving to a more conservative one. A more socially conservative one. Most of the attendees at our current church likely voted for Obama. And yes, it is a non-demoninational evangelical church. But the problem isn’t that they stayed on the sidelines, the problem is that they _voted for Obama_. Same problem in the Catholic Church, where 45% voted for Obama.
Ask yourself this. Of those 45% of Catholics who voted for Obama, if they had been even more socially conservative in outlook, more religious and devoutly Catholic, would they have been more likely, or less likely, to have voted for Obama?
Our problem isn’t that church goers take God too seriously. Our problem is that church goers don’t take God seriously enough. If they did, Romney would be President.
One could make a case that the American Revolution failed after some small 200+ years and we are re-annexing to European values. The rugged individualism of the rurals has been out voted by the co-dependency and needs for social demands of the densely populated urbans.
The nanny state with the government referee as the player has evolved. Corporate experiments will be neutered by the Big Brother oversight, risk will be punished, and self-reliance mocked. Population density increases the insanity of the humans’ territorial imperative. More regulations are thus created which easily create more criminals and failures.
Every time I search Google Play to find suitable apps for my Android smartphone, I’m amazed at the innovations I see.
I can do things on my smartphone that would have been science fiction just 25 years ago. Even Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov never imagined what an iPhone or an Android phone can do today.
I’m not worried about future innovation. We heard this same story in the 1970s.
Innovation will do just fine.
But it’s going to be heavily decentralized, with capital decentralized too.
Someone selling an Android app on Google Play is probably never going to have a giant modern office building to produce it in. Many of these developers may work out of their homes, for all I know.
Human ingenuity will always be with us. At this very moment countless people in North Korea are likely thinking up absolutely brilliant ways to feed their families. Castro couldn’t take the ingenuity out of the Cuban people. Look at the ingenious methods people invented to get out of there.
What can change is the climate that permits creative people to turn that passion for creating into a livelihood or supplemental income. That climate can become very unfriendly through governmental policies, regulations, taxation and loss of freedom of expression.
The ability of people to earn a livelihood creating apps assumes that the climate of the Internet remains as it is. I believe that it is highly possible that the Internet could look very different after four more years.
China, the statist communists vs China, the capitalistic communists.
I believe “decentralization”, which is another way of saying “distributed”, is going to be the key to the 21st century. We are going to distribute into small regions that raise their own food, generate their own power, handle their own problems, and defend themselves. The internet allows for communication between them, without any threatening physicalities like, oh, I dunno…”armies”.
Once upon a time in a land far, far away, these were called “citystates”. I think that is an excellent way to go, because it allows vastly different people to drift to where the life they want to lead is practiced. Honestly, I think the best sized region is about 5,000 people, but I’ll admit I’m extreme.
But this cannot happen unless we can defeat the growing central power of the statists. That is where the armies would come from.
Before we can defeat the trend toward centralization, we must find a way to make people understand that it is the worst possible path. Most people are clueless about what is being built right before our eyes.
Don’t worry, Malatrope. They are busy creating your utopia for you. Although we should be more careful about what we wish for, because we just might get it.
What changes is that the main customers for entrepreneurs to target will be agencies in various levels of government with access to our money. If a technical advance will enrich some official somehow, it has a chance to succeed. Otherwise, larger companies skilled in finessing the government will be able to keep out pesky new competition.
E.g. They persecuted Gibson Guitars to give their Democratic donor competitor an edge.
They “random” audited Northwestern Hospital to give their competitor, the First Wife’s former employer, the U of Chicago Hospital, an advantage.
In a word, yes.
There are entrepreneurial startups all the time in biotech. But the government actively quashes them through the hyper restrictive protocols of the FDA. Unless this is changed a whole other sector of the economy is going to vacate these shores for better climes elsewhere. The government doesn’t need to support companies like these; venture capitalists will do so if the ideas are good. What government does have to do, however, is get its boot off of people’s necks. They have no business picking winners and losers – their record shows that they can’t do it.
What conceivable reason is there for Venture Capitalists or entrepreneurs to set up in this country? There is no stable rule of law if you come up against someone with connections, laws are made by Executive Order and bureaucracy and not the Legislature, the Constitution is honored more in the breach than the performance, the currency is shaky at best, and the official doctrine of the regime is hatred of the Kulaks. And that is before the beginning of Obama’s second term.
Subotai Bahadur
Wow Mr. Bahadur, I found your comment to be the most direct, relevant, accurate, and to-the-point of all the comments posted here. And you made it interesting to read, and I loved your allusion to Russian history and its relevance to modern day America. Bravo!
You are correct, sir. I lost 10% of my 401k during the GM cramdown. Two hundred plus years of rule of law thrown on the ashes, by political lawyers with political agendas. My “claim” amount wound up in the pockets of the UAW.
I never hear political pundits talk about the value of the “rule of law” to a healthy and vibrant economy. But, without a consistent application of the rule of law, every kind of varmint, opportunist, or crony is tempted to bribe, donate, etc. to a candidate which allow them to trample over other people’s rights.
I read somewhere that the pension funds in American have $20 trillion dollars to manage. But I wonder if the trustees hesitate to invest in United States busiensses given the opening up of lawlessness.
Innovation runs in cycles. Somewhere, some scientific or technical advance waits in the wings, something that will sweep through the economy and be a must-buy because it offers productivity advantages to its buyers and hence to society. Early adaptors will find a competitive advantage while late adaptors will buy to stay competitive.
But this productivity enhancers needs two ingredients. It needs the right idea, something that CAN be done and WILL benefit its buyers. The second is that it needs capital. Without both, it dies.
The current recession has capital seeking returns. You certainly won’t find returns in a bank account or a CD. To get returns you must take a risk on losing your investment. Low returns encourages risk taking.
Unfortunately, the current government increases the risk systemicly for all investment, raising the threshold for risky investment.
Living in the heart of Silicon Valley, I agree completely that our tech industry is just another commodity business. When was the last time you rushed out and bought a new program or piece of hardware for your PC? When was the last time you even welcomed a new application your corporate IT pushed onto your desktop? It’s been ages for me. Even cell phones are plateauing.
David is only half right: the other part is simply a lack of trust either in others or the stability of the rules.
I saw it coming in the fifties when I was very young. America is much to willing go rely on force when a claim to morality can be made. Put another way the place simply forgets that there are people on the receiving end of your good actions and they will have to pay one way or another so you can feel good.
Lastly people like Obama because he cares or perhaps like Potus Bill he feels your pain. People who want that can neither care nor feel themselves being sunk in the slime.
You guys vastly over estimate the value of entrepreneurship. There are plenty of other factors that go into having a healthy economy: well-trained technical people, adequate infrastructure, reliable workers, dedicated public servants.
The Old Reds used to talk about the emergence of the “New Socialist Man.” Maybe heavily ideological political movements inevitably dream of reinventing humanity in their own image, ergo the “New Conservative Man,” who overcomes all obstacles by combining the Protestant ethic with the practical ethics of a Mexican drug lord. You can’t fight the logic: if every black guy would just emulate Cain and own 168 pizza restaurants, all would be well.
Professor Goldman,
We’ve been worshipping the Constitution.
We need to worship G_d, Judeo-Christian G_d.
The Constitution was merely supposed to allow for an orderly society so that we could worship G_d. It is a brilliant, divinely inspired document. But it is the means to an end. It is not the point. G_d is the point.
I have a lesser version of the gift you have, which is the ability to see the downstream consequences of actions, decisions, and processes, and how systems and movements affect each other. What I see terrifies me. I suspect it does you as well. I see no way out. But I am just a man.
This is the gloomiest post mortem so far on the “demise of America” beginning or more accurately, continuing, unabated, in 2012. But hope, as it’s been said many times, springs eternal. M. Goldman’s knowledge of the inner workings of the economy and its underlying trends, coupled with impressive graphics supporting his notion that America is basically finished, is impressive but will fly way over the heads of those that must be reached before his dire prediction comes true; those who think GDP means Government Distribution of Payoffs.
The political mess America is in today is more about the widely discussed but, in practice, largely uninhibited and unchecked influence of a media that has become a powerful instrument of indoctrination. This is the result of a diabolically clever strategy that sacrificed the unrealistic goal of immediately achieving its ideological ends through violent means for a more peaceful, non-violent, subtle approach. The ideology is the Communist, Socialist, Progressive, Statist goals expressed most succinctly by ex SEIU president, Andy Stern, a good buddy of Barack Hussein Obama and a big proponent of big Unionism and big Union’s Card Check philosophy…… “Workers Unite.”
The approach, in essence, was patience and a dedication to achieving maximum effect with a minimum, indeed a paucity, of personnel.
The Vietnam war was marked by the disaffection of a large number of college level students and intellectuals with their American identity. They defected to other countries, especially Canada, to avoid being drafted and sent to the human buzz saw that was the Vietnam war. The animus for this war spread throughout America, especially among the most vulnerable, the youth. Some of us older guys can still remember the infamous Jane Fonda, daughter of Hollywood legend, Henry Fonda, who went to Vietnam to express her anti-American, anti-war views to a welcoming crowd of North Vietnamese thrilled with the windfall, the unsolicited propaganda bonanza she represented, a Hollywood star in her own right, a glamorous, quintessentially American celebrity committing what is still considered by many, a treasonous act. The college crowd and many of Americas youth, particularly in the entertainment industry, adored her for what was, at the time, considered courageous defiance of the “evil military/industrial complex” guilty of murdering innocent Vietnamese women and children for no justifiable reason other than personal aggrandizement and profit. American soldiers were reviled, spit upon on their return from what was the burial ground for 50,000 of their comrades.
This attitude persisted then and its anti-American sentiments continue to be cherished as being emblematic of the true American spirit of individual freedom, freedom of expression, etc. “You didn’t build that” Obama likely benefits from more than just being half black.
It’s been estimated that some 80% of College faculty today proudly align themselves with what is loosely called “the Left.” It is not at all a stretch to conclude, from what is obvious in modern America, that a majority in print and television media and in Hollywood today and over the decades since Vietnam, are products of this sub culture. Many graduates of these institutions of indoctrination are now situated in institutions and organizations, like the EPA for example, that exercise enormous influence over the economy that Mr. Goldman considers is in dire straits.
What would be the result if organizations like the EPA were stripped of their dictatorial authority to arbitrarily make decisions on the basis of their ideology with no regard, none, for the human cost and the impact on the economy? What would be the effect of removing the regulatory noose around the necks of America’s energy developers and producers? What would be the effect of a complete overhaul of the massive volume of regulations promulgated as a means to implement elements of an ideology by bypassing an incompetent, recalcitrant, permissive Congress? What would be the effect of abrogating economically disastrous decisions made by a rogue, anti-constitutional, activist Supreme Court (like declaring CO2 a greenhouse gas for example)?
It is perhaps true that, at least for the immediately foreseeable future, there are no high tech, high growth, high profit innovations on the horizon but the power of the American, Capitalist, free enterprise system does not require such breakthroughs to survive and flourish. But this will not happen as long as “the Left” maintains its dominance in the communications industry. Republicans and Conservatives need not be involved in a futile, never ending quest to adjust their message. They just need to find a way to get that message out by overpowering the cacophony of vitriolic, ad hominem attacks and outright distortions of the truth that become “truth,” ipso facto. With the weakly challenged, powerhouse that dominates the communications industry today no amount of messaging, however conservative the message, will gain sufficient traction to stem the tide of Leftist propaganda and America, in fact, is on the precipice, about to go over the edge.
I will no longer be courteous or “nice” to Leftists. This will be known as the “Marcia Doctrine” and it was put to the test today. While having a cup of coffee at my favorite coffee shop, I was engaged in conversation with a retired school teacher and his wife. After about 30 seconds, the talk turned to the election and it became obvious that he was a Leftist. He proceeded to spout some B.S. about Obama not being against coal, just dirty coal. I let him have it and put my Civil Engineering degree to good use. He was told point blank and directly by me that he was lying and I backed it up with facts. We all need to stand up to these people. I’m not going to take crap from some Leftist retired public school teacher who denigrates and spouts lies about an industry and livelihood that supports tens of thousands of proud people. These people can all go to hell.
Production costs drive spike in ag lending John Maday, Managing Editor, Drovers CattleNetwork | Updated: November 9, 2012
http://www.cattlenetwork.com/cattle-news/Production-costs-drive-spike-in-ag-lending-177977511.html
Most American voters are stupid enough to vote for a complete charlatan over an intelligent, capable, successful, honest man. Neo-cons, So-cons, Libertarians, Tea Partiers and all the rest are only culpable in this if they couldn’t tell the difference themselves. I say the Democrats are totally to blame for this albatross and the only way to beat them is to convince a lot of very stupid people of that fact. Inspecting our own philosophical impurities won’t help us and it is just what our real enemy wants us to waste our time doing.