I joined a partnership in Tokyo that is described in an earlier blog post. It was the world’s first social think tank. We solved business problems involving social structural matters. What reminded me of this is a first rate book on language that I am reading. I learned there are many language communities, around the globe, where the inhabitants communicate... Continue reading

Historically, humans have had children because children were productive assets. While children were a cost burden until age 9 in most traditional societies and their survival to age 21 was very low, the family produced many children to offset losses and the early cost. By their teens, the cost of the children was usually paid-off. From that point on the... Continue reading

As usual I found material online that is far from complete and I need to add my own experience to the collection. The material I found on Ron Boise the sculptor was here and here. In late 1963 I bought five sculptures I saw in a North Beach gallery. The Vorpal Gallery (from “the Vorpal Blade went snicker snack” Lewis... Continue reading

I was the treasurer and business manager of Glide from 1970 to 1981. The Internet records about Glide are total nonsense. They are based solely on the self-serving history as told by Cecil Williams. Here are the facts. This page at Stanford is accurate: “By the early 1960s, …. Glide Memorial, a small congregation with a large endowment in the... Continue reading

I’m taking a crack at this subject. No one, to my knowledge, has done a good job. The subject matter has many names which is evidence that it isn’t understood. Mass hysteria, Collective action, Mass psychology, Crowd psychology and many other terms. The best summary, I’ve found, of descriptions and theories is here. I have personally been in the Dan... Continue reading

I just finished reading Matt Ridley’s book on innovation. An excellent summary of the issue. How innovation occurs and, importantly, how it is continually opposed and stifled. I’ve spent many decades as a business consultant for a large number of businesses, mostly small. I have lived in the innovation capital of the world, the San Francisco Bay Area. I‘ve personally... Continue reading

My friend and editor, David S., has been sending me libertarian reading material. And I have read a lot. A major focus, recently, has been on the way the Global Internet may make libertarianism more salient. Bitcoin has added to the tumult. I disagree. My adult life has been focused on how social systems work. You can see some of... Continue reading

I was trained as an economist but have never practiced as one. I’ve observed three unexpected economic phenomena from the Covid lockdown. First, about 50% of the labor force works for businesses with 50 or less employees. These businesses, 50 and under, were the most hard hit by the Covid restrictions. These include sole proprietors, grooming, exercise, yoga-type classes and... Continue reading

There is a conservative ETF that started at the time of the last election (ACVF.) I’m commenting on this subject because I am one of the founders of the Corporate Social Responsibility Movement. This ETF is a fifty years late offspring of that movement. I organized the first Corporate Social Responsibility Conference in 1972 in Inverness California. About 20 activists... Continue reading

How many people do you know who work for a company that has no physical office? I personally know six people who work for companies that have no physical location. Total employment in these six companies is close to 100. The Covid-19 year of radical change will have created many more of these cyber nomads. These workers can work and... Continue reading

There are two kinds of money in politics. One is the kind of money spent on expensive law firms in Washington DC that is directed at lobbying. The other is money spent on campaigning. The former generally works and the latter doesn’t. My closest life-long friend, Bobby G. believed that the moneyed class has disproportionate power in politics. He changed... Continue reading

My relevant background on this subject is that I helped start the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco in 1974. I was co-organizer of the 1st International Erotic Film Festival and Museum with material from the Kronhausen Collection. I was on the California State certification committee that approved the masters and Phd degrees for the Institute.... Continue reading

The revolution was the hippies; the counter-revolution is the wokies. Many years ago I wrote the Hippie Manifesto: We are going to build a better world for our children and our grandchildren. We want fun, good health and mutual caring; everyone is welcome to join us. We have boundless optimism. We love diversity, we hippies are everyone. We try to... Continue reading

I have had a 40-year relationship with friends in and around the Japanese State Department (Gaimusho). An Israeli friend wrote asking me about a YouTube by SSanbeer on Biden’s deteriorating U.S. relations with Japan. I sent it along to a close friend in Japan, a foreign policy professor. She sent two articles she had written on the subject, one is... Continue reading

As we lead our daily lives, over the decades, we forget that the war raging around us is a religious war. The Covid-19 interlude is somewhat of a diversion from the main war. One side believes in a human caused global apocalypse, the Enviro Religion, the other side doesn’t. In the United States the majority doesn’t accept the Enviro Religion,... Continue reading

In my old age I am remembering my four closest friends. What allowed the intense and long-lasting friendship was what we had in common. In each case we had an original common experience. In one case, Bobby G, it was a common ethnic upbringing, in a second, Peter S, it was our common professional background, in the third, Chick, we... Continue reading

The concept of homeopathy: “something that brings on symptoms in a healthy person can -- in a very small dose -- treat an illness with similar symptoms.” Massive government growth has created the current malaise in America. Voters, believing in political homeopathy, in 2020 voted for more of the same. The Democrat Party gained control of the Congress and the... Continue reading

There have been several bursts of American commerce over the past 170 years. Four factors have caused this: Escape from the elites in the U.S., Innovation, the End of the U.S. Elite and Market size. As I have pointed for several decades, the elites of the world have repressed innovation. Elites are the prime beneficiaries of the status quo. They... Continue reading

I watched a new CBS show The Equalizer last week and saw four recent CBS shows in the past few days. I will not watch them again. They are too ‘woke’ for me. The Equalizer is predominantly a black action program with a few white actors. All the black actors use Standard American English which is necessary in prime time... Continue reading

Jews, Irish and Japanese-Americans have no problem claiming prominent thinkers and Nobel Laureates as compatriots. The black community has a problem in this regard. I was the business manager of a black church for more than a decade and have had many close friends who are black including the black minister of the church. A few of my black friends... Continue reading

I’ve followed the Ayn Rand, Objectivist and Libertarian world for over half a century. D. Schatz recently led me to a book by Paul Rosenberg. It is a contemporary update of that world. Rosenberg paints a fictional vision in a cyber free-market fantasy. I’ve had a great deal of experience that relates to the viability of this cyber vision. I... Continue reading

When the new campus for Lowell High School was about to open in the Fall of 1963, the San Francisco School Board voted to end the century-long history of Lowell as an academically select college prep school that fed graduating students into U.C. Berkeley and Stanford. That set in motion a 25-year sequence that included me. The current School Board... Continue reading

Sometime around 1976 the Japanese State Department (Gaimusho) asked me for advice. I was known for my articles on Japan in the leading American hippie journal, CoEvolution Quarterly. The question was “‘What should Japan do about drug use by young Japanese?.”’ My advice was to allow young Japanese to smoke pot, there were no serious long- term effects. Allowing pot... Continue reading

I protected my daughters while they were growing up. I never told them about the corrupt world they faced. I didn’t protect my son. I believe this is common in the Anglo world. Women are far less likely to know about and understand the corruption around them. Corruption is the disproportionate favoritism for some people or groups. The following is... Continue reading

I’m seeing a division in our society that has many consequences. With the arrival of a global functioning Internet I am seeing several unusual phenomena. One is the social monopoly attribute of a few big sites, like Facebook, Google and Instagram. The main reason is that the first one with a large global following sets user patterns that cross geographic... Continue reading