A repbulican in Chicago!

When I arrived at the train station to wait for the morning train I was approached by a man who is running for state representative in November I am guessing. His name is Franco solidified who works full time as a lawyer. He was giving out pamphlets, which are very nicely done, however they do not say anything about his views on anything. This may be the standard operating procedure for this level of a politics but I am going to call his office later and ask about a couple topics. Oh by the way, he is a Republican so his favorable with me has reached 51%.

Update: He does have a website although it was not on his pamphlets!!! There are still no issues listed on the website. This must be modus operandi.

US Capitalist Cycles

To go along with my Oct 17th post I just read an article about how small businesses across the US are exploding.

I believe the small business cycle is often overlooked. While not widely reported to me it appears there have been many such times when small businesses have outpaced big business.

During these times which I think occurred around 1940s, 1980s, and now 2000s big business tends to stagnate or shrinking leading to many mergers resulting in Oligarchy structures of the old big business.

This causes a lot of shakeup among the employed workers and investors. This leads both groups to look elsewhere. For former employees, new opportunities present themselves because of new technology or productivity enhancements. Investors want higher returns and look towards these new businesses to get them.

Eventually as the end of cycle approaches the small entrepreneurships grow and combine to form new large companies, eventually to reach oligarchy status and restarting the cycle.

The result of all this is survival of the corporate fittest which is a reason why the US is so productive and rich.

A College McEducation

I had to take 3 or 4 social science classes in college. They were all useless. It is really sad that the last real history learning experience I had was at my high school when I had to read a 400 page book about sugar and a 30 page paper on the US legacy in the Philippines.

I don't even believe what I wrote in that paper to the extent I did back then. The sugar book was really good though. It sounds so boring but its amazing how this one commodity shaped the world. I wonder if 400 years from now people will be reading about oil in the same amazement.

I just read an article over at the Heritage Foundation, a great think tank, you can read it here. The topic is about S. Koreans trying to tear down the statue of Macarthur. It really makes me pissed off, enough to yell. The redeeming factor is that twice as many Koreans turned out to protect the statue. My worry is that in 10, 20, or 30 years there won't be any Koreans turning out to protect the statue.

They don't really stop and think why that statue is there. If they did, they would realize its there because they are free and prosperous. If it was not there, that means the US got pushed off the peninsula and the communists took over all of Korea. They wouldn't have a statue to pull down, but most likely they would have never been born. Hmmm.... Makes you think.

Is an education system good if people aren't being taught actual facts?

Another laissez faire mechanism?

I believe the venture capital market in the US needs to be watched more closely than it is now. By "watched" I mean analyzed not regulated. I believe as a whole there is a lot that can be implied by the amount of money going on the VC market.

1. The majority of people believe that the equity market, not being volatile, will be fairly stagnant in the medium term.
2. The majority of people believe that tBonds are worthless because their stagnant return is still below the equity markets stagnant return.
3. The current business environment is not lending itself to new technology that will give any one business a competitive advantage thus creating high return rates.

Because of these points people rather invest in new firms that want to try industry changing technology. Even though these companies have higher risk, the technology they are developing is economy changing such as the steel industry was in times past.