Category Archives: Capitalism

A Bad Business: Avoid ‘Kimberley’s Tailoring & Alterations’ Like The Plague

Asia, Business, Capitalism, Free Markets

The fact that the proprietor of “Kimberley’s Tailoring & Alterations” has received some good reviews suggests that she has a clientele that expects little, is easily intimidated and has no qualms about parting with a LOT of money UPFRONT—yes, you heard me—with no assurances that the job will come up to standards, other than the abrupt, obnoxious manners of the proprietor. “Kimberley,” I presume.

I entered “Kimberley’s Tailoring & Alterations” for the first time ever to have two new skirts shortened. Pinning the skirts for hemming proved a somewhat unpleasant experience. “Kimberley” made no particular attempt to advise on length, or enable me to properly see the length of the hem, vis-à-vis the shoes. She did, however, convey in her gruff, incoherent demeanor what she could NOT do for me, rather than what was achievable. Indeed, “Kimberley” made it crystal clear that her aim was not to please this customer, but to lord it over her. No matter, I thought to myself. We all have our idiosyncrasies. So long as she’s good at what she does, right?

Following the fitting, I headed to the counter. I expected to receive a slip—perhaps pay a deposit—and depart. Whereupon “Kimberley” informed me that I would have to pay her in full and UPFRONT. I said that I seldom pay in advance for a service I have not received, except when the government forces that on me, and I presume she is not working for them (she’d make a great TSA agent). If I pay upfront, I inquired, what recourse will I have should she botch the job? None, “Kimberley” conceded. How much did she want for hemming two skirts, I inquired?

ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY EIGHT DOLLARS! $138!

The skirts, although stunning and well-made (one even made in Paris), were bought on sale for $29 each (at “Winners,” in Vancouver, B.C.: thanks, Karen, for sending me there). I told “Kimberley” I would not pay $138 for hemming. And I would most certainly not be paying $138 in advance. I’d be prepared to pay a deposit, no more. Besides, with the full amount in her pocket, what incentive would she have to do a good job? I requested that she return the pinned garments, at once. I offered to pay for the time she spent pinning the skirts for hemming. More civilized and reasonable than that one can’t get.

Whereupon “Kimberley” became unhinged, clutched my PROPERTY (the skirts), refused to turn them over, and informed me she’d be removing the pins forthwith. I had stood for 25 minutes in her sweltering shop, being pinned for hemming. I saw no reason for her to be so irrational and undo the work. “I’ll pay you for your time as well as for a box of pins,” I offered. Again, I demanded she return my garments forthwith.

From there on it was downhill. “Kimberley” threatened to call 911 and claim I had assaulted her, because I had reached for my skirts, which she was clutching and refusing to return. I took out $20, put it on the counter, and demanded again that she give me my property, or else she’d hear from my lawyer. I promised that I would be committing the experience at “Kimberley’s Tailoring & Alterations” to pixels.

Finally, “Kimberley” relented. My skirts were returned and she yelled, running after me, “I don’t want your money.” Realizing she was making a scene outside, “Kimberley” retreated into the shop with the cash. Good riddance. I headed to the adjacent “Dirk’s,” where the service is always fantastic and the people genteel and gracious.

Incidentally, I had a similar experience with “Margarita Tailor,” also of Issaquah. I can only imagine that in both instances (“Kimberley” & Margarita), one is dealing with individuals from an authoritarian culture, who do not understand how free-market transactions work.

The Paltrow Of Politics (Minus Looks & Ethics)

Capitalism, Elections, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Healthcare, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Military, Uncategorized, War

“The Paltrow Of Politics (Minus Looks & Ethics)” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

Hillary Rodham Clinton has done some “conscious uncoupling” from reality. The term was disgorged by a celebrity, Gwyneth Paltrow, to announce a separation from her spouse. In the same breath, the actress bemoaned her gilded, glamorous life, and offended America’s military sacred cow by comparing the cyber-attacks she endures to the experience of war.

As heir to a political dynasty founded by a powerful man, Hillary has received millions of dollars to write books. Over the years, she and husband Bill Clinton have made hundreds of millions from both book deals and speaking engagements. Yet in a recent ABC interview, the former “First Housewife” complained about emerging from the White House not only “dead broke, but in debt”: “We had no money when we got there and we struggled to … piece together the resources for mortgages, for houses, for Chelsea’s education. You know, it was not easy.” …

… But on CNN, love is in the air. Viewers have expressed a belief that Hillary would restore the country to the Clinton years of peace and prosperity. Bill Clinton bombed Iraq in 1998, as well as a Sudanese pharmaceutical company that turned out to be the main manufacturer of medicines and vaccinations in Sudan. And he strafed the Serbs in 1999. Stateside, Bill butchered 76 men, women and children in Texas. Alas, so long as Hillary steers clear of another Waco, and confines her murderous sprees to killing far-away people from high above—few boots on the ground—her countrymen will consider her a peace-maker.

While prosperity during the Clinton years was due less to Clinton-economics than to Reaganomics and a Republican Congress not yet completely comatose—in fairness, Bill does grasp something about prosperity. “This is good work,” he famously said about Mitt Romney’s much-maligned work at Bain Capital. Hillary, conversely, has no economic acumen. “There are rich people everywhere, and yet they do not contribute to the growth of their own countries,” she grumbled at the Clinton Global Initiative, in 2012. According to economist George Reisman’s cogent analysis—and contra Mrs. Clinton’s crushing ignorance—“a highly productive and provident one percent provides the standard of living of a largely ignorant and ungrateful ninety-nine percent.” As for Obama’s putsch for a North-Korean style health care: Instead of aborting it, Hillary will guarantee that Obamacare reaches full-term gestation.

Another wily fox called Bill (O’Reilly) has defended Mrs. Clinton’s riches as capitalism’s reward for hard work. Not quite. Hillary has accrued wealth by using the predatory political process to wield power over others. Although she has pudding for brains, Gwyneth Paltrow, on the other hand, has made a living in the honest, productive, non-predatory and salutary ways of the free-market. Paltrow’s affluence, unlike Hillary’s, is a reward for assets she peddles to people who choose to purchase them. …

Read the complete column. “The Paltrow Of Politics (Minus Looks & Ethics)” is now on WND.

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UPDATE IV: Latest Anti-Man Moaning From Menstruation Lobby (‘The Americans’)

Capitalism, Celebrity, Feminism, Film, Gender, Government, Hollywood, Political Correctness

Just for a change, the menstruation lobby is moaning about the movies and its members’ representation therein: “The latest study on women in front of the camera finds that female characters are still significantly under-represented on the big screen. … The numbers for minority females are even lower. African-American female representation on screen climbed to 14%, from 8% in 2011, but down from 15% in 2012.”

Despite the same lobby’s attempt to ban the word, we women are “bossy.”

I control the remote in the house. My husband, however, is happy to allow it, because we like viewing the same things—except that he is more patient and prone to watch foolish female heroes strut their stuff in stilettos and plunging cleavages while chasing the bad guys. He’s been softened. He believes the schtick.

Other than “Olivia” in “Law and Order”—she’s the only believable woman in a tough-cop routine—I can’t watch females as action heroes because it doesn’t make sense. I’m way too wedded to reality to find women believable in these roles.

As for the presence of minorities in movies: it usually signals a two-hour long, oppressive racial lecture. And “I’m no more inclined to turn to ’12 Years A Slave’ for entertainment, than I am to subject myself to Oprah Winfrey and her M.O.P.E. (Most Oppressed Person Ever) ‘Butler.'”

Maybe other viewers are on to this and agree, because it is quite clear that Hollywood is giving viewers what they want to see: men in lead roles. If film executives listened to loathsome Lena Dunham, instead of to the demands of consumers—the industry would go bankrupt.

In any event, Sean and I both like the Metal and Military Channels, “Investigation Discovery” for the gory real-life murder cases, “Law and Order” (Olivia’s awesome), “The Following,” “Criminal Minds” (the horror compensates for the hens), “Justified,” and, I know the category is wrong, but the Oscars belongs to ….

The Americans.

It is simply superb; TV at its best: no politics, surprisingly, no mega movie stars (who usually can’t act); real foreigners playing foreigners (no fake foreign accent, courtesy of Angelina Jolie), and a great script.

Enjoy tonight’s episode.

UPDATE I (3/13): The Following” is ad hoc, make-it-up-as-you-go garbage. But it’s done well-enough to entertain.

UPDATE II: “THE AMERICANS.” The script and story are so good in The Americans, that you don’t root for a political side—the story is remarkably apolitical, given how political is should be, the halmark of good storytelling—you simply get absorbed in the plot. It’s a great spook story. That’s the experience the movies should deliver. Good narrative, good acting, no wagging finger. However, it is pro-American in the subtle, good, non-rah-rah way, as it shows how the couple is living the life while going through the spook motions. It is wonderful TV.

UPDATE III: The script and story are so good in “The Americans,” that you don’t root for a political side—the story is remarkably apolitical, given how political is should be, the hallmark of good storytelling—you simply get absorbed in the plot. It’s a great spook story. That’s the experience the movies should deliver. Good narrative, good acting, no wagging finger. However, it is pro-American in the subtle, good, non rah-rah way, as it shows how the couple is living The Life while going through the spook motions. It is wonderful TV.

House of Cards: I do not like a lecture: not from the Right, the Left, or from the libertarians (my crowd). And I do not watch any program about politicians, CIA, FBI, NSA. I want to excise these cancers from my life.

UPDATE IV: Some seek an ideology in a story, I seek a good narrative. Not sure what it is about my explanation on Facebook that Friends have failed to get about excising all gov. from my life. CIA, FBI, NSA, D.C.: “Good” or bad, it’s all bad, because it should be abolished. I don’t watch it for “fun.” I write about it.

Conservatives Adopting Lefty Language About ‘Income Inequality’

Business, Capitalism, Conservatism, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Private Property, The State

A more meaningful index than “income inequality”—it implies that income equality is the thing to strive for, heaven help us!—would be the correlation between the increasing balance sheets of the central banks of the world and so-called increasing wealth discrepancies.

Conservatives rarely argue the morality of capitalism and individual liberty. If they do debate, it is about the utility of freedom to the common good. The entire impetus of Republican-Party operatives is to keep up with the issues the Democrats introduce to distract from the destructive effects of galloping statism. So if the latter decry “income inequality,” the former affirm that they too worry themselves sick over whatever it is the Democrats are droning on about.

Today, Fox News reported gravely that the “World’s richest 85 people have as much as bottom half the population.” Similarly, this Townhall.com writer assures his readers that “Inequality is a Conservative Issue.”

“The Capitalist Professor” George Reisman is having none of it. He writes “In Defense of Business Fortunes and the Destructive Effects of Imposing Economic Equality,” at www.twitter.com, @GGReisman:

1. A fortune is accumulated by means of earning a high rate of profit on capital and heavily saving and reinvesting it year after year.

2. The high rate of profit is achieved by introducing newer, better products or producing existing products at a lower cost.

3. Sooner or later, competition brings down a high rate of profit to the general level. To go on earning it, further innovation is necessary.

4. For example, to maintain its high rate of profit, Apple has had to repeatedly improve its products and introduce several major new ones.

5. Had Apple stood still, its initially very profitable products, made obsolete by competition, would now be selling at huge losses.

6. The high profits are generally invested in the means of producing the very kind of products in which the innovations take place.

7. For example, Apple’s profits are invested in the expanded and improved production of Apple’s products.

8. Thus, business fortunes under capitalism represent ever better, less expensive products produced with capital constituted by those fortunes.

9. The fortunes originate in profits and are used as capital. Both ways they serve the general buying public. They also pay wages and salaries.

10. The existence of fortunes under capitalism benefits everyone in his capacity both as a buyer of products and seller of labor.

11. Imposing economic equality requires the confiscation of high profits. It would abort the earning of fortunes and stifle economic progress.

12. Advocates of economic equality know nothing about profits, innovation, or capital. They believe that wealth is a pile of consumers’ goods.

13. The capitalists, whom they depict as fat men, allegedly have too much of this pile. Some of it must be given to the starving masses.

14. Thus, imposing economic equality is also a policy of seizing capital in order to consume it—eating the seed corn and being impoverished.

15. Advocates of economic equality are wilfully ignorant of economics. They are fueled by envy and resentment, biting the hands that feed them.

16. Socialism/Communism is their philosophy. Stalin and Mao are their heroes. Famine, slave labor camps, and mass death are their legacy.