Category Archives: Free Markets

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.

Eric Garner: Peaceful Entrepreneur, Killed By Cop

Free Markets, Private Property, Regulation, Taxation, The State

Liberty’s quixotic hero, William Norman Grigg, documents and deconstructs the murder by cop of Eric Garner, chocked to death by Officer Daniel Pantaleo, for doing nothing naturally illicit. Arguably, Garner was being entrepreneurial, trading untaxed cigarettes in defiance of the state’s “slave patrol” and “Comrade” Andrew Cuomo’s “Cigarette Strike Force.” As always, Grigg gets to the nub of the issue, and beautifully so:

“Every time you see me, you want to mess with me! I’m tired of it! It stops today!”

Eric Garner, a peaceful and productive citizen, had suffered years of pointless and unnecessary harassment by the costumed predators employed by the NYPD. He told one of them to leave him alone. Such impudence by a mere Mundane cannot be tolerated, so Garner was murdered in the street in full public view.

Several plainclothes officers were prowling Garner’s Staten Island neighborhood on the afternoon of July 17 seeking to harvest revenue by catching harmless people in the act of committing petty infractions. Police Commissioner William Bratton describes this as “stamping out petty offenses as a way of heading off larger ones.” in practice, this means authorizing police to commit actual crimes in their efforts to turn harmless people into “offenders.” …

The first fatal mistake Garner made was to act as a peacemaker. The second was to assert his self-ownership in the face of someone employed by the contemporary equivalent of a slave patrol. Within minutes, five police officers attacked him, one of them slipping behind him to apply an illegal chokehold. Garner died of cardiac arrest after being swarmed and suffocated in front of numerous horrified witnesses, one of whom captured the entire event – from first confrontation to homicide – on camera. …

“Eric Garner’s exasperated proclamation ‘It stops today!’ is cognate with ‘Don’t tread on me,’ and his murder by an army of occupation immeasurably more vicious and corrupt than the Redcoats could precipitate a long-overdue rebellion against the omnivorous elite that army serves. …”

READ ON.

Some Americans Are Worth More Than Others

Free Markets, Labor, Military

You’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who will commiserate with your loss or dub it “dangerous and bad for the morale”—a risk to your family—in the event that you get the pink slip while serving nobly in the private economy, supplying fellow Americans with the services and products they need and desire.

On the other hand, the Pentagon “shrinks” the largest military in the world a smidgen—and the military-industrial-complex’s spokespeople fly into a rage.

Said Major Gen. Robert Scales: “It puts the soldier, the soldier’s family and the men under his command at risk.”

Seconded Sen. James Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee:

Once again [President Obama] is putting domestic politics ahead of the security of our nation. The Army captains and majors receiving pink slips while on the battlefield is just the latest example. My heart goes out to these men and women who are risking their lives and making great sacrifices, yet are now being told they are being separated from the Army and will have no job when they return home to their families.

Why should Army captains and majors be spared unemployment, a reality that faces American working in the market economy?

Militarism gone mad.

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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