They Dare Not Admit it, Atlas Shrugged still Here

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Len Cranford

To: apopeeso@comcast.net ; pyrigenes ; Chris D.

Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2015 9:55 AM

Subject: They Dare Not Admit it, Atlas Shrugged still Here

 

{The GAME would be up indeed!  The TRUTH IS; The entire Jew, mud-race thievery of Socialism relies on WHITE RACE Producers to PAY!  Ayn Rand`s "Atlas Shrugged" covered this 60 Years ago. And now Denninger sees it - last paragraphs here in bold letters;

 

This Is Why, In Short, I REFUSE To Innovate  http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=229860

 

I have often been asked why I don't set up another company, much as I did in the 1990s, and which was wildly successful.

Well, first off, MCSNet was not the first try; those who don't get that, and who don't understand that the odds are always againstentrepreneurial activity, have rocks in their head.  That is, most people who start new businesses fail.  I failed before I succeeded, and that's not only normal, it's expected.

Failure, in the context of entrepreneurship, usually means the loss of not only some amount of monetary investment but of a whole lot of time.  If you've never worked for yourself you simply don't get it; there is no such thing as a "shift", or even a "vacation"; those words are not in your dictionary.  Both the failing and succeeding versions of entrepreneurship that I have personally experienced were pock-marked by a ridiculous number of all-nighters and damn few 24 hour stretches where I was actually able to do what I wanted to.

One of the common things said is that entrepreneurs love their work.  If you are one you better love it because you're not going to have a single day away from it once you start for a very, very long time -- and maybe never.  Anyone who's done it understands this, fails instantly when they begin or really isn't an entrepreneur at all, instead playing some sort of "hedge fund" game where you're handed a bunch of money and lever it up at the behest of someone else.

Simply put as an entrepreneur whatever capital you have available the most important capital of all is human capital -- yours.  I cannot count the number of nights I spent with a kerosene heater keeping a basement reasonably warm in the middle of a Chicago winter while I coded away, or the number of times my light was the only one on (outside of the bar down the street) at 4:00 AM.

Here's someone, like myself, who has decided (like I) that they're not going to do it anymore.  I detected this problem more than a decade back, and it's why despite having a number of ideas I have refused to set up any sort of entrepreneurial outfit that could become a "big deal" and employ others, say much less grow dramatically.

Some here know my story, but for those who don’t, a brief history.  6 years ago, two friends and I saw a problem – lack of broadband access in our rural Oregon county – and we knew it was a business opportunity.  We pooled a few thousand dollars of savings and started building our own ISP from scratch, using the just-released AirMAX equipment from Ubiquiti.

Slowly and steadily, powered by income from satisfied customers, we’ve grown over the years.  We now cover over 500 square miles of Northeast Oregon with real broadband speed, up to 26Mbps, which beats the new FCC broadband definition of 25Mb.  Do you live out on a ridge  miles from town, or up on the mountainside in the trees?  We can hang a dish on your house, point it at one of our towers and get you a quality work-from-home telecommuting-grade connection.

This guy sounds like he built his ISP the same way I built MCSNet.  No private-equity money, no debt, none of that.  Simply building out infrastructure from income paid by happy customers, good decisions and a ****-ton of hard work.  I like it.

But...

Along the way the State started with their games.  Oregon, like most states, has an amazing patchwork of tax laws and regulations.  It seems Comcast, the big cable company, disagreed with the state on some of those taxes and whether they applied.  They sued, and it appeared they were going to win.

The problem is that Oregon had been spending the money taken under dispute instead of escrowing it and was faced with an utterly untenable situation should they lose.  So their state Supreme Court did what the USSC did with Obamacare and tortured the law to "justify" it rather than ruling on the law as-written, and in the process this guy's business was reclassified and suddenly subject to taxes on intangible things like goodwill and potential coverage area!

Then, of course, there's Net Neutrality.  I have written may pieces on this; the "seminal" one is here, and still available.  Read it again folks, because it's important.

Then read this:

The American population has been groomed to such a level of entitlement that they see Internet service as a human right, like air or water. They feel they have a right to what I provide, a right to my labor, and the government is only too happy to oblige.

It's not just The Internet either.  How many people have argued they have a right to shelter, food and/or water?  Detroit anyone?  Note that water falls from the sky on a fairly regular basis in most of the country but you'd have to collect, store and transport it, maintaining a sanitary environment, and then treat it when you're done with it so you don't pollute the environment.

Instead what people have argued is that someone else has an obligation to do that for them, whether the "thing" is food, water, shelter, health care or Internet access.

In short the issue is not that you should have the right to make an effort to have these things at whatever level you're willing to pay for but rather that others have an obligation to provide labor so you can have these things irrespective of your ability or willingness to labor on your own!

What rural Oregon is about to find out is what I've been pointing out for years in these pages: You cannot force an entrepreneur to innovate and put forward the extraordinary effort required in his or her business.

It's coming up on two decades since I left the Internet business as a provider of services.  No small part of the decision was due to frankly outrageous "advantages" that certain firms had as a consequence of effective monopoly access to the "last mile" that my company could not achieve on its own, irrespective of how much money it possessed or could raise.  I have declined to stand up several other firms over the years for the same sort of reason; interference with anything approaching a "market economy" in that particular area.

A couple of years ago I announced that due to the changes in the law on a federal level, specifically Obamacare, it no longer made sense for me to engage in the sort of entrepreneurship that was Tickerforum, and that I was going to intentionally scale it back along with my income.

Simply put virtually everyone that isn't truly destitute needs far less than they actually earn and consume.  You can only entice me to produce; you can't compel me to do so.  There is nothing unlawful about a decision to earn less and therefore pay few or no taxes, nor is there anything unlawful about taking lawful advantage of all the subsidies -- that is, the free lunches -- that you think you can compel others to provide.

Oh sure, this means I don't take as many cruises, and I don't drive a Mercedes.  But I don't need a Mercedes; my Mazda will do just fine and, quite frankly, I enjoy driving it more than a Mercedes.  I don't give a good damn about "keeping up with the Joneses" since attempting to do so means acceding to having everything I produce stolen, save a few scraps.

Now think about this very carefully folks: Obamacare, along with things like the EITC, are all predicted on people like me not collecting them but rather being willing to forfeit huge sums so YOU can sit on your 400lb ass.

Without people just like me being willing to do that, the entire scheme collapses of its own weight.

Welcome to the collapse; it's a slow-motion thing, but it is definitely, without question, on its way.