Business, Sports… and Defending the Apostrophe

I ask GP what he’s been doing since he retired late last year.

“Living the dream,” he tells me. “I walk along the beach almost every morning. Once or twice a week I golf. I fill in the rest of the time with crossword puzzles, watching sports or TV or a movie. With Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and the others, there are so many good things to watch.”

“Too many,” I say.

RS has a part-time job in a hardware store, which he likes. Having spent his life in construction, he knows a lot about building materials and tools. Sharing his wisdom with shoppers makes him feel good.

“I get that,” I say.

I ask him how he spends the rest of his time. Like GP, RS golfs, watches sports, and binge watches “true crime” series on the streaming services.

And then there’s the grandkids. GP and RS agree that time spent with the grandkids is the best. “So long as it doesn’t go more than a few hours,” they add. There’s just so much endurance an old person can muster up for toddlers.

GP and RS are old friends of mine. And they are good friends. But we struggle sometimes to have good conversations. I’ve been trying to figure out why that is.

Here’s my current theory: We grew into adulthood in an era when men were supposed to be the sole breadwinners. It wasn’t until we were in college that the women’s liberation movement kicked in. And even then, it wasn’t about men having less financial and parental responsibility, but about women exercising certain already established rights.

As we made room for women as equals in the workplace and elsewhere, we never expected that our financial responsibilities would be lessened. We would accept some responsibility for the housework and the child rearing, but our primary responsibility to our families continued to be to pay the bills. The more we earned, the better we felt about ourselves. And so, we continued to put most of our energy into our work.

One consequence of all of this was the effect it had on our conversation skills. In responding to the proverbial “What’s new?” we could talk at some length about the challenges, frustrations, and triumphs of our work. Work conversations were generally short and sympathetic, but they were interesting because of shared concerns. After that, the only commonality for most of us was professional sports. We talked about baseball or football or basketball.

For most of my life, I was satisfied with the conversations I had about work. I had plenty to talk about and was always interested in the experiences and opinions of my peers. As for sports, except for several years when I followed the Miami Heat, I had nothing to contribute to sports conversations. So they bored me. But that, as my friends always reminded me, was my problem. It was unnatural for a full-grown man to know nothing about professional sports. To my friends, though, my ignorance posed a different problem: Having nothing to say on the subject, I was, to them, a bore.

Today, almost all of my coevals are retired. That means we no longer talk about work. I am still working, but I’m acutely aware that it isn’t fair to burden my friends with stories of my business struggles. Instead, I talk about what they talk about: what we have done to replace the time we used to spend working – i.e., TV and movies and sometimes books… and the inevitable, golf.

And so, I find that some of the best conversations I have these days are with younger people, my colleagues and protégés that are still actively working. But that makes me sad, because I think that my best conversations should be with my best and oldest friends.

I’m drawing too grim of a picture here. My book club conversations are usually very good. And casual conversations with friends sometimes slip into philosophical discussions about politics, economics, and the disintegration of Western culture. Those I still enjoy. But it makes me second-guess the idea of retiring. I understand the allure of it, but I don’t want to spend the precious time that remains to me pissing away my time with trivial pursuits and then boring others by talking about it.

When we near retirement, we have several choices. One of them is between fixing on what we know or being receptive to continuous learning – narrowing our interests or opening up to more.

I read a short obituary in the WSJ about a British guy that decided to devote his retirement to “Defending the Apostrophe”:

After a career as a newspaper reporter and editor in England, John Richards took up the role of defending the apostrophe, an often-abused punctuation mark.

When he started the Apostrophe Protection Society in 2001, there were only two members, Mr. Richards and his son, Stephen. Soon, however, he had more than 250 members, and some made unsolicited cash donations. Letters and emails arrived from all over with examples of misuse of the apostrophe. Many offenders left the apostrophe out of possessive phrases where it was needed (“The last word was John’s.”) or inserted it where it should not have been (“It’s title was Exodus.”).

He recalled an incident when he saw a restaurant advertising coffee’s: “I said, very politely, to the owner, that it wasn’t needed. That it was a plural. But the man said, ‘I think it looks better with an apostrophe.’ What can you say to that?”

“He was always great fun to listen to,” a mourner said. “If you asked him what’s new, he always had another story and something interesting to say.”

As Anna Quindlen once said, “A finished person is a boring person.”

“Some people dream of success, while other people get up every morning and make it happen.” – Wayne Huizenga

Tryptic 

1. Enrique 

Anna Julia asks me if I’ve seen Enrique. I tell her I saw him yesterday. We talk about how much he’s amejorando since his drunken, lawless days. I say it’s rare to see someone make such a positive and apparently lasting change in midlife. She agrees. I think but don’t say that I’m also proud of Enrique for weaning himself off my enabling charity. (I used to think of him as my bad son. That somehow made his dependence easier to accept.)

Twenty years ago, when he was 19, Enrique came to work for us as a gardener. He has a winning smile and a gentle demeanor. He is also bright. He began with just the most basic gardening skills, but as the years passed he became a very capable jack of many trades.

Impressed with his intelligence and good nature, I encouraged him to take classes in various trades offered at Fun Limon. Eventually, I put him into business repairing bicycles and motorcycles. I was optimistic about his future.

Everything was fine, except for Enrique’s drinking problem – which eventually affected his work. He was fired by the management company for coming to work drunk (and armed with a gun).

For the next several years, I would give him money and a pep talk whenever I happened to see him, and hope for the best. All that free help, like almost all free help, was useless. He could not hold a job, and became not just dependent on my largesse, but felt entitled to it.

About three years ago, for the first time, I refused his attempt to sweet talk me into another handout. But I told him that I would pay him five dollars for every day that he remained sober. At the end of two weeks, the day before we were due to go back to the US, he came to me and told me he had lived up to our deal. He looked sober, so I gave him his $70. And I told him that I’d continue the deal, but at the reduced rate of three dollars a day, until I saw him again on my next trip.

I didn’t expect him to stay sober, but he did. I gave him a part-time job working as a gardener at Fun Limon. And about a year after that, I discovered that he was back with his estranged wife and was making money on the side by fishing in the ocean in his spare time. Hopeful again, I encouraged him to turn his side hustle (as they call it today) into a real business. He did. And thereafter, every time I visited, he was at my house first thing the following morning with a basketful of mackerel, lobster, and whatever else he had caught.

I once again encouraged him to start his own fishing business. But this time, I didn’t give him any free money. I lent it to him, made him sign a formal loan, and had him repay me weekly.

He not only paid back the loan in full, he saved enough money to buy himself an old truck for $1,800. (Which I’m sure is the largest sum of money he has ever had at any one time in his life.)

Here he is in the back of his truck, holding up… I don’t know what.

2. Anna Julia 

Anna Julia tells me that when she is finished working at Rancho Santana, she wants to open her own little tienda. I tell her that she cannot retire from RS until she is my age. She laughs.

Anna Julia has a great laugh. It is completely unaffected. What I love about her is that she is not cowed in any way by me, her gringo boss. Quite the contrary, she likes to tease me (and K) and loves to correct my many solecisms in Spanish. I love that, too.

Anna Julia’s strong sense of self-esteem cannot be dismissed easily. There is a gulf between us – money, education, social status, skin color – that is tangible and ineluctable.  It is also something that neither of us can pretend doesn’t exist. Nor is it something that I can exorcise by treating her as my equal. That is the common vanity of the foreign interloper in all poor countries. You can convince yourself that your relationship is equal, but it’s equal only if the local person decides it is. It’s not up to you.

I don’t know how Anna Julia does what she does. I don’t understand how she is able to bridge that gap when so many others can’t. Her mien is agreeably independent. (She reminds me of K in that regard.) If you express a thought she disagrees with, she doesn’t even consider it. She laughs at you. In her world, which is the real world, you have just said something that is obviously absurd.

Having her own tienda is no guarantee that Anna Julia would make more money than she does now – as a domestic working for RS, plus the extra money I give her when we are here and the tips she gets from the people that rent our house. As is the case in every corner of the world, starting a successful business is a big challenge. Many are called, but few are chosen.

3. Yessenia 

Our last housekeeper also wanted to start her own tienda – which I encouraged and funded. She had an idea for the business that made sense to me. Her tienda would sell clothing for children, something that was in demand but had no supply in the local area.

Yessenia wisely didn’t quit her housekeeping job. She took my advice and had an unemployed relative run the tienda while she was at work. The business grew slowly but steadily. About a year or two later, feeling upset by some change in her work schedule as a housekeeper, she quit and became a full-time entrepreneur.

The business was very solid for several years as Nicaragua’s economy grew, year after year. Unemployment dropped and wages went up. That meant her customers, mostly working moms, had more money for luxuries. (New clothes for children is still a luxury for most of Nicaragua’s working poor.)

Then, in early 2018, the tourist industry in Nicaragua suddenly collapsed after reports of government crackdowns and violence against protesters erupted in Managua and many other cities. Just as things were settling down from that, the COVID Crisis appeared. Gringo travel to Nicaragua dried up almost completely, and with it more than half of the employment that was related to the tourist industry, which, in this part of the country, was more than 50%.

Yessenia lost her business, just like millions of American business owners lost their businesses during the lockdown last year. There was no realistic hope of keeping her business open. There was no market for her wares. So, I asked Bismarck, our director at Fun Limon to give her a job, doing whatever he needed. She took the job, but not enthusiastically. Somehow, the disappointment Yessenia suffered when the business failed broke her self-esteem, which, unlike Anna Julia’s, was never particularly strong.

Today, Yessenia works like she always did – not energetically, but with resolve. The little spark that was there when she launched her business is gone. When I see her now, we hug and exchange warm words, but there is something unsaid between us – that gap again – that is sad.

Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. It is only for those that have the strength of character to fail and fail again. Yessenia had hope and she had trust, but she did not have that sort of strength. She had the dream and for a while she had the passion, but vision and passion are not sufficient for success.

Which is why now, as Anna Julia tells me that she’s going to start a side business, I resist the urge to urge to urge her on. I ask questions. I give her some counsel. But I don’t push.

But then I think: Anna Julia is not like Enrique or Yessenia. She has no discernable demons to derail her ambitions. And she is not fragile. Nor is she naïve. She’s worked hard and done without and suffered plenty in her life. Her strength is evident. Her spirit is strong. Her heart is brave. Her view of life is stoic and ironic, which seems just about exactly what it should be for a budding entrepreneur.

The national economy is soft, but the local economy is gradually coming back, thanks to Rancho Santana and a few of our neighboring resorts.

Employment in Anna Julia’s town, which is adjacent to RS, is relatively high right now. So, from that perspective – the demand side – starting a busines could have potential for her. On the supply side, however, there’s a question. If her idea is to open an ordinary tienda, she’ll be competing with a hundred small tiendas in the hamlets within five miles of the resort. Most of them are selling the same things. One admires their ambition, but worries about the chances.

Anna Julia has thought of that. Her store will provide specialty items. She gives me examples, but because of her habit of speaking to me as if I am a native Spanish speaker, I can only understand about a third of what she’s saying. She will sell a certain type of shoe that is apparently in great demand, a certain kind of food that you can’t get anywhere but Managua, a certain type of something else that…

“Okay,” I say. “It sounds like you know what you are doing.” I tell her I will speak to Bismarck about enrolling her in our entrepreneurship program, which includes the opportunity for loans and investment if the business plan is strong.

I feel like she will be very happy and grateful for this offer, but she laughs at me instead.

What did I say that’s so funny?” I ask.

It’s not what you said,” she laughs. “It’s how you said it.” And once again, she corrects my Spanish.

“Any clod can have the facts; having opinions is an art.” – Charles McCabe

What I Believe 

A compilation – in no particular order – of some of my longstanding theories and many of my current ideas and opinions… 

* Conventional thinking is not thinking.

* Social Science, as practiced today, is an oxymoron. It would be much better to call it Social Dogma.

* Economics is a valid field of knowledge, one that sometimes employs the scientific method, but it is not a science.

* Most of economic and investment theory is based on incomplete data and faulty premises.

* The currently popular academic philosophies of intersectionality and structuralism are intellectually dishonest and pragmatically destructive.

* Charity is dangerous to both the giver and the receiver. It creates a false sense of accomplishment in the one, and dependency and entitlement in the other.

* Of the many kinds of charitable actions, giving away things (including one’s time, one’s wisdom, one’s knowledge, one’s things, and one’s money) is the worst kind.

* Businesses that put their employees or shareholders ahead of their customers are morally bankrupt and will eventually be financially bankrupt.

* The currently popular theories of institutional racism, inherent bias, white privilege, and reparations are intellectually dishonest and harmful to people of color.

* Police violence is not the number one issue facing African-Americans today. It is not even on the top 10 list.

* Social workers are not necessarily saints. Nor is social work necessarily saintly. But social workers can be good and social work can be helpful if it is done carefully.

* The four-hour work week was once a dream. Now it’s becoming a possible nightmare.

* Of all the professions that contribute to the wealth of nations, entrepreneurs and small business owners provide the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

* The primary job of government is to establish law and order so that its citizens can be free to go about their business.

* Governments are not structured to create wealth and they do not. What they do is redeploy wealth towards political and military objectives.

* Politicians, government workers, and military personnel take part in the business of redistributing wealth. It is always in their interest to do so.

* Zen thinking is the equivalent of sub-atomic theory.

* Culture – including micro-culture – is the single most important factor in social and financial advancement.

* The most important component of a success culture is the belief in hard work, continuous education, and saving.

* Slavery was and is a commercial activity whose objective was to create profits for slaveholders. But the system of slavery was never profitable as a whole.

* All businesses pass through at least 4 distinct levels of growth, each with distinct challenges and opportunities. Any founder or CEO that doesn’t know them is doomed to failure.

* Capitalism is not an intellectual ideology like Socialism and Communism, but the most natural and fairest form of human commerce.

* Every young person entering the workforce comes to the job with immutable tendencies, prejudices, psychological preferences, and habits that are nearly impossible to change.

* Business management efforts to motivate employees are completely ass-backward.

* 90% of psychological counseling and marriage counseling doesn’t work – for good reason.

* Much of mainstream medicine is scientifically dishonest and harmful and expensive to patients.

* Serial killers are 98% like the rest of us.

* Liberals are less generous with their personal charity than Conservatives.

* The mainstream media can’t be trusted.

* Any economic philosophy that does not account for the work of the Austrian economists (Hazlitt and Hayek) is sure to develop ideas that are so profoundly idiotic that they are not worth a moment’s attention.

* Being thoughtful is more useful than being intelligent.

* Adherence to any political party is always and necessarily intellectually bankrupt.

* Political partisans are not to be trusted.

* Men and women are fundamentally different but not always in ways people commonly think.

* All wars, regardless of cause or justification, are destructive.

* Of the many wars the US has been involved in over the last hundred years, the most costly of them, in terms of dollars and lives, were the war on drugs and the war on poverty.

* The new wars will be against institutional racism and social injustice. They, too, will be extremely costly in terms of dollars and lives, and they, too, will fail.

* The search for freedom is a more important humanitarian objective than the search for equality.

* Equality of opportunity is a legitimate goal of a just society. Equality of outcome is a recipe for injustice.

* Nature itself abhors equality. Everything within and without the human animal strives constantly and continuously towards the unequal.

* Every social and political effort in history that has made equal outcomes a goal has failed.

* You don’t need an education in art and music to become an expert at it.

* 90% of what Americans spend their money on is based on wants, not needs.

* Trying to “be number one” is a childish and self-destructive goal, whether employed by an individual, a group of individuals, or a country.

* Working-class and poor people fight and die in wars that do them no good but profit the elites that send them to war.

* Soldiers fight for ideals and ideas that are sold to them by people that don’t believe them.

* We are all morally obliged to take responsibility for and fix our problems, even if they are caused by someone or something else.

* Happiness is only marginally related to wealth.

* By understanding the relationship between money and happiness, we can make better decisions about how we make money, how much money we need to make, and how we can enjoy the money we make.

* Income is an important factor in the acquisition of wealth, but it is not a measure of it.

* Most people want to have a higher income and net worth, and many people work hard and long to increase their wealth. But few achieve the financial goals – conscious or unconscious – that they set for themselves. There are reason for that, which the wealth seeker should understand.

* Sharing wealth is more rewarding than growing it.

* Getting up early really is superior to getting up late.

* Organizational growth in any form – business, non-profits, social programs, etc. – is created by a very tiny fraction of the community involved.

* Growth creators are entitled to the lion’s share of the wealth, prestige, or acclaim that comes from that growth.

* It is not possible to motivate 80% of a workforce to work harder unless you ignore them and demand that the 20%, who are already working overtime and on weekends, work more.

* The military-industrial complex is real.

* The medical-industrial complex is real.

* As much as 30% of what are considered established and proven medical practices, including surgeries and medication, have no scientific support.

* Over the last 20 years, there has been a huge transfer of wealth from the working class to Wall Street.

* In bad economies, the debt created by the government/corporation cabal is paid for not by either of them but by entrepreneurs and the working class.

* Racism, ageism, sexism, classism, and elitism exist in most cultures and can retard and, in some cases, restrict individual economic advancement. But the negative effects are rarely absolute. Extraordinary individuals can and do overcome them.

* Wealth and income inequality are realities that exist in every economy – even those committed in principle to the distribution of wealth.

* Two words normally used interchangeably – saving and investing – should not be considered synonymous. The primary concern of saving is safety. The primary concern of investing is growth.

* Wall Street promotes the idea that investing in stocks and bonds is the sensible way to grow rich. But any strategy that focuses solely or even primarily on stocks and bonds is flawed.

* Every asset class and financial strategy has its own inherent characteristics, investment advantages and disadvantages, profit and growth potentialities, and risk profiles. The smart investor understands this and balances his portfolio accordingly.

* There are proven ways to safely achieve a higher-than-average ROI for certain asset classes under certain conditions. One can, for example, safely double the ROIs on income-producing real estate by using bank financing wisely. The same is true for many business transactions, some stock strategies, and a handful of other asset classes.

* The financial industry promotes the idea that life insurance is something every sensible person should have. In fact, life insurance makes sense only in certain circumstances.

* Most people fear entrepreneurship because they believe it takes genius, courage, and luck. In fact, these factors are rare contributors to success in start-up business ventures. The factors that matter most are common sense. humility, cautiousness, a relentless work ethic, and perseverance.

* With respect to building wealth, there are two kinds of skills: financially valued skills and financially valuable skills. Developing skills in either category is a big advantage in building wealth – but the financially valuable skills are more important.

* The purported benefits of great wealth – financial security, choices, and prestige – are more valued in their absence than when they are present.

A Challenge That Every Business Owner in the World Is Facing Right Now 

JS has a dilemma.

“Right now,” she writes, “I strongly believe in self-isolation… which brings me to a question about the young woman who cleans my apartment. I want to tell her to stay home. And I want to tell her that I will pay her even if she doesn’t clean. But for how long? I don’t want her to think that this ‘offer’ (if I make it) is open-ended. What is the right thing to do? I don’t really know. What do you think?”

This is what I told her…

You are a caring employer. You have decided that she shouldn’t continue working for you because of the potential dangers. You are taking responsibility for that decision (which she may not agree with) by offering to continue to pay her salary – thus transferring the financial burden from her to you. But you cannot afford to gift her salary indefinitely.

Recognize this: Tens of millions of business owners, large and small, have to grapple with the same problem. Some have more in the treasury than others. Some can afford to hold out longer than others. But none can afford to do so forever.

The advantage you have is that this is not a business but a personal service. You aren’t risking ruining your business by giving away too much. If it were a business, it would likely be a much tougher question. You’d be faced with “firing” her, knowing that she can’t get another job. And knowing that any check she gets from the government isn’t going to help her for very long.

I’m in that same situation – both as a business owner, the principal donor of a charitable foundation, and as the employer of several dozen people that maintain my properties (that are not income-producing properties).

As a business owner, my partners and I are doing everything we can to keep our employees employed. How long we can do that depends on sales. If sales crash, we will be laying people off in a matter of months. If they continue at a reasonable pace, they will stay employed.

As a donor of a charitable foundation, I have a responsibility not only for the several dozen people that work for us, but for the thousand or so people we provide assistance to. I will continue to support that foundation as long as I possibly can. But that depends on the income I get from my businesses. If that dries up, all these people will be negatively affected.

The people that work on my non-income-producing properties are in the same situation that your house cleaner is in. My plan there is to keep paying them as long as I can.

In every case, I am willing to reduce my net worth to help these less fortunate people survive. But the limit to that is the responsibility I feel for my family and friends. So there is a limit there too.

For the moment, I don’t have to make the decision you have made, because I have the opinion (from everything I’ve read)  that social distancing is more effective than isolation.

Were I in your shoes, I would continue to provide that assistance for as long as you can… but let your cleaning lady know that your largesse may end at any time in the future and that she should do whatever she can to prepare for it.

What everyone is discovering these days – I hope – is that there is a limit to how much charity all of us are willing to provide out of our own pockets. This is a very important realization. In accepting the truth of that, we must also recognize that this is true for everyone else.

All those who feel virtuous for taking the position that other (wealthier) people and the government should take care of wealth and income inequality will hopefully see the hypocrisy in that position. And perhaps (although it may be doubtful) that all wealth and therefore all financial charity comes not from the government but from the profitable efforts of private enterprise.

Despite the positive momentum, many people have remained on the sidelines or have seen only modest pay increases. By lowering rates, the Fed hoped to protect the economy against potential risks to ensure that it keeps growing. The move could foster a labor market that continues to draw in disadvantaged workers while prodding companies to raise wages.

“The best thing we can do for those people is to sustain the expansion, keep it going,” the Fed’s chair, Jerome H. Powell, said after the move. “That’s one of the overarching goals of this move – and all of our policy moves.”

 The wealthiest also benefit from the Fed’s decision, since rate cuts push up stock prices, creating big gains for investors. But the central bank’s push to portray its policy as a win for rank-and-file workers highlights an evolution: The Fed is trying to be more attuned to the needs and attitudes of everyday Americans.

Some of the changes are superficial. Mr. Powell, previously referred to as “chairman” in the Fed’s post-meeting releases, is now a gender-neutral “chair.” The 17-member policymaking body is as diverse as it has ever been, with leadership roles held by two openly gay members, five women, one black member and one person with Indian heritage. The powerful Federal Reserve Bank of New York flew rainbow flags outside for pride month this summer, for the first time.

A visit to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Instagram account shows that it is following up its #dogsofthefed campaign with a #humansofthefed one, complete with inspirational stories and not-so-candid snaps.

But something more significant is happening under the surface.

An institution long shrouded in mystique and hemmed in by its desire to remain above the political fray is opening up. Fed research has long hit on diverse and even hot-button topics – from social mobility to global warming –  but presidents at its 12 regional banks increasingly promote and publicize that work. They even occasionally take positions on issues like immigration and skills training.

Fed officials have also spent much of the year visiting community groups in places like Augusta, Ga., and Camden, N.J., part of a widely publicized campaign aimed at convincing the public that policymakers are listening to workers’ concerns. Officials now regularly talk about unemployment rates by race and gender.

A political calculus is at play. The Fed needs to shore up public support at a time when President Trump regularly criticizes its actions and when government bodies – especially opaque ones aligned with bankers – are anything but popular. It has come under congressional and popular pressure for being slow to diversify and not focused enough on the most economically disadvantaged.

Mr. Powell nodded to those challenges in a recent speech in Paris, saying, “Our audience has become more varied, more attuned to our actions and less trusting of public institutions.”

America’s shifting social discourse also enables the Fed’s evolution. Janet L. Yellen, the Fed’s first female leader, broached the topic of income inequality in an October 2014 speech, questioning whether it was consistent with American values. It was an unusual topic for a Fed leader to take up at the time, and Republican lawmakers chastised her.

“You’re sticking your nose in places that you have no business to be,” Mick Mulvaney, a South Carolina representative at the time and now Mr. Trump’s acting chief of staff, told Ms. Yellen during her testimony to the House Financial Services Committee the next February.

Representative Sean Duffy, a Wisconsin Republican, said the speech showed political bias because Democrats were campaigning on the issue ahead of the midterm election.

Five years later, Fed officials frequently talk about income inequality. In February at a forum with teachers in Washington, Mr. Powell echoed Ms. Yellen’s sentiments – but got no pushback.

“We have work to do to make sure that the prosperity that we do achieve is widely spread,” Mr. Powell said. “We need policies that can make that happen.”