Can HEB save the colonial economy?

I have watched the "Occupy Wall Street" movement with various, conflicting feelings of repulsion and sympathy. Repulsion because any "protest" movements ineluctably attracts radicals. On an slightly related point, I have of late become a reader of atlasshrugs.com, NYC blogger Pamela Geller's site, who has done some good journalism on this movement. (In fairness, I am not quite as "libertarian" as Ms. Geller is, being more of a "Blue Dog" by temperament, and that is another conversation, but I applaud and support Ms. Geller's great journalistic work regarding the global threat to the west that "Jihad" still constitutes, and, as a fellow Zionist, I appreciate very much her work, some respectful disagreements along economic lines aside.) So I have been repulsed, concerned, etc., when I saw some Jihadists elements in league with the "Occupy Wall Street" protesters as reported upon on atlasshrugs.com. This movement, abbreviated OWS, I jocularly refer to as "Over-privileged White Sophomores" :-). That is, it largely (radical elements aside) consists of plenty of good-intentioned if naive folks, who are worried that America, "the land of the free, and the home of the Braves" :-) might not be the "land of opportunity" she once was, seeing as how tax payer money goes to bailing out failed banks, but then these same banks continue with dubious practices of things like fractional-reserve banking (where I can lend out more than I take in, thereby creating an effective Ponzi scheme) and derivatives-trading (where I trade investment objects that have no value of their own, but are just linked to things that do have value, like packaged-mortgages, etc.). This scam of course is backed up and sustained by "fiat currency", that is, a pound sterling, for example, used to be just that - a pound, 16 ounces, of sterling silver. Now, we just print money whenever we like, the sine qua non of banana republics. So if a bank's ponzi scheme fails, well then, we can just print more what I would call "Geithner dollars" to cover their ass. Not real dollars - we can't violate physics and create energy from nothing, but we can create fictional dollars to keep the ponzi scheme going. Bernie Madoff is not a criminal in a major sense of the term - he is in jail because he is small time, and not the system, not the government. The entire system can out-Madoff Madoff each and every time. Of course Madoff is a criminal, but he is small change compared to the government-banking relationship which involves Geithner dollars being printed to support fractional reserve banking at the expense of hard working tax payers who get to foot the bill and by that I mean, deal with the laws of physics, which even big politicians and bankers cannot get around. So, does "Occupy Wall Street" have a point when they say "the system" is messed up? Yes, they do. But saying X is messed up does not offer a solution. We need to come up with a positive solution, not just wave signs around in Central Park or blame "the Man" or whatever. Capitalism, per ce, is not the problem. What is capitalism, at root? It means I have a good or service to offer, and I need a good or service. So, say I need cigarette money. That is the good or service that I need. Say also I can code up a mean website. That is the good or service I offer. So, I find someone who needs a website, and they give me money for cigs. :-) It works great. Where it does not work, is when it is abused, when banks are allowed to lend money they do not have, and, when they get in trouble for this (the proverbial "run on the bank") the government can just print more Giethner dollars to bail them out, which does not solve anything in the long run, because, if money is not tied to actual goods and services (energy) than Newton gets unhappy (since energy is not created or destroyed, it only is) and what does that mean? That means somebody has to hold the bag at the end. It means what we are seeing: fewer available jobs, less potential for promotion for those who do have jobs, etc. So, yeah, there are problems. But is it "capitalism" per ce that is the problem? I would argue no. I would say the confusion that Occupy Wall Street has is that they equate the abuses of capitalism (turning it into a Ponzi scheme driven by Geithner dollars) with capitalism itself. Capitalism is not some big mysterious thing. It is just free people trading freely for things they need by giving things others need in return. It is not very complicated. It only gets complicated when people want to abuse the system.

So, to HEB and the colonial economy. What I mean by "the colonial economy" is the American economy - my own personal joke - sorry - "Mass-hole" and "anglophile" that I am, I more identify with the "colonies" of the 1700's than "America" per ce, so that is just my own personal joke - I am a proud American, and by that I mean a proud "colonialist". Shoot me. :-)

HEB is a Texas grocery store chain over a hundred years old now. It is "the" grocery store if one lives in, for example, Austin. It is, to all appearances, one of those "big corporations" the OWS movement is whining about. It has big stores, big signs, it even has super stores, like one in Round Rock, just north of Austin, the Texas Capital, which is to all appearances sort of like a Wall Mart superstore - everything one needs at one-stop shopping. It could not, in reality, however, be more different from Wall Mart. Let me explain. I used to go to an Episcopal Church and - with Richard Dawkins I might add - still have a lot of affection for the Church of England / Episcopal tradition (in fact a close friend of mine at university, whom I won't name on a public blog post, but her grandfather was at one point the Bishop of Oxford, incidentally, such is my connection to that tradition) - in any event if one joins the Episcopal Church one has to "renounce the Devil and all of his deeds". This being the 21st century, "the Devil" is not really much in vogue, and I recall a discussion about this I had one time with some folks, and we all rather mutually agreed that for our time, "the Devil" was roughly Wall Mart, and so "rejecting the Devil and all of his deeds" meant, among other things, do not shop at Wall Mart. :-) Why? Because from everyone I ever talked to who has had a connection with working there or knowing someone who worked there, employees there are essentially modern slaves - they have no say in anything, they are payed minimum wage at best, can be fired for no reason at all, and essentially have no human dignity. This is the "bad face" of capitalism (or its abuses) that the OWS protesters are on about. Perhaps because Wall Mart (or its affiliates) can be traded publicly, and are therefore part of the Wall Street - Geithner bannana republic ponzi scheme, has something to do with this. For the Wall Marts of the world, Geithner dollars are the point, not real value. And of course people become cattle, not respected any longer. So naturally this is a legitimate grievance.

HEB is different. It is a family-owned company for more than a century, and therefore not interested in Wall Street bailouts in the form of Geithner dollars. It simply operates by doing its own thing, creating value, creating good deals for the consumer, and it thrives. Its employees too are taken care of. They do not have lay-offs. Why? Because they do not hire based upon bailouts, but they hire based upon how much (actual) money (not Geithner money) they have to be able to hire. Furthermore, employees have stock options. It does not matter if one is a high school drop-out with perhaps a GED, and starts at HEB stocking shelves. This lowliest of employees still has a stake - if he or she works hard and keeps at it, he or she will eventually be able to share in the stock of the company, and reap a benefit from their labour. And the great thing? Wall Street cannot f*** this up because HEB is a private company and not traded on Wall Street. If HEB succeeds, everyone, even the lowly shelf-stocker, benefits. If they don't, well, that would be because of internal incompetency, which has not in more than a century happened. And in any event, win or lose, they would not be relying upon Geithner dollars to bail them out - they would rely on the ingenuity of their own employees to bail them out. "Such is the nature of achievement", as my friend Howard Roarke might say. :-)

I submit to the reader that the false dialectic between the "Tea Party" protesters and the "Occupy Wall Street" protesters is just that, a false dialectic. Both sides sense the system is f***ed up, and it is. Both sides simply want more opportunity for the average person. The "Tea Party" (rightly in my opinion) focuses on the evils of Geithner dollars being shelled out at tax payer expense to failed ponzi scheme banks. "Occupy Wall Street" also fairly complains about these banks getting Geithner dollars while lots of folks can't get a job, but, wrongly blame it on some abstractions like "capitalism" or "the Man" or whatever.

There is a working model, I think, that can satiate both sides of this false dialectic. It is about having companies, maybe very sucessful companies, having everyone involved in the success or failure thereof. This is not about "capitalism" vs. "communism" or whatever. It is about what works and what does not work. If we can encourage more companies like HEB that have employees as part of the success or failure of the organization, we can eschew the evils of the extremes, on the one extreme, places like Wall Mart, which dehumanize their workers, and, on the other extreme, places like North Korea which also dehumanize their people by not allowing for individual opportunity.

I am not saying all companies should be privately held and should give private stock shares to their employees. This is a free society, and people should be allowed to form whatever sorts of companies they want. However, I am saying, that companies like HEB that do allow employee participation in profits and by being privately held stay away from the machinations of Wall Street and Geithner dollars, are the best bet we have towards keeping the American Dream alive, the ideal of the availability of opportunity, if one has the gumption to reach for it.

This I think is the best answer for both the legitimate concerns of the "Tea Party" and "Occupy Wall Street". Hopefully we can get beyond these stupid dialectics, and start focusing on what actually works: a capitalism that truly embraces opportunity for all and rejects false band-aids like Geithner dollars when times are tough. :-)