Hubbard is a small Wisconsin town, but not too small. It has several banks, a university, small and medium-sized businesses and a Wal-Mart supercenter. Its tree-lined neighborhoods vary from those with humble homes to large, Victorian mansions. It is not so small that everybody knows everyone else, but it is small enough that everyone knows someone who knows everyone else.

The nice thing about Hubbard is that all of its residents feel they are important. The members of the private country club, mostly business owners and white-collar professionals, think themselves to be quite prosperous, but their wealth pales in comparison to their counterparts in big cities. When they take their families out to eat at the country club restaurant, they complain when the entree prices exceed $12.00. As a result, every year the country club board has a difficult time making its expenses. The obvious solution is a substantial increase in annual membership dues, but the members won’t go for that. They want status, but don’t want to pay too much for it. In a small-pond town like Hubbard it’s easy to be a big fish.

There aren’t many university professors that have a membership at the country club. If you ask the business owners why this is the case, they will point out that those who can’t do, teach; and that professors don’t make enough money to join the country club. If you ask the professors, they will tell you that golf is the mindless entertainment venue of the business classes, who purposefully avoid sophisticated intellectual challenges. Professors, on the other hand, have more important things to do with their time, like reading the Greek classics.

Then there’s Bill Harnack, who works at the local foundry and has a small fishing boat which he regularly uses on lake shady. On weekend fishing days he goes by Archie’s bait shop for a dozen crappie minnows. A dozen minnows costs $1.30 but if he treats himself to night crawlers the cost ramps up to $2.11. Still, that’s cheap entertainment; less than a meal at the country club and much more economical than a copy of Homer’s Illiad. If he’s lucky his wife, Betty, will fry up a nice dinner for he and the kids, as long he cleans and scales the fish. Bill doesn’t much concern himself with the country club or the Greek classics; he’s content to land his evening meal on 4-pound line. Ask Bill and he’ll tell you who’s really important in Hubbard. It is the working man like him, without whom nothing would get done in Hubbard or anywhere else.

You see, everyone is important in Hubbard, Wisconsin.

Big Guys Always Win

Once upon a time, towns in America were served by local merchants who ran small retail establishments.  These small businesses gave great personal service.  The owners of these small shops knew their customers by name.  They knew your wife or husband’s name.  They knew the names and ages of your children.  They supported town activities.  They hired their employees from the towns where they resided and spent their money locally, boosting their hometown economies.

Furthermore, the profit margins of these small retailers were relatively slim.  These “mom and pop” stores applied a modest but fair mark-up over their costs.  Few of them got rich; but they did exactly what their friends and neighbors did; they eked out a living.

Then, everything changed.  The big retailers invaded the space of the small town merchant.  They offered a larger inventory of goods and services.  The local merchant just didn’t have the capital to stock such a large inventory.  The big retailer’s costs were so much lower and their efficiency was so much greater, the town folk could now buy their products as cheaply as the local retailer.

At first the local retailers weren’t worried.  They believed that despite their limited inventory and higher prices, the level of service they provided and the loyalty of their friends and neighbors would compensate.  They were wrong.  Satisfied with the money-back guarantee, local citizens flocked to the alter of the big retailer.  Literally thousands of small retailers went out of business over a thirty-year period.  Hundreds of thousands of employees were affected.  In the end the customers cared not so much about small town service and the export of jobs, as they cared for larger product selection and low prices.  It was the ruination of America.

Or was it?

I’m not talking about Wal-Mart or Target, or Best Buy, or Home Depot.  I’m not even talking about this century.  I’m talking about Aaron Montgomery Ward and Richard Sears.  Aaron Montgomery Ward opened his Chicago mail order business in the fall of 1871.  Richard Sears, a railroad freight agent in North Redwood, Minnesota began selling watches via mail order in 1886, re-establishing his firm in Chicago four years later.  Due to the establishment of the railroads, Sears and Ward took advantage of rural free delivery along with their famous no risk customer satisfaction policy.    Their catalog, which was mailed to virtually every farm and home in the United States, offered everything except live animals and fresh fruits and vegetables.  Sears even sold an entire one-family house.  The guarantee was simple.  The Sears catalog said, “Tell us what you want in your own way, written in any language, no matter whether good or poor writing, and the goods will promptly be sent to you.”  “Send no money.”  “All goods will be sent express C.O.D., to be examined at the express office in the presence of the agent.”

Like today’s Wal-Mart, Sears and Wards were the essence of efficiency.  A German visitor, observing the Sears’ operation exclaimed that the business operated with “the greatest efficiency I have ever seen.”  Indeed it was true.  “Beginning at 9:00 a.m. sharp, an average of thirty-five thousand orders a day was sent through an eighteen-mile-long system of copper tubing to the desks of thousands of clerks working nonstop at typewriters.  By four that afternoon all orders were filled and sent to waiting baggage trains, their long locomotives lined up in the company’s rail yard, stacks smoking, eight and nine abreast, as if poised for a race.  At a signal, they steamed out to all corners of America.”*

In this manner, Sears and Wards drove out hundreds of thousands of small country stores between 1871 and 1900.  But unlike Wal-Mart and other big box retailers of today, the Montgomery Ward Catalog made no apologies.  In an article in Ward’s catalog it was written:  “Mail-order has solved the problem (of the tyranny) by the country merchants and released (the farmer) from serfdom.  He can now buy his supplies as cheaply as the country merchant, and by the mail can annihilate the distance between himself and the great centers of trade.”

The lesson is simple.  Efficiency wins, at all times and in all circumstances.  It wins because the standard of living of the average man is elevated above what existed under prior circumstances.  The times, they are a changing….or are they?

*  City of the Century.  Donald L. Miller.  Copyright 1996.  Simon & Schuster  ISBN 0-684-83138-4

This week saw the coordinated rush hour bombing of a bus and tubes in London’s underground system.  The event cost scores of lives and injured many more people.  It also damaged the British economy by shutting down most businesses for a day.

Unfortunately this type of terrorist act is not preventable in a free society.  London’s subways move three million people every morning.  Asking city commuters to stand in line for an hour to have their bags searched before getting on the bus or subway would defeat the purpose of urban mass transit.  Busses and subways in every city in the world run the same risks as those in London.

We must accept that open societies are soft targets for terrorist activity.  It is impossible to protect all of the citizens all of the time from radical religious fundamentalists that are willing to give up their lives to kill others.  Free men and women are not willing to live in an armed fortress; hence, our determination to live in an open society will always make us vulnerable to these types of attacks.

Currently fundamental Muslim terrorists have two distinct advantages over the civilized world.

First, we are overly dependent upon foreign oil.  Every time we buy a gallon of gasoline we assist in the funding of terrorism.  I call it the “terrorism tax”.  How much money from our $2.25 gallon of gasoline ends up in the hands of Mullahs in Saudi Arabia who poison the minds of children in fundamentalist Wahabi schools?  Because of our dependence on oil we begrudgingly end up funding the terrorism we abhor.  What a mess!

Second, many citizens of the western world believe that fundamentalist Muslims can be reasoned with or bought off.  The French believe this, but other western nations, including the United States, have followed policies of appeasement with oil-rich Arab rulers who play both sides of the street.  They dine at the White House while directly and indirectly assisting terrorists.  This must stop.

The two advantages listed above can be successfully neutralized.  It will take time and money, but it can be done.

The first terrorist advantage (dependence on oil) can be eliminated only if the United States begins large-scale construction and use of nuclear power generating facilities.  We can use this electricity to heat our homes and power our automobiles.  With our present technology only the nuclear option offers energy levels with sufficient capacity to satisfy our current and future power needs without polluting our air and water.  It will be a lot easier and more pleasant to solve the nuclear waste storage problem than it will be to rebuild the infrastructure of bombed subways and cities.

The second terrorist advantage (appeasement of radical Muslims) can be mainly neutralized by getting tough with our “friends” in Saudi Arabia and other countries that choose to play “both sides of the fence”.  Internationally we should use whatever economic and diplomatic leverage we have to encourage positive change in these rogue nations.  Domestically we should insist that Muslim clerics in the United States start aggressively and frequently condemning acts of terrorism in their mosques.  If they fail to do this, they should be tried for treason and the United States Government should shut down their mosques.   The same should hold for clerics of all religions.

On June 23, 2005 the US Supreme Court ruled in Kelo v. City of New London that the city of New London, CT has the right to use eminent domain to take the homes and property of fifteen residents to make room for private developers of a hotel, office complex, and other private businesses.  The low/middle income neighborhood, known as Fort Trumbull, is located on the seashore and is coveted by private developers.  The decision is the result of years of struggle by area residents to keep their private property.  The whole mess started in 1998 when the city proposed to clear the land to get Pfizer Pharmaceuticals to come to New London.

The Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution says that no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”  Eminent domain, the legal tool used to forcibly take land from property owners who refuse to sell it to the government, may not be used unless the land is for public use.  Eminent domain has traditionally been used for things like highways, canals, airports, and parks; all of which involve infrastructure used by the public in general.  Until now eminent domain has never been used to take property from one private individual for the use of other private businesses or individuals.

The US Supreme Court ruled that creating jobs and increasing the tax base of New London, CT is a legitimate “public use”, despite the fact that the land will be sold to private developers.  In a similar case the Minnesota Supreme Court (Walser vs. the City of Richfield) ruled that a successful car dealership had to be removed in to make room for Best Buy to build their corporate headquarters.  After all, the land had become too valuable to use as a car lot and the city of Richfield had a higher and better use for the land.  Walser Auto Sales, with its property rights virtually stripped by the Minnesota Supreme Court, finally relented.  Best Buy now occupies the site.

Now that the US Supreme Court has made this ruling each of us may have our property involuntarily seized, even if a private business wants the land.  This is a terrible and (in my opinion) unconstitutional precedent.  Property rights must be inviolable in a free society.  Unfortunately the US Supreme court has decided that the US Government will protect your right to life and liberty but your private property is now subject to the whim of the next developer who needs your land.

The next time you purchase real estate or land and sign the deed that gives you ownership to “your heirs and assigns forever”, don’t take those words too seriously.  The US Supreme Court apparently doesn’t think that property rights are important, even though they are mentioned in the same sentence in Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution as “life” and “liberty”.  The founding fathers knew the importance of property.  They knew that one cant sustain his life and liberty without the tools for such sustenance; namely property.

It’s tragic that the US Supreme Court has made such a terrible and far-reaching decision.  This was another of those 5-4 Supreme Court decisions with the liberal side of the court holding sway.  If you don’t think Sandra Day O’Connor’s replacement is important, think again.