Month: July 2024

Incompetence Can Be Fatal, But It’s Always Expensive

“You know what doesn’t look good?  A story about gross incompetence.” – American Hustle

My garden shears will never be obsolete, after all, it’s cutting-hedge technology.

My science teacher in high school, who I’ll call “Mr. Johnson” (not his real name except that was totally his real name) often lectured us on things entirely unrelated to science.  It wasn’t a doctrine he was trying to instill us with, it was merely that he was old enough and close enough to retirement that he really didn’t give a damn about 90% of the class.  I don’t think that he even cared if we listened, since he was only talking to 10% of us anyway.

You either got him or you didn’t.

One of his random asides was about the word “crisis”.  Mr. Johnson hated the use of the word crisis except to refer to a single moment in time.  His definition was that the crisis was a moment – the Cuban Missile Crisis when everyone was poised to push the button, and yet backed away from world condemning us to live in a world where The View exists.

Regardless of Mr. Johnson’s definition, I think we’re in the midst of a crisis.

Why do I think this stage would smell of old kitty litter and stale chardonnay?

Datapoint:

  • Crowdstrike™

The Crowdstrike© software incident from just two weeks ago brought down at least 8.5 million computer systems, and brought them down in such a way that they couldn’t restart.  To make it even better, once a fix was found, it had to be fixed computer by computer.  Why?  Because they didn’t test the patch.

Right now, the estimate is that this caused at least $10 billion in financial losses, though a communist would tell you that it was a good thing since all of those computer techs had something to do other than play Tetris™ and Minesweeper© while listening to Dan Fogelberg.

I think Boeing® should adopt a “no slippers” policy.

Datapoint:

  • Boeing’s© Starliner™

The Starliner® is anything but, more resembling a large orbiting bucket filled with cash than a spacecraft, it sits, useless, stuck against the side of the ISS.  If it were the only failure to Boeing’s©, name, that would be one thing, but it’s not.  Their planes regularly either fall from the sky due to poor programming kludges, or have random spontaneous partial disassembly of their planes in flight due to spotty manufacturing quality control.

Boeing™ had a pretty good reputation for decades as a company that took engineering seriously – the name of the Boeing® 707 was rumored to be an engineering joke – it’s one over the square root of two.  It kept showing up in their calculations, so they decided that was a good omen for naming their (then) flagship airliner.  In reality, it sounds like it was just a product number, with the 7 series being jets, and they liked the sound of the end 7.

Regardless, they didn’t call it a “Dreamliner™”.

NASA refuses to send a giant duck into outer space – they say the bill would be astronomical.

Datapoint:

  • NASA

I loved NASA when I was a kid.  They were generally seen as a triumph of competence and coolness under pressure.  They did real engineering, and also were great at managing the integration of multiple complex systems in a manner where they worked pretty well, Apollos 1 and 13 notwithstanding.

They literally wrote the book on getting man to the Moon using the very limits of known technology at the time.  Getting to the Moon was so hard that it was barely in our grasp, yet they did it, time and time again.  They even managed to get the ISS built.

But now?  Barrack Obama stated that the primary goal of NASA was Moslem outreach.  During the eclipse of 2017, they even spent NASA resources to make a Braille book about eclipses.  What was that meant to do, taunt the blind kids?  And, yes, the Webb Space Telescope has been pretty cool.  But the Space Launch System costs about $4.1 billion per launch, and each launch takes about six months.

I was okay after I figured out alcohol could kill COVID.

Datapoint:

  • COVID-19

Every aspect of the response to COVID-19 was horrific from an economic and medical standpoint.  From an economic standpoint, the government response was to blindly throw as much cash in as many places as possible as quickly as that could.  This was a bipartisan effort.

The panic and hypocrisy weren’t limited to the economic response, no.  The medical response was just as inept, as Fauci now admits he just made things up as some sort of medical theater.  Ventilators appear to have killed more people than they saved.  The abomination of the “Vaxx” has led to an excess mortality that many reckon has a body count higher than COVID itself.  I, for one, really hope that everyone who took the Vaxx® recovers, but can we forget a government and its accomplices who tried (and in many cases, succeeded in forcing people to take it?

I can’t, though the GloboLeftElite surely hope you forget.  But remember, there are no refunds.

I was wondering if this was going to be too dark, but then I realized it’s all under two and a half miles of water, so of course it’s going to be dark.

Datapoint:

  • The Titan Submersible

In one sense, I certainly admire the guts that it took to build a submarine from a pressure hull and off-the-shelf parts like an X-Box™ controller, but the hubris of the owner remains:  the CEO didn’t “hire 50-year-old white guys” because they weren’t “inspirational”.  I wonder if we would have made it to orbit if Von Braun had a similar philosophy?

Well, I guess he paid the ultimate price for his hubris and disregarding competence in favor of the “inspirational” stories.  Most CEOs just lose their shareholder’s money, like Disney™, which I could write an entire post on.

The crisis we face is one where we’ve lost the capacity for competence and will to achieve that we had as recently as the 1960s even as our systems grow far more complex.  Again, one software update cost $10,000,000,000, NASA doesn’t produce spaceships that can fly with any reliability, and Boeing™ went from making some of the most reliable airplanes in the world by the thousands to a company that survives on government contracts, accounting errors, and inertia.

Maybe, though, this crisis will do what the Cuban Missile Crisis couldn’t do:

Free us from The View.  Wonder if they’d like a trip to the Titanic?

Socialists: How To Make A Monster

“Well, ‘free’ is just another word for ‘socialist’.” – Watchmen

There are social drinkers and socialist drinkers.  Socialist drinkers only drink when someone else pays.

TIK History is a YouTube® channel that focuses on, well, history.  Mainly his channel has focused on World War II battles, and mainly battles involving lots of tanks.  He did one series on Stalingrad that (I believe) totaled over 3,000,000 words of script by the time he was finished.  Obviously, that took him years to put together.  That’s more than enough work to earn him a doctorate, which I guess would make him a Stalingraduate Student.

When not doing battle documentaries, he also does some on political philosophy.  Where I do listen to all of his battle recreations, his political philosophy videos are hit or miss.  One that I did listen to (LINK) is one on the similarities of the lives of socialist leaders who had no particular problem with the idea of killing millions to achieve their paradise.

Which socialist leaders?  Well, all of them:

Lenin, Trotsky, Marx, Engels, Stalin, Mao, and (and, to a lesser extent) Pol Pot.  TIK included Mussolini and Hitler, and, on reviewing, in my opinion they don’t quite fit the mold, so I’ve omitted them here.

Lenin, Trotsky, and Mao walk into a bar.  There are no survivors.

TIK noted that each of these had the same sort of pattern:

  • Horrible relationship with their father or an absent father.

This doesn’t really surprise me.  Mothers and fathers have utterly different roles in raising a child – mothers teach love and empathy and altruism, while fathers teach discipline and honor and courage.  These are very different tasks, but this might be incomprehensible to someone who cannot define what a woman is.

This is directly from Mao’s Wikipedia® entry:  ”During the 1930s, Mao would claim that he resented his father, viewing him as stingy and unaffectionate. He contrasted this with the affection he received from his mother, thus adopting a Marxist dialectical perspective by dividing the family into two camps: his mother and himself on one side, his father on another.”

This leads us directly to:

  • Very strong relationships with “sainted” mothers.

Again, mothers are different than fathers.  Looking at what mothers teach, these socialist leaders were taught that they needed to fix the world, but never told to fix themselves.

What did Freud use as an insult?  “Your mother is so unpleasant that even your own subconscious isn’t attracted to her.  What, no, this is just a cigar.”

  • Very religious youth, followed by atheism later in life.

Religion, when done right, provides both a goal and a means to achieve that goal.  In Christianity, you’re supposed to help people, but those people should also be striving to be worthy, and there are limits based on the religion of exactly how one should help people:  altruism, but with limits.  Remove the religion, remove the limits but keep the misplaced altruism.

This is crucial, because it means that all power is in the hands of man, and there isn’t any space for a higher power.  Man has no limits, and thus there is no meaning to any of this, so everything is justified as long as it brings about the desired end result.

Socialism doesn’t even work on paper, if history books count.

  • Prosperous or stable middle class upbringing with no particular hardship.

Mao, for instance had a hardworking father that bought up several acres and employed several farm workers – this was substantial wealth for where he grew up – Mao as a child had his own room, which was amazingly rare.

  • Relationship with real jobs was spotty, at best.

I think Marx did some occasional writing for papers, but mostly he lived based on begging money from friends and family.  Yet, he had a maid, drank like a fish, and smoked enough cigars to bankroll Cuba.  So, no job, his wife constantly giving birth, his maid once giving birth (likely to Marx’s kid) and he lived in an eight-room house.  No wonder communism was a failure: listening to the advice of a pauper on the way to get to economic prosperity is like taking the advice of Boeing in 2024 on how to make spaceships.

These people either hated or feared the idea of economic independence.  Lenin worked for two years before becoming a bum.  Ditto with Trotsky.  Stalin’s only job, ever, was as a cobbler as a child working for his father for a very short time when he was a kid.

A GloboLeftist said that if we had to kill our own food, we wouldn’t eat meat.  But I say if he had to make his own computer, he wouldn’t whine on Reddit®.

I think the poor economic conditions that each of these people had filled them with envy.  It’s not that they wanted everyone to prosper, it is that they wanted (especially with Marx and Lenin) other people to work harder so they didn’t have to.

Each of them is slightly different, yet those same patterns appear to remain.  Additionally, I think the family structures (I wrote about this at the links below) of their countries allowed them to come to power in a way that wouldn’t have worked in England or the United States.

Another Key To Understanding It All: Family Structure

Family Structure, Part II: Orphans Still Not Required

When I look to the modern politician that most models this family structure and early life, it is clearly Barrack Hussein Obama – each of the points that would lead to a socialist or communist dictator were and are there.  I think this explains, at least partly, his current engagement to try to steer and control the Democratic party and to “fundamentally transform” a nation that he hates.

Which brings us to the other candidate that fits the pattern:  Kamala Harris.  Although she never won a primary, she fits the pattern as well:  her father was absent from her life after their parents divorced, her mother was her sainted figure, raised as a Hindu, she is more than likely not at all Christian, since her father is a rabid communist and commies hate Christianity.

Makes me wonder if her quest for power has left a bad taste in Kamala’s mouth.

That leaves Kamala as filled with altruism as someone guided by religion, but without the constraints that the belief in God.  Or whatever gods Hindus believe in, since I don’t believe anyone actually understands the religion.

Regardless, these two people are dangerous.  And they are potentially working together.  If you look at the intense desire to bring in hordes of illegal and legal immigrants used to either socialist or chaotic government, look no further for the reason:  they hate America.  They hate you.  And they want to replace you because, in the end, they hate themselves as well.

Here’s hoping that Kamala can’t keep away from the vodka during the campaign.  Perhaps we can convince her to start a vodka diet if we tell her she can lose three days in just one week.

It Came From . . . 1990.

It Came From . . . 1990

“Alas, poor Yorick.” – Hamlet

I can’t really think of a worse interpretation of the instructions I gave the A.I., but yet, here it is.

I seem to recall we have one more year in the 1980s before we’re done with it, but I decided that we could zip along and move to 1990.  VHS changed everything – of the nineteen eighteen movies on this list, I saw 11 on VHS tapes.  I had to drop a movie because Ernest Goes to Jail is technically a sequel.

As I look through the movies that are on this list, only two of the top ten grossing films are on it.  Again, the rules are that there are no sequels on the list, and the list is in no particular order.  One of these I included because of personal reasons, and you’ll see that when you get to it.

With that, here’s the list.

Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer – Wow.  Picked this one up at the video store, and I had no idea how grim a movie could be, and then this one topped it.  Looking back, the title includes the words “portrait of a serial killer” so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.  I’ve seen this one twice.  The second time, I said to myself, “Nah, it can’t have been as grim as I remember.”  It was.

Tremors – In every way possible, Tremors is the opposite of Henry.  It’s a buddy comedy about two less than bright handymen who run into a bright scientist and discover a species of giant landwhales (this doesn’t refer to Democrat voters) that they have to outwit to survive.  A good time filled with lots of firepower.

Well A.I., at least you tried.  Here’s a star.  Not a gold one.  But a blue one.

The Hunt for Red October – The Cold War was already winding down and the end was near for the Soviet Union, but, hey, this is a pretty good story, told pretty well.  Sean Connery’s Russian accent sounds like it came from the Edinburgh part of Moscow, but it still works.  I rewatched this a couple of years ago, and it holds up pretty well.

Joe Versus the Volcano – This movie always seemed to me to be only slightly better than a TV movie of the time.  The major difference was the cast, with Tom Hanks attempting to sell the silly plot, and Meg Ryan before plastic surgeons performed those bizarre experiments on her face.  Brain cloud.

Blind Fury – Rutger Hauer as a blind guy who carries around a walking stick that’s also a samurai sword.  What more do you need???  Technically, this is a remake which would make it invalid for the list.  Meh.  It’s on the list anyway.

I guess this poster describes the movie absolutely perfectly.  If you were a blind person going to a movie.

A Shock to the System – Aesop suggested this one to me a few years ago.  It’s about a guy with a midlife crisis that he solves with murder.  Bippity, boppity, boo.

I Love You to Death – What’s funnier than a wife killing a philandering husband?  A wife failing to kill a philandering husband by shooting him and poisoning.  What’s even funnier?  That it’s all based on a true story, and that the wife and husband are still married 40 years later.

The Adventures of Ford Fairlane – This isn’t a great movie, and I only put it on the list because I’m theoretically in it.  Yup.  In a crowd shot.  At night.  Maybe a pixel or two.  I’m sure everyone wants my autograph now.  Life forms on the left, next to the gift shop.

Quick Change – Most people like Groundhog Day better than Quick Change.  They’re wrong.  Quick Change is Bill Murray in a sharp, funny, very rewatchable comedy where a clown robs a bank and needs a monster truck to try to get away and where Murray’s character doesn’t grow or change in any way.  Which is as it should be.

I guess Geena Davis is gonna be pissed by this poster.

Arachnophobia – This is a movie that simply disappeared.  Why?  I have no idea.  I haven’t seen it show up on any streaming service.  Regardless, it was what is mostly rare today:  a summer popcorn flick that doesn’t promote any sort of agenda with the exception of “Auuuuuugh!  Spiders!”.

Pump Up the Volume – What teen boy didn’t want a pirate radio station to blast his silly rants out to the world while having sex with Samantha Mathis?  That was the best of all possible worlds.  This was a fundamentally silly movie, sort of like if rabbits had an opinion.  I blame this movie for all the teen angst of the 1990s.

Men at Work – Yes, another silly comedy, this time about brothers who are sanitation workers living on the edge, getting in the face of cops, and solving a crime involving illegal toxic waste dumping.  Emilio Estevez both wrote and directed the movie, I think while on drugs, which was a net positive for him.

Since when did Fabio do sanitation work?

Goodfellas – Another movie based on a real story, this one involving the Mafia.  You’ve seen it, so I won’t dwell on it, except to ask, does it amuse you?

Quigley Down Under – Tom Selleck as a cowboy who decides to not kill aborigines in the Outback in Australia and picks up Laura San Giacomo in the process.  Alan Rickman plays the perfect villain.  “This ain’t Dodge City.  And you ain’t Bill Hickok.”  One of my favorites.

Home Alone – Home Alone was the biggest money-making action comedy for decades, grossing half a billion dollars in 1990.  So, you’ve seen it, you filthy animals.

If Keven was a Soviet officer attacked by Clint Eastwood and Peter Cushing.  I guess.

Robot Jox – This was a huge box office flop, and really part of that was the production values.  The story itself is fun.  After a nuclear war, the major countries decided to solve all of their conflicts by having giant robots fight each other.  Yes.  That was the basis of international order, and I, for one, would like to dissolve the United Nations right now and have everyone buy robots.  I would love to see the one from India – I imagine it would be steam powered.

The Grifters – This is John Cusack’s first attempt at a real dramatic role, and he does a fine job in this tragedy.  It’s a shame that he turned into a horrible Leftist.  This movie is a tragedy, and its not a lot of fun at all.  I don’t suggest watching it, but I really do remember it.

Hamlet – This 1990 version is my favorite version of this tragedy.  Mel Gibson was a bit long in the tooth for playing the sad Dane, but it’s fine because he plays the part with such verve.  It was really lost on me when I was a kid, but now, alas, I finally understand his speech to Yorick.

Not gonna lie, this movie looks like the best movie ever.  What a paragon of movies this could be….

At the end of the 1990s, there seems to be a difference in the way the movies feel.  The 1980s were giddy with the challenge of coming together to beat the Soviets.  The GloboLeftistElite propaganda machine owned television then, but movies had to make a buck, and Reagan won a resounding victory in 1984 not on a weak America, but on building a strong one.

So, what happened?  Why did the victory sap our strength?  Why did the brash, in your face sounds of Cherry Pie turn to the lament of Lithium?

Maybe, just maybe . . . a man needs a goal.

Gen X, Gen Z, And The Crisis Of The Soul

“And then we’ll all have a Christening for Rosemary’s baby.” – Last Action Hero

They call me “The Exorcist” at the liquor store.  After I leave, all the spirits are gone.

The kids today have a lot of challenges.  Generation Z and Generation Alpha have had a very significantly different childhood than most people reading this post.

For me growing up as a Gen X kid, we were very, very free.  I regularly came home to an empty house when I was in kindergarten.  The first time I let myself into my house with my own key, I was in third grade.  The first time I stayed overnight by myself (in winter, no less) I was in fourth or fifth grade.  By the time I was in high school I didn’t even see a parent three or four nights a week most weeks since I was going to school in an apartment about fifty miles from Wilder Mountain.

I certainly didn’t raise myself, but Gen X was pretty free range.  We left the house when we got up, and got home, dirty, muddy, and sunburned when the photodetector turned the yard light on because that was Ma Wilder’s definition of ‘dark’ in the ‘be home by dark’ direction.

Life is like a warranty – it runs out at the worst time possible.

I certainly used several of my free hours to do things that were things my warning label said not to do, and certainly would have voided my manufacturer’s warranty had I goofed up.

We were also pretty awful to each other, at least in middle school.  I have long maintained that kids in middle school are the worst people on the planet:  they have learned how to bully people by digging at their deepest insecurities, but they haven’t learned enough empathy to not do that.  See?  Absolute worst people on the planet.  I know, I was one of them.

I won’t dwell much on my specifics for this post – this isn’t about me, but about a generation that was given great independence from the start.  Many, many generations had it far worse than Gen X, since at no point when I was 8 did Pa Wilder seriously mention selling me off to the mines to move explosives so that valuable miners wouldn’t be injured.  Again, he may have mentioned it, but not seriously.

You’d think that being the first generation born after the pill was invented and abortion was entered into the sacraments of the Left, that Gen X would have been the most wanted generation in history.

No, not really.

What’s Gump’s password?  1Forest1.

Many parents that were often more interested in themselves during the “Me” decade of the 1970s.  In fact, Gen X was born at the intersection on a great societal upheaval of Woman’s Lib convincing women they didn’t want to be mothers.  Or wives.  That was also the beginning of the cult of the no-fault divorce as well.

Society’s feelings are often transmitted in the media, and let’s look at the roster of Gen X villains:

  • The baby from Rosemary’s Baby was a Gen X baby.
  • So was Damien from The Omen
  • So was Regan The Exorcist.
  • Although Michael Myers from Halloween was technically a Boomer, when he first appears he’s a kid, the same age as Gen X at the time. Same with Jason Voorhees.
  • Who opens the door in Poltergeist? Gen X.
  • The vampires in The Lost Boys? Gen X.
  • Everybody in Scream.
  • Oh, and when we grew up? The Faculty.
  • I think the shark from Jaws was a Boomer, so we’re off the hook on that one.

I started downloading Jaws the other day, but my computer keeps dying after one megabyte.

I don’t know what it was about Gen X that made people think of Satan when they thought about us.  I’m pretty sure that other kids weren’t quite as bad as I was.  Except Damien.

I can’t speak for other generations, but I’m not going to complain about my experience being a part of Gen X.  Yes, I was bullied, but I got tougher.  Yes, my parents gave me a lot of freedom, but Pa Wilder missed very few wrestling matches and rarely missed a varsity football game, even when a three-hour drive was involved.  I knew I was loved.

Coming out of high school, I felt (and still feel) that the limiting factor to my life is . . . me.  I feel the ball is in my hands.

From observation, kids today (on average) don’t have near the opportunity to be free range that we as Gen X did.  And, at least around Modern Mayberry, they aren’t bullied.  People are nice.  The kids are nice.

Maybe . . . too nice?

The best thing about taking money by bullying kids is you can buy yourself something nice.

We have created a fundamentally different generation with Gen Z and Gen Alpha.  Heck, what’s the best way to ground a member of Gen Alpha?  To make him go outside and hang with his friends in real life, away from his electronics.

I sense (and I could be wrong) that a lot of Gen Z and Gen Alpha has never had to face real adversity.  Instead, they’ve lived their lives with a sense of impending dread and massive confusion amidst the greatest material and information wealth the world has ever seen.  Starvation in the United States, and, for the first time ever, in the world, is virtually unknown.

World hunger?

It’s a solved problem.  There is more than enough food for everyone in the world right now, and the only starvation that occurs happens in war zones or is politically motivated.

Yet the GloboLeftElite has put into the minds of the kids today that the world is doomed.  They’re feeling higher levels of depression than kids from the Great Depression.  Suicide is their second highest cause of death.

Gen X had “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’”, while Gen Z and Gen Alpha have “All Good Girls Go To Hell”.

Yet, my generation had Mutually Assured Destruction while Gen Z and Gen Alpha have Climate Change.  At least the Soviets were the bad guys in MAD, but in Climate Change?  Every human is the villain, oh, and we’re deeply in debt, robots and immigrants are going to take their jobs.

Gen X is so old our Social Security number is in Roman numerals.

Gen Z and Gen Alpha have been taught to hate themselves and humanity, and it’s so bad that they don’t want to have kids.

More than anything, this is a crisis of the spirit.  My generation was vilified as the Anti-Christ incarnate, and we responded by getting married and having children and getting by in life.

Did we make it?  Yes, I think we did.  Will they make it?  I think so, though, for many, their road is tougher than ours.  Weak men make hard times, and I think that’s where we’re at.

But, hey, think of all the great memes they’ll make!

It’s Joever. What next?

“And after your glorious coup, what then?” – Gladiator

I hadn’t planned on tackling the Fall of the House of Biden today, but, hey, an opportunity is an opportunity.  As it is, I think that the world has provided a rich set of memetic information that will more than cover the situation.  All of these are “as found”.

First, do you think Joe knew he’d be stepping down today?  Here’s the foreshadowing:

That brings us up to the end of the campaign.  How did that go?

The results seemed to catch even those close to Biden by surprise:

Lots of folks seem to think the nomination is a done deal for Kamala.  Obama, pointedly, did not endorse her.

Why did Obama not endorse Kamala?  Well, reasons, probably including that she is likely the stupidest person to ever run for Washington, with more baggage than the Lusitania, all combined with all of the charisma of ¡Jeb!:

I think she thinks the quote above is profound, because she keeps repeating it.

The pain . . . !

But what are the other complications?

Not gonna lie, it would be funny to start this program:

What if Joe doesn’t remember?

And what if Darth Clinton returns?  I’d say never get involved in a land war in Asia or play a game against a Clinton when power is on the line.  That does leave me with one question:

If There Are Seven Basic Plots, Which One Is Yours?

“There’s no plot.  It just goes on like that for an hour.” – Videodrome

Why don’t they use thyme as medicine?  I hear I heals all wounds.

Last week’s post was about life as a three-act play.  It may or may not work, and, like all metaphors, it’s flawed and suspect.  Perhaps I should used something better, like a metaphive?

The Third Act

During the post, I also mentioned that a dude named Christopher Booker had written a book called The Seven Basic Plots.  In it, he broke down most everything we watch into, well, seven basic plots.  I guess he completely blew the suspense with the title.  These plots all follow the same three acts discussed last week, though this week I’m using “hero” more as a descriptor than “protagonist”.

But what are the plots?

Overcoming The Monster:  Destroying a great evil that threatens good.  Examples:  my divorce attorney from my first marriage, Star Wars®.

Rags to Riches:  Start out poor and drunk, get money, lose money, get more money plus the girl and a private helicopter.  Examples:  Sonny Bono, Brewster’s Millions.

The Quest:  The search for and attainment of a thing or place after being found worthy.  Examples:  losing my virginity, The Lord of the Rings.

What kind of magic to GloboLeft wizards use?  Soycery.

Voyage and Return:  A trip to an unfamiliar place, a learning experience, and a return as a changed hero.  Examples:  The Mrs. and I moving to Alaska and back, The Hobbit.

Rebirth:  External events happen, and force the hero to change for the better.  Examples:  I was adopted.  Duh.  Groundhog Day.

Comedy:  External things keep happening and pile up to the point that they get more and more confusing, but then sort themselves out in the end.  Examples:  My first marriage, any episode of Frasier.

Tragedy:  Bad things happen to good people because they let temptation spoil their virtue.  Examples:  Me giving up on a drug-addicted friend, Macbeth.

Yup.  Seven plots.

Whether or not you agree with them, all of them (with one exception that we’ll talk about in a bit) all have the same basic idea:  the hero goes out, does stuff, and grows.  That personal growth is what leads to ultimate victory in the climax of the story.  Sure, luck can play a part of the victory, but to have a really emotionally satisfactory end, the victory comes because the character has faced his past mistakes, worked, grown, and is now a better man.

Our new puppy can’t write a decent plot.  The only thing he can get out is ruff drafts.

This is a wonderful story and sings to our hearts:  who of us hasn’t lost?  Who of us hasn’t worked hard to get better, and then won in the end, even if it was just a small victory?

It is the personification of a story of virtue that we want to change to improve, to work to a higher goal, to pay the price in effort, and to win.  Who wouldn’t want their children to live that life?

An aside:  one of the (many) reasons modern movies suck is because, especially with victim-class characters and girl-bosses, they can never be shown in any sort of negative light.  Looking at the stupid movie that made me hate Star Wars™, The Girlboss Awakens©, the main character starts off as invincible, invulnerable, and never has to grow.  Why should she?  From the first moment she can pilot the Millenium Falcon© better than Han Solo®, fight better with a lightsaber™ than a man who has spent his entire life in perfecting that skill, and is way better at The Force© after hearing about it for the first time.

No struggle.  No growth – how could she need it?  She was born the BeSTeSt EvAR hero because she’s a girl.  This is of course, even though the character was written by people who would tell you that gender doesn’t exist and that you’re a bigot for not liking girls even though they don’t exist either.  Bigot.

Her next movie?  Fifty Shades of Rey.

It’s also the deprivation of that challenge that’s ruining our kids.  I had a conversation with a Zoomer the other day, and he noted that, yeah, they were a generation that lived on phones, didn’t have bullying, and were afraid of real challenges because they never had to face them.  Why are Zoomers on anxiety meds?  Because their parents protected them from the dragons and never let their kids work themselves out of a hole that they’d dug for themselves.

We need to let kids do heroic things, dammit!

Okay, I’ll step back away from that ledge, and end this aside.

Fun fact:  most coyotes, despite years of effort to teach them, cannot do simple calculus.

What was I talking about?  Oh, yeah, plots.  There’s one different plot.

Tragedy.  This plot shows how temptation lures in the innocent hero, corrupts him, and then causes his ultimate destruction.

This is also a story we want our children to know.  Regardless of intent, regardless of skill, there is a danger in allowing temptation to overcome virtue, allowing negative emotions to rule our lives.

Here’s a real-world example:  the firefighter who was murdered (Corey Comperatore, PBUH) at the Trump rally.  A tragedy?  Do you think he’d look back at his life and call it tragic?  A hero who died saving his family, who fathered children who love him and who was married to a wife who mourns him?

It’s not tragic.  It’s heroic.  There was no vanity, no anger, no petty emotion that led to his downfall.  He didn’t have a downfall.  He died a hero’s death.  Tragic?  Absolutely.  The plot of a tragedy?  No.

And, in this case, we find seeds of the important:  the plot of our lives, as long as we breathe, as long as we can change, isn’t set.  The ultimate destiny of whether we live as the hero on a quest or a villain who lived the plot of a tragedy rests with us.

Me?  I’m trying, very hard, to be a hero.  I can look back on my life and see places where I could have been more heroic, but also places where I’m damn proud of my actions and would do them again, no matter the outcome.  I can also see places where my weaknesses made me the villain in a tragedy or two.

But, as long as I’m breathing, I’m still attempting to be the hero.

You can, too.

How Corporations Ruin Nations, Part II: Readers Strike Back

“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?” – No Country for Old Men

How many clickbait articles does it take to change a lightbulb?  The answer will shock you.

First:  thanks everyone for the comments last week, agree or disagree, it was an epic comment section with over 5,000 words of well thought out commentary.

One of the things that I think we all have to realize is that the thought process and institutions that got us into this situation are the thought processes and institutions we have to reform because that’s how we got here.  This is the same logic used by the Founders when they created this place.

I am first and foremost for things that make the family strong, and the virtue that comes from being observant is absolutely one of those things.  The Constitution isn’t agnostic, though it allows you to be.

I am furthermore very much in favor of limited freedom.  Well, limited how?  You know, pesky things like murder should be outlawed.  Does no-fault divorce with alimony and child support make women “freer”?  Yes.  But it’s horrible for our nation.

And I am for a mostly free market.  Should marijuana be legal?  Probably not.  Should Google™ be able to change its search algorithm with the express intent of keeping Donald Trump out of the White House?  Also, probably not.

Should every corporation be able to live forever and go into any line of businesses, leading to Facebook™ buying competitors just to keep relevant?

Yeah, no.

What’s the difference between Mark Zuckerberg and your wife?  Zuck knows more about you.

Below are some great points that I had to condense.  I tried with utmost sincerity to try to trim them fairly, so they didn’t lose context though I fixed a few typos.  Keep in mind if I had kept all the bits, this post would probably end up doubling to around 7,000 words, and ain’t nobody got time for that.  Comments are in bold italics, responses are mine.

Free market capitalism only works in a very homogeneous society with a shared and enforced set of Christian values, along with churches strong enough to enforce said values.

John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Freedom, and free market capitalism, really only works with a moral and religious people. Everything else quickly turns into some form of tyranny. Or tranny. Or both.

I disagree – the free market can and has flourished in many locations through history, see Kipling’s Gods of the Copybook Headings.  Now, combining the free market with a mostly free society?  Yes, that requires a virtuous people, with a shared virtue founded in a shared religion.

The worst is altruistic people without religion:  those are monsters.

Kipling, Gods of The Copybook Headings, and It’s Different This Time

Ahh, when you get the smug feeling that comes from your altruism but somebody else pays the price.

the absolute number one reform on corporations that needs to happen is not on the list though: this is removing the liability shield. The shareholders of a company must be liable for the actions done in their name, as well as for the debts of the company, and they must be actual people, not other corporations. the debts are easy to prorate over the outstanding shares. the liability for damages or criminal activity, however, must be shared by all shareholders.

In researching this, although not all shareholders may have been liable, the managerial class of the corporation were legally and criminally liable at least for a time in the country.  I was surprised!  And, for the same reason you suggest.

Restricting corporations sounds great, but how could it be enforced? More .gov, more bureaucracy, more laws, more grift. Rather than strongarm huge national and international entities, think of ways to incentivize the local aspect. We don’t need any more .gov regulation mucking up our lives.

Just devolve it back to the Several States, it would be a rather simple Constitutional amendment.  Oh, and have the Several States select senators to protect their rights.  Much of this nonsense happened after senators became “super congressmen” with longer terms.

Sorry, looks like this picture has a piece of Schiff on it.

Corporations only exist because of government powers. They could not exist without the government enforcing their existence 24 hours a day. If the government were to simply no longer recognize corporations as legal entities, they would disintegrate in seconds. So changing the terms of that government support is not anything out of imagination.

Yes.  And there is historical precedent.  And don’t forget that AT&T being broken apart didn’t cause the world to explode even though they had a Death Star© logo.

The corporations MAKE the laws.

This is very, very true.  I reference the exact stats a little lower in the post, but if the Elite is for a regulation, then it happens.  Look at the endless hordes of illegals:  this was chosen by both sides.  Either could have stopped it, and either could stop it today.  But the Elites have bigger pocketbooks.

Peter Turchin’s End Times: There Be Dragons Here

Chain stores outcompete mom-and-pop stores. Customers prefer to buy from them. Why are you objecting to what customers have decided they want? It is not obvious that patronizing chain stores is contrary to customers’ interests.

Your policy prescription reads like the envy wish list from local pharmacists who can’t compete on price and selection, and demand government ban their competition.

At one point, I agreed with your statement wholeheartedly even though I’ve never been and never will be a pharmacist.  Customers do prefer lower prices.  Larger big-box stores can get those by several ways:  a good one is lowering the cost of goods delivered to the store via increased efficiency, a bad one is offshoring all manufacturing in critical industries.  But the impact on the community is not zero sum.  Profits that would stay local aren’t local anymore.  That has a cumulative effect.  If you really want big box stores and they’re 50% locally (in-state) owned with a specific mandate, and there are strategic tariffs?  Maybe we’re both happy and life is better.

Never put a catheter into a pharmacist, you’re just left with a harmacist.

The next comment went point by point, but I skipped a few points (length):

  1. Require corporations to be chartered as separate entities in each operating state.
    And here we have the restriction that really silos the states from each other. I don’t know – CAN this be done at the state level, or would this require federal action?
  2. Require a percentage (greater than 50%?) of local (think, people living in the state) ownership in each corporation.
    If the preceding point can be done, so can this.
  3. Sharply restrict lending by out of state institutions.
    Ok, I know there’s a federal law on this – the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking Act.
  4. Tiered sales tax based on company size: the bigger, the higher, which reflects the value these companies are taking out of state.
    Let’s add income taxes in here too, and combine this with points 1-6 above, and create a new legal entity – the “Domestic Missouri Corporation” (for example), which must have 50%+1 local ownership, a 50 year limited life, collects no sales tax, is exempt from as many state regs as reasonable; and income derived from a DMC is taxed at an extremely low rate by the state (if at all), and liquidation distributions from a DMC (at the end of the 50 year life) are exempt from state taxes. DMCs can be banks, and are then exempt from most state-level banking regulations.

There was an awesome longer comment talking point by point about the legality at the state level of doing this that I excerpted above.  Yes, it would require an amendment to the Constitution, because the Supreme Court (activist in the Robber Baron days) essentially nationalized corporations, primarily to protect the railroads (many of the court cases that changed the status of corporations from limited to infinite dealt with railroads).

Our local railroad has a good training program.

The big corporations collude with the government to use your tax dollars – stolen from you at gunpoint – to subsidize their costs.

A point I missed, thanks for bringing it up.  This is a particularly insidious trap – and it creates more input for the victim machine that is the GloboLeft – they import millions to undercut wages, profit strip an area, but are in favor of subsidizing the low-wage Potterville they’ve created.  People who depend on the government want . . . more government.  And (as noted by another commentor, they also look to have local communities give them a tax break, or even tax citizens to get them to pay for capital expansion (new stadium, anyone?).

. . . lots of corporations make contributions to local interests. WalMart posts these inside their store. In my neck of the woods, Family Express does lots of community support. On a national level, Thrivent does all kinds of stuff. All you need to do is ask. They approve even marginal stuff, though I know of no cases of them funding LBGTOMFG crap.

Back before the Boy Scouts went woke, I was a Cubmaster.  We went to Wal-Mart® and asked for contributions for day camp, even offering ad space.  “No.”  No large, non-local business contributed.  Local businesses did.  My experiences only.

I don’t disagree with any particular point, however, no set of laws will ultimately protect you from a group who A) is reasonably intelligent, B) is entirely unscrupulous and C) instinctively works together against outsiders. The only thing to do with a group like that is not deal with them and exclude them if at all possible.

Effectively, we are currently ruled by such a group. Until we are rid of them, these laws would grant temporary protection at best.

This is a significant problem, but it’s one that exists, well, everywhere.  Look at Indians (dot, not feather) that get jobs at Microsoft©.  What do they do?  They get on the hiring side and only hire additional Indians.  The same can be said of other groups that are insular – a friend works for a Mormon corporation.  He noted that non-Mormons can get jobs there, but never C-suite positions.  And, yes, Jews do this too and have been exceptionally successful at it.  One of James O’Keefe’s targets noted that at Disney©, there was no way that anyone but a Jewish person could get a top job.

Under a decentralized set of solutions as we’ve discussed, it is simply very, very difficult to concentrate that much power.

There’s a highway to hell but a stairway to heaven, which may be a commentary on the expected traffic load.

As an entrepreneur myself, I think all you really need is #1:  Restrict corporations to a limited life span, at which time they have to divest. . . . (or) . . . Just make them play by the same damn tax rules. That’s probably sufficient.

How about we replace most taxes with tariffs?

Your great ape brain firmware wants to blame the competing outside tribe instead of traitors who look like you, but that group is called “middle class WASP voters”. That group has such a large percentage of the votes that no other group can force any policy onto them. Why then are there so many policies made against their interests? Are middle class voters mostly a bunch of non-player-characters whose minds are programed by the mainstream media? If so then voting can never work.

But policy after policy has been shoved down the throats of the middle-class WASP voters.  Who voted for unlimited immigration?  Here’s Turchin:

“The political scientist Martin Gilens . . . gathered a large data set – nearly 2000 policy issues between 1981 and 2002.  Each case matched a proposed policy change to a nation opinion survey asking a favor/oppose question about the initiative . . . .

“Statistical analysis . . . showed that the preferences of the poor had no effect on policy changes . . . . What is surprising is that there was no – zilch, nada – effect of the average voter.  The main effect on the direction of change was due to the policy preferences of the affluent.  There was also an additional effect of interest groups, the most influential ones being business-oriented lobbies.  Once you include in the statistical model the preferences of the top 10 percent and the interest groups, the effect of the commoners is statistically indistinguishable from zero.”

Given inflation, the poor are revolting.  No surprise, soap is expensive.

I will say that communities becoming dependent on the corporations is a problem as well. Again, example here in New Home: We have two very large corporations in town and one just down the road that are likely substantial employers for this entire region. If they go, it will have a huge impact.

There is a place for larger corporations with longer lives.  But they need to be sharply held to task.  Why is Facebook™ still so big?  They bought all potential competition when the competition was still small.  Facebook® as Facebook™ is fine, but when they want to just buy other corporations to make themselves invulnerable?  No.  But someone needs to make aspirin and airplanes, and Bayer® and Boeing™ can do that.  Maybe if Boeing had maintained a focus on airplanes they wouldn’t suck.

One (of Denninger’s suggestions) was to eliminate the ability for large investment firms like Blackrock and Vanguard to vote proxy shares on the mutual funds of their customers. This gives them ginormous power to influence the country which is why we have DEI (among other things). With this power it becomes easier to vote themselves even more control. To stop this, the actual owner of the stock (even via a mutual fund) should be the one who votes the shares or else the votes are forfeit. That would deflate their power tremendously. I would go a few steps further though, and limit their ability to invest in certain areas (real estate for example).

Yes.  BlackRock® should be neutered.

Why wouldn’t you trust Dr. Anthony Fauchi?

Undertake to lay your finger on that clause in the Constitution which gives government that authority and power.

“To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;” – this is the literal and exact purpose of the article.  But note, this uses the proper word “among” meaning that Massachusetts couldn’t blockade Vermont if Congress said “no”.  It does not mean “within” which is the source of the mischief.  States are, however, given the power, and had it, and restricted the formation of corporations to a legislative event because they were so frightened of unbridled corporate power.

At the beginning, when the Founders were still around, most corporations existed for large, well-defined purposes for a limited amount of time, and couldn’t own things that didn’t meet that purpose.  This isn’t my idea, it was the Founders.

Yes.  It was and is misused horribly.  But it is applicable here.

Corporations get too big, and live too long (list of dead corporations)?

Yes.  Just because Sears© cratered as it was looted doesn’t mean that BlackRock© or Facebook™ or Google® should be allowed to wield unlimited power, either financial or via information restriction on the public.  The power of the corporation in public life can and should be limited by limiting their reach, lifespan, and ability to work across business sectors.

BTW, how did Smoot-Hawley do at saving American jobs?

Don’t know, ask China in 2024 – we’re not 1930 America.  At that point(1930) we had a trade account surplus.  Now?  Not so much, and it’s a race to the bottom.  A $5 tariff per $700 (at the time) iPhone™ would have swung the production cost to favor the United States.  By 200%.  Countries can (and do!) strategically target markets so that they can “corner” the intellectual skills and know-how to make strategic goods.  Domestically produced F-35?  No way, there are parts that in 2024 have to come from China, and the timeline for competency in that tech is measured in decades.

And how is NAFTA really working out for the economy?

I shot the tariff, but I did not shoot the subsidy.

Penalize companies for outsourcing jobs overseas, and you might be onto something.  But don’t subsequently bitch when American cars and medicines cost 20x what the same products cost overseas, where they’re made in sweatshops, and are uncompetitive in the rest of the world for the same reason.

That’s making my point for me:  we used to be able to do that – the P-51s flying off the assembly line and into Europe was because we had the capacity and the know-how.  Germany could figure out how to make cars.  And in what industry (exactly) are we 20x less efficient?0

I’ve been thinking a lot on this lately. Do communities really benefit from cheaper prices at stores like Walmart or DollarStore if all they are is conduits sucking money out of local communities? Or, banking at MegaBank Corp when the local bank is owned by shareholders in the community?

I know a guy who owns a bank here in Modern Mayberry. Has a nice house that he had built.  By local labor.  Bought the concrete at the local plant, owned by locals.  He also volunteers his time to lead a civic group.  Make him a branch manager of MegaBankCorp© and he’d be buying a crappy house, and too tired to go out and help out after dinner.  But, hey, with MegaBankCorp™ your interest goes to New York!

I’m guessing (hoping) this discussion is really just JW’s way of pointing out the dearth of anyone having read Adam Smith’s Wealth Of Nations, which came out the same year as the Declaration Of Independence, and therefore being wholly ignorant of how liberty works in a country not controlled by the state, cannot come up with one reason (out of any five hundred) why government control of any markets is asinine and stupid in the extreme.

Adam got a lot right theoretically but also wrong practically.  Yes, it would be silly to grow grapes in Greenland, but comparative advantage says not.  We’re not talking about grapes, though.  And, Smith was against tariffs, but the average tariffs went up as high as 60%.  During our industrialization phase up until 1930 or so, the average tariff was 50%.  Average.  And they made up 95% of federal revenue – so much that we didn’t need an income tax.

Adam Smith was against those, so we can see the United States was very weak and not an industrial powerhouse.  Oh, wait.

Socialists would be fine using the invisible hand to change a lightbulb, but it would have to be somebody else’s bulb.

Bonus points: When the government also decrees that the national minimum wage should be $20/hr, how many of you will venture to local restaurants to buy dinner out?

I’m against minimum wages.  Boot the illegals out, restrict legal immigration, let the price float while defanging .gov as well as .com.  Yes, government is a dangerous servant and a cruel master, but so are Facebook™, Google©, and BankAmerica®.  Defanging both of them isn’t a bad idea.

So you’re okay with a government corporate entity living forever, but the idea that private citizens could have the same ability and right to incorporate scares hell out of you?  And when, exactly, are the masters of that government held liable for the consequences of their actions?

Governments end.  We have successive congresses, and successive presidents (elected or not).  Putting all of them on trial like the Spartans did after their terms (limited!) end is maybe not a bad idea – it would be fun to watch Clarence Thomas in charge of such an event.  I think the bigger problem is the regulator class, which should be mostly eliminated by actually following the limits placed on the federal government by the Constitution.

That would probably make her Schiff her pants.

Thanks for participating in this little thought experiment.  Again, it’s clear that the concentrated power of government is bad.  It’s also clear that the concentrated power of corporations can be just as bad, since they appear to inevitably twist themselves into anti-competition behemoths that want to control governments, import endless streams of illegals, and support Leftist causes – hence, the GloboLeftElite.