John – Page 114 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

What should you do in an economic downturn? Depends . . .

“Out these windows, we will view the collapse of financial history. One step closer to economic equilibrium.” – Fight Club

Since 1940, the United States has had 12 recessions, as recorded by the Fed. The graph is below.

fed unemployment

Want to start a small business? Just buy a big one before a recession, and wait! Saves a lot of hassle! The gray bars are recessions.

Why do we have recessions?

There have been several economists who have tried to explain this. One of the earlier explanations was from Ludwig Von Mises. Von Mises, being Austrian, was the founder of what is known as the “Austrian” school of economics. Austrian economists are the mortal enemy of Keynesian economists (named after John Maynard Von Keynes, it being a new rule that every economist must now have “Von” in their middle name). Often the Austrians and Keynesians will have gang fights over who has better economic theory, but they’re economists, so the gang fights look like slap fights between anemic three-year-old girls.

Von Mises felt that recessions were caused by a debt cycle. At a time (like today) you can borrow massive amounts of money at very low interest rates. My current house is mortgaged at 4% or so, but my first house was financed at a rate just over 9%, and that was a bargain at the time. And my current savings account pays interest in dust and, on a good year, in little balls of dryer lint.

voneconomics

Little known fact: Ludwig Von Mises (Miller) was Superbowl® 50 MVP!

This condition (like we’re in today) encourages investment, and discourages savings. An example:

The little town I’m in has one hotel that was built since Bill Clinton was president. There are a collection of at least two other (nice) hotels around town. And, there are about three hotels that were constructed when the building code required use of lead pipes, lead paint, and asbestos carpet. So, there are hotels for moderate budgets (like $90 a night) all the way down to hotels that take payment in squirrel pelts (tanned only – no raw pelts). No five star hotels, but, really, this town isn’t one you’d come to visit as a tourist.

But somebody decided we needed another hotel. And they built one – a brand new, brand name hotel in a town that already had enough rooms. Why?

Interest rates are low, so the hotel company is just looking for places to spend money. If they can borrow it at 5%, they don’t have to make too much money for the investment to pay off.

In an environment with low interest rates and large amounts of money available, companies will borrow money to do almost anything – projects that are crappy at 10% interest look great at a 5% cost of capital. So they borrow first to do the “great” projects and, once those are done, companies then borrow to do the so-so projects.

What happens when the interest rate goes up? Or the business ideas that are presented are so silly (strawberry picker making $15,000 a year buys $720,000 California house – LINK) that when they make the papers they become legendary. Another way to tell is when a Wells Fargo® bank has a Starbucks© inside it’s lobby – and the Starbucks has a Wells Fargo™ bankette inside. With a tiny Starbucks©. You can tell that maybe, just maybe, the economy is nearing peak stupid. (This happened in Houston – there was a Starbucks™ in the mall in front of the Target©. The Target® had a Starbucks™ just inside the door. So did the Wells Fargo© bank. Next to the Target™.)

As we watched the housing market collapse, as well as the financial shenanigans machine industry that supported it, my lawyer friend said to me . . . “Well, when you’re at the beach and the tide goes, out, you see who wasn’t wearing any clothing.” The length of time of artificially low interest rates and the greater the amount of “silly” investment is like a drunk’s binge – the longer it lasts the bigger the hangover.

Examples of irrational thought:

The price of a house never goes down – it’ll go up forever. And this one is in a great location, right next to the high paying jobs at the chemical plant.
The price of a stock never goes down – stocks will go up forever. And that new car will never replace horses! Silly!
Comics are totally the best investment anyone could ever make. This issue of Teen Manga 2000 will be worth millions!
“It’s different this time.”
“Stocks have reached a new permanent high plateau.”
“This company, Montgomery Ward Toys ‘r’ Us Sears Tesla will last forever . . . .

And then, something happens. Oh, sure, it looks like . . . 9/11. If the economy were healthy and operating on all cylinders, 9/11 wouldn’t have led to a recession. The reason for the recession isn’t what’s in the papers – the economy was sick from too much bourbon. It was going to throw up anyway.

Make no mistake – the United States is an economic engine. 2% growth is middling, but a 2% contraction is catastrophe. Why?

All of the jobs are created at the margin, at that 1% or 2% of growth. A small contraction ripples through the economy – now people are losing jobs. A 2% contraction is really a 3% or 4% contraction. That can set off a chain reaction (like during the Great Depression) – those people aren’t consuming, so the next group of people lose their jobs/businesses. And so on.

Also, in the past, inflation was a thing that happened. Now we pretend it doesn’t, even as food goes from a $5 lunch to a $10 lunch, minimum.

Eventually, however, the Central Bank (in the case of the United States) can hold back the interest rates no longer – it has to raise them or risk the currency (dollar) becoming worthless. Interest rates rise.

Formerly profitable projects and businesses are no longer profitable at the new rate. They get cancelled, or in some cases abandoned during construction. Or the entire business fails. The average business lasts . . . 10 years, regardless of age. Big ones, small ones, they get eaten or fail. It’s part of that regrowth that’s actually nice about capitalism. Wouldn’t it be nice if the DMV had to compete to get you to come in and get license plates or a new driver’s license?

So how should you behave in an economic contraction?

First, the pitfalls: being right early is EXACTLY the same as being totally wrong. In 1994 I saw that Marvel® had a great group of characters, and if they could only exploit them, they’d have a franchise that was worth millions. So, I placed a big bet – $2000 – on Marvel™ Entertainment stock. Which promptly went bankrupt, making my investment worth a handful of magic beans. Sigh. Again, being right early is exactly the same as being wrong.

Second: Getting out early (which I’ve done a time or two or almost always) has proven to be a killer. Getting out while the market is still going up has cost me a lot of gains. Not that I’m complaining – the world has been awesome for me, but I really wish I could afford a private island with a heliport inside and extinct volcano. I’ll have to buy an island without a volcano. Again. Sigh. Is an extinct volcano too much to ask?

So, what do you do when faced with an economic downturn? I’ve developed a helpful graphic:

Size of Downturn	Best Investment	Amount of Panic	Beware of:	Move to:
1-3%	Stay the course – keep investing every month.	Bernie Sanders waves his hands and screams for more aid.	Falling stocks.	A nice property you bought at a bargain.
Less than 5%	Whiskey. AAA Bonds of solid countries, like Switzerland. Gold.	Bernie Sanders takes his hand out of his pockets and puts them in yours.	Communist revolution. Oh, wait, they already got California.	Montana or Idaho.
More than 10%	Ammunition. Even more whiskey.	Bernie Sanders forms a cannibal paramilitary organization.	Better Call Saul being cancelled.	Your island with a helipad in an extinct volcano.

The real answer is that response to a downturn depends on:

How much money you have. If you have plenty, you’ll be fine.

How long the downturn lasts. If a year or two, you’ll figure it out. If a decade or more? Yikes! (Unless you have lots of money.)

How severe the downturn is. See above. The “More than 10%” is not really all that much of a joke.

How much your job is impacted. This you can figure out now. If your company could do fine without you, you don’t figure into any strategic initiatives, and you make a lot of money? I hope you saved some, because you and dozens of people that look just like you will be looking for a job soon enough.

Ma Wilder’s family, the McWilders, took in a batch of neighbor kids during the Great Depression and helped to raise them. Great Grandpap McWilder was wistfully employed on the railroad and operating a boarding house. Plus he ran a gambling house (I think) that sold illicit whiskey. He did what he had to do to get by during the Depression.

Great Grandfather Wilder ran a bank that did fine during the Depression. Never had to hustle, worked banker’s hours. Depression? Not for him.

So, be like Von Mises and Great Grandfather Wilder! Blitz that recession!

The Coming Civil War Part II, and a (Possible) American Caesar

“Who the hell is Julius Caesar? You know I don’t follow the N.B.A.” – Anchorman 2

This is Pompey, the opponent of Julius Caesar. Yeah, there’s no second place in history for “nearly became emperor.” Thankfully, there was first place for “widest head in history” which he won, hands down. I mean, seriously, how could this guy buy glasses?

Last week’s post was the first prediction about the coming future of the United States. You can read it here (The Coming Civil War (United States), Cool Maps, and Uncomfortable Truths) and another good post about the life of empires is here (End of Empires, PEZ, and Decadence). Breakup was the first, and in my mind, still the most likely scenario. But it isn’t the only one – there is at least one other possibility worth considering.

As I referenced in the post, there was a moment where Julius Caesar stood upon the banks of the river Rubicon and thought about his future. As he looked at the shallow river he considered the orders from Rome: at the banks of the Rubicon he was to turn over command of all of his legions. Julius had four legions under his command in his conquest of Gaul. But as he stood on the banks of the Rubicon, only the 13^th Legion (Legio XIII, Gemina, or “Twins”) was at his back.

Caesar at the banks of the Rubicon. Some say he thought weighty thoughts about how he could best govern Rome. I wonder if he was thinking about what was on TV, or if Brutus accepted his Facebook friend request?

To cross without them would, he feared, most certainly end with him being tried for political crimes (mainly the crime of being more popular than the sole remaining counsel, Pompey). To cross without the army, then, might mean that his long career for the Roman Republic would end in dishonor. In Gaul alone, his legions had faced over three million men, killed a million of them, and enslaved a million more – not a record that generally leads to disgrace, but a record that still irritates the French 2000 years later.

Legend recounts that as Caesar decided to cross the river and conquer Rome, as his horse’s hooves went into the shallow Rubicon he said, alea iacta esto, or, in a less-metric language, “Let the die be cast.” And it was a gamble – he was outnumbered.

Caesar’s refusal to be a political pawn set him up to do what no other man on Earth could do – he conquered the most powerful nation on Earth. He transformed the Roman Republic after a civil war, and created the Roman Empire with him as the leader. The Roman Republic would never again exist.

At the time of Caesar’s ascension to becoming “dictator for life,” Rome had become a Republic ruled by a small number of families, including the Bushes and Clintons those of Pompey and Cicero. Historian Adrian Goldsworthy writes in his book Caesar, Life of a Colossus (p. 378), that, “The Republic had become dominated by a faction who ignored the normal rule of law and particularly refused to acknowledge the traditional powers and rights of the tribunate.”

The empire that Caesar helped create removed the instability of the late Republic, and replaced it with a more stable structure that lasted another five hundred years.

Here is a painting of Vercingetorix, a chieftain who united the Gauls, throwing down his arms at Caesar’s feet. This was painted in the 1890’s in France, and there are numerous historical inaccuracies in the painting. Among them: it’s unlikely that Vercingetorix would have had such a stupid mustache, and Caesar always had his iPhone® at surrenders listening to “We Are the Champions” by Queen on a loop in his earbuds.

The transition from Republic to Empire was completed within 20 years’ time. Caesar put all of the rules in motion for his last name to become a title – the Roman emperors became Caesars. The title followed to the German king – Kaiser and the Russian Emperor – Czar. Think about that – your last name becoming synonymous with being an emperor for 2,000 years . . . “Wilder John the First” has an awesome ring to it, right?

But this is the other possibility for the United States: whereas breakup into multiple states is likely the longer we go, there is still the possibility of an American Caesar, especially if the crisis is within the next 10 years or so while some shred of commonality can be forced upon us. Sure, we won’t call him (or, much much much much much much less likely, her) “Caesar.” We’ll probably call them “President” and pretend that the “for duration of the (endless) emergency” part doesn’t exist.

If we have a female American Caesar, she will probably look like the picture above. Don’t worry, she doesn’t bite. Oh, wait, she does bite. And that’s not autographed to me – I found this one on the Internet.

And notice that I said forced. The way we get to an American Caesar is through crisis – real or invented. A currency one would do just fine, and I’ve pointed out that a currency crisis is inevitable here (Rome, Britain, and Money: Why You Can’t Find Fine China after the Apocalypse) and here (More Budget Doom, The Rolling Stones, an End Date, and an Unlikely Version of Thunderstruck), it would certainly bring the “need” for a strong, popular leader to take the role of power to save us all. We almost ended up with one in 1932, but thankfully FDR gave out as World War II was nearing completion – if it had been a younger, more physically fit man? Yeah, it scared the heck out of America. That’s why we had a two term limit in place for Presidents before Roosevelt’s corpse was cool.

History shows that people give up freedom to someone who makes promises. Napoleon, Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, and well, here’s the map from Freedom House. Most of the world’s population lives under what would be considered a dictator. Very little freedom.

But never in the United States. Why not?

Historically, the United States has been driven by a core desire for individual freedoms and liberty. Those freedoms and liberties were specifically written into the Constitution, despite several politicians of the day noting that no government would EVER try to take these freedoms away. The Bill of Rights has been a firewall against government power.
Separation of powers is another key. The President can’t make laws, only Congress. The President can just refuse to sign them. And the Supreme Court has the ability to call into question the Constitutionality of all of those laws (Jefferson argued the President had those powers as well). These divided powers were intended to prevent the Federal government from acting unjustly.
As a further (and much stronger) barricade against tyranny, the states had significant power: they appointed Senators. Without the Senate, no new law could be made. The states further had delegated to them all powers not specifically granted to the Federal government.

But those are weakening.

The Supreme Court has made decisions that create new categories of rights of people to have stuff (the old Bill of Rights prevented government from doing things, not granting people rights to stuff). And recent rulings generally allow the government to do pretty much what it wants in most cases. We’ve gone from a limited Federal government to a Federal government that can choose the size of your toilet tank and define what features you MUST buy if you buy a new car.
Separation of powers is eroded. Congress writes the laws, but bureaucrats from government agencies run by the President write the regulations that implement those laws. Page after page of regulation. 81,000 in 2015. Stack one atop the other? A three story building’s worth of paper. With that many regulations, everyone is guilty. Everyone has done something wrong. To go back to a Roman, Tacitus: “The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.”
States in the United States are little more than counties since Senators become popularly elected. Senators are just Representatives (Congressmen) with longer terms, and they don’t represent the states at all.

So, the stage is set – a collapse of the walls that kept a dictator from gaining power. Now all that’s needed is a set stage. As I mentioned above, a significant crisis will set that stage. Maybe it’s actual civil war, as noted in the previous post, which is driven almost entirely by economic difficulties. People don’t fight in civil wars if they the major problem they have is whether to go to the mountains or on a cruise for vacation. Civil wars happen when people have nothing left to lose.

And when people have nothing left to lose, Caesar will (possibly) emerge. You won’t look at him like he’s the bad guy. Political lines will disappear. I was watching the Netflix® remake of Lost in Space. Not bad, but there was one scene that was so unintentionally silly I laughed out loud.

Space eels were drinking the space fuel that the space ship needed to move away from being crushed. Plus, the space eels looked like they could kill people, too. The husband went down to the ship’s 3D printer to print out a gun to save the family from the space eels.

Mom had the codes to the printer, and it wouldn’t print out a restricted item (gun) unless she said it was okay. Then she harangued her retired Marine husband that guns weren’t necessary to fight the space eels.

Okay, you can have staunch anti-gun principles, but the second a space eel is going to eat your kids? You print a dozen guns.

Your priorities change immensely after three days without food. You’d be just happy to have a strong leader who will protect you. A leader who will feed you. And you won’t worry so much if you can’t criticize him, especially if you have food.

There was some comment that the maps from the previous post didn’t show the great amount of land that Trump won during the last election. Here’s a different version, represented by area. Future battle map for a new Caesar? Asking for a friend.

You’ll look at him like he’s saving you, which he just might be doing. He’ll have songs written about him. And if he does a good enough job? He’ll be remembered for 1,000 years. If he does a bad enough job, he’ll be remembered that long, too.

When (if) he rises to power? You’ll applaud.

Possibility, Your Choices, McDonalds, and Your Responsibility . . . (and too many “Your Mom” Jokes)

“And in Paris, you can buy a beer at McDonald’s. And you know what they call a Quarter-Pounder with Cheese in Paris?” – Pulp Fiction

This is a picture of the McDonald®’s shoe car, circa George W. Bush’s presidency. Notice the French fries dangling from the rear view mirror. Must be some sort of talisman that makes him attract your mom.

There is a brief moment at your birth, when every single possibility of who you will be, and what you can achieve is open to you. If your genetics support it, you can do it. You will never have more possibilities open to you than at that moment. And, over time – slowly at first – those possibilities narrow. Your life is a funnel, and the wide open end is the possibilities that you have on day one. Eventually, that funnel narrows. You make decisions that cut off possibilities – you decide to dedicate yourself to a single sport rather than trying to letter in three. Possibilities disappear. You decide to go to college rather than open a business. Possibilities disappear.

Possibilities never reappear. They were always there. You can’t conjure them out of nothing, but you can fulfill them.

Your life consists of two things: the choices you make (which determine the possibilities that you have) and time. And your choices even determine how much time you have. Choose wrong? You lose a few options. Want to shoot up heroin? Chances are poor that you’ll live very long, unless you’re Keith Richards – honestly, I imagine that if you could isolate how to kill him you could make cockroaches AND mosquitos extinct with a single drop of that stuff.

But your life consists of your choices.

Some good choices, some bad choices . . .

Ray Kroc was the guy who got involved with a little restaurant in 1952. He helped franchise it. Kroc built it into a brand we all know today – his vision drove the entire process. Ray Kroc is the single person most responsible for McDonalds™. He created, single-handedly, the concept of a clean hamburger place where you could get a decent meal inexpensively and wouldn’t be afraid that bikers or rowdy teenagers would cause a scene in front of your family. Sure, a dollar burger isn’t five star French cooking, but it’s a dollar burger in a clean restaurant with a clean parking lot.

What Ray was doing at the time he got involved with McDonalds® was selling milkshake mixers to the McDonald brothers (who owned the restaurant). He looked at the hamburger shop and saw it had great possibilities. He went to work with the McDonald brothers (named Ronald, Bono, and Sting), and eventually bought the brothers out. Oh, and in 1954 when Kroc started with them? Yeah. He was 52.

He was a FIFTY TWO year old milkshake machine salesman, and let’s be real – nobody puts that as their career ambition under their senior picture in the annual. And Kroc was trying to sell a dying brand of milkshake machines. Like your mother, his machines weren’t very popular, and unlike your mother, they were expensive.

He didn’t create a single new possibility when he made the jump from being a travelling salesman – that possibility was always within him.

Ray made the choice. He was going to do more, and be more than a washed-up 52 year old milkshake salesman waiting to collect social security. Why didn’t he do it before? Don’t know. Maybe in 1954 he just got up feeling like he had nothing left to lose – at 52 you know you’ve got more weeks behind you than in front of you, and maybe he sensed he had to make something go.

I know that many people like to put the cause of their situation in life and give up. And it’s easy to blame everyone around you. It’s easy to blame society, or your mother (let’s face it, we all blame your mother) or genetics.

Sure, it’s pretty unlikely that Ray could have been competition for Elvis in 1952 – Ray was too old. Likewise, his shot at pitching for the Yankees® was finished. He was past his prime – he would have had to start much earlier, rather than, you know, fight in World War I.

Those possibilities were closed down for him – but the reservoir of possibility was still open for him to lead a restaurant franchise system that’s served billions of meals and created an entire industry – without McDonalds® there wouldn’t be a Burger King™ or a Wendy’s©. And if he hadn’t created that industry, there’d be no place for your mom to work.

Kroc eventually bought the San Diego Padres®, so there’s an argument that not all of his ideas were great, although he bought that team (when he was 70) for $12 million dollars, roughly as much as a current Major League® ballboy makes per inning. As of today, that team is probably worth about a billion dollars.

So, I guess even that was a good deal. True story: when he told his wife he bought the San Diego Padres™ she asked, “What, is that a monastery?”

Friday is the day for health posts, so why am I posting about choices and Ray Kroc?

You are where you are today, almost entirely due to the choices you’ve made in your life. If you feel that your situation is beyond your control, and blame everything else besides you, you’re done. And those are a horrible people to hang around with – always whining and complaining about how the world is out to get them and the deck is stacked so they cannot win.

People who believe that the world outside controls them and their ability for success have what’s called by nerdy psychologists an “external locus of control” – and that’s not a good thing. People who feel that way are stressed out all the time, and it shows in the results: people who an internal locus of control believe the ball is in their hands. The have better jobs that pay more.

Perhaps, oh, just perhaps, people who think that their output matter – work harder, and get better results.

So, short version? Get your big boy pants on (or big girl panties on) and understand that your life is what you make of it. The crappy time that you’re having at work isn’t because people are out to get you. Unless your last name is Kennedy. Then? Yeah, maybe.

Repeat After Me: Never Buy a New Car (and other lessons for young adults)

“Everything I have is yours. My four lawnmowers. My sister. My 35 ferrets. My massive student loan and real estate debt. It’s all yours.” – Anchorman 2

I took this picture on June 2 from my hotel room. Well, over a decade ago – in Anchorage. Dinner that night was salmon, red wine, Caesar salad, and a beer for dessert. I was still paying on my student loans, but I didn’t have a car payment . . .

It was about 10:30 on a warm summer evening. I was sitting at a stop light in my home town. I had my (then) best friend with me, a case of beer in the back, and we were going to go and watch HBO® over at my apartment. I was a senior in high school. Yes, I had my own apartment while I was in high school – it was amazing, thank you very much. It’s a longer story – maybe I’ll share it sometime – danger it involves striking workers, cans of soup, and volleyball.

Anyway, back to the stoplight.

I looked behind me as I heard a squealing sound. In the rear view mirror I saw a car (headlights off, even though it was night) heading right for the rear end of my brand new car. Brand new! I did the mental calculation. It wasn’t going to stop in time. It didn’t.

The squealing sound ended in a crunching sound.

My brand new car (I got it because I’d gotten a full-ride scholarship) now had a wrinkled back end, just like Cher®. Crap.

So, off to the local auto-body place it went. The car, literally owned by me for less than two months needed a lot of repair. I went in to find out when my car would be done. The manager (the father of a girl that had graduated a year before me) invited me into his office. He had a fairly long speech that he shared, indicating that he had found some cheaper parts than he had originally quoted the insurance company, and, well, my $200 deductible could go down to $40 if I only paid him in cash, right then.

I’m not sure how he knew that I had exactly (and only) $40 on me at the time, but his cash radar was perfect. I pulled out my wallet (brown nylon with a Velcro® strip that kept it closed) and pulled out my $40.

I felt vaguely dirty afterward, like I’d done something wrong. Honestly, I still fill icky about it writing this down.

The reality is that he probably just needed money his wife couldn’t track for booze or lunch and saw an 18 year old coming . . . and decided to separate me from all the cash that I had . . .

Fast forward to today:

I was walking in a local department store and ran into a kid that I’d coached for a while. She’d just bought a new car, and was excited about it. But she’d had a “new” car two years ago – a 2008 vintage car. What was up with that?

“Well, John, I’d had to replace the alternator and the starter. And maybe it was leaking oil. So, I was worried that would cost a lot of money to fix, so I bought a brand new car. I know you only buy used cars, but this one is brand new! Sometimes things are just meant to be! And I got a loan – it’s only 21% interest!”

I wish I was making up these details, but they are true.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with my take on cars, it is my considered opinion (noted in this post: I’m gonna tell you about an accident, and I don’t wanna hear “act of God.” – Jack Burton, Big Trouble in Little China) that my rules are even more correct if you’re a kid.

John Wilder’s Hard Earned Car Iron Lesson One: If you can’t afford to buy a car with cash, don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.

My young friend violated this rule. Now she has interest payments. Two weeks ago, there were none. Now, each and every month, like Cher™ at the fridge after midnight, they’ll always be there.

Why?

You can use someone else’s spare money RIGHT NOW to buy what you want. RIGHT NOW! Sounds awesome! There must be a catch? Yes, they want a fee. That fee is interest. You pay it every month until you’ve paid back the money you owe.

And to top it off, loans are “amortized,” which is Latin for “will cause you to die of stress because you have to figure out how to pay off all that money.” At the start of the loan, say, of $16,000 at 21% for five years, your payment will be $432.85. Yeouch! That will buy a lot of Netflix®.

That $432.85 is made of two parts: the first is the interest you pay back to the guy who loaned you the cash. The second is the money you borrowed from the guy. So, in month one you’d expect that you pay half of $432 as interest and half of $432 as principle, right?

No, not even close. Your first payment would be $280 in interest and $152 in principle.

Why? At the beginning of month one, you are paying 21% interest on the full $16,000. At the end of month one, you’ve paid off that $152, so the next month, your payment would have less interest, since now you’re paying interest only on $16,000-$152 (which is $15,848 or something like that).

You pay lots of interest early in the loan, but not much of the money you borrowed. If I were to graph it, (and I did) it would look like this:

This graph explains why, when you buy a car, you can very quickly owe much more than the car is worth, since the car is worth at least 10% less the second you drive it off the lot. Your car is immediately worth $1,600 (if you paid $16,000 for it) less than you owe on it.

You’re trapped.

Never borrow for a car.

John Wilder’s Hard Earned Car Iron Lesson Two: You can’t possibly afford a new car.

I have ridden in a billionaire’s wife’s car exactly once. It was several years old. The CD player was broken. The case around the CD player was gone. It was a nice car, but it was old. As a billionaire’s wife, she had zero need to feel superior to anyone within a three state radius – she could get on a private jet at 8AM and have lunch in Rio and ski in Switzerland the next day. Hell, she could send her dogs off to summer camp in the jet. Who is she trying to impress?

Who are you trying to impress? So why do you need a new car?

My friend had noted that I only bought used cars. I had shared that with them hoping it would wear off.

Well, maybe next time?

John Wilder’s Hard Earned Car Iron Lesson Three: If the car is worth more than 15% of your gross income, don’t buy it.

This is the kicker for my friend, and the bitter lesson they’ll learn over the next sixty months. This car is (probably) valued at 75% of their gross income. 75%. That’s like Elon Musk® buying a car that that was worth $7.5 billion dollars that year his net worth went up $10 billion dollars. I guess that’s a really cool Tesla®.

I digress. Nobody needs a car worth 75% of their gross income. Nobody. The last car I bought was 5% of my gross income. It was for The Mrs. She likes it. The one I drive is six years older, and the oil in it is only four! I like it.

My friend would have been better off buying a car that was closer to $3,000, and having a bike ready if it ever broke down. She has a job, but she rarely travels farther than 10 miles on any given day.

Let’s look at the details – at 21%, a $16,000 car will cost nearly $26,000 in payments. You’re paying an additional $10,000. How many fixes on a used car would that pay for? Lots.

It’s actually worse. If you don’t own the car outright, you MUST pay insurance so whoever loaned you the money isn’t out if you wreck the car into a deer at 7:15AM. Not that anything like that ever happened to me . . . .

So, in addition to the $10,000 in interest, my friend will be paying another $150 a month in insurance.

My friend makes (I’ll guess) about $15,000 a year. After taxes, that’s probably about $875 a month.

This car plus insurance is costing them $580. That’s 66% of every dime they take home. OUCH! And you thought the government was bad. Cars cost even more.

John Wilder’s Hard Earned Car Iron Lesson Four: It is no longer 1940.

Used cars last longer today. In 1940, a car might last five or six years. We’ve had 80 years of engineering excellence driving cars to be amazingly reliable (shh, don’t tell my car I said that). Cars are more expensive, sure, but a good car from between 1998 and 2015 or so will last for a very long time.

New cars (like my friend bought) might have issues: in order to meet government mileage restrictions, car companies are having to make the automatic transmissions (who drives stick anymore except Wilders learning to drive?) so complicated an expensive that a car may become a disposable item when the transmission goes out. There’s a mom joke here, but I’m going to skip it.

Do your research and get a good car with a decent transmission.

People Keep Taking Advantage of Kids

Yes, at 18 you’re technically an adult, although an adult that can’t drink but that can certainly sign their figurative life away to debt. Or their actual life in the military. I could have done that at the age that greasy body shop guy swindled me out of $40.

But the $40 was cheap. I never trusted ANYONE who tried to tell me that what I should do was good for me if was going to put money in their pocket – it’s a lesson that probably saved my job a time or two.

Thankfully we now allow 18 year olds to get themselves in thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars in college loan debt that they’ll never repay because they have a degree in the anthropology of ancient Greek testosterone supplement commercials.

Because, you know, it’s good for them.

The Coming Civil War (United States), Cool Maps, and Uncomfortable Truths

“Well, l could be wrong, but l believe diversity is an old, old wooden ship that was used during the Civil War era. l would be surprised if the affiliates were concerned about the lack of an old wooden ship, but nice try.” – Anchorman

politicalspectrum

So, I guess that my “Secretly Wants To Live in a Post-Apocalyptic Society” secret is out of the bag? I guess I need more dehydrated food. And scotch.

(Part II of this series is posted at: The Coming Civil War Part II, and a (Possible) American Caesar)

There are some posts where I know exactly what I want to say, and how I want to say it. Often, those are fairly well scripted, either with a handwritten first draft or a set of researched bullet points. I’ll expand those into the full post. Those are nice. The structure has been created. The post flows out.

Some topics are topics that are well planned out (I actually plan the blog topics about three months out) and fit. Some topics just hit me with a blast of inspiration and nearly write themselves.

And some are difficult. Very difficult – they occupy headspace I know that I’m going to write about them, but the issue is so difficult that I want to make sure it comes out how I want it to come out, that it doesn’t inadvertently come out in some sort of ham-handed way. This is one of those. I’m sort of pleased with the results – it came out the way I wanted it to come out, just like the ending to Breaking Bad, or Jean-Claude Van Damme’s last optometry appointment – he still doesn’t need glasses, yay!

Don’t know a great way to put this, but we’re (in the United States, and in Europe, though my read there is much murkier) heading towards civil war. In Europe, civil war means dissolution of the EU and (likely) expulsion of large numbers of immigrants. But I’m not European, so I won’t go too far speculating about them.

I’m not sure if it will be a decade off or longer, but I put the arrival of this war as soon as 2024, and as late as 2032. Not really any longer than that. What would stop it is a prolonged, total war that would challenge the very existence of the United States. External threats and an external enemy are the best way to create unity (and second term for a president named “Bush”). And that’s not good, because a prolonged war always leads to extremes, and we have extreme weapons – in that way, a civil war might be the best-case scenario. But I digress – back to civil war.

Why? Again, this won’t be exactly the same civil war as THE Civil War – there are some facets that will rhyme, but others that won’t. The major theme is division. And what better way to show that than with . . . maps.

Here’s a map from Colin Woodward and Tufts University, and Brian Stauffer, depicting the 11 cultures that they contend make up the United States:

11nations

So, there’s this. Accurate? I would personally draw a line between those who like Star Wars® instead of Star Trek™. Those people are awful.

And it’s not just culture, the Woodward/Tufts map is pretty accurate at predicting where we are today politically. Here is a map of the Clinton/Trump 2016 vote count:

vote-by-nation-2016

The redder you are, the more Trump. The overlay of the Woodard/Tufts map is clear. These cultures are significant, and real, and explain NASCAR®, country music, and the inexplicable popularity of PEZ®.

And I think I’ve graphically made my case for there being a division. But how significant is it? Well, research shows that it’s pretty one-sided. Liberals (at least young ones) are significantly more close-minded than conservatives:

civilwarstats

Yes, you read that right. 45% of liberals would be uncomfortable with a roommate with opposing political views. 12% of conservatives would be uncomfortable. I guess this means that liberals don’t like diversity?

In 49 B.C., Julius Caesar was ordered back to Rome. Quite specifically, he was ordered to leave his army, the 13^th Legion (Legio XIII, Gemina, or “Twins”) beyond the border of the Rubicon river, which was considered the northern border of Rome. He didn’t, and then spawned a civil war that (ultimately) led to the end of the Roman Republic and Caesar being proclaimed Emperor. To this day we celebrate this event by ordering salads in Caesar’s name.

geminaxiii

The last time the 13^th Legion was active, I think they got in line in front of me at Arby’s® in Boulder, Colorado after a Van Halen© concert. Man, when 4,000 people are in front of you in line, you’d expect they’d run out of roast beef. They did. Thankfully they had lots of panda and koala bear left. They also ran out of Horsey Sauce L. They claimed they ran out of horses.

So we have divisions that are significant, enduring (these divisions aren’t new), and deep. Yet for decades we haven’t had a problem. Why are we at the Rubicon?

Well, we were ethnically much more uniform than today. The United States in 1965 (at the time of a major change to immigration policy) was 85% white. Now? 62%. That’s a pretty significant change, and one that impacts politics. Again, cultural divisions lead to war. And the easiest division is what you look like. I know that people like to fight and will pick any old reason to fight. Religion in Northern Ireland (Protestants and Catholics), football in California (Raiders™ vs. 49er’s©), and really important stuff (Star Wars© vs. Star Trek™). People will fight each other to the death because we don’t like each other’s hats. Historically, multi-cultural societies . . . fail. Spectacularly. (Again, this is not an indictment of any individual group, just a reading of history.)

But civil war in the United States is . . . very singular. The Civil War was built upon philosophical differences (with very human consequences). Issues involved in the Civil War include slavery, states’ rights, and Northern industrialism versus Southern agrarianism. But one of the underlying causes might just be that map of the 11 cultures shown above. The Northern states were built on the Puritan ethic. They make up the Boston/New York corridor and the swath heading west from that. The Southern states were built upon scoundrels – the Irish malcontents and Scottish reivers that immigrated later. They’re the ones that make up Greater Appalachia.

So what will cause a civil war in the United States?

The first thing is the philosophic divisions listed above. The desire for the freedom of individual determination is still strong in the Deep South and in Greater Appalachia and the Far West. That hasn’t changed. The Puritans in Yankeedom and the Left Coast still very much want to make their values the only values that matter. Note the graph above that shows relative discomfort with diverse exhibited by liberals. Ouch!

These groups have hated each other since the 1600’s. And it will never go away, especially as long as the New England Patriots® keep winning Super Bowls™. The two sides have never spoken the same language. The time that both North and South united? After the Civil War, the North (magnanimously) allowed the South to keep their heroes (Lee, Stuart, Jackson, Davis) and they were transformed into American heroes rather than insurrectionist traitors. Not a bad trade.

There were places that held out – the first celebration of July 4^th after the Civil War in Vicksburg was on July 4^th, 1945. Admittedly, Vicksburg surrendered on July 4^th after a horrific siege and devastating defeat for the Confederacy. It took 80 years and winning not one, but two world wars for Vicksburg to celebrate national unity on a regular basis on July 4. These divisions remain to this day.

But what else will cause this war?

The Fourth Turning – it’s time. Here’s a previous post (The Economy, The Fourth Turning, Kondratieff, and You.) that explains this timing in more detail. The last generation to have experience the horror associated with total war, with the mobilization of the entire economy of the United States to defeat a foe is . . . dead. The youngest boys that landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day are 95 today. They control nothing.

Our leadership, our population has no connection to those that saw the horrors of a continent ripped apart by war. They led our nation (and all of the nations of the West) and their actions were held in check by the horrors that they had seen. Now their experiences no longer temper the actions of the leaders (and desires of the people) to avoid apocalyptic levels of violence.

Let’s continue with economics – I’ve discussed before that the current economic practices have a time limit (More Budget Doom, The Rolling Stones, an End Date, and an Unlikely Version of Thunderstruck). One cause of civil war (not necessary, but certainly an exacerbating cause) is economic collapse. When people have more to lose than to gain, they won’t fight. As Janis Joplin said, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” And when people are ruined? They fight. See the French Revolution (Robespierre, Stalin, Mao, Mangos and A Future That Must Not Be).

Economics will be a trigger, but not the underlying cause of division listed above.

So, we have a civil war. What’s the end look like?

Breakup.

I don’t think that the things that have held us together as a nation will continue to hold us together. What values do we have in common anymore? It seems like . . . none. Let me elaborate. I could do a post on each of these (and likely won’t – other people cover this on a regular basis, so unless I have a Wilder take, I won’t):

Guns
Abortion
r versus K (r/K Selection Theory, or Why Thanksgiving is Tense* (for some people))
Economic Freedom
Role of Absolute Morality
Definition of what is an American
Globalism versus Nationalism
Cultural Relativism
Judicial Activism
Does Evil Exist?

We don’t speak the same language at all, anymore. Even though I have friends that don’t (at all) agree with me politically, I fear that they aren’t the norm. The end state isn’t 11 countries. It’s probably (at least) four. I can see a Heartland State, an East Coast, a West Coast, and a Northern Mexico. Los Angeles will be Mexico. Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle will be East Coast. The Boston/Manhattan/DC corridor will be East Coast. Northern Mexico will be as shown as El Norte.

But on the bright side? Jean-Claude Van Damme doesn’t need glasses!!! How awesome is that?

Health as a System – Or, Ignore What Keith Richards Does and Treat Your Body Like A New Tesla.

“Think big, think positive, never show any sign of weakness. Always go for the throat. Buy low, sell high. Fear? That’s the other guy’s problem. Nothing you have ever experienced will prepare you for the absolute carnage you are about to witness. Super Bowl, World Series – they don’t know what pressure is. In this building, it’s either kill or be killed. You make no friends in the pits and you take no prisoners. One minute you’re up half a million in soybeans and the next, boom, your kids don’t go to college and they’ve repossessed your Bentley. Are you with me?” – Trading Places

It’s a new martial art – we call it “Slap-foo.”

I’ve been posting on health topics weekly for, well, over a year every Friday, which is well over fifty posts on health (my basic math is still intact, so my senility is at least another week off). The Friday health posts have examined some important relationships between all sorts of issues, and generally attempt to tie back to things that impact (or will impact) our health, health care, and the future of what technology might do to health care and longevity. It’s a pretty big topic, and well within the blog’s mission, which was stolen shamelessly from Benjamin Franklin’s “healthy, wealthy, and wise” quote.

But what I haven’t done is look at health from a bigger picture. Health as a human system. Let’s examine the human body as if it were a Tesla® Model 3™ or any other engineered system. That car rolls off the assembly line (or not, if it’s a real Tesla©, they seem to be having trouble making them) in as good a condition as it ever will be. Every moment, every mile degrades a system in one way or another. The tires get worn down by the road. The batteries experience a slow failure as they are charged and discharged. Your Elon Musk™ bobblehead gets faded by ultraviolet rays. The paint gets chipped by a rock from the road. And yet, we can look at the systems that impact the life of the car in a dispassionate way because they’re governed (mostly) by things that we can analyze, failures that we can predict based upon way we use and treat the car.

So how is a human body different? In many ways it isn’t. Human longevity depends on many predictable, controllable factors that determine how long and how well a human will function. It reaches its peak genetic health at birth, its peak physical health between 16 and 30 (depending upon the system) and then ages. What determines how long this machine lasts? How much of it do we control?

Quite a lot, really, and it’s simpler than you might imagine (though I didn’t say it was easy):

Diet – if I were to pick my number one choice for something to focus on for longer human life, it would start here. “You are what you eat.” “Don’t be such a pig, John Wilder, and save some for the rest of us.” “No, you don’t have to finish off the second plate of fettuccini alfredo. That’s not the way to stick it to Olive Garden®.”

I’ve discussed this on numerous posts – and it appears that a low carbohydrate diet is demonstrably the best in many respects. But sugar tastes so good, even high fructose corn syrup. Obesity is one that more and more people struggle with every year. It’s a major factor in heart disease and cancer, too – the number one and number two killers.

If you want to live longer, start with diet. It’s hard, and society is making a frowny face at you if you don’t conform. But in the end, you (and I) control the fork . . . .

Here are a couple of relevant posts from the past:

Doritos, Obesity, Addiction, and Nic Cage

Diet, then Exercise. Diet first. Atkins and Paleo work.

The Link Between Sugar, Cancer, and the Kardashians

Exercise – this is my number two on the list. Exercise tones and trains the body, so that when you die you will look awesome at your funeral and also helps you lose weight so that you don’t need thirty pallbearers. I kid.

Exercise is clearly related to a stronger body. It’s clearly related to a healthier heart (though it’s not a cure all for heart disease). It’s clearly related to lower incidence of cancer. And it’s clearly related to smaller pants (which helps with stress, below).

If you’re not exercising and are healthy enough to do so, exercise. Duh.

Russian Wrestlers, Pylometrics, and You’re Probably Not Trying All That Hard

Sitting? Death. Get up. Neal Stephenson says so.

Stress – third on my list of factors influencing how long you live, stress seems to be a byproduct of modern life. But many of the things that stress us are chosen, and most of those things we choose to stress out about are based on future consequences that will never happen. Stress is dangerous for nearly every system that you require for operation: your brain and memory deteriorate under long-term stress. Your heart and blood pressure are aggravated by stress (and stroke risk increases). Negative behaviors like eating a whole cake, or living on a diet that consists entirely of pre-made frosting tubs (chocolate sour cream, of course) increase with stress. Tobacco use increases. Alcohol/drug consumption increases.

Sure, you say, but what are the negative behaviors? I kid. But long term consequences of stress and the behaviors that we engage in to cope with stress kill 4 billion people a year.

Okay, not 4 billion people a year. But it’s not good. According to one source, stress-related conditions are responsible for 75% of doctor visits. Stress is a contributor to the top deadly conditions (heart disease, cancer, accidents, suicide) in the United States.

So what do you do?

Surviving Stress, Still Proudly Caffeinated

Superpowers, Stress, Ben Franklin’s Nails

Relationships and Social Engagement – having friends is key to living longer. While it may be related to stress reduction, I think it’s more than that. Engagement in something that gives your life meaning and purpose is inherently fulfilling. And it gives you something to look forward to each morning when it’s time to get up. Being married is also key. Having people you can share with – you can confide in – makes you stronger.

Recently, however, people doing more social interaction on places like FaceBlock® or Tweeter©, and these interactions don’t and can’t replace taking a five mile hike with your son or a spirited conversation with your family, just like you can’t fight evil with a macaroni duck.

Lonely? Ditch Facebook, Find Real People. Live Longer.

Friendship and Health – and When Friendships are Made . . .

Lifestyle – other lifestyle factors can greatly influence your lifespan, especially if you overdo them:

Alcohol/Drugs/Smoking – I would say these might void the factory warranty, but Keith Richards is still alive. I also had a relative that smoked several packs of cigarettes a day. And slipped in the shower and died when she was in her mid-seventies. Those are outliers – be moderate in your vices. Ben Franklin and his Thirteen Virtues

Sleep – Get enough. Too little will hurt you and make you fatter over time. Sleep Deprivation, Health, Zombies, and B-Movies
Be Wealthy – everything is easier if you’re rich, and that’s part of the mission of this blog. So get a lot of money, or change your name to Richard.
Personal Safety Habits – I had a dream that my youngest son was using my table saw to turn trees into planks. He kept putting his fingers near the blade. NOOOOO! Don’t do that. Be . . . at least a little
Supplements – Might some help? Sure, but you have to have your basics (above) in place. Vitamins and You

Sure, there are things you can’t control and that are difficult to assess:

Bad luck –
- Accidents,
- Meteors,
- Being a skinny marathon runner who has a heart attack
- Being Job, that guy from the Bible. (Never be the subject of a bet between God and Satan – it’s like being Dan Ackroyd from Trading Places.)
Genetics – Ever see a family of fat people? Or skinny people? Some people just have those genetics. And if you’re lucky you’ll have the “only allergic to being stabbed and are impervious to cancer” genes. Heck, I’d settle for Keith Richards’ genes.

Luck aside, if you control your diet, exercise, stress, relationships, and lifestyle, you could live 10 to 20 years longer – you can get a lot more mileage out of your Tesla® if you take care of it. That is, if you can get one . . .

Again: I am Not a doctor. NOT A DOCTOR. Not a doctor. Not a doctor. Not a doctor. Doctor.

NOT A DOCTOR. So see a real one if you think you need to.

Giving Up? Steve Jobs Would Never Give Up! (Except for the times he did)

“Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?” – Animal House

The Boy prepares to defend Houston from The Hun.

You never know when you’re going to find opportunity. A while back, The Mrs. got invited to a dinner by her graduate advisor with the other grad school students. The professor and her husband owned a little cottage on a lake, and he owned a sailboat. He asked if anyone wanted to go sailing. I had never been sailing (and, to date, this is my only sailing trip). My hand shot up. I assumed that we would perhaps lay claim to a nearby cottage and maybe engage in some light pillaging. Sadly, it was only sailing. He looked askance at me when I had a full Viking regalia and torch (you only get to 80% pillage without the torch) that I brought for the trip.

I choked down the bitter disappointment and not going on a raid, but decided to go on the sailing trip anyway. He took us out on the lake. Making small talk, I asked what he did (since he was obviously not a proper Viking). “I have an advertising agency.”

I pressed further, asking details of how it worked and how he liked doing it and if he liked drinking the blood of his enemies while listening to the lamentation of their women. He said that was what they did in the 1950’s. I finally asked, “When did you open your ad agency?”

I’ve always been fascinated to understand that spark – that moment when people toss off their day jobs and decide to open their own place.

Him: “It was 1976.”

Me: “Wasn’t that in the middle of recessions, plus all the inflation?”

Him: “Yup. Stupid thing to do, right?” He said as he piloted his sailboat back toward his private dock by his cottage.

Duh. Obviously it was stupid. Why else didn’t he have a yacht and a private island?

And it’s easy to second-guess people who have great ideas and push for them to succeed. But flaming messes like Enron® aside, we mainly look at the companies that survived and think, “Wow! Those guys are so smart – they did everything right.”

Hey, a stock I didn’t lose money in! But I wish I could have been the guy to raid the burning building and hear the lamentation of their women.

We look at the survivors and judge their actions based upon their outcomes. Even geniuses (Steve Jobs was one) get it wrong – his board of directors had to fire him to put him into a place where he could make the biggest business comeback in history, plus redefine at least two consumer product lines, nearly singlehandedly.

But he messed things up, too. Jobs dumped all his Apple® stock when he got fired. Oh, did I mention he hired the guy that got him fired? And NeXT® computers were awesome, but no one wanted to spend $10,000 (1990 cash) to buy them. And the Apple© Lisa™. And the MacCube®. And a whole bunch of other stuff that didn’t work out.

But the ideas that he had that survived were worth over a trillion dollars.

The pattern that I keep seeing is that people who are successful don’t try just one idea and give up, they try lots of different ideas and the ones that work are kept, and the ones that don’t are thrown out.

What we look at when we see success doesn’t show the failure that success is built on.

You never know when you’re going to find opportunity. And you won’t find opportunity unless you try. And try. And try.

The Germans will NEVER TAKE PEARL HARBOR!

Memorial Day and Memento Mori

“Ron’s sudden death was the catalyst for everything. Deborah told me later that it had been like a wake-up call for her. What people used to call the Memento Mori. Ron’s massive coronary had reminded her that life was just too short to waste any chance of true happiness.” – Men Who Stare At Goats

Philippe de Champaigne’s picture “Vanitas”, which was a Memento Mori – inspired picture – the fleeting life symbolized by the flower, death by the skull, and the amount of time until the casserole comes out of the oven symbolized by the hourglass.

Memorial Day in the United States is meant to commemorate soldiers who died on active duty for the United States armed forces. The total number of dead is about 1 million, although many families use Memorial Day to remember their dead relatives as well, bringing flowers to graves.

It’s also an appropriate time to bring up the concept of Memento Mori. Memento Mori is Latin for “remember death” – which is an admonition to, well, remember death. And this isn’t just about your relatives that have passed on, and not just for the soldiers that died. No, this is also a time to reflect on your own death.

And why should we reflect and remember death?

To start with, this is something that isn’t new. Seneca, the Roman stoic philosopher, said: “No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it. Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.” Throughout the middle ages, the phrase Memento Mori was the lolcat meme of the day, if we put lolcat memes on tombs.

Reflect on death – if you knew that you wouldn’t wake up ever again, what would you do with your remaining hours? This reflection on death has multiple values to you and your character:

It reinforces that which is important to us, here today.
It exposes the frivolous that consume too much of our time.
It shows what’s really of value – the money you made will be less important than the lives you’ve changed.
You don’t have to worry about returning that library book.

All too often we think too little of those who sacrificed all for us. All too often we think too little of how we are spending (or squandering) our own lives.

So, on Memorial Day, by all means salute those who reluctantly laid down their lives for freedom. Spend time in remembrance of relatives who have passed on. And work to understand what is really important in your life.

Besides PEZ®, I mean.

Sleep Apnea, CPAP, and how the Medical Mafia is Killing You

â€œDid I never tell you? I suffer from sleep apnea.Â That’s why I had to bring this guy with me. My CPAP machine.â€

â€œOh, my God.Â Did you just rent that so you could have your own bed?â€ â€“ The League

So, to demonstrate how sleep apnea occurs, I cut a cartoon cadaver in half.Â Itâ€™s messier than it sounds â€“ ink went everywhere.Â Â Fortunately I had lots of ACME towels to sop it up.Â But then the towels exploded.

It looks like this cadaver died from being shot in the mouth with blue arrows.

Recently, The Mrs. sat me down and said that she was worried that I might be snoring . . . a bit too hard.Â I disagree â€“ I assured her that I had never heard myself snore, so she must certainly be in error.Â Especially when she indicated that the snoring had, on several occasions, triggered tsunami alerts in Hawaii, and we live firmly in flyover central northern Upper South Midwestia.

I started doing some research.Â Snoringâ€™s not dangerous, right?

No.Â Snoring can be deadly.Â Very deadly.Â Like 40,000 deaths a year in the United States (at least).Â Thatâ€™s more people than Rosie Oâ€™Donnell drives to suicide monthly.Â Wow!

How does snoring kill you?

Cardiovascular disease.Â Car accidents.Â High blood pressure.

Huh?

Turns out that snoring, especially loud snoring, is a sign of sleep apnea.Â Sleep apnea is where the â€œsleeperâ€ periodically stops breathing for 10-60 seconds, up to 80 times per hour.Â This, in turn (simply, neither of us are going to med school) causes a plethora of piÃ±atas problems.Â Increased carbon dioxide causes parts of your brain to die.Â It also causes your heart to freak out, and beat harder and faster to get more blood moving.Â It may even lead to shots of adrenaline that keep you from sleeping soundly.

The end result is youâ€™re tired, all the time.

Your heart is getting stressed out, every night.

You are getting (subconsciously) stressed each night as you periodically are suffocated.Â By yourself.

The causes of sleep apnea are fairly common.Â Be an aging dude, be overweight.Â Have allergies.Â Have a thick, football player neck.Â In turn, this leads to more weight gain, daytime sleepiness, heart attacks, strokes, and car accidents from drowsy drivers.

So, youâ€™re saying, â€œJohn Wilder, youâ€™ve convince me that this can kill me.Â What on earth can I do about it?â€

Iâ€™m so glad youâ€™ve asked.

Give up drinking, smoking.Â Lose weight.Â Sleep on your side.

See the problem?Â Drinking is certainly possible to give up, but why would you want to?Â (I mean besides all the documented health benefits).Â Losing weight is hard enough, but sleep apnea actually changes your body chemistry so itâ€™s harder to lose weight.

Whatâ€™s the solution?

CPAP.Â (Iâ€™ve most often heard people pronounce this as â€œsee-papâ€ as in â€œSee Papâ€™s eyes as he has another heart attack???â€)Â The symptoms (including snoring) that you might need CPAP are being drowsy during the daytime, drowsy driving during the daytime, nodding off after Thanksgiving Dinner, and generally being able to fall asleep at the drop of a hat.Â I thought I had a skill â€“ I could fall asleep anywhere, anytime, generally in thirty seconds or so.Â It turns out that it might just have been sleep apnea, curable by CPAP.

CPAP stands for Continuous Positive Air Pressure, and not Constant Peer Alcohol Provision, as one might think.Â Uncharacteristically, it is one of the three things invented by Australians that donâ€™t involve alcohol, marsupials, or Australian Rules Football.

Back when ESPNÂ® was good, it would show Australian Rules Football at 1AM.Â All the guys on my high school football team watched it, mainly because the referees were so . . . amazing.Â

As I was saying, Dr. Colin Sullivan, AC/DC fan and uncle of Angus Young (I made that up to make him more interesting) was a guy who treated people with sleep apnea.Â At that time, the prevailing treatment method was a tracheotomy.Â Yes.Â They would cut a hole in your throat to stop the apnea.

So, Dr. Sullivan figured that there had to be a better way, even if it was less cool than slitting the throats of his patients.Â He experimented with dogs (dingoes, maybe?) and must have found a group that snored but that didnâ€™t drag off babies.Â Here was the first CPAP.

After he got it to work with a patient whose throat he was going to cut open.Â He put that first CPAP on the patient, and the patient had seven great hours of sleep in the first time since forever.Â Unlike throat slitting, this was a medical procedure with no significant adverse side effects.Â None.Â Sadly, Dr. Sullivan deprived thousands of doctors of the joy of cutting open patients as the first commercial CPAP machines went on the market in 1985.

Now the crazy facts:

22 million Americans are probably suffering from some degree of sleep apnea.
Machines are relatively inexpensive, with many costing less than $350.
Only 10% or so of sleep apnea sufferers have machines.
Sleep studies (required for the prescription of this harmless but helpful machine) cost between $600 and $5,000.
40,000 Americans a year die from sleep apnea.
John Candy died from complications related to sleep apnea.
William Shatner has sleep apnea.

The facts speak for themselves.Â Lifesaving technology is being kept hostage to gatekeepers that could be replaced by software or a cellphone app at very low cost?Â Where have we seen this before?Â If we let Silicon Valley â€œdisruptâ€ sleep apnea treatments weâ€™d probably have machines costing less than a $100, since your cell phone would become the machine brain and the data would be uploaded to some cloud site and analyzed and tweaked in real time to provide even better performance and better apnea control (hint: as a business idea).Â Heck, it could even provide a real-time alarm if it saw actual life threatening patterns developing.

Oh, yeah, when I wrote about optometrists (LINK).Â Thereâ€™s a low-cost way to get a very accurate (I can attest) prescription.Â But they want to scare you.Â As would anyone who saw a lucrative meal ticket floating away.Â Such as anyone who does sleep studies.Â These are gatekeepers that server a very limited role in society today â€“ their skills can be replaced inexpensively by technology.

I talked to someone I know from work (he doesnâ€™t work at the same place as I do, but we talk frequently.Â I asked him if he had ever used a CPAP.

â€œMan, thatâ€™s the best thing ever.Â I love it.Â I have been using it for years.Â If you travel you will forget your toothbrush, your underwear, your deodorant, but you will never forget your CPAP.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œHow was the sleep study?â€

Him:Â â€œSleep study?Â Didnâ€™t get one.Â Just ordered one off of my dadâ€™s prescription.â€

He described a fairly tough few days getting adjusted to the machine.

â€œBut the first day you sleep through the night?Â Oh, man.Â You feel like youâ€™re sixteen again.Â Energy!Â I woke up after four hours â€“ more refreshed than Iâ€™d been in years.Â I love it.â€

As for me?Â I think this system where you have to pay an artificial gatekeeper for proven, safe technology is immoral and strangles market competition and innovation.Â And, as the facts would say, also fattening.Â Quite literally, this market manipulation to serve a few medical professionals kills thousands of people a year, but since they have nice jobs and serve on the PTA nobody recognizes them for the killers they are â€“ more efficient than organized crime.Â More deadly than gun violence.

And the people in Hawaii are probably getting tired of the tsunami warnings, what with the volcano, they have enough on their hands.Â They should take up a collection for a sleep study for me . . . or in a sane world, Iâ€™d just walk down to the store and buy a CPAP.

But the Sleep Mafia wonâ€™t let me . . . .

Repeat to yourself:Â John Wilder is NOT a doctor.Â Do NOT take medical advice from humor bloggers on the Internet.

Pournelle’s Iron Law, or, Why Conspiracy Isn’t Needed to Explain the Stupid

“An independent, international intelligence agency operating at the highest level of discretion. Above the politics and bureaucracy that undermine the integrity of government-run spy organizations. The suit is a modern gentleman’s armor.” – Kingsman, The Secret Service

When we lived in Alaska and Texas, we learned that this was what the citizens thought of bureaucracy. And taxes. And regulations. And postage stamp increases.

We discussed Dunbar’s Number a few posts back (LINK).

To refresh from that post: Dunbar looked at primate group brain sizes, and compared to the size of the neocortex to the size of the primate “group” or tribe. After running the math, he predicted that humans should have a group size of around 150 – it’s related to the size of working memory that you have about other people. The commonly accepted maximum stable group size (average) is 100-250, which is all three of your inbred relatives and the 247 from your wife’s side of the family.

Dunbar further theorized that larger groups could only stick together under strong survival pressures – you’d have to be pressed to work together by a fate as tough as death. Why? .

Dunbar’s number has other implications as well. We can’t work as tribes anymore, because the major feature of tribes is massive, wanton bloodlust on a national scale. Tribes don’t trust the law to help deter another tribe – no. Tribes kill to solve traffic disputes. So, to work around tribal violence, and to avoid nepotism, bureaucracy was created.

We all love to hate bureaucracy, but the nice thing about those long line at the DMV is that they prevent the tribe from Pixley killing the tribe from Hooterville over who got their license first.

But is there a darker side to bureaucracy? Yes.

Jerry Pournelle was a wonderful science fiction writer that I loved reading. His collaborations with Larry Niven (Lucifer’s Hammer, The Mote in God’s Eye) are amazing novels that made me turn a page a minute when I read them as a kid in the back of the bus on the half-hour ride to town. Dr. Pournelle also worked on the numerous defense department projects, and was a science advisor to President Reagan. Dr. Pournelle was instrumental in bringing down the Soviet Union, as his work on the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI or “Star Wars”) caused the Soviet Union to bankrupt itself attempting to keep up with our technology.

So, he’s kinda pivotal to stopping nuclear war. What did you get done in the 1980’s, hmmm?

Okay, the title was just genius. The writing’s pretty good, too.

Possibly the best science fiction novel of the 1970’s, if you don’t count Richard Nixon’s autobiography.

Dr. Pournelle also made the following observation:

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”:

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

Pournelle picked on government – it’s known for bureaucracy. And it’s clear that NASA® has ceased to have spaceflight as part of “what it can do” when Elon Musk can put his car into orbit on a rocket more powerful than anything designed by NASA™ since it was run by the Germans we kidnapped after World War II. And Musk did it for less money than NASA® spends attempting to fix a launch pad. It’s sad that isn’t a joke – it’s true.

NASA© is now run by people whose main job in life is . . . having a job. They hire massive numbers of people, so they have a reason to be a manager. Then they need a bigger budget, and crowd out all of the work the agency was supposed to be doing.

Pournelle’s observation is true for businesses as well as government programs. I’ve seen managers fight to spend every dime they could in the last month of the year – just so they could justify their higher budget request for next year. I’ve seen people move from department to department to department until they found one that wasn’t responsible for doing anything measurable. Then they’d stay in that department for the rest of their careers. Which, I guess, describes Congress perfectly. But I digress.

Where I live, if you cut down trees and branches, and it’s cold, it’s completely legal to have bonfires that are visible from the moon. My next door neighbor and I used to burn these on a dark night, new moon, when the temperature was around 40˚F (354˚C) and watch the flames lick the night sky. He’s younger than me. And we live in a state where you don’t need to stand in line for hours for a burn permit. All you need is wood, leaves, branches, gasoline, lawn chairs, a match, and sufficient quantities of Bud Light®.

My friend and I started talking about politics (this is pre-Trump).

“John, when I look at this whole mess we’re in, it almost seems coordinated. It seems like the government agencies (he works in the highly federally regulated banking industry) want to put the small banks out of business. It seems like a plot.”

My response: “That’s too simple. It doesn’t require for there to be a conspiracy. Let’s look at your business. Do they regulate you exactly the same as large banks in New York?”

Neighbor: “Well, yes. They just have tons of staffers that can answer the bank regulator questions.”

John Wilder: “And you told me you worked for a while as a banking regulator?”

Neighbor: “Yes.”

John Wilder: “Would you have gotten in trouble for pushing real hard on an infraction with a small bank?”
Neighbor: “Never.”

John Wilder: “Would you have gotten in trouble for pushing real hard on a big bank?”

Neighbor: “I did. I got in a lot of trouble. It was why I quit.”

John Wilder: “The big banks own the banking regulators – they’ve captured the regulators and the regulators only do what the big banks want them to do. Every regulator knows that their next job isn’t with the federal government – it’s with the big banks. Don’t rock the boat. Small banks don’t matter. Never mistake that a conspiracy is present when incentives are in place for those same regulators to think that they’re on a job interview with their new boss.”

Neighbor: “I guess that’s why you never got in trouble for letting a bank not get in trouble. Only by pushing the rules too hard.”

John Wilder: “The people in Washington don’t really care about the outcomes of their regulations – the best pollution regulations came out forty years ago and cost very little for the companies to clean up 98% of their pollution – air, soil, and water. The last 2% cost billions. And that’s great with the regulators – they want to have a good budget and a great story to tell to Congress when budget time comes around. The fact that the pollution that they’re cleaning up isn’t really pollution, costs billions to “clean” and is having zero impacts on anyone? That’s beside the point. Bureaucracy acts to save itself. Right or wrong don’t matter. What matters? Department budgets and staff size.”

John Wilder continues to bloviate: “There isn’t a conspiracy. It’s a bunch of little people making themselves important. Nobody makes themselves important by cutting regulations. They make themselves important by adding new, complex regulations. And they increase their value when they go to work from some company. Heck, I was told by a guy that the main author for solid waste regulations wrote them in such a complex manner that they’re nearly incomprehensible. He did that so he could get a high paying job afterwards because he’s the only one who knows where the loopholes in the regulations he wrote are.”

Neighbor: “So, did we really land on the moon?”

At this point my neighbor was killed by a tribe of NASA™ ex-engineers. If only we had a police force and a judicial system . . . hmmm.