Black Swans, Cute Girls from Poland, and Sexy Bill Gates

“All I want is peace – a little piece of Poland, a little piece of France . . .” – To Be or Not To Be

These are Polish sports fans.  They were photographed at . . . oh, I’ve lost you already.

I went to seventh grade in a very small school district, I think there were, perhaps, 40 or 50 kids in my grade.  We were fairly remote, and the area wasn’t particularly well off economically so looking back, this was the end of the road for the teachers that weren’t locals.  When I was in seventh grade, I saw that my science teacher was reading a book.  Since I had ample time to read on the bus going to school every day, (Pa Wilder picked me up after football practice) and I was a pretty voracious reader.  I was always looking for a good book after I’d rolled through the science fiction section in the school library.

Young John Wilder:  “What’s that book?”

Teacher:  “Oh, this?  It’s called The Shining.  It’s pretty good.  Want to borrow it after I’m done?”

I’m sure he’d get fired today for allowing a seventh grader to borrow a book that only included cis-gendered characters in a heteronormative patriarchal un-handicapable-positive environment.  But it did start me reading Stephen King, and I read everything he wrote until he stopped snorting whiskey and drinking cocaine.  After that?  King’s nosebleeds decreased, as did the quality of his writing.  It’s probably in bad taste to suggest we start a “Get Stephen Stoned Again” movement, but if it gets him away from Twitter® I’m all for it.

Given all that, today I was amused when I got this in a text from my friend:  “The reason your writing is scarier than Stephen King is that your writing is more likely to come true.”

But reality is scary.  The future is scary.  And even though we can’t predict exactly what will happen, it’s fairly clear that we live in a vastly more interrelated society that exhibits technological wonders while it faces the challenges of a huge planetary population.  The paradox is, although humanity is more connected than ever before in history, that connection seems to have sharpened the divisions between peoples and ideology.  The dream was that communication would unite humanity.  The reality is that we don’t seem to like each other all that much.  Apparently the ultimate conclusion as we communicate in a superhuman fashion at the speed of light across the planet is that “those other guys are hooter-weasels.”  Hooter weasel wasn’t my first choice, but turd-yak© and rump-stooge© were already copyrighted by Disney™.

But back to scary:

The other day I was working out, and listening to a YouTube® video on the Polish Resistance during World War II.  Why?  I like history, and in some ways you can learn a lot about today from looking at the past, it seems that just like Albanian strippers attempting to fix a copier at an all-night hardware store, we just never learn.  I haven’t quite finished watching this video (since I ran out of treadmill) but will probably finish it tomorrow.  But one question struck me as I was listening:  what sort of change had the Polish people endured?

Warning, this video is over an hour long.  I enjoy watching stuff like this on the treadmill at lunch, because it makes me think and ignore the pain weakness escaping my body and how the English have no idea how to pronounce certain words.  Your mileage may vary.

The economy of Poland before invasion in 1939 was growing.  Like the rest of the world, the Polish income had dropped during the depression, but by 1939 it was higher than it had been in 1929.  Beyond that, between World War I and World War II Poland had greatly increased the number and quality of schools and had started flossing regularly.  Poland was doing okay.

Of course, being stuck between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia is a really, really bad place to be.  Both countries invaded in Poland in 1939, and it was split up like a Hollywood couple’s kids, except Hitler and Stalin were mom and dad.  Yeah.

Immediately, the Poles buried rifles.  They didn’t plan for this, and didn’t have much time to prepare, so when they went to dig the rifles up later, they found that they had rusted and were useless.  As the economy of Poland was absorbed first by the Germans and the Soviets, and then by the Germans alone, Poland’s economy was shattered.  Poland’s labor was taken to make armaments, and Poland’s food was taken in large part to feed Germany and German troops.  Food became scarce.  What could be worse?  Oh, yeah, the war passing right over your country again.  When the Soviets invaded Poland the food situation eventually got better, but, let’s face it:  the communists have never really figured out the whole “feeding your people” thing.

This is a real picture of a store in Poland during the communist years.  They actually told the people that they didn’t produce too much food, so that they wouldn’t be wasteful like the Westerners.

This post isn’t about Poland or Stephen King’s coke-filled sinus cavities.  This post is about change.  The Polish people were doing well, but then this big steam roller then proceeded to crush them, eliminate 20% of the population, and then oppress them over the next fifty years.

Did anyone in Poland predict that change?  Nope.

Massive, unexpected catastrophic change regularly occurs.  In society, the stock market, companies, and even personal reputations are built slowly, but lost in a flash.  This phenomenon is called Seneca’s Cliff, and I wrote about it here (Seneca’s Cliff and You) a long time ago.

Are there other examples of extreme catastrophic change beyond Poland in 1939?  Sure.

• The Russian Revolution, which led directly to the Holodomor (In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!).
• The Depression and Housing Bubble were both examples of market crashes.
• Myspace®. Not the company, that was bad.  But my page was just awful.
• I could start on reputations of people, but, really, where would I end?

Funny how times have changed.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote about this phenomenon in his (quite excellent) book The Black Swan.  The really short version of his book is humans lived for tens of thousands of years in a linear world.  You could look around, and see that the height distribution in the tribe was a bell curve.  So was running speed.  Yeah, everyone who runs the 100M (3.2 miles) dash at the Olympics® can run it faster than I could when I was young.  But I could run a 40 yard dash in 4.9 seconds.  So, let’s say I could run 100 meters in 11 or 12 seconds at my peak being while pretending to be chased by a rabid Albanian stripper.  11 or 12 seconds is probably average for a high school athlete while not being chased by an Albanian.

The world record in the 100 meter dash is 9.58 seconds.

Yeah, my best time sucks compared to the world record, but the world record isn’t that far away from what I could run.  Now let’s take a look at wealth.

The average (which is pulled up by wealthy people) net worth of a family in the United States is about $700,000.  But the median (half the families above, half below) is $100,000.  But let’s use the higher figure for grins.

The best sprinter is about 25% faster than me.  Bill Gates is 14,285,000% wealthier than the average family.

To get the same percentage in a sprint as Bill Gates has in the pocketbook would require that I finish the 100 meter sprint that the world’s fastest person finished in 9.58 seconds in . . . 15.9 days.  (That’s 15.9 in metric days.)  People are simply not equipped to think about life like that, although Pugsley (my youngest spawn) does move that slow when I tell him to take out the trash.  Huge numbers and exponential quantities are not what we spent tens of thousands of years thinking about.

What does it take to make Bill Gates the richest man in the world?  Jeff Bezos dating a floozy.  Sexy Bill Gates is for James at Bison Prepper (LINK).

How did Taleb define his Black Swans?

• The odds would say that they’re extremely rare. Stock markets don’t collapse all at once when investors are rational, right?  Well, the odds are wrong.  Nonlinearity happens.  Investors panic in a herd.
• Black Swans have huge consequences. The Great Depression likely led to World War II.  That’s a huge consequence.  These consequences are huge mainly due to overlapping failures – one part of the economy shuts down which pulls another with it.  And the longer a system has been forced into “stability” and not allowed to fail?  The greater the consequence.  An avalanche isn’t a single snowball – it’s a massive wave of snow.  It’s funny, but it used to be a joke that someone just making a big noise could cause an avalanche . . . and yet . . . at some point that individual snowflake is just enough weight to bring the whole mountain of snow down.
• In hindsight, people believe it was obvious the Black Swan would happen. Why didn’t evil terrorists pilot a plane into a building sooner?

The Polish being invaded was a Black Swan.  Sure, it looks obvious now, but Britain and France guaranteed that they’d go to war if Poland was invaded.  Britain and France were completely unprepared for war.  But in hindsight . . . oh, that was the point.

Javelin jokes?  Please spear me.

We have to live in this world of Black Swans.  Well, Bill Gates doesn’t, but you and I do.  How do we cope?

1. Be awake. The world wants to lull you to sleep with Doritos® and Johnny Depp movies and food delivery boxes.  Don’t fall for it.  Look at the world through clear eyes.  See beyond your surroundings.
2. Be honest. You can’t cheat an honest man.  Be honest with others.  Build real relationships. Be honest with yourself.  If you don’t understand that 40 year old you couldn’t beat 18 year old you in a 100 meter dash, you’re not being honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses.  Plan accordingly.
3. Plan for what?  Don’t know.  Everything.  Anything.  Start small.  Three days.  Then Three months.  Then?  Three years.  But start.  The basics of financial survival and the basics of physical survival overlap.  Plan.  Think about what could happen.  You won’t be right, but you’ll be ready to react when the unthinkable really does happen.
4. Remember, higher consequences are less likely. A fistfight is more likely than a gunfight which is more likely than global thermonuclear war.  Hurricanes are more common than civilizational collapse.  But the odds of civilizational collapse might be much higher than you think.
5. Understand that the inevitable is . . . inevitable. You’re going to die.  The sun will come up tomorrow.  The Cubs® will never win the World Series™.  Oh, they did?  2016?  I must have been sleeping.
6. Have a rainy day fund. The rainy day fund isn’t always in dollars, though dollars are super nice.  It can be a pantry full of food you eat.  It can be a massive safe filled with rare PEZ® dispensers.  It can be gasoline in gas cans in your garage, propane in your propane tanks.  Pop Wilder always said, “It doesn’t cost anymore to run off the top half of your gas tank.”  Build slack in your life, in your time, in your supplies.

Even in the darkest days, there is hope.  For Poland, it was an electrician who wanted workers to be treated well, and who also didn’t like communism.  Lech Walesa founded the labor union “Solidarity” in Gdansk, on September 17, 1980.  A year later over 30% of the Polish workforce belonged to Solidarity.  In the end, Solidarity forced the Polish government in 1989 to allow the first free elections since the 1930’s.

Never underestimate the power of the ‘stache.

Shortly afterward and absolutely related to Walesa’s work?  Another Black Swan, the collapse of the Soviet Union brought about in part by Lech.  A Polish electrician helped bring down a superpower.  Okay, let’s be honest, a Polish electrician and $10 million in covert funding from the CIA.

Thankfully the CIA got that $10 million – the Pentagon would probably have bought, what, 16 hammers with that?  The Pentagon spending wisely?  Now that’s a real Black Swan.