Category: Big Thoughts

The Iron Triangle of Retirement . . .

“Well, it’s not really fine, but it’s not why I’m here.  Hell, man, you know me.  Money’s not my issue.  I could’ve retired straight out of MIT, off to some island, let the business run itself.  Nobody told me to try and save the planet.  I wanted to.” – Kingsman, The Secret Service

DSC03557

Downtown Houston, reflected off a building at dawn.  No, I wasn’t there at dawn to catch the picture – I was working as hard as Jean-Claude Van Damme at a splits contest.

At some point, I’m going to retire.

No, not change the low-tread tires on the Wildermobile – I generally like to wait until the tires are completely showing steel before I change them out.

Silly, I’m talking about working all the time.  For money.  So this blog is safe.

Some people suck at retiring.  I work with one guy who retired six years ago, Ted.  About six months after Ted retired, he came back and asked, “Hey, have need for me to consult?”

Although Ted decided he wanted to retire (and got the cake, party, and everything), Ted wasn’t really ready.  He keeps coming in to work even now after six years.  Thankfully Ted has a unique perspective and awesome experience on technical systems that can help train some younger workers, so it’s a win-win.  But he’s not ready to retire.  That switch that says, “hey, I’m done,” or “hey, if I have to go to hell it’s worth it to never see you people again,” or, “I never, ever, ever want to live in this soul-sucking environment again,” never flipped for him.  And I don’t think it ever will.

Work for him is still a big part of who Ted is, the definition of himself when he gets up in the morning.

For a long time I was with Ted.  I could no more see retiring than I could see Kim Jong Un and President Trump forming a “Guys Only” fort in the Oval Office and sending the secretaries out for chocolate milk while they watched Loony Tunes® cartoons on a Saturday morning before Mom picked them up to take them to the skating rink and the movies after.

But recently?  Yeah.  I’ve started to think that I’ll retire one day, and that’s what this is about.  (The decision to decide to retire is a different post.)

I’ve discussed retirement before in the best and most comprehensive article ever written on early retirement strategies (LINK).  But that article was focused on people who retire young.  Which would be less than 1%.

Let’s see when people really retire, based on 2015 Census data, as analyzed by LIMRA SRI and as I found on Financial Samurai (LINK).

retirement ages

This excludes people like Abraham Lincoln who exit the labor force for other reasons, of course.

Most (68%) of people retire at age 65 or earlier.  This makes sense, but first I’ll have to introduce a self-serving concept and graphic.

Let’s talk about John Wilder’s Iron Triangle of Retirement Fate (JWITORF).

IRON TRIANGLE

I made this graphic at great expense, after paying Freddy’s Advertising, Kites, Etc. $2,300 and waiting six weeks for delivery as it came on a container from Shanghai.  Oh, wait, I threw it together in 5 minutes.

Regardless of the cheese factor of the graphic, John Wilder’s Iron Triangle of Retirement Fate does explain pretty neatly how retirement works, and why people wait so long to do it.  So, why 65?  Statistically speaking, you’re at or near your maximum wealth as you near age 65.  Additionally, you have a reasonably long life ahead of you (statistically speaking) but not an unreasonably long life.  Presumably, you’ve also reached the age of wisdom where you’re smart enough not to blow through your retirement cash on cruises, vacations, PEZ®, pantyhose, and chocolates.

But let’s look closer at the Quantum Entangled Boxes at the Vertices of John Wilder’s Iron Triangle of Retirement Fate (QEBATVOJWITORF).  Or, just the boxes with words.

The first one we’ll tackle is:

  1. Lifestyle

You can upsize lifestyle to spend virtually any amount of money including a fortune the size of Johnny Depp’s $650,000,000.  The world entrusted $650,000,000 to Johnny Depp over the course of 31 years.  .  He’s kinda broke now, since he buys mansions at the drop of a hat, and his personal expenses run to about $2,000,000 a month.  His security alone costs $300,000/ a month.  And hair gel?  Thankfully he saves on soap and shampoo.

My needs are a bit more modest.  Most planners say you should expect to spend between 70% to 80% of your take home pay when you retire.  But others say you only need to plan for 50%.  Or 100%.  Or . . . more!

Part of the problem is that their guidelines assume you spend everything you make.  If you have the ability to save (like in the earlier retirement article LINK) a very large proportion of what you earn, these metrics don’t make sense – you might only need to replace much less than half of your present income, since you’ve radically reduced your lifestyle and eliminated many items . . . like security for $300,000 a month.

Lifestyle is a retirement variable that you mainly control.  Get a budget and live by it.

Biggest risk?  Healthcare.  Who knows what that’s going to cost – might be $60,000 per aspirin by 2019.  You don’t want to guess what calf implants will cost . . . .

  1. Longevity

If you’re dying tomorrow, like Abe Lincoln, you already saved too much for retirement.  If you’re going to live another 80 years, you don’t have nearly enough.

When I first started looking at retirement with a spreadsheet and projected assets and lifespans, one fact popped out at me:  the earlier you retire, the less you earn, so your retirement savings will be less.  And you will pull money out sooner since you don’t have a salary anymore.  Sure, it sounds like a “duh” conclusion, but once I put my numbers in and played with it, it began to make perfect sense.

So, if you retire early, it helps if you die early, too.  And don’t forget your spouse!  If they’re much younger than you, you might want to try to convince them to pick up smoking, skydiving, BASE jumping, and prison boxing so they don’t outlive you by too much.  You’ll thank me for it later.

Outside of shortening life, you don’t control tons about your longevity, either.  Biggest risk?  You outlive your money and so does your spouse and you get a never ending stream of “I told you so” when you’re 90 but she just uses a crutch and can beat you and your walker.  Thankfully you can be a burden to the state and your children at that age.

  1. Amount of Money You Have

This is (mostly/kinda) in your control, too.  Bill Gates has billions of dollars saved for his retirement, and I know some people who work a whole year and don’t make a billion dollars.  Okay, I kid.  But I am certain that you could save more money than you are saving right now.  Part of the value is adding additional money to your savings, but the other value is in reducing your lifestyle and knowing what you really need.

A second portion of your money will come from your 401K.  Most of these are a really good deal, since you company will give you free money to add to your savings.  They do this to encourage you to contribute, since a portion of their bonus is based on how much you contribute.

Pensions are awesome if you’re part of the 0.0001% of private sector jobs that still have them.  If you’re working for the government?  Yeah, I guess you can count on* that.

Social Security is a real thing – and one that you probably can count on*.

*Bigger risks?

  • Inflation (here’s a LINK to my commentary on how that’s inevitable in our current monetary system).
  • Budget deficits (here’s a LINK to my commentary on what the likely impact of our deficits is).
  • Economic dislocation (here’s a to a discussion on Bitcoin and how it can disrupt economic systems).

Best idea now?  Max out your 401K and savings.  Understand what lifestyle is really necessary and what you have to do to pay for it, both in dollars today, and in years of your life in the future.

John Wilder’s Iron Triangle of Retirement Fate© . . . ignore it at your own risk.  Assuming you’re not going to be like Ted (and 10% of Americans) and work past 75 . . . heck, I might have new tires on my car by then . . . .

John Wilder is not a professional financial dude.  Consult your attorney, financial planner, or shamen for real advice.  

Penultimate Day and The Biggest Story of 2017

“Everyone thought the agency was a joke, except the aliens . . . “ – Men in Black

ufoguncam

Yes, this is gun camera footage from US Navy fighter planes.  Yes, it shows something no one can explain.  Yes, it’s the real, actual US Navy.  Not pictured – Will Smith.

It’s the end of the year, so it’s the holidays.  By holidays I mean, of course, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Penultimate Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day.

Okay, you’ve heard of most of those days, but Christmas Eve, really?  Whose idea was that . . . ?

I kid.

We actually have a Wilder Family High Holiday, called Penultimate Day.  Penultimate doesn’t mean the last (like many people do), it means . . . next to last.  That’s one of the things I love about the English language – that there’s a word for “next to last” just like there’s a word for “throwing a person out of a window” – defenestrate.

Cool!  But this isn’t a case of “Ask Mr. Language Person.”  I’ll leave that to the MUCH older Dave Berry.  This is just explaining our Wilder High Holiday.

It started (I think) in 2010 or 2011.  The Mrs. had been having problems with her cell phone – at that point an actual Blackberry™ with a real, physical keyboard.  We went shopping for a replacement on December 30.  In order to get a new one from for/from our carrier, we had to drive nearly 100 miles.  We went both to our carrier’s store and the local Best Buy®.  We were frustrated by the deals, which were fairly incomprehensible unless you were fluent in a variety of Klingonese spoken only near Sherman’s Planet.  And none of them were deals we liked.

Frustrated, we gave up and went to the local Olive Garden®, which is the closest one to our house.  Yes.  We live over 100 miles from an Olive Garden©.  But, I promise, we have indoor plumbing and flush toilets and everything.

We had a wide variety of their pasta (I think I had the one that mixed steak and fettuccini Alfredo) and joked about our frustrating search for cell phones.  It was there and then, since it was December 30, the real and actual Penultimate Day that I proposed a new holiday, Penultimate Day.  In order to observe Penultimate Day properly, one must:

  1. Drive South.
  2. Look At, But Not Purchase Cell Phones.
  3. Eat Italian Foods.

I can see how religions schism.  The Boy is adamant that the above list is heresy, and I could hear him conspiring with Pugsley that I should be cast down since the only true way to observe Penultimate Day was to:

  1. Drive Two Hours South.
  2. Look At, But Not Purchase a Sprint® Cell Phone.
  3. Eat At Olive Garden®.

Perhaps one day after the apocalypse there will be a Council of Sheboygan where the Sheboygan Creed will come down that will indicate that to observe Penultimate Day, one must:

  1. Look Southerly.
  2. Have a race where one Sprints® and finishes second (Penultimate Place).
  3. Eat an Italian.

While getting ready for our Penultimate Day celebration (which, for various reasons we had to celebrate late today), I looked at The Boy.

John Wilder:  “So, with all of the crazy things this year, what’s the biggest new story of the year?”

I expected to hear something about Trump.  Russia.  Nuclear North Korea.  Star Wars® being the worst movie of the year.

Nope.

The Boy:  “Aliens.”

Yup.  He got it in one.

Here’s the story:  There were several United States senators who decided UFOs needed to be investigated.  Since they were senators, they managed to get several million dollars appropriated.  At the rate the Pentagon spends money, several million dollars would be less than they spend on attempting to milk mice with itty-bitty automatic mice milking machines to get enough mice milk to . . . well, its classified why the Pentagon needs mice milk.  Move along, citizen.

Anyhow, they put together a program to monitor UFO sightings.  In charge of this program was one Luis Elizondo.  Here are a few of his recent quotes from Luis’ interview with The Telegraph:

“It was enough where we began to see trends and similarities in incidents. There were very distinct observables. Extreme maneuverability, hypersonic velocity without a sonic boom, speeds of 7,000mph to 8,000mph, no flight surfaces on the objects. A lot of this is backed with radar signal data, gun camera footage from aircraft, multiple witnesses.”

“. . . if this was a court of law, we have reached the point of beyond reasonable doubt.”

So, we have the person in charge of the government program researching UFOs indicating that we are seeing evidence of the amount and magnitude that indicates the phenomena is real.  Not made up.  Not swamp gas.  Not little old ladies dipping too often into the cooking sherry or medical marijuana.  Not even the Canadian Air Force (I hear their plane is working again, though).

This leaves us with several possibilities:

  1. The evidence is faked.
  2. The US (or Russians) have propulsion technology that allows them to do what no other aircraft in the history of aviation can do and no interpretation of our current physics can explain.
  3. We are being visited by entities from off of Earth (in our solar system).
  4. We are being visited by entities from another star.
  5. We are being visited by entities from another dimension.
  6. We are being visited by entities from another time.

That’s it.

That’s the full well of possibilities.  There are no more.  (taps well of possibility) Bone dry.

Let’s hit the possibilities one at a time:

  1. Fakey Fakey UFO Bakey.

So, Luis and all of the Pentagon faked all of the data.  Sadly, this is the most likely case.  There is no reason that this would have happened, and plenty of evidence that past world leaders knew something was up . . .

The following is a quote from Mikael Gorbachev:

“From the fireside house, President Reagan suddenly said to me, ‘What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?’” (source: Smithsonian.com)

Gorbachev agreed to a full truce and full cooperation in the event of an alien attack.  Yes.  This is a thing that happened.

I’m not inclined to believe this is a lie, but still the highest probability merely because it’s easiest to explain – not because it fits any facts.

  1. We have the tech.

Attractive.  It would be nice to think that we have this technology.  But the energy and speed involved dwarf literally all known technology by orders of magnitude . . . .

So, to believe this we’d have to believe that we can create not only speeds outside of our ability, but also control inertia so that any pilots weren’t turned into paste through inertia.  Let’s pretend that’s not the case – the structure of the craft alone would be distorted beyond all ability to fly.  After the first turn.  And if the USSR had this tech?  We would all be studying Russian now, comrade.

This, oddly improbable as it is, is the second highest probability.

  1. We are being visited by entities from within our Solar System.

The Earth is about 4.5 billion year old, and could have created several sets of intelligent species during the last 250 million years.  Mars might have had a similar window, but several hundred million years earlier.

Could they have escaped doom and watch us, even now?

Not really likely.  It would get very boring – more even than watching reruns.  But it does solve one problem of the next possibility:

  1. We are being visited by entities from another star.

Moving between stars is Hard.  Capital H – italicized Hard.

Stars are really far apart.  Not far apart like driving through Texas far.  But far apart like driving through Texas twice with Alaska in the middle Hard.  And there are no gas stations or rest stops and you just drank 20 Big Gulps®.

And the confines of the life spans we are familiar with aren’t compatible with interstellar travel.  Traveling 1/10th the speed of light, (which is fast, almost 19,000 miles per second) it would take you 40 years to get to the nearest star – and we’re not sure there’s even anything interesting there.  And it would take as much energy to get you going that fast as the world’s largest nuclear bomb – ever.  Add in supplies?  At least the annual electricity consumption.  Of the world.  Just for you.

So, if you could freeze yourself (if you could figure out how to do that) and then spend thousands of years getting here.  Just so you could fly around nuclear bases and make US Navy fighter pilots nuts – “I don’t know what it is, but I want to fly one.”

Alternatively, there could be technology that would allow faster than light travel, even though there is no indication, ever, that there is any way to travel faster than light.  But we didn’t think that heavier than air flight is possible for . . . almost all of history.  Is there a physics we don’t understand?  Certainly.  Does it include faster than light travel?  Unknown.

But what doesn’t require suspended animation and won’t die on a long trip?

Machines.

Here’s a (really short) story I wrote a couple of years ago.  Enjoy.

It didn’t use radio.

No one knew how it communicated, but they couldn’t pick it up on any band that we knew. On the TV, they speculated that maybe it used some sort of “quantum” thing to communicate, but that didn’t tell me much.

It was on the moon.

At school, my teacher Miss Rachel told us that some person using their backyard telescope pointed at this crater on the moon – Aristarchus – had seen something one night. That had happened before, but this time the flashes, the glimmers, they didn’t stop.

It was moving.

It didn’t stop, either. By the time they wheeled Hubble over, they were able to see it in real time. There were clouds of dust, but that didn’t matter much. There isn’t any atmosphere on the moon, so the dust drops out real quick. Something was going on, but we had no idea what.

The rock that it launched hit Stanford.

The professor in the wheelchair used his machine voice to tell us that we were too close. Whatever it was up there was listening to us. It maybe always had been. And it was old, old as the whole solar system, maybe. It was a tiger trap, a wolf snare. Stanford was where the best AI research was, he said. Maybe they were getting too close. Can’t be too close now – Stanford is nothing but a crater, and about two million people died, according to the Internet.

It’s watching.

I guess it always was. I guess it always will be. Wonder if the dinosaurs got too close way back when? Right now, I’m wondering if this was a warning shot or a warm up.

Yeah.  Sleep easy.  Don’t worry about the Terminator under your bed.  Or on your Moon.

This has a low probability.  But . . . it’s at the same time nearly 100% certain.  Aliens could easily create AI that could travel between stars.  That tech is nearly available to us now.  If there’s intelligent life it’s high probability it will develop to our level of technology given enough time.  And if it took thousands of years?  Who cares if your iPhone takes 100 years or 100,000 years to get to a destination?  If designed well enough, it could prep and wait for  . . . whatever it was programmed to wait for.

  1. We are being visited by entities from another dimension.

Well, now I just throw my hands in the air.  We do know that there are other dimensions, or at least are pretty sure that they are necessary to explain much of the physical phenomena we see around us today.  It’s possible, likely even, that there are alternate universes out there.  Maybe an infinite number.  But what if you could go to one that was next door?  That sounds really hard.  But might even be easier to move between alternate Earths than moving between stars.  We simply don’t know.

But if I could move between dimensions?  I could see wanting to keep track of the neighbors . . . .

  1. We are being visited by entities from another time.

This one is way weirder, and I consider much less likely.  Why?  Moving through time is probably way harder than moving through space.  The Earth is moving around the Sun.  So, if I tried to travel back in time?  I’d also have to travel through space to the place the Earth is now, not then.

And the Sun is moving through space.  It takes about 230 million years for it to do a lap – so it’s done over 19 laps around the Milky Way galaxy since it formed.  And the galaxy is moving, too.

Sorry to disillusion you, but if Doc Brown sent Marty back 25 years in time?  He’s die gasping for air in a DeLorean off in interstellar space, since the Sun is moving 30 miles per second in its orbit around the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.  He’d have been 24 billion miles from anyone who had ever heard Johnny B. Goode.

In space no one can hear your guitar solo.

This is the least likely scenario.

Regardless, it is “beyond a reasonable doubt” that something out there, came here.

Those are not my words.  The dude who ran the program to study UFOs said this.  Obviously he’s seen more than we ever will.  I just hope he celebrates Penultimate Day in a non-heretical way.

The Boy is waiting to punish heretics . . .

Depression, Debt, and Saving Tinfoil for Fun and Profit

“We have no Great War.  No Great Depression.  Our Great War’s a spiritual war . . . our Great Depression is our lives.  We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars.  But we won’t.  And we’re slowly learning that fact.” – Fight Club

debt depression

Depression related to debt?  Unpossible!

My Mom went through the Great Depression (she was pretty old when Ma and Pa Wilder adopted me, nearly fifty) as a child, so she told us kids ALL about it.  To hear her tell about it, the Depression wasn’t all that Great from her perspective, but no one wants to talk about the Mediocre Depression.  One of the ways that she was impacted by the Depression was her relationship to physical objects that might be of use someday.  Tinfoil that you used to cover last night’s casserole?  Hey, you might be able to use that again.  Aluminum pie tins?  They could be cut to make a great decorative lantern (no, they couldn’t, but Ma kept them anyway).  They call this “hoarding” now.  Pa even built a building to hold Ma’s stuff.

The reason for her obsession was understandable.  During the Depression, many times her family had to do without basic necessities.  Our family was well off by comparison, but Ma Wilder never got over the times when she had so little.  We wrapped our Christmas presents one year in the comics section of the Sunday paper to economize.  Food?  Never thrown away.  It fed us, then the leftovers went to the dog.  During my life as a kid, we never spent a cent on dog food.  Pa Wilder eventually got her to throw away old TV Guides® (kids – it’s a tiny part of the Internet that describes “what’s on TV” that they used to print out and send to us every week).

Perspective:  Pa Wilder was the president of a bank at that time.  We were NOT hurting for cash.

And I recall that Grandpa McWilder plucked a fiberboard suitcase for me out of the closet so I could pack my things to come and visit him and Grandma McWilder every weekend (LINK).  The suitcase was missing its original handle.  Grandpa took an old leather belt and cut it and wrapped it as a handle on the suitcase.  It was (probably) better than the original suitcase handle.  Whenever he needed something, his first trip was not to the store, but to his shop, where he would craft whatever he needed out of wood, leather or metal.

And Ma Wilder followed her dad’s example.  Her crafts were legendary, making a passable statue of Ben Franklin out of a wine bottle, some sand, a sock, some blue felt and grey yarn and some copper wire.  Our family was not in need of Ben Franklin statues, but Ma Wilder liked to keep in practice, since at that time the US was also tied up in a great period of inflation – it looked like the wheels were coming off of the great capitalist experience called the United States.  Interest rates to buy a house were all in double digits.  Even the Treasury notes were yielding 18%+.

What this did (looking backwards) was trim all of the non-productive investments from the economy, and I do mean all.  If you could stick your money in a bank account and make 12%, you’d do it. Why risk your money in a business venture, unless that business venture was really, really good?

So what business ideas got money at that point in time?  Only the best.  And those great ideas had to have great teams behind them.  The crappy ideas were laughed out of the bank.  These high interest rates also depressed the stock market.  Why buy stocks when you could buy government bonds at 15%?

This high-interest rate environment led to a recession, but what followed the recession was the greatest peacetime economic expansion in history – the stage had been set by winnowing away the crappy companies.

As time went on and as the economy expanded it also changed as small companies grew to enormous size and replaced large ones that didn’t serve a purpose in the economy anymore (MicroSoft® grew, Montgomery Ward™ exploded).

The interest rate was then lowered.

And lowered.  And lowered.

The idea behind this (from the standpoint of a politician) is that cheap money encourages business.  Which encourages hiring.  Which is one way of using the people’s money to buy their votes.

interest rate through time

And, it’s a great idea.  Companies borrow money.  That makes the banker happy.  People get jobs when the companies use that money to invest in stuff, like buildings, stores, employee PEZ® dispensers, Johnny Depp’s ego, factories (once upon a time we made stuff here) and oil wells.

In a functional economy, some of these businesses flourish, and some fail.  The flourishing businesses more than compensate for the lost incomes (and bad loans!) of the failures.  This is healthy in an economy – bad ideas, like my Internet pizza by the slice company (no, we don’t deliver, you have to pick it up) fail.  Good ideas, like Amazon.com, flourish.

But as you can see above, we got to a point where the graph went . . . flat, like Johnny Depp’s career.  And flat as in zero.  Also like Johnny Depp’s career.

So, if high interest rates force businesses out in a Darwinian competition that only the strong survive?  What happens when interest rates are low?

Well, we live here in Smallville.  Smallville is . . . small.  It had some hotels built during the 1950’s and 60’s.  And one obviously from the 1970’s.  One might have been the late 1980’s.  And one last hotel built around the late 1990’s.  Most nights nobody is in any of these hotels.  I’d bet it’s generally a 10% occupancy rate or so.  Low.  In a nearby town, you can buy one of the 1970’s vintage motels with 50+ rooms for $200,000 or so.  Yes, you read that right.  Annual income for the thing is about $120,000, and it probably nets out at $40,000 a year or so after costs.  Sort of expensive for a $40,000 a year job.

But right now in our very lightly visited (and way off the beaten track of any busy highway) town they just built a brand new hotel.  That might be 15% full on a good night.

Why?

Because money is historically cheap.  Like 5,000 years of history cheap.  Save it?  Never!  The investment only has to yield more than the interest rate of the loan to be profitable.

Cheap money is like gasoline to the bonfire that is our economy.  To start the fire, a little is needed.  But to really get the party going?  Toss on more gasoline.

When there’s a competing economic system or discipline from organized investors, this won’t work.  The confidence of the economic system would be lost, and interest rates would go up as people fled the money system.

If there’s an alternative.  But today?  There really isn’t a credible alternative to the dollar (the euro is too new, the yuan and yen are too closely held, and every other currency on the planet (except the Swiss and British) is generally more valuable as holiday wrapping paper than as actual money.

Without this constraint of an outside competitor, politicians did what politicians do.  They opened the spout to the money supply.  Yay!  We can borrow and spend ourselves into infinite economic prosperity, right?

Not exactly.

A little debt adds a lot of GDP.  It funds great ideas like desktop computers to massively increase business productivity.  It funds control valves and robots and data systems that automate pipelines and car factories.

The big ideas get funded first.  They change the world.

Eventually you get to funding ideas like “bigger cupholder” in a Camero®.  You get less return, less profit with each dollar invested.

That’s shown pretty well on the following graph – it relates debt to GDP (GDP is like the country’s salary – it’s all the money the country makes).  The first bits of debt (earlier on) produce the greatest growth in productivity.  The last bits of debt?  It shows that they aren’t horrible, but in reality this graph reflects consumers getting out of debt as fast as they can during the Great Recession – individuals don’t take on more debt when they’re not sure they’ll even have a job at the PEZ® factory next month.  Unless you’re Johnny Depp, in which case you just buy $30,000,000 in castles and some albino bears.

debt to gdp

This is called diminishing returns – the latest debt doesn’t add as much to the economy, unless you really need a castle filled with albino bears and can sell tickets.  The later investments are worth so much less than the previous investment.  Eventually?  You get debt without GDP growth, so you pay interest on the PEZ® that you ate last night.  Forever.  Your bonfire?  The wood has burned all away, and the only thing that keeps the fire going is the gasoline.  And it makes a much smaller and more dangerous fire.

Yes, eventually the added borrowed money swings your income downward, as you pay interest on investments that produce nothing.

This was like another time in history.  Just wish I could remember what it was.

Maybe I should save my tinfoil now?

The Chinese Farmer, Kipling, Marcus Aurelius, and You

“I’ve come back. Give me a drink, Brother Kipling. Don’t you know me?” – The Man Who Would Be King

Rudyard_Kipling_(portrait)

Kipling in 1895.  Good heavens, what a handsome mustache!  No wonder the English ruled most of the world – any group that can create such handsome whiskers deserves to run the place.

I first heard this from a friend in 2002 or so . . . there were several of us that would get together to talk about ideas and concepts, and one of the participants told this story:

There is an old Chinese story about a farmer.  One night, there was a terrible storm.  The wind blew so hard, it opened up his corral, and his horses got out.

“Bad luck!” said his friends.

“Good luck, bad luck.  Who can say?” replied the farmer.

The next week, his horses, lonely for home, came back.  But while they were loose, they got in with a group of wild horses.  The wild horses came home with them.  The farmer now had twice as many horses.

“Good luck!” said his friends.

“Good luck, bad luck.  Who can say?” replied the farmer.

A wild horse is good to no one, so the farmer’s son began to work on breaking the horses.  Most of them were no problem, but one particularly fierce horse bucked the farmer’s son off.  The farmer’s son broke his leg.

“Bad luck!” said his friends.

“Good luck, bad luck.  Who can say?” replied the farmer.

The next week, the Emperor, having decided to go off to war due to a very dangerous threat against the empire, marched with his troops through the farmer’s town.  They called up in a draft all of the able bodied young men to accompany them to war.  The farmer’s son could not go – his leg was broken.

I think you can see where this is going.

But the story does stop there (thankfully!), though you see that it could keep going indefinitely, probably ending up with the farmer’s son constructing an evil robot army to enslave the human race that ends up saving us instead by stopping the invasion of the mole people from below South Carolina.  Oops!  I think that’s the plot of the sequel to Pacific Rim.

pacific rim

Source:  Uproxx, by porkythefirst

Despite my firm belief in the power of self-determination, even I’ve got to admit that sometimes you just have no idea how an action will impact your future – what will the result be of a decision you make today.  Opposite effects aren’t unknown.

For example, brush your teeth every day in order to keep them longer, right?  Well, at one point they used abrasives in toothpaste in order to scrub off that yellow tint that evolves over time.  Unfortunately, over time you weren’t brushing your teeth – you were sanding them down to nubs.

That’s an extreme example, but here’s another:

You work really hard at your job.  You’re smart, and come up with innovations to make things work a little bit better.  Your boss notices, but so does his boss.  Rocket ship to the top, right?  I mean, at least a promotion?

No.  Your boss is lazy and scared that he’ll lose his job.  The last thing they want to see is you breaking the curve at work.  He is now focused on . . . . getting rid of you.  Again, the opposite of what you’d expect, and the opposite of what your work merits.

Which brings me to this:

If

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too.
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster,
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make a heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

I am an unapologetic Kipling fan.  And in this poem is more good philosophy than you’ll find anywhere.  Well, anywhere but here.

At a certain point, you realize that you’re not going to be a trillionaire.  Or even a billionaire.  You have to settle for what you’ve done and not feel regret that you’ve not transformed the world entirely.  In reading history, it wasn’t just one of the best poets ever to live who understood that, but also, over a thousand years earlier people understood it.

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”  Pretty cool statement.  From?  A frigging Roman Emperor, Caesar Marcus Aurelius.  I’ve mentioned him before.  His book, Meditations was something he wrote for himself.  He didn’t write it for other people to read to see what a smarty-pants he was.  No, these were his private thoughts.

And as Caesar, he had more power than most people on Earth have ever had.  And he still worried about stuff.  He worried about doing a good job.  His back hurt him.  He worried that he wasn’t being a good dad (he wasn’t – his son was horrible and was destined to be played by Joaquin Phoenix – a curse of history).

But Marcus, the unnamed Chinese farmer, and Rudyard all had it tuned into the same thing – we can’t understand exactly what the outcome will be.  We can only go out there and do our best – break the horse, fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds of distance run, or do our best to run the most complex civilization ever devised.

So, today’s your day.  Go out there, and run as hard as you can.  Maybe, just maybe, one day you can have a mustache that will rival Kipling . . . .

Bitcoin, Satoshi, and Belief

“Violent ground acquisition games such as football are in fact crypto-fascist metaphors for nuclear war.” – Back to School

DSC01203

Does this look like the Bond villain Satoshi Nakamoto who put together the million 7 bitcoin fortune???

As a family we often go out together for Friday night dinner.  It’s a nice way to close the work week prior and get together as a family and talk.  We (generally) have a strict policy of leaving the phones at home (LINK).  A corollary rule is “no talking about computers” at dinner, mainly to keep The Boy and Pugsley from entering a nerd mind meld where they talk to each other in binary:

The Boy:  0101 1001 110010 10011 0111?

Pugsley:  10010!

Both:  Laughter.

On this particular Friday, The Boy would not shut up about bitcoin.  (฿ is one suggested Internet symbol for Bitcoin.)   He told me how bitcoin was a cryptocurrency – a currency that uses cryptography to verify transactions and make sure that some people don’t just counterfeit a bunch more of them.

You prove that you have a bitcoin via mathematical checks that only work if you have the “magic number” – your key to your money.  Again – secret codes – cryptography – is used to access your money.  Lose the code?  Not only can you never use your money – no one can ever use it again.

Bitcoin is also unique in that it’s mined.  Not in a real mine, but by using computer processors to break yet more codes through trial and error.  It’s not like all the bitcoins were available on day one – the inventor of bitcoin designed the system so that code breaking the next bitcoin is harder than code breaking the last one, so it gets exponentially more difficult to crack the bitcoin codes.

When people first started mining the coins, they used a computer processor.  Then someone came up with the idea to use graphics cards, like the ones in your computer that generate the images you see on the screen to do the processing.  Sounds crazy, but the graphics card is an order of magnitude better at doing the math than the processor.  Right now, most bitcoin mining is done on purpose-built processors, and a lot of it is done in cold places (Iceland) to make it easy to dump the heat from the processing with cheap electricity (Iceland has cheap electricity from geothermal).

Bitcoin started not only with a set number of bitcoins in the future, it was introduced in tandem with something called “blockchain.”  Blockchain is an open ledger system where people look at and record transactions.  If everyone looks and sees the transactions (not the details, mind you) then everyone agrees that a transaction happened.  There are multiple copies of this ledger, so it’s redundant and decentralized.  There are some people who think that blockchain might be the real innovation that will long outlive bitcoin.

I looked at The Boy as his tutorial on bitcoin came to an end.

“How many bitcoins do you have?”

“Five.”

I was astonished.  The Boy was 12.  He had, in his bedroom, concocted a scheme where he mined an alternate cryptocurrency (litecoin) and traded it back and forth between different currencies until he (finally, at peak wealth) had seven bitcoin.  When he had seven bitcoins, his net wealth was several thousand dollars.

“Okay.  The computer comes out of your room.”  I had no idea he was a budding day trader.

Eventually his trading losses ate all of his bitcoins, besides a few he used to register a domain name.  He even gave me 0.5 bitcoins for my birthday in 2012, but, I gave it back to him.

Yeah.  He gave me something that is worth about $8500 today.  Biggest birthday present to me, well, ever.

But don’t feel bad, at least I didn’t trade away $123,060 (today’s value) worth of bitcoin.  Like he did.

Even stranger is the origin of bitcoin.  It was created by a shadowy internet figure who used the name Satoshi Nakamoto.  Since he originated it, he also mined the first million bitcoins – worth $19 billion dollars today.

Yeah.  And they’re just sitting there.

Did he lose his secret code?  Is he dead?  Is he waiting to buy New Zealand?  Was Satoshi the CIA?  Was he a time traveler from the future?  What if it was created by the first sentient AI as a plot to crash the economy?  No one really knows if he is even a he, or if he is alive or frozen in nitrogen next to Walt Disney.

Yeah.  Weird.

But bitcoin exists.  And now it’s recognized as a commodity like pork, oranges, or PEZ® and traded in futures markets, which are regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

What’s going to happen with bitcoin?

I’m not sure.  Predictions are pretty hard, especially about the future.

In the past, every single currency that’s not based on something like gold which prevented wanton printing (called a “fiat” currency, after the Italian car) has eventually failed.  Bitcoin isn’t based on gold, but it is based on the mathematical certainty of scarcity – once it’s all mined out in a decade or so, there won’t be anymore.  Ever.  In fact, the amount of bitcoin in circulation will end up getting smaller over time as people lose the secret code for their wallets (this happened to The Boy – he has a wallet with about 0.001 bitcoins in it.  About $180.  But can’t get the code.  And if he can’t?  Those coins are lost forever.  Theoretically, we could divide bitcoin forever.  And the losses mean it will go up, not down in scarcity.

Additionally, bitcoin has no government backing, and is outside the control of central banks like the Federal Reserve Bank or the International Monetary Fund.  They don’t like that, but they can live with it because it’s small.  If it gets to be of any size, they’ll kill it.  China has already made bitcoin trading illegal, and it’s possible that more countries could do the same.  Could they kill it entirely?  Bitcoin buffs say “no.”  But they could make the penalties so high and make exchange into hard currency so difficult that it’s effectively the same.  Other countries besides China will ban bitcoin.  Expect “terrorism” to play a part in this.

Currently, like a Dutch tulip bulb (LINK), it’s gone too high, too fast.   I have to think that it will come back down.  And back up again after that?  Yeah.  Probably.  The difficulty is that bitcoin is based entirely on what people will believe about it in the future, which is very hard to predict.  If people don’t believe in it, it will go to zero . . . but if people see a continually inflating dollar, a deflating currency will look very good.

All the gold in the world is worth somewhere around $1.9 trillion.  Bitcoin is worth about $300 billion.

Someone estimated “all the stuff in the world” is worth about $400 trillion, which surprised me because there is so very much PEZ© in the world.  So, bitcoin is pretty small compared to  . . . everything.  It still has plenty of room to grow.

Bitcoin is real, and it’s around to stay, especially when governments start printing money like it’s going out of style – bitcoin will provide a non-inflationary alternative – Gresham’s law (LINK) says that bad money will drive out good, and people will get rid of their currency that’s becoming worthless, and save the currency that’s becoming more valuable.

So, I wish that The Boy had not frittered away his seven bitcoins.  And I wish I knew who Satoshi was.  I could certainly help him look under the couch cushions for his code . . . for a small fee.

But . . . what if . . . The Boy is Satoshi?

I’m not a financial advisor.  I don’t have bitcoin and won’t buy any this week.  Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer.

Just-In-Time Production, Hurricanes, and Road Ice

“Wait, let me guess. You want me to fly the Maru into the teeth of what amounts to an interstellar hurricane just so that I can shut down yet another Seamus Harper science experiment thereby saving all of our butts from certain doom?” – Andromeda

DSC04205

So, here’s “Just in Time” food inventory . . .

Since the first industrial revolution, businesses have been on a relentless drive to create additional efficiency.  This has resulted in a lot of wealth creation since the “stuff” that we consume becomes cheaper.

How does it become cheaper?

Over time, production processes have been automated.  To give an example, it takes less than three equivalent people working less than a day to turn 1800 parts into a car.  Sure, the parts were produced elsewhere, so more days were taken than that – but to me it’s astonishing – less than 24 hours of labor to produce a vehicle.

Part of the reason for the efficiency is that so much of the process has been automated.  Hundreds of robots are on the factory floor, which allows the car to be built with so few hours.  Imagine if the same level of productivity went into the construction of a house . . . .

Focus is spent on elimination of waste at every part of the process – it’s that destruction of waste that allows industry to focus on production.

One (relatively) recent initiative to reduce waste is to create “just in time” production.  It’s been a driving force since Toyota popularized it in the 1970’s in factories (and in business) across the world.  The way this concept works is beautiful in its simplicity.  Let’s say you’re producing 1000 cars a day.  And you want to put steering wheels on those cars (I know, a crazy luxury).  That means that you want to have enough steering wheels to build the cars you’re building today.  Which also means you have to have the right steering wheels (not one that turns only right, but the correct steering wheel that goes with the car) since one model of the car might not take the same steering wheel as another.

So, of the 1800 parts that make up a car, you have to deal with a MILLION of them each day.  And not every car is the same – there are different carpets, stereos, seats and any number of variations for each car.

So, do you keep a 60 days’ worth of inventory?  No.

In fact, in your best possible world, the company that manufactures the steering wheel that you need shows up and puts it in your hand right as you’re ready to install it into the car.  In practice, that doesn’t happen exactly like that, but it’s close.  The company that manufactures the seats, for instance, knows which ones you want on Tuesday.  It delivers them to the line in the order required for your production run.  Your effective inventory of seats is zero – you let the seat supplier deal with the hassle of getting the seats ready and in place for when you need them.

Likewise, the seat manufacturer doesn’t want a month’s inventory of foam in the place, so they order it to arrive . . . just in time.

The genius of this idea is that you can reduce inventory across every manufacturing system . . . everywhere.  You eliminate bins and shelves and racks of stuff and all of the difficulty in counting it and keeping things dry that should be dry, while not forgetting you have 75 tons of leather for seats in the back corner where the lights are out.

Great idea, right?

Well, it is.  Until something goes wrong.  It is the manufacturing equivalent of going bumper to bumper at 80 miles per hour.  That space between cars is like inventory – it gives you time if someone makes a mistake to correct before catastrophic damage occurs.  So, if a seat isn’t there, I’m sure it’s painful to pull the car off the line, but you can make do.  If all the seats aren’t there?  The factory will have to shut down fairly soon – you’ll just have piles of seatless cars, which are only popular in Southern California.  “Just in Time” makes the factory more efficient, but also less resilient, more prone to catastrophe brought about by the simplest shortage.

But in real life . . . where else are we using just in time philosophy?

Gas stations.  There’s about 28 gallons of gasoline for each person in the US.  My family uses that much in a few days (three cars).  But if production went down for whatever reason?  The US would run out of gasoline in short order.  See, it’s all fun and games when we’re just talking about steering wheels . . . .

Food stores.  The average food store turns over their entire inventory . . . 19 times a year.  Oddly, that’s nearly the square root of 365, so the average inventory turnover is  . . . 19 days.  But that includes things that don’t move as fast, such as sponges and nosehair trimmers.  You can imagine food, especially perishables like meat, frozen foods and vegetables are probably at a week or, more likely, less.  And if there’s an emergency?  The inventory is measured in hours.

We were in Houston prior to Hurricane Ike hitting.  I was out of town on business, but got back in time to ride the storm out (no, not with REO Speedwagon) with the Wilder family.

Oddly, we were completely prepared.  We had food for weeks, a gas grill, canned goods, matches, candles, wine, cigars and pantyhose and chocolates for trading.  Oh, and fifty gallons of drinking water.

I went by the local Target® store that night and found . . . everything gone.  The place was picked clean, even the wine.  I think people went into a frenzy and bought extra hairbrushes because . . . hurricane hair?  You can read about the Wilder experience in Hurricane Ike in more detail here (LINK).

Why did I go to Target™?  Really, just for grins.  It’s a nice feeling knowing that you and your family are protected.  That night as the storm set in, we lost power early on.  So we sat, drinking wine, smoking cigars (yes, The Mrs. joined me) while we roasted hot dogs over the candle (not recommended) and watched John Adams (the HBO® miniseries) on a laptop until the battery died.

The next day?  Power out, so time to eat the steaks. Mmm.

The next day?  Pretty hot.  Oppressively Houston hot.  This wasn’t good, but I got my hands on a battery operated fan, which was worth approximately a million dollars.  I noticed people were selling ice for $8 a bag on the roadway.  Was I mad at them?  Heck no!  If you really needed ice, you could get it from these people, and nowhere else since the every store was still closed.  These people were doing humanitarian work.

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Road ice.  Ain’t capitalism grand?

We were ready – we were practicing the opposite of “Just in Time” – we have stuff around our house all the time so that little interruptions won’t ruin our lives.  But a reasonable question to ask yourself is . . . how ready are you when the car in front of you taps on its brakes and you’re going 90 miles per hour?

Washington: Musk, Patton, and Jack Daniels all Rolled into . . . the ONE

“I, George Washington, born in 1492, freer of the slaves, and the first president of this, our country, though savagely impeached for the shooting of Abe Lincoln, I will lead us into the demise of all humans!” – Home Movies

Washington

General George Washington, 1776, when he was about 44 years old.  44 years old, a billionaire, a war hero from the French and Indian War, and now commanding a rebel group fighting the largest superpower in the world.  Hmmm.  Maybe that’s why all that stuff is named for him?

There is a time for fighting valiantly and dieting.  Then there exists the Thanksgiving/Christmas nexus.  I’ve been generally trying to minimize the carb content of what I eat, but Thanksgiving?  Yeah, I’m having pumpkin pie.  And stuffing.  And mashed potatoes.  And might drink a bit of gravy.  Just a quart or two.  Not from the gravy boat – I have standards.  I have standards . . . and a mug.  A great gravy mug.

Yes, I have willpower, but Thanksgiving and Christmas are more difficult times to stick to diets.  So, I don’t.  And I don’t spend a lot of time feeling guilty about it, but it’s also a good time to reflect that eating different things changes my mood.

If I’ve had enough potatoes to feed the Soviet Army, I know that I’ll feel differently both physically and mentally.  Sugar is similar. Ditto with bread.

So, how do I feel different physically?  For me, when I eat carbs I tend to retain a LOT more water.  It’s my theory that it’s used to think out my blood so it flows better than maple syrup.  When I jump back into the low carb regimen, I know that for the first few days I will dump water faster than the democrats dumped Al Franken.

I’m pretty sure that the extra water does NOT do anything really good for me.

How do I feel different mentally?  Again, for me the low carb (very low, like none) zaps me into a state of clarity and stability.  Stuff just doesn’t bother me as much.  And I seem to get better sleep.

But one thing that’s wonderful about the Holidays is . . . George Washington.

George was really tall for his time and place, and strong enough that he could crush walnuts in his bare hand.  British walnuts.  And he was known to party (from teachingamericanhistory.org):

First Troop Philadelphia City
Cavalry Archives, 1774		 City Tavern
George Washington
Entertainment of		 15 Sept., 1787

Light Troop of Horse, September the 14th 1787

To Edwd Moyston .. Dr.
To 55 Gentlemans Dinners & Fruit
— Rellishes, Olives etc………………………………………..  20  12   6
— 54 Bottles of Madera……………………………………….  20   5
— 60 of Claret ditto……………………………………………  21
— 8 ditto of Old Stock…………………………………………   3   6   8
— 22 Bottles of Porter ditto………………………………….   2  15
— 8 of Cyder ditto……………………………………………..  16
— 12 ditto Beer…………………………………………………  12
— 7 Large Bowels of Punch………………………………….   4   4
— Segars Spermacity candles etc………………………….   2   5
To Decantors Wine Glass [e]s & Tumblers Broken etc..   1   2   6
To 16 Servants and Musicians Dinners……………………   2
— 16 Bottles of Claret…………………………………………   5  12
— 5 ditto Madera……………………………………………….   1  17   6
— 7 Bouls of Punch…………………………………………….   2  16   
£89   4   2

 

If you study the above, you’ll see that George Washington and 54 of his best buddies had 114 bottles of wine, plus cider, beer, and 8 bottles of hard alcohol.  I’m thinking our Founding Fathers were knee-walking drunk at this point – you can see that they got well into the “smashing the bottles and glasses” part of the party.  And it was the equivalent of something between $15,000 and $20,000 that he spent on the party.

George liked to party.

And he liked to party at Christmas, which brings us to eggnog.

Now, I must tell you that I really, really hate eggnog.  Hate it with a passion.

Or I did, until I had George’s eggnog.  And it just so happens I’ll share his recipe with you (this will be the 306,001st place on the Internet that you can get it):

“One quart ye cream, one quart of ye milk, one dozen tablespoons of ye sugar, one pint of ye brandy, ½ pint of ye rye whiskey, ½ pint of ye Jamaica rum, ¼ pint of ye sherry—mix liquor first, then separate yolks and whites of 12 eggs, add sugar to beaten yolks, mix well. Add milk and cream, slowly beating. Beat whites of eggs until stiff and fold slowly into mixture. Let set in cool place for several days. Taste frequently.”

And it’s amazing.  It tastes just like Christmas.  And George was right – making this stuff and drinking it on day one is NOT advised.  It tastes . . . strong.  But after three days in the fridge?  Amazingly smooth.

So, not only was George a billionaire president general that defeated the world’s largest and best trained armed forces?  He knew how to party.

Here’s to you, George!

Seneca, Stoics, Money and You

“My heart attack didn’t kill me, so why act like it did?  See, Tim, it was the Roman philosopher Seneca who said “if we let things terrify us, then life is not worth living.” –  Home Improvement

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Seneca could definitely use a makeover, but would probably be the last person who cares about a makeover, since he’s willing to be dead and made of marble.

Source- I, Calidius CC-BY-SA-3.0  via Wikimedia Commons

What is stoicism, and why does it matter for your money?

From Wikipedia’s definition of Stoicism . . . “the path to happiness for humans is found in accepting this moment as it presents itself, by not allowing ourselves to be controlled by our desire for pleasure or our fear of pain, by using our minds to understand the world around us and to do our part in nature’s plan, and by working together and treating others in a fair and just manner.”

What on Earth does that have to do with money?

Everything.

Let me explain . . . with a story I’ve used before:

When I was young, we had a subscription to Reader’s Digest (which, really, might have been influenced by the CIA for a time – google it).  For those that haven’t heard about it, it’s where they take articles (and even books!) and edit out the boring bits and republish them.  It’s like someone printed a tiny bit of the Internet.

Pop Wilder always said, “I can read my own articles and decide what’s important.”

And yet?  I always found an issue of Reader’s Digest in the bathroom that only he and I used, and I know that I wasn’t carting them in there.

But in Reader’s Digest they had features as well as the articles, one of which was “Laughter is the Best Medicine.”  In it were nice, clean stories that were, well, funny.  Some of them were even taken from real life.  My favorite was about a five year old girl and her eight year old brother.

They were playing in the backyard (which kids used to do prior to the Internet).  The boy was holding a tin can on top of the little girl’s head and smacking it with a rock.

Mother:  “Tommy, what ARE you doing????”

Little Girl:  “Mommy, it’s okay.  He’s almost done.”

I keep coming back to that image.  It’s like life.

Sometimes the problems we go through are pointless.  Sometimes they are downright silly.  Life keeps smacking a rock into the top of your head.  And when it stops, you feel so good.

Another example:

A friend of mine went through Army Ranger School (a long time ago).  There were two out of their class that passed.  Two.  The other guy was a chaplain.  The last ordeal had been an extended duration hike with little food.  They had survived.  They had made it back to base.  But . . . it was five hours until they would be released from training, and couldn’t go to mess hall (cafeteria) to eat.

They climbed into a dumpster.  They found Doritos® covered with ants.  They brushed the ants off and ate the Doritos™.

His thoughts?  “Best Doritos© I’ve ever eaten in my life.”

And this relates back to money, too.

Seneca was a Roman.  I use the word “was” because he’s dead.  Nero ordered Seneca to kill himself (spoiler, Seneca totally did kill himself) back in moldy old 65 A.D. (Not “Common Era” but good old Anno Domini).

Seneca was rich.  How rich?  Rich enough that he could have purchased six hundred million loaves of bread.  And that didn’t count his real estate, which included at least six Sonic® drive-ins and three strip malls in Omaha.

I’m not even sure where I would put six hundred million loaves of bread.  Certainly my pantry would fill up after 2 million or so.  But outside of bread (food), the man had a lot of bread (money).  And thought a LOT about it.

Seneca:  “He is a great man who uses clay dishes as if they were silver; but he is equally great who uses silver as if it were clay.”

In the end, a dish is a dish, and as long as it comes out of the dishwasher without last night’s Kraft® Garfield® Macaroni and Cheese, well, deal with it.

And a car is a car.  I went to a stand-up comedian one night with a friend, his wife, and a blind date. (Yes, this is you, Chris – the friend, not the blind date).  The comedian was making a joke about cars.  The reason, he thought, that we had so many traffic fatalities was that we didn’t make cars out of Nerf® stuff.

He looked, from the stage, down at me.

“You sir, you look like you drive a big-ass truck.”

Me:  “No, it’s a Toyota® Tercel™.”

Him, loudly into a microphone with everyone in the room listening:  “Well, you must be the world’s BIGGEST pussy.”

Needless to say, the blind date ended right there since I didn’t go and beat him up.  And, yes, I probably should have answered “yes” when he asked if I drove a truck.  But . . . like Seneca, a car to me is  . . . just a car.  The first virtue of a thing is in its utility.  Does it do the job?  Sometimes duct tape is the proper solution.

From the standpoint of a Stoic, even a wickedly rich one like Seneca, taking pride in personal possessions was to be looked down upon.  And, yes, his wife had earrings that cost more than a house.  And he had solid silver nose hair trimmers.  And we know this because he wrote about them.  But, did he care?  I don’t think so.  He bought the stuff because he could, not because the stuff had power over him.  I’m certain that he understood that he didn’t own the “stuff” but just had it until he died, so it had no power over him.

But we let stuff have power over us.  Does the neighbor have a nicer car?  Do they have a better stereo?  It’s normal, natural to envy that.  It’s totes Stoic if you go, “good for you!” and not want to go and buy an even better car because you’re good with the one you have.

When I was in Houston I would be stopped at a traffic light, surrounded by cars much nicer than my 2006 Ford® Taurusdadcar™.  And I would wonder how many of them owned their car.  And I wonder how much heartache was caused by that REALLY BADASS Mercedes® next to me when monthly payment time came around.  And, truthfully?  If it was being driven during work hours by a girl, I wondered how long she’d be with her husband after the money ran out.

So, for me?  Being Stoic about the stuff I own is a sanity preserver.  If I had to worry that The Mrs. would leave me if I didn’t have an awesome car, or, honestly, cared at all about what my neighbors thought, life would have a stress it doesn’t need at all.

But Seneca went further.  He said, get rich all you want, but don’t do it in a way that’s “stained by blood.”  My interpretation?  You got you money honestly, without forcing it out of other people.

How does this play out?  Well, let’s look at . . . Obama phones.  Regardless of how you feel about them, the money that comes to purchase them, and to provide monthly service is forcefully taken from others.  Don’t think that it’s forceful?  Try not paying your taxes and then you’ll learn that the IRS is not your benevolent aunt who bakes cookies.  Unless your aunt works for the IRS.  In which case, please tell me the rule on deductibility of capital losses from a prior year against current year capital gains.  Just kidding, I use TurboTax®, which is probably nicer to me than your aunt.

I digress.  But I think Seneca would think it was wrong to take money from one person (me) without their consent to give to another (Obama phone users) and taking a cut in the middle.  It’s wrong.  Unfortunately, it’s our government’s current business model (LINK) and Elon Musk’s (LINK).

Last?  Seneca thought you should be generous.  Bill Gates is certainly living up to that, shooting money out like a lawn sprinkler at causes he likes.  And I tip well at the restaurant.

But the biggest danger of generosity?  It has to be moral.  Give a man money and he will take it.  But he will resent you, because you didn’t give him more.

Let a man (or, I guess we let women earn money nowadays, and even own property and vote) earn money?  That will provide both support for him (or her or it, whatever the cool kids say nowadays) and self-worth.  So, generosity is good.  Charity is corrosive.

The really cool thing about being a stoic is realizing the beauty you can find in the weird, small bits of life that you often ignore.  The smoothness of a straw.  The stark sharpness of the edges of the clouds on a crisp winter night.  The wear marks on a keyboard you’ve typed a million words on.  The ability to take satisfaction out of nearly every experience you have is there.

If you let it.  And if Tommy will stop pounding the tin can on the top of your head with a rock for a moment.

How I Met Your Internet

“I told him that I had a daughter and he told me he had one, too. And he said, “Never give up on family.” And I didn’t. I took his advice. My God, the universe is random, it’s not inevitable, it’s simple chaos. It’s subatomic particles in endless, aimless collision. That’s what science teaches us, but what does this say? What is it telling us that the very night that this man’s daughter dies, it’s me who is having a drink with him? I mean, how could that be random?” – Breaking Bad

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The Mrs. took this picture during a particularly pernicious rainstorm.  They tell the kids to stay inside during a thunderstorm.  Meh.  If I get hit by lightning I’m buying a lottery ticket.

So, this is the 100th post.  I think the best way to deal with this is to skip the structure of wealth, wisdom, and health for this post.  The discipline of structure is nice, and I’ve learned a lot of things by doing it, but it’s nice to vary from that structure from time to time to be spicy, like taco-flavored kisses.  So, here are some random bits of fog from my brain.  Some of these may end up as posts at some point . . .

  • If someone is cloaking a concept in really, really confusing language, they’re lying or trying to cover something up.  The desire to create an impression contrary to truth requires that they twist the language to the point of ripping.  Using bigger words and confusing, academic phrasing are just camouflage for the lie.  For example:  At a dinner party, a gentleman was talking about overpopulation.  His solution?  Reduce the population by a billion or so through “caloric restriction.”  He was confronted by another guest . . . “You want to starve a billion people to death?”  Yup.  Really happened, according to the article.
  • If you depend on someone to give you money or things so you can live, they control you.  This is why welfare is control.  This is why parents get to make the rules.  This is why bosses can be arbitrary, and the Hollywood predator gang could stay so safe, for so long.
  • There is no objective morality without a belief in a higher power.  Without that, we’re all just meat and cells.
  • Children need enough privacy to grow, enough structure to grow well.
  • Youth is rarely wise, but it might be smart.  My brother, John Wilder (yes, we have the same name – just different parents – my family tree looks like an inkblot) talked about how his company had hired a 30 year old CFO.

Me:  “He won’t last a year.”

Bro:  “He’s smart.”

Me:  “Yeah, but he’s got a LOT of growing up to do.”

The guy flamed out in a year.

  • I don’t know why wisdom costs us so much pain and difficulty in life.  Is it because, like divorce, it’s worth it?

Rorschach, Copyright DC Comics

How my family tree would look as a superhero. © Certainly DC Comics, Fair Use Claim, Will Remove on Request

  • Liars lie.  The only thing that stops them is when they get caught and something tragic happens, and mostly not even that.  I’m not sure why they do it.
  • Cowards are the most dangerous of men.  They will quickly befriend you even when you don’t deserve it.  They will desert you at the first sign of an angry mob.  And they’ll join the mob.
  • Being close to a coward is bad.  But you can always count on a coward being a coward and acting like a coward.  Having a liar close to you is worse.  They might tell you pleasing lies for a time, and you might forget their nature.
  • You are the average of your five closest friends.  Choose wisely.
  • People say, “Kids tell the truth!  It’s natural.”  Oops, I meant people who never seen an actual child say that.  Kids lie as soon as they can figure it out, as any parent can tell you.  No, I didn’t eat that cookie.
  • Between the ages of 10 and 14 are the only times you really have to parent.  Before that, it’s teaching.  After that, it’s supporting.  Something happens between the ages of 10 and 14 that determines whether or not the kid goes bad.  They’ve learned how to inflict pain and but haven’t learned empathy or kindness or responsibility – they’re a group of snotty acne-covered psychopaths.  This is why middle school age children are such miserable creatures, and once you win the battle as a parent you can hit the autopilot once they hit high school.
  • Underarm hair grows back.  A reputation doesn’t.  In other words?  One drop of snot ruins all the eggnog.
  • Always take an offered breath mint.
  • We waste a lot of time.  (I include me in that.)  Ben Franklin said, “If thou loveth lifeth, wasteth noteh time, for that is what life is made of.”  And a big part of that waste is in pursuits that produce . . . nothing.  I’ve been accused of being a “hillbilly” for fixing a faucet rather than buying a new one.  In my defense, my name isn’t Billy.  And I could fix the faucet for $5 and an hour of time, and some cussing and bruised knuckles.  And I know how to fix a faucet now!  A faucet that was last manufactured in 1980.
  • Buy new faucets instead of fixing them.
  • You can’t reason with someone who’s acting out of emotion.  And you ESPECIALLY can’t reason with a crowd of people who are rioting.  Fight reason with reason.  Emotion with emotion.  And rioters with force and/or Optimus Prime®.  Thus the following is the best thing to wear to a riot (LINK) (and no, not getting paid for this link):

optimus-prime-costume-hoodie.main

  • Reason is something we use to convince ourselves that what we want is wise and, well, reasonable.
  • Cultures aren’t all equal in the output they produce.  Some cultures produce much more violence, less wealth, and much less freedom, and some even create all three negatives at once (Venezuela).
  • I invented a gravity cannon.  It consists of two huge counter-rotating cylinders of the matter from a neutron star (this stuff is denser than a Kardashian at 900 pyramids of weight for a single teaspoonful).  Thick cylinders, but hollow.  I think it would only require a dozen or so neutron stars to build.  To shoot it, you have to jam the inner cylinder into the hollow outer cylinder.  The result is a vortex of gravity that might stay stable enough (if the cylinders are rotating fast enough) to slam into your enemy – an invisible ring of gravity death travelling at them at whatever speed you slammed the cylinders together at.  It would also create a massive black hole and a huge gamma ray outburst that would roast a turkey from 100 light years away.  Is it impractical using a dozen solar masses and the approximate energy put out by our galaxy in any given year for one shot at an enemy?  Possibly.  But maybe I need a government grant to study it?  We wouldn’t want Russia to have one and us not.
  • There is bacteria growing on the space station.  On the outside of the space station.  While it’s in space.  I sense a 1950’s B-Movie:  The Fungus from Mars.
  • Tip well.  Show gratitude when it makes sense and when you can afford it.  Give a hard working waitress a $10 tip on an $8 dollar bill?  They’ll mention it for days.  Where else can you make someone so happy for so little?

Hope you’ve enjoyed the first 100 as much as I have.  See you Monday!

Soviet Genetics, Mangoes, Your Momma, and Swedish Weight Gain

“The only difference between Señor Chang and Stalin is that I know who Señor Chang is.” – Community

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This duckbilled dinosaur could have been a kitten, if only it had been loved.

When I start a blog topic, most of the time I know where I’m going, and, generally where I’m going to end up.  Most of the time.  Sometimes I end up learning something completely unexpected that changes my conclusion.  Sometimes I learn that we, as humans, are only scratching the surface of how really, deeply weird the world around us is.  This post is deeply weird.  Hang, on, buckle up and enjoy my favorite health post ever . . . .

Trofim Lysenko was born in Ukraine in 1898.  Apparently the baby name books in Russia includes the name “Trofim” even though to me it sounds like a fitness product advertised on an infomercial at 3AM on The Discovery Channel® – get fit with new Trofimâ„¢!  Frankly, Lysenko sounds like a bathroom cleanser – so poor Trofim was destined for failure, right?

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Would you buy a used economic theory from this man? – photo of Lysenko, public domain, via Wikimedia

Trofim studied agriculture, and, apparently came up with a bunch of ideas about how plants could better grow around the time the Soviet Union was starting up.  His theories included the idea that cows that were treated well would give more milk, and that plants could cooperate somehow to make more wheat.

Joseph Stalin LOVED Lysenko.  His theories dovetailed exactly with Stalin’s Communism – the importance of genetics went to zero.  With proper nurture, you could create a True Soviet Man – people weren’t just created with equal rights – they were BORN equal.  If you could create the right conditions, everyone would BE equal, just like George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and me.  Oh, wait, that’s observably false.  Brad Pitt could never get my SAT score, even if he studied.  Clooney?  Let’s see him go bald, huh?

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Unrecorded in the West is the fact that Stalin’s giant head was carried in local parades by men in white suits up until 2003, when it was retired to a farm outside of Minsk where it now lives with gently treated cows and monkeys. – photo of MegaStalin, Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R78376 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

Lysenko singlehandedly destroyed genetic research in the Soviet Union for forty years, as well as being responsible for the jailing (and sometimes execution) of everyone who disagreed with him.  Certainly no one in the West would do that about people who dissent scientifically . . . right?  Anyway, Lysenko set the standards for political correctness in research, and yes, the Soviet Union is where the term Politically Correct came from – the idea that ideas themselves couldn’t be discussed unless their politics were in vogue at the moment.  And if you brought up politically incorrect ideas?  Gulag for you, comrade.

Mao Zedong proved that this point could be taken to extremes when the Pakistani ambassador gave him a case of mangoes.  Mao didn’t like mangoes.  So  . . .

In the afternoon of the fifth, when the great happy news of Chairman Mao giving mangoes to the Capital Worker and Peasant Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Team reached the Tsinghua University campus, people immediately gathered around the gift given by the Great Leader Chairman Mao. They cried out enthusiastically and sang with wild abandonment. Tears swelled up in their eyes, and they again and again sincerely wished that our most beloved Great Leader lived then thousand years without bounds … They all made phone calls to their own work units to spread this happy news; and they also organized all kinds of celebratory activities all night long, and arrived at [the national leadership compound] Zhongnanhai despite the rain to report the good news, and to express their loyalty to the Great Leader Chairman Mao.

August 7, 1968 People’s Daily

Yes.  The Chinese people worshiped (for 18 months) mangoes so they didn’t disappoint Chairman Mao.  And it had lasting consequences for some.   A dentist was executed for saying the mango touring his village looked like a sweet potato.

Don’t believe me? A lot more about it here (LINK).

But, we were talking about Lysenko.

He killed genetic science because of the laughable idea that everything was nurture, not nature.  We do know that there are lots of things that are totally genetic:  intelligence, likelihood of being criminal, eye color, hair color, blood type, et cetera.  For example, you can stunt a smart person’s intelligence through poor nutrition.  But their overall capacity to be intelligent is about 70%-80% genetic.

So Trofim (snicker) Lysenko was entirely wrong?

No.

We’re learning a lot more about something called epigenetics now.  Epi in this case means “over” or “over-genetics.”  If you remember, DNA is a double helix molecule that stores all of the information about how to make a copy of you.  One gram of DNA can, according to folks at Harvard, store 700 terabytes of data, or about as much information as 14,000 Blu-Ray® discs of Geostorm© when it comes out.  Which will also be 13,720 more discs than Geostorm© sells.

DNA stores lots of information, but at a cost.  DNA is information dense, but it is looooooooooong.  Each cell has about 2 meters of DNA if you stretched it out.  Take all of the DNA in your body and lay it end to end?  (Do NOT try this at home, it’s kinda messy – if you’re going to do this, at least use the garage.)  There’s enough DNA, laid end to end, which would be roughly diameter of all of the planets in our Solar System.  That includes Pluto – we’re gonna take it back.

DNA is long.  And since our cells aren’t 2 meters long, something happens to the DNA in your cells.  Rather than tossing the DNA into the cell like The Boy and Pugsley throw extension cords onto the garage floor, the cell has little cord winders that wind up the DNA so it’s not all tangled up like Johnny Depp’s finances.  So, the DNA is tightly wound around the cord winders.  In my garage.  In your cell.

But it turns out that the cord winders themselves (I know this analogy is getting a bit stretched) are very much impacted by your behavior.  And, the scary part?  Potentially your mother’s behavior.  Scarier?  Even your grandmother, and we all know what a tramp she was.

I recall reading a story about a Native American tribe in Arizona that experienced famine that killed off a significant portion of the tribe.  The result?  A bunch of really, really fat Native Americans two generations later.  My theory had been that the people with the skinny genes had all died out, and that the remaining Native Americans had all had genes that were really, really efficient with calories.  And liked Twinkies®.  Makes sense?  Sure.

But then?  Epigenetics.  Turns out that this phenomenon was repeated in Sweden, where in some really northern town, named “Rejëllyfaarnøørthernplåcedüde” there was a periodic starvation, because they didn’t live where any food was, except seals.

All the kids from Rejëllyfaarnøørthernplåcedüde got fat.  Really fat.  Turns out the operative theory is that the environment that the mothers grew up in changed not the DNA but the cord winders and how the DNA was wound up.  Because of the changes to the cord winders (which are really enzymes) certain parts of the DNA were exposed that changed the way the cells work.  This is entirely necessary, because when you’re a baby, your eye cell needs to know that it’s an eye cell and not a lung cell, otherwise you could see your guts and have to remove your glasses to breathe, which would make dating . . . complicated.

The end result of this epigenetic change was it made the kids more likely to burn off energy slowly – which is a great adaptation if you’re starving.

But it looks like there are a whole host of other adaptations that may be driven by epigenetics:  addiction, depression, anxiety, fear conditioning, and that’s just the bits we’re beginning to understand.  Yes.  What scares you might be related to what scared great grandma.  One experiment with mice shocked the feet of the mice when a cherry blossom smell was introduced.  The mice babies from the mothers . . . who had never been shocked . . . were scared when they smelled cherry blossoms.  The impact on the baby mice from the experience of their mothers was transmitted . . . without genetic change.

So, Lysenko was not totally wrong.

The health implications are stunning.  Can there be a pill that you take that switches “on” a weight loss enzyme?  Maybe.  What other conditions can we change?  Can we make Kardashians attractive?  Sadly, no.

But beyond that, it may go to explain weird things . . . motherly love?  The baby’s DNA is floating around inside the mother (you can determine a baby’s sex through a blood test of the mother, so, the DNA is there).  How does this impact the way a mother bonds with a baby?

What about surrogate moms?

What about all of the things that we can change?  We can’t make ourselves smarter through epigenetics, but . . . can we make ourselves better?

Like I said – this is weird territory, and we have a LOT more questions than answers.  And, fortunately, we have plenty of mangos to worship.  Just don’t compare epigenetics to Johnny Depp’s sweet potato.