Corona – Page 12 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Endgame: At Some Point? This has to stop.

“You know, when I was a kid, food was food. Before our scientific magicians poisoned the water, polluted the soil, decimated plant and animal life.” – Soylent Green

I pity the fool that thinks we’re done.

In 471 B.C., a group of soldiers of the Roman Republic broke camp one fine morning. The way the story works out, I’m pretty sure it was a Monday. Their plan was to go attack some smelly hill people under the command of the Roman Consul, Appius. As the horn sounded to leave the camp, the smelly hill people swarmed down on the Roman column from behind. In the defense of the Roman soldiers, this was way before the invention of coffee but after the invention of wine, so they probably weren’t exactly awake.

As an aside, I imagine that the whole of the ancient history can be explained by un-showered illiterate people who were hungover most of the time trying to run things. I guess this description also applies to congress, but at least the Romans dressed well and threw great parties. Can you imagine Bernie Sanders or Adam Schiff or Mitch McConnell being fun at a party?

Perhaps the artist was a talented person who had only ever seen birds with lazy eye and just imagined what a person might look like?

Regardless, the Roman column broke under an attack less expected than the Spanish Inquisition. The Roman historian Titus Livius, more commonly known a Livy, is the reason we remember this battle. Livy wrote that the reason the hill people stopped pursing the Romans were that the Romans were running away faster than the victorious hill people could wade through the dead Romans, but remember, the smelly hill people didn’t have coffee, either, so maybe they just got . . . tired. The Roman Consul, Appius, tried to stop the fleeing soldiers, but wasn’t able to do so, no matter how he tried.

Appius rallying the troops. Colorized.

When the Romans made camp far enough away that the mean hill people weren’t going to attack them, Appius lined all of the soldiers up. Every soldier was asked, “Where are your weapons?” Every standard bearer was asked, “Where is your flag?” Then Centurions that had fled the field of battle were identified.

All of these men were beaten, and then beheaded, because being beheaded wasn’t quite enough. That made a bad morning worse, but it didn’t stop there: of the remaining men, they drew lots. One out of each ten was executed for the overall cowardice of the unit. Why not ten out of ten? There were still lots of smelly hill people around, and Appius might have been faster than some of them but not all of them.

This latter part where one out of ten was killed lives on today in our language as the word “decimate,” from the Latin “deci” meaning “Lucy’s husband,” and the Latin “mate” meaning, “someone an Australian drinks beer with.” But, in a literal fashion it means losing one out of every ten, and has been a military punishment used all the way up into the 20^th century, when the Soviets did it to at least part of the 64^th Rifle Division after a very bad day at Stalingrad in 1943, though rumor has it no one had fun in Stalingrad in ’43. If you don’t believe me, read your “Argentinian” grandfather’s real diary.

I know you’re thinking, “Hey, John Wilder, that’s fun, but why are you talking about dead Roman bird-faced men when the economy is collapsing?”

To be clear, I don’t have any dirt on the Clinton family.

The United States labor force in February 2020 was 164.6 million. In the last three weeks, respectively, 3.0 million, 6.9 million, and 6.6 million people filed for unemployment, bringing that total to 16.5 million newly unemployed. For those of you without a calculator or fingers, that’s just over 10%. And as bad as the rest of the news is, I had to search for it, rather than it being front page.

Think of it, the second worst unemployment numbers in the history of the United States not being above-the-fold page one news. Instead? “Could have been worse. At least the sky isn’t dripping blood and lava.”

Employment in the United States has been literally decimated in the last two weeks. Sure, it’s not as bad as being beaten to death because of those stupid scary hill people who had the bad manners to attack before lunch or being a Russian (or a German) at Stalingrad, but it’s not good.

It is catastrophic. And next week will be more of the same, if not worse.

If we listen to some leaders, it could be “until August,” or if you listen to Bill Gates, “until the entire United States can be vaccinated and Windows 14™ implanted into their spinal column.” Neither of those two are acceptable, especially since some people, like Joe Biden, have no discernable spine.

He sniffs, he sucks, he scores!

But removing those restrictions is important. Even as farmers dump milk that they can’t put into supermarket-sized cartons and break eggs that they can’t put into 18-packs for Wal-Mart, the system is breaking down. At a certain point the economy is important, because a breakdown in the system might be just the key for some of the more fringe elements on the Left to begin to “finally try real communism” in the United States, which will end up with a bigger butcher’s bill than COVID-19 could ever create. Yeah, it’s a worst-case scenario, and I don’t think we’ll go there, but did anyone think the Fed and Congress could imagine $5 trillion dollars in extra debt. In a single month?

The other side of the argument is, “Start everything back up. Now!”

That won’t work, either. You won’t see people crowding into quaint and cramped Italian restaurants, because nobody wants to get Coronavirus from the busboy. People want to see the infection numbers drop before they commit to getting into a stadium with 77,000 other people to cheer on the NFL®. Zero? Nope. But lower than the 30,000-ish daily (hopefully) peak of newly infected we’re seeing right now.

Well, I guess this is the hard part of the Art of the Deal.

And if you really want to see the fireworks over this idea, wander on over to Aesop’s place. Here’s a representative post. The genius (and the real nuclear part) is in the comments (LINK). As you can see, Aesop has a plan. The plan? Probably not. But it’s important, because it’s a plan.

One thing that is owed the people of the United States is the plan, complete with criteria and reasoning. We know, for certain, that after restrictions are removed that more people will die of COVID-19, and that every single death will be placed at the foot of Trump by the Left. Even though we know that collectively the Left couldn’t organize a hunger strike at a fashion show, we do know that they’re aces at blaming everyone for everything, just like The Mrs. blames me for not having the hardwood floor installed six years after having purchased it. Oops. The Mrs. messed up. She trusted me.

We also know that the devastation of job loss and economic collapse will create thousands of ‘silent’ deaths through despair and addiction. Trump will be blamed for that economic loss, as well. There’s no daily graphic for showing economic misery. Well, not yet there isn’t, but as soon as it sells in the news media? Expect it on the front page of Drudge® every single day.

You dirty birds. I have to apologize for this one since Misery the movie came out in 1990, but it’s at least cheap to watch on Amazon®. Which Pugsley and I did, after I wrote this. I guess we’re dirty birds.

When the time finally comes for Americans to emerge out of their basement bunkers fatter than Hillary Clinton after a wine evening with the ladies? And we’re caught up on all of that “must-see TV” (spoiler: fire insurance is a must if you live in King’s Landing®), what kind of a landscape will they see?

Americans are already getting antsy. It won’t last until August. I don’t think it will last past May.

The economy won’t be the same. Small businesses are in really bad shape. Since they don’t have a lobbyist like Boeing®, that steak house on Main Street? Owned by Ma and Pa Steakhouse owners? They don’t have anyone looking out for them. They’ll get loans, sure. But another loan on top of the mortgage on the restaurant? Another loan on top of the bills they have for the steaks sitting in the freezer because no one is coming in? Yeah.

That’ll help. Just like links from the chain of the anchor would help a lifeboat from the Titanic.

I’m an upbeat person, I really am. Work back through my posts, and I defy anyone to find me being downbeat. I’m not. I think that things will generally work out for me, at least until I die. That part will probably suck. Unless Anne Wilkes has a sledgehammer between me and the grave.

But one thing I want to stress is that hope isn’t a plan, and that hope isn’t your friend. Hope keeps you wishing for a future you wish to see, rather than the future you can work to have. If you hope that after Corona-chan is in the rear-view mirror, the United States will be the same, you will be disappointed.

If you hope that the world will snap back into “happy motoring” (thanks, Jim Kunstler) in June, you’ll find that hope will be a straightjacket. Hope is not your friend, to the extent that it allows happy thoughts to replace action.

Don’t hope. Do. And live. Hope is for amateurs and dreamers.

The United States as you knew her in February 2020 is dead. There. You have it. Deal with it and plan your life. You don’t have to be among the decimated.

But know this:

The United States is dead.

Let all of us go and find her. She is there, waiting for us.

Inflation? Sure. But not right now. (Special Edition Includes Greta Thunberg Joke)

“In 1899, my grandfather, Henry ‘by God’ Ford, was walking home from Edison Illumination after working a double shift. He was ruminating. That morning, he had himself an idea that changed the world. Sixty-five years, and 47 million automobiles later, what shall be his legacy? Getting it in the tail pipe from a Chevy Impala?” – Ford vs. Ferrari

If Stephen King were at the Fed: “All the interest rates float down here, Georgie.”

The government is getting ready to blast enough paper money into the economy that even Zoomers get the joke. The Boy has said, on multiple occasions, “Money printer go brrrr.” By that he means that it’s visible to anyone who is looking that government is willing to just add a zero to every piece of currency coming off the press just to toss money everywhere like Charlie Sheen on a night out with Johnny Depp when one of them is dressed like a Muppet® and the other one gets to be the hand.

But the point is, even teenagers anticipate immediate inflation.

But I can be better than Shoeless Joe: I can say it ain’t so.

See, even the kids get it. Not my meme, probably the work of a 12 year old Anon on 4chan.

In fact, I’ve said before and will say again, I expect that many items will not go up in price, but down. Here’s an example: Pugsley is a young man, at that tender age after puberty begins its hormonal onslaught, but before he has a driver’s license. Generally, that means that the thing he thinks the second-most about is: cars. You can probably figure out what first is. He says it’s the Bible, but I’m not sure he owns one, and that surely wouldn’t explain the Internet data rates I’m seeing.

He’s had me price some beautiful cars, some that do amazing things like go from zero to sixty in a short enough time that I’d worry that I’d look like Shrek® got caught under a steam roller if I put the hammer down. One of them is the Ford Shelby GT350®. This particular car can be purchased used, a year or two old, with less than 10,000 miles on it for about $50,000. Just for grins, I thought I’d check out what they were going for last week. $45,000. That’s a 10% drop, in two weeks.

Why?

Because absolutely no one older than 18 is looking to buy one right now, and everybody under 18 has, ahem, the Internet. Potential buyers are also anticipating further price drops. Why buy that Shelby™ at $45,000 when you can have it for $40,000 next month?

Anticipation of cheaper cars is one factor that leads to deflation.

But who will be able to a-Ford® it? I’ll admit it, I’ve even priced insurance.

There’s another powerful force pushing towards deflation: people just don’t have money. I’ve mentioned before that something like 80% of Americans can’t afford an emergency spend of $1,000. Now, people are losing jobs faster than Hillary Clinton’s witness list is shrinking, and it doesn’t take long for rent, phone, and food to add up to $1000. There won’t be inflation if nobody is buying, and you can’t buy if you don’t have money.

I was slightly concerned during the first few weeks of the COVID-19 lockdown because of empty shelves. Not a lot, because the way the food system works ensures that there is some slack in the system: grain isn’t grown and then immediately shipped to the pizza factory as flour. There are silos. There are cows in the field. There are vats of wine fermenting, and barrels of whiskey aging, and the porthole to the alternate dimension where marshmallows come from is holding up fine. A lot of our food is in the process of being made at any given time.

But this week the shelves were full. In Modern Mayberry, we had full shelves of everything except toilet paper. There was sugar, meat, eggs, milk. Okay, there wasn’t any chicken, but isn’t chicken really just poultry Jell-O®? But there was plenty of nearly everything else. How much of those full shelves wasn’t because of the distribution system, but because people were out of money?

That scares me. People need food.

Finally, there’s a third force. People who do have money are hanging on to it. In a very rational fashion, they’ve decided that they have no idea what’s coming next, so best to keep all the spare change in the candy dish available, so to speak. And spare change in the candy dish doesn’t move in the economy. It just sits there.

In part, our financial system is built around a concept called money velocity. In simple terms, after I spend a dollar, how fast does that dollar get spent on something else? When it moves around quickly, it can account for a lot of transactions in a short period, it seems like there is more money than there really is because it keeps being spent, again and again. It sounds like a hot check, but it’s not.

I actually liked economics classes in college. It was like a nap, but with a grade at the end.

If you consider that this money came from a checking account, in general according to the statistics a dollar in a checking account bounced around over five times in 90 days at the end of 2019. That means:

I got paid and,
I bought some toilet paper from Wal-Mart™ and,
Wal-Mart® paid their cashier with my dollar and,
The cashier bought my old bicycle and,
And I bought some more toilet paper from Wal-Mart©.

It’s simple. But what if there’s no toilet paper? Well, then the second half of the transaction never happens. I just sit on my dollar. It’s not moving around in the economy. That means, even if the Fed prints trillions of these dollars, it’s not enough to offset the fact that there’s no toilet paper to buy and that no one is going out to eat for the last month.

Those transactions just never happened.

And people like me that sit on a chunk of their pay? That drops the velocity on that stack of money to zero until I use it. Right now, people are in general sitting on every dollar they can, unless they have a good source for bargain toilet paper, and I guess they’re sitting on that, too.

Because of those conditions, a lot of things will cost less instead of more, at least in the near-term future. Does that apply to everything?

No.

Things that are in demand, and are in genuinely short supply, will increase in price. Take gold and silver, for instance. The price of silver today is $15 an ounce, according to Kitco™. To buy a silver coin? That’s $24 a coin. The $9 difference? That’s the price to get a coin by the United States Mint or from the Canadian Mint. Silver bars, which have a generally smaller premium? Forget it. Kitco© doesn’t have a single one in stock.

So not everything will deflate like my ego after losing that fistfight to William Shatner at Fight Club. Oops. Wasn’t supposed to mention that. Shhh.

Pugsley tried to Photoshop® something for me, but I told him that teenagers can only do minor editing, at least until they turn 18.

But houses will deflate like a bouncy castle after being jumped on by a dozen toddlers covered with hypodermic needles – but enough about New York City. How many people are buying and selling houses now? No one is. How many people are moving for a new job?

No one is.

Let’s take another example, the New Zealand dollar. The New Zealand dollar is a currency I’ve followed for several years, just for grins. I like to imagine buying a New Zealand winery and retiring there to be a funeral director. I just found out where New Zealanders bury lopsided people – asymmetry. Trust, me it’s funnier if you read the last word in a New Zealand accent.

In the last 15 years, the very best the New Zealand dollar has ever done against the United States dollar was a little shy of $0.90. Right now, you can get a New Zealand dollar for about $0.60. If you look at history, as long as people think of the United States dollar as “safe,” you get people jumping out of currencies like the New Zealand dollar into the United States dollar whenever they get skittish.

Here’s hoping the sheep don’t figure out they outnumber humans in New Zealand.

The United States having a zillion nuclear warheads probably makes people think it’s safe, so they take their money from all over the world. Instead of buying New Zealand dollars, they buy United States dollars, which makes United States dollars increase in value.

The New Zealand dollar has deflated.

I would have bet that would happen, and it has. Imagine all the sheep and, um . . . more sheep you could buy with your new expensive United States dollars?

Can I predict what assets are going to drop in price, by how much, and for how long?

No, I can’t.

But be aware that the rules that you are used to aren’t going to apply.

Will there be inflation?

I think so, after a while, and depending upon where and when the Federal Reserve tosses all those scads of money from the printer that goes brrrr. But if you had just lost your job, and got a check for $10,000 would you spend it on PEZ®, pantyhose, and elephant rides right now? Of course not. But it may be farther off into the future than you anticipate. Houses won’t inflate until people have enough money to buy one. Unless the Fed fills people’s pockets with money and forces them to buy a house, they won’t. Would I buy one in San Francisco for $2 million right now? Would you?

No.

Hmmm, makes those Oklahoma double-wide jokes seem a little, umm, self-serving?

Those assets are frozen, harder than a two-year-old’s grubby grip on a Gummy Worm©. And good luck borrowing money on a house for what it was “worth” yesterday. In the last bust, I went from bankers offering me more money than I could pay back on my signature before the housing bust to having to having to find a receipt to prove I hadn’t stolen that Spice Girls™ CD I listed as one of my assets. Banks always seem to close the barn door in a timely fashion, at least one month after the horse ran away.

Inflation? Sure. But before then that Shelby GT 350™ will be down another 20%, I bet.

Money printer go brrrrr.

Shelby GT 350® go Rawarrrrr? But on a budget, right?

Survival Mindset: City vs. Country. Bonus? Country Girls.

“I’m so tired of all of this traffic. I just can’t wait to get out of Africa.” – Upright Citizen’s Brigade

Especially when I’m explaining.

When we moved to Alaska, we were moving from a mid-sized Midwestern city. The town we were moving from was not big enough for an NFL® franchise, but also not nearly small enough for a letter to Penthouse© about my experiences with an entire college sorority when I was a naïve college freshman in my first week at a small Midwest college.

But this town was a big enough town that there was still a reasonable degree of anonymity. If the person in the car next to me at the stop light was knuckle-deep up their nostril mining for mineral resources without even so much as an endangered species permit, well, the chances are I’d never see them again. And if I did, I could practice a pre-Coronavirus version of social distancing, which involved awkwardly “spilling” 173°F coffee over the hand they had extended for a welcoming handshake. I hope Grandpa forgave me after the burn surgery, but all he would do afterwards was waive that restraining order when I came over to say, “Hi,” and call the police.

He was such a scamp!

Sometimes when you sober up as a naïve freshman, you get udderly surprised.

Not too long after we moved to Fairbanks, The Mrs. had called me and asked me to pick up some canned bananas, sushi flavored ice cream with calamari chunks, and diet flavored peanuts (which turn out to be just a packet of salt) at Safeway™. I managed to get them. Did I mention that The Mrs. was pregnant with Pugsley at the time?

Anyway, after I got back into my car, I had to make a left turn to leave the Safeway© so I could head back to my house. Not a problem – it was a two lane road I was turning on to, but it was 6pm in February in Fairbanks – the traffic was as sparse as original hair on Joe Biden’s head, and it was colder than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s womb, so at least the ice cream wouldn’t melt.

I was third in line to make the left turn. The first turning car stopped, looked left, looked right, looked left and took his left turn. Boom, off he went, never to be seen again.

Now, second in line, behind a minivan. In front I could see the driver wasn’t looking left or right. As a battleship sized (really) opening to turn left opened and closed in front of her, I could see that she was arguing with her kids, probably about how the mean blonde man shouldn’t have taken the last of the canned bananas. Finally, when enough openings for the 7^th Fleet to safely make a left turn had been there and left, my hand hovered over the horn.

I paused.

I took a deep breath.

I we got a mushing dog when we were in Alaska, but he identified as a she. I guess it was a Trans-Siberian Husky.

What had I lost out of my life waiting behind this woman? 45 seconds? I put it in perspective. Was it worth it to add stress to a mother who was currently in a battle of wills with three junior high aged kids? No. I let out a sigh, and realized that getting upset about something small like this really was, was something I could let go of. Forever.

Why be stressed? I’d be home in less than 10 minutes anyway, and Alaska would still be in its own time zone, which was a decade earlier than the rest of the world. I exhaled slowly. Stress drained away.

The woman finally pulled out into an opening large enough to be considered an interplanetary distance. I followed, right behind. At the lights, she went straight. I went straight.

And then I followed her for seven miles. At the next right turn, she turned. I followed. At the next left turn? I followed. She turned down the secluded driveway that held four houses. I followed. She turned right one last time, and I didn’t follow, because she turned into her house.

Her house? Right next to mine.

Mainly we didn’t garden, we just raised our herds of mosquitoes.

Lesson learned. Living in Fairbanks was tough enough. No reason to make it tougher by being the jerk, especially when it’s a small place.

But the lessons learned from living in Fairbanks were bigger than that. I had grown up in the country, so I generally never left the house without things like a blanket, jumper cables, a knife, good shoes, or yak-flavored fruitcake. You never know when disaster will happen, and I’d seen Pa Wilder rescue some idiot flatlander at least once a year.

When you grow up in the country, you never know when or even if a car will come along. I’ve driven mountain roads in winter where my tracks were the only tracks that had punched through 6 inch (7 meter) deep snow and I knew that if I went off the road, the only thing that would keep me alive was between the steering wheel and the driver’s seat. You have a lot of time as you pick your way through a winding road to think of the things that should be in the car with you. You also know the only thing that will save you is . . .

You.

Second place, Jack London Memorial fire building championship (LINK). Link related.

I contrast this with living in an urban area. Sure, there are dangers there, but those dangers are man, not nature. Nature, in places like New York City, has been tamed to the extent that the only dirt you’ll see has been trucked in from miles away. In an urban setting you are reliant on people to do everything for you. Come get your trash. Heat your house. Wax and filet your Chihuahua. In New York City, they even have a number to complain, 311. In 2010, Wired (LINK) did an article and listed the complaints, graphing them. What complaints were sent to this number?

Graffiti. Consumer complaints. Traffic signals, damaged and overgrown trees, dirty conditions, chlorofluorocarbon recovery, problems with taxis, illegal building uses, property taxes, noise, and rodents.

In a rural world, graffiti is solved by talking with the neighbor boy’s dad.

Traffic signals? If you see three in a day, you’re doing something wrong.
Consumer complaints? Don’t shop there anymore.
Damaged trees and overgrown trees are solved with a chainsaw. Which also might solve the graffiti, if you know what I mean.
Illegal building uses? What’s that? When cousin Kaiden uses your barn to make meth?
Property taxes? Call the county commissioner. He lives down the road apiece and you know that Wanda is NOT his cousin.
Rodents? You do have a barn cat, right? And if by rodents you mean coyotes, that’s what the .223 is for.
Chlorofluorocarbons? The pigs eat those, right?

With a few exceptions, all of those issues are taken care of by rural residents themselves. The other things don’t even exist. Chlorofluorocarbons? Sounds like Bigfoot to me. Unless you mean sweet, sweet Freon®, which is necessary to keep the sushi ice cream cold.

Godzilla was flipping houses before it was cool.

I remember reading the Wired® article when it came out, incredulous that city dwellers would call the government and bother them with such petty things. In my mind, this call-in number over shallow inconveniences almost seemed like an experiment in conditioning people to be helpless when nearly all of these problems could easily be solved with either small arms or artillery.

In a rural setting, you’re prepared to save yourself. In an urban setting, you’re waiting for someone to save you. And in an urban setting, you’re anonymous. Do you think people would act like such fools on Black Friday if they had to face those same people the next day?

No. Good heavens. Want to see a polite Black Friday? Come to Modern Mayberry. We have to live with each other, and performing Brazilian ju-jitsu over a Spongebob Squarepants™ 50-piece socket set is just not something you can do and still nod and smile at the Dairy Queen® afterwards. Heck, it’s not like it was the Hello Kitty® smoker, right?

One of the stories that presents the biggest case for learned victimhood in cities is that of Kitty Genovese. Kitty was a bartender coming home from work one night in March in 1964. She was murdered. Some accounts say that dozens of people heard her murder, which lasted half an hour. Apparently there were one or two calls to the police, but no one came. At least one person that heard it said, “I just didn’t want to get involved.” Did I mention that happened in New York City? Yeah. It did.

Contrast it with this:

When I was driving in Fairbanks, I saw a car by the side of the road. It was -50°F outside, and it was a January night. The car was obviously stuck. I stopped, and rolled down the window. The other car did the same, and I found myself talking to a (maybe) sixteen year old girl, plainly embarrassed that she’d run off the road.

John Wilder: “You okay? Got someone coming?”

Unknown Teen Driver: “Yes. It’s all fine. I just wish everyone wouldn’t keep stopping!” They say that no man is an island, but to me it’s ironic that you’re more on an island in the sea of humanity that is New York City than you are in an isolated island of sub-arctic tundra in the snow on a rural road in Fairbanks, Alaska.

I kid. I only saw it snow once in June in the two years I lived there.

The other day I was at one of the nine stoplights (in the entire city of Modern Mayberry) and was thinking about some wonderful blog topic and not really paying any attention to the light. The light turned green. My car was as immobile as Bernie Sanders’ love of communism. There were two cars behind me. Pugsley, however, said, “Dad, get the lead out! Are you waiting for a special color of green? Are you waiting for it to grow vines and pull you through the intersection?”

None of the cars behind me honked.

When it comes to community cohesion, where would you rather be?

Okay, probably not behind me.

Submarines, Star Trek, and Economic Collapse

“But on the submarine, Boris wasn’t as cheerful as he could have been.” – The Bullwinkle Show

If it’s a missile sub, you could say, “Okay, Boomer.”

In most submarine movies, there is a scene where the submarine is hit. One of the forward compartments is being flooded, but the submarine can’t surface because the enemy destroyer is lurking on the surface like Nancy Pelosi lurking at the clinic where they reinject her with blood from the young. The captain must make the fateful decision: do I try to save the team in the forward cabin and perhaps lose the ship? Or do I close the bulkhead door and assure the safety of the ship and the remaining crew?

Time is always of the essence. When the movie is particularly well made, one of the people on the other side of the door is someone you know the captain cares about. It’s often a nephew, or a new, innocent crew member that is doomed to death. You can tell you’re supposed to like him, because he actually has a name; something like Ensign Timmy McFarmboy instead of Dead Crewman #3.

One memorable variant of this theme was in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan™. In that particular scene, Captain, Kirk doesn’t order Spock to go in the reactor room, Spock just does it to save the ship and crew from Ricardo Montalbán’s massive pectoral muscles. “Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” are among his last words to Kirk. Thankfully, Spock has as many lives as a cat, and kept returning to Star Trek® movies because his agent couldn’t get him the lead role in Die Hard.

Spock said my mother was so fat, that she outweighed the needs of the many.

Presidents don’t generally have the luxury of behaving like captains of submarines or starships in the movies, especially in 2020. The world of politics won’t allow it. Political enemies keep attempting to frame both sides of the equation so that whatever happens, the president loses.

If he acts too soon in closing the bulkhead? He’s being irresponsible – overreacting. If he acts too late and loses the submarine? He was fiddling while America burned. Regardless of his decisions, each one will be held up to the scrutiny of the perfect knowledge that only the future will bring.

That’s the burden of the mantle of command: you own the decisions. I won’t second guess President Trump – I wasn’t in those rooms when the decisions were made. I don’t have the facts that he does. And I don’t have to take responsibility.

He does.

However, to continue to use the submarine analogy, the front compartment is flooding. In many ways, the political opposition on the Left is thrilled: they feel that they have a winning issue against Trump, even if it took a crisis that will either kill Americans or wreck the economy to do it. Either is fine with them, which is a function of how polarized the country is now.

The crisis, however, is huge. And it’s far more than Corona.

Easter sheep: ready to wool the world.

I would bet that the reason that Trump said that he wanted the country to reopen for business at Easter was that he was given information about how the COVID-19 measures are wrecking the economy. But I think the information he was given was overly optimistic. I don’t think anyone told him we’d see 3.3 million initial jobless claims – no one expected that we’d see the largest numbers in history. The expectation is that we’ll see another 6.0 million next week. In a labor market of 160-some million Americans, that’s a 6%* unemployment increase. (*edited for an incorrect figure and updated unemployment with 4/2/20 numbers)

In two weeks.

No, his advisers didn’t tell him that.

“We’re the first nation to go to the poorhouse in an automobile.” – Will Rogers

The personal pain and tragedy that level of unemployment represents is astonishing. In previous posts, I told you the economic fallout would be Great Depression bad, but this is worse. The Federal Reserve Bank is projecting 32% unemployment at the high end. 25% was the highest unemployment rate during the Great Depression.

At the height of the Great Recession in 2009, the unemployment rate hit 10%. Total. Not 10% additional two weeks. The Great Recession is the biggest economic emergency that many people remember, and this is projected to dwarf it.

The jobs we’re already losing aren’t all low-paying jobs, either. Oil has dropped in price to $20 and I don’t think it’s done dropping. Oil production companies, the folks that drill the wells for the sweet, sweet oil? They’ll be shedding jobs nearly immediately. The average oilfield job pays $100,000 per year, but $20 per barrel won’t pay for $100,000 per year jobs. Or pickup trucks. Or houses.

The economy is crashing faster than at any point in recorded history. Daily. Based on JP Morgan’s™ recent estimates, it will be $4 trillion smaller (a drop of nearly 20% overall) this year. That’s assuming that the economy returns to astonishing levels of growth in the last half of 2020.

I hope I’m wrong, but I consider an immediate rebound highly unlikely.

Why?

Dear Diary, Today the stock market didn’t crash.

This is far worse than 2008 – at this point, it’s projected to be eight times worse. At the maximum rate of growth the economy has seen in the last fifty years, it will take a decade to get back to where we are today. That’s a decade of lower employment. A decade of people having to do with less, not more.

I’ve heard it said that all of the economy is still there, waiting to be re-occupied. But it’s not. The stock market has dropped by a third. How much of that was in the average person’s 401k? Spending habits will change. And the people who have been fired – will they come back to work for a company that fired them nearly immediately? Will businesses start as usual the instant the stay-at-home orders are lifted? Will oil zoom back up in price to $60 a barrel?

No. Spending isn’t being deferred – in many cases spending is being cancelled right now. If this goes on until May, that will be at least six weeks without the usual wages for millions of people, perhaps as many as 20 million people. For the majority of households not capable of handling a $1000 emergency, what will happen to their spending profile?

And the people won’t be the same, either.

Most of my jokes about unemployment don’t work. Oh, except for the one about the unemployed classical musician. He’s baroque.

Think about that for a second. Are people going to emerge like cave dwellers from the basement, and start consuming like they used to? No. They won’t have the money, having spent it all on toilet paper. They’ve had bills. Food. Electricity. Rent. Sure, they’re not getting kicked out of their house or apartment during the crisis, but someone has to pay the rent at some point.

Corona has also hit economies all around the entire world. As we speak, the world stock markets have lost trillions of dollars as well. Sure, that impacted all of the Greek shipping tycoons who wanted to buy a yacht, but it also impact all of the people who were thinking of buying a new car this year. Not only will demand be down in the United States, demand will be down globally.

For a decade.

If we’re lucky.

We sit at the crossroads of a country experiencing increasing polarity, year after year, and have just had the greatest financial catastrophe anyone living has seen. The submarine is still taking on water, and the hatch isn’t yet closed.

Expect even more surprises.

Soon.

Another Way Politics Messes Things Up, Complete With A Bikini Picture

â€œThough in war, you only get killed once; inÂ politicsÂ it can happen over and over.â€ â€“ Battlestar Galactica (2000â€™s)

â€œThe taxpayers are sending congressmen on expensive trips abroad. It might be worth it except they keep coming back.â€ â€“Will Rogers

Politics is not a great tool for a real, actual crisis.

Politics is, like our economy, about motion.Â Itâ€™s about creating fear enough to spur people into an emotional frenzy, or bully bureaucrats.Â One of my favorite stories along this line was when Amy Klobuchar, D(emon)-Minnesota, wrote to the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) about . . . BuckyballsÂ®.Â Buckyballsâ„¢, if you donâ€™t remember them, they were small strong spherical magnets that were fun to play with.Â They were generally marketed as a desk toy for adults.

One toddler died from swallowing seven of them.Â Apparently, during the life of the product, there were 19 other injuries as well, though I donâ€™t have details on those, but I have it on good advice (Ma Wilder) that nearly anything will put your eye out or result in a severed limb.Â Maybe I would have taken her more seriously if we had more adults who looked like Captain Hook.

But there were hundreds of thousands of BuckyballÂ® sets sold, and MILLIONS of little magnetic balls in circulation.Â Cars, for example, are at least 287 times more deadly than BuckyballsÂ©.Â 100 kids a year die on bicycles.Â The biggest cause of death for toddlers?Â Backyard pools.Â Most dangerous food product for toddlers?Â Hot dogs.

But dying because of small magnets?

Clearly, common sense assault toy safety should be important to all of us.

Thatâ€™s somewhere lower than â€œbeing hit by lightning while holding an aluminum replica of Celine Dion above my head on a pole while covered in barbeque sauce and crushed potato chips.â€

Did Amy go after those bicycles or pools or hot dogs?Â No, that would make her look crazier than usual and give her bad press.Â Instead, Amy went after Buckyballsâ„¢.Â Â And Amy got her way.Â The CPSC shut down Buckyballsâ„¢, and went after the owner of the company with particular zeal.Â Why?

Amy asked them to.Â You see, in 2012, despite the looming Mayan Calendar Apocalypseâ„¢, Amy needed something to complain about.Â So she found her reason in the newspaper and built her grandstanding off the back of that unfortunate fatality.Â I can hear her complaint now.Â â€œChildren are dying in a very rare yet odd and public way that puts them in the newspaper!Â The only thing that can save them?Â Senator Amy to the rescue!â€

Iâ€™m just sad that Amy didnâ€™t volunteer to catch the JartsÂ© when her brothers were playing and she was a kid.Â Seriously, Jartsâ„¢ were fun.Â JartsÂ® child death toll over a span of 35 years before the CPSC banned them?Â 3.Â Thankfully, you can still buy them, but to beat the CPSC, the company asks that you assemble them yourself.Â Itâ€™s a kit.

Ha!

JartsÂ®, when played right.

The problem wasnâ€™t with BuckyballsÂ®, the problem was that there wasnâ€™t anything else pressing that Amy could complain about and get away with.Â Her party held the presidency, so most national issues were out of the question because if they failed, the Democrats would own the failure.Â But she could complain about a tiny toy company.Â The only victims would be the owner and the people who liked the toy.Â Confession:Â I bought six sets of Buckballsâ„¢ in their going out of business sale to help contribute to the owner before he lost his business.

What does one stupid senatorâ€™s quest against a (mostly) harmless toy have to do with today and the COVID-19 virus?

Everything.

Chuck saved me some joke writing.

Politics in 2020 is still about doing something.Â But, more importantly, itâ€™s the art of been seen to be doing something.Â One day when I came home from work, The Mrs. was incensed.Â â€œSchumer wants to allocate $4 billion to the Corona virus!Â Heâ€™s insane!â€Â The Mrs. was skeptical at that point, primarily because weâ€™re used to the media crying wolf about every little potential crisis, and secondarily because the Corona death toll was smaller than Jeffery Dahmerâ€™s.

My response was simple:Â â€œ$4 billion?Â Trump should say, â€˜Make it $8 billion, Little Chucky, think big,â€™ but put in an asterisk that weâ€™ll spend the money only if necessary, and in ways deemed by the President to stop a pandemic.Â Heck, he could even get a few miles wall out of that.Â Arenâ€™t you tired of the Canadians, dear, coming in with their beavers and maple syrup asking â€˜abootâ€™ everything?Â Initiate Operation Leafblower*.â€

â€œBut John,â€ she replied, â€œthe country doesnâ€™t have $8 billion to spare.â€

â€œSo what?Â We donâ€™t have $4 billion, either.â€

*I actually love Canadians.Â And Canada, ever since I discovered Bob and Doug as a kid, beauty, eh.Â Itâ€™s a joke, you hosers.

And this should add back in the RDA of bikini as suggested by the FDA . . . .

The Corona Virus, Chinese Virus, MOVID-19 (named after MOre streaming VIDeo in your basement) or whatever you want to call it is still an enigma.Â Those that say it is not any worse than the flu really should look at the real-time consequences weâ€™re seeing in hospitals, especially in New York.Â However, is Corona Chan a wrecking ball like Joe Biden at a hair sniffing contest that, unless it was stopped, destroy civilization?

Nah.Â Weâ€™ve lived through, and thrived through, worse.

But are we the same people who did that?

Right now, people no longer hold the idea of sacrifice highly.Â Instead, the idea is the no one should ever be inconvenienced for the greater good.Â Which is because in the mind of most people, there no longer is a commonly recognized greater good.

You can see this in the stories of the infantile people licking products, spitting on food, and stating that if they came down with Corona, that they were going to go to Trump rallies to infect as many people as possible.Â There are people who think, â€œWell, the rules on staying home donâ€™t apply to me.â€Â There is no us to them, no commonality, only the idea their needs, right now.

Iâ€™m Joe Biden, and I forgot this message.

Why isnâ€™t there a greater good?Â Itâ€™s primarily being driven by the political rift between Right and Left, though there are other factors, as well.Â Decisions are made not on the basis of what is for that greater good, but on the basis of what looks good for the cameras and can get more money for â€œmyâ€ group of constituents, and get more votes for me.

As such, every decision is a political one, meant to obtain or maintain power.Â And every opportunity should be made to attack an opponent, whether or not they deserve it.Â This means that every action taken in the muddled and unclear past is subject to criticism based on the perfect knowledge of the future.Â Political attackers are looking for errors.

Let me explain, using a discussion of Type I and Type II errors.

The best way to explain what these errors are is to use an example that always stuck with me: Â Â prescription drugs. Â The two primary jobs of the FDA are to approve drugs for sale in the United States and surf social media during the day.Â When the FDA approves a drug that it shouldnâ€™t have approved, thatâ€™s a Type I error.Â What happens with a Type I error is that there is a body count.Â Drugs that show up on the market that kill people (even terminally ill people) make the FDA look bad, so they just wonâ€™t do it, and will go to ludicrous lengths to keep drug company profits high.

So, the cat did warn the dog not to eat out of itâ€™s bowl.

What happens when a bad drug gets through and into the market?Â Does anybody at the FDA lose a job?Â No.Â Does anyone get demoted?Â No.Â But they look bad, which I guess is similar to public execution for a bureaucrat.

That leads to the second type of error, the Type II error.Â Thatâ€™s when the FDA doesnâ€™t approve of a drug that it should have approved.Â Â People still die, and maybe a lot of people.Â But since they really died of the condition and not the lack of a drug that legally doesnâ€™t exist, you canâ€™t get to a body count.Â You canâ€™t convict without a body count, or at least thatâ€™s what my lawyer tells me.

Letâ€™s go into an alternate universe where President Trump hears of the Wuhan Flu and shuts down access to China immediately.Â Not only that, he shuts down access to secondary nations that have contact with China, and perfectly protects the United States from Corona.

Does he get any credit if he does this?Â No.Â No one will count the dead bodies that didnâ€™t exist because he took decisive action.Â In fact, heâ€™d be called a racist xenophobe abusing his powers by the media.Â You can read various articles making exactly this point that were written around the end of January and the beginning of February.Â Â Â My favorite of these articles is one written by an avowed communist that includes the line, â€œThe Trump administrationâ€™s â€˜state of emergencyâ€™ should be regarded as a piece of more substantial and systematic hostility in its relations with China.â€Â The author then complains that people should move freely.Â Thereâ€™s a lovely comment at the bottom, â€œWell, this article aged poorly.â€Â I expect articles like these to be scrubbed from the Internet as people get around to it.

Trumpâ€™s critics kept complaining he was doing too much, until there was a body count.Â At that point, the problem became a Type I problem â€“ people dying because of choices that were made in the past.Â So, with that upward ticking clock of bodies available live on the Johns-Hopkins Pandemicvisionâ„¢, we are in a continually unfolding crisis complete with rolling odometer of sick and infected that, from a political standpoint, require visible action.

To get a quick test result, touch Johnny Deppâ€™s face and see how soon his test results come back.Â Bonus?Â Contact high.Â Â

Or at least people pretending to take action.Â Is the current policy of shutting down huge chunks of the economy the best one?Â Iâ€™m not sure.Â The information we have is very poor â€“ we simply donâ€™t have sufficient information to make great decisions.Â Iâ€™m thinking the President has better info, what with deciding to put the Northern Command (the bit of the armed forces thatâ€™s concerned with North America) back into the nuclear bunker under Cheyenne Mountain, which is always the sign that things are going well.

The initial death rate was estimated to be up to 10%.Â I think itâ€™s clear thatâ€™s not the case at this point.Â Some hack said that itâ€™s so mild that, â€œhalf of Britain may have already had it.â€Â Itâ€™s also clear thatâ€™s not the case.Â But every credible report Iâ€™ve heard says itâ€™s big â€“ intensive care units being swamped.Â Time and data will tell.

But politician response has to be played for the crowd:Â Nancy Pelosi is already blaming everything on Trumpâ€™s past decisions.Â Her quote, â€œBut as the President fiddles, people are dying,â€ seems to ignore Nancyâ€™s own banjo lessons during the impeachment.

Iâ€™ve never seen a more non-essential employee . . .

In a sense, we are where we are as a society because there isnâ€™t anything that can ever be simple bad luck.Â Blame must be assigned.Â Every accident must have a cause, and every person at fault must pay, even if the outcome isnâ€™t one that was intended, or even remotely likely.Â The lady spilling coffee in her lap for hundreds of thousands of dollars in money from McDonalds is the norm now, not the outlier.

All political decisions are coming through these filters:Â Type I Errors and Assigning Blame.Â Donâ€™t be surprised by the mindboggling amounts of money and silliness that will come shortly.

But sometimes sanity wins.Â Buckyballsâ„¢ were made legal again when the CPSC got thrashed in the courts back in June of 2018.

How I Learned To Love The End Of The World

“We estimate between two and four megatons. Everything within a 30 kilometer radius will be completely destroyed, including the three remaining reactors at Chernobyl.” – Chernobyl (HBO®)

Thankfully, everyone is equally hungry under communism. Bernie’s job is done.

I think I’ve always thought about what’s known today as “prepping” – even at a young age. When I was young, we lived deep in the mountains. How deep? The next closest kid anywhere near my age was ten miles away and probably 2,000’ lower in elevation and was actually a yeti that had moved there from Tibet to get away from the crowds. The nearest grocery store was twenty miles away. The nearest movie theater? Fifty miles.

When you live nearly so far from civilization that tourists try to pay you in beads and pantyhose, you have to think ahead. Ma Wilder did. Ma had designed the house with remoteness in mind. Her pantry was always full, and it was huge. She built in a pantry that consisted of one entire fifteen foot wall, floor to ceiling, a foot deep.

The pantry was always (and I mean always) stocked from floor to ceiling with canned goods. Freezer? Not one freezer. Two. And they were always packed to the brim with food. Well, with the exception of when Pa would let the inventory go down so there would be room to fit half a cow. Literally. He’d buy a “side of beef” which was half of a cow. Minus the hooves, of course.

Ma Wilder had also designed a root cellar that the contractor built. For those of you not in the know, a root cellar is a small building (8 foot by 8 foot by 8 foot) that is 90% buried to keep vegetables so they will neither sprout nor spoil. In order to do that, the cellar is dark and cool, like Nancy Pelosi’s heart. Ma Wilder kept hundreds of pounds of potatoes there. I should know – I was often the guy taking them down in fall and hauling them up in winter. And to be clear, we kept the potatoes in the cellar, since Nancy Pelosi’s heart isn’t big enough to hold a French fry.

Exercise? No, with COVID-19, it’s extra fries.

The house was designed to be heated in winter with firewood. Since electricity was incredibly expensive up there, Pa Wilder made gathering, cutting, splitting, and stacking firewood his summer hobby. As it was Pa’s summer hobby, it turned out to be my summer hobby, too. It was hard work, and paid poorly until it came time to hit the blocking sled for football when it paid off with massive thighs of steel.

There is no jean size for “massive thighs of steel.”

But it wasn’t just the remoteness that drove Ma Wilder to be prepared. First, I have to explain a little bit about the family. My parents were older than I was. Oh, sure, that’s normally the case, except in some places like Hollywood, but in my case my parents were a LOT older.

Why?

It turns out that I was adopted, despite the original story they told me of finding me as an infant in a crashed space capsule in a wolf den near the summit of Mount Olympus. In reality, Ma Wilder was my biological grandmother and not who hiked around Greece looking for wolf-raised space babies. Apparently, as a child the only super-power I had consisted of making my biological mother and father both disappear.

I blame the heat ray vision.

I made a website for orphans, but it doesn’t have a home page.

So, I was adopted. Since my parents were not only older than me, but also much older than even standard issue parents, they had hands-on experience with the Great Depression and World War II while they were young. Apparently, those were events that may been somewhat memorable.

I do remember sitting down in rocking chair in the kitchen while supper was cooking. After Pa Wilder had finished his chores for the day, he and Ma would sit down to talk about life, most often with a libation, as Pa Wilder called drinking. I believe it was mainly bourbon, but I can’t really say since they were quite poor hosts and never offered me any. Often, Ma and Pa discussed people I didn’t know. This was so boring it made me want to go to and stick forks in outlets to test breakers.

Especially when they talked about people, I was often admonished that “what we discuss stays within the family” though it was implied that that admonishment probably counted for every topic. I can see how it might be considered controversial how irritated that they were that the neighbor dog kept peeing in the snow by the back porch and they didn’t want me to tattle to the neighbors. Or how economic collapse might be a thing. Or how we might be headed towards nuclear war, and had Pa thought about buying dynamite so he could blow up the road leading to our house so we weren’t the victims of marauding, murdering gangs?

Yup. That was an actual conversation that Ma and Pa had. I think they only mentioned that idea once while I was in the room, but when your mother is calmly talking about having your father blow up bridges to save you from hordes of people (the parents of the kids you go to school with) ransacking your home after the Soviets gave America a “just thinking about you” bouquet of 10 megaton fireballs?

You tend to remember that sort of conversation when you’re 12.

I heard that after a nuclear war, there are high radiation levels, then only the politicians will be left.

Ma and Pa were acutely aware that all of their material prosperity could evaporate in an instant. Ma and Pa had both seen rich men laid low by the Great Depression, and Pa Wilder had fought in World War II. He had driven all through northern Europe, having been on Omaha at D-Day +3. I can’t even imagine what he had seen. Of course I asked him the obvious question, “Did any Germans shoot at ya, Pa?”

“No, son, they never shot at me,” he replied with all the coolness of a Steve McQueen, “but I was with a lot of people they were shooting at.”

I’m ashamed at how long it took me to figure out what he was really saying.

That’s not impressive, though. One of my friends had a grandpa that brought down 15 German planes during the war. Worst mechanic the Luftwaffe had.

I’m not sure that they ever mentioned the idea of nuclear Armageddon more than once or twice, but it doesn’t take long to make a kid connect the dots: “Oh, that’s why we have all the food. And all the guns. And the 500 gallons of gasoline. And the 250 gallons of diesel. And Ma’s amusing utter failure to raise vegetables in the backyard, repeated year after year.”

My parents were preppers before it even had a name beyond “being prudent.” It’s probably justifiable, especially on Ma Wilder’s part. She had seen her family make it through the Great Depression okay, but her family had also raised several children whose parents weren’t well off enough to feed them. I know that sounds crazy in the year 2020, but in the year 1930, sometimes parents couldn’t even figure out where to get enough money to feed a child.

I think those experiences were a driving force in Ma Wilder’s life. She saved aluminum TV dinner trays. She saved old clothes. She could sew (fairly well), make soap (that was more like a caustic chemical burn in a bar), knit (very well), or ferment wine (she gave me a sip and to 12 year old me it tasted of pepper, hate and despair). Back when she grew up, prepping wasn’t a hobby. Prepping was what everyone did.

As I mentioned, one factor that made all the preparation seem even more normal was being so far away from anything. Also, being so far away from everything meant I was pretty far away from the middle school. I was the last one on the bus route. That also meant I was the first one on, and the last one off. It gave me a lot of time alone on the bus to read – a lot.

All of this might explain why I developed a love of fiction that featured the end of the world when I was growing up. Lucifer’s Hammer, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Earth Abides, The Stand, On the Beach, The Postman, and I Am Legend were all novels that I read as I rode the green pleather seat on an endless loop back and forth to school. My classmates might have been looking at the trees and houses or talking to each other, but I was living in a world where everything had changed, all at once and strong men did what they could to rebuild. And without communists this time.

I think Baltimore jokes are just a riot!

My middle school’s library was filled with books that were older than me – many from the 1950’s with pages already becoming yellow and brittle with age. There were dozens of science fiction anthologies. Science fiction in the 1950’s was filled with the paranoia of a country that was just coming to grips with the concept of being able to destroy an entire planet and wrestling with the now obvious fragility of the human species. One of the short stories I remember was A Pail of Air, by Fritz Leiber. You can read it for free here (LINK). It’s worth it.

If you’re not a fan of apocalyptic stories, you might think that the attractive part about reading the end of the world was about death – and you’re wrong. Reading that literature was, for me, a celebration of life. In most of those books and stories the human race didn’t die out. To me, apocalyptic books weren’t about gloom, they were about hope. No matter what was thrown at humanity, we would find a way through.

I am unabashedly pro-human, and most fiction in the 1950’s was pro-human. Somewhere after that, we became a bit more self-loathing and reveled in the idea of our destruction. I can’t help but think that self-loathing started with Doogie Howser, M.D., but I might be wrong. Much of today’s literature isn’t fun, and isn’t optimistic. Sure, I see tough times ahead. But I feel quite strongly that we can make it through them.

Trust me. We will.

What, you don’t think I developed psychic powers on Mount Olympus?

Eight Phases of Crisis: COVID-19 Edition

â€œYou had aÂ dishwasher box to sleep in?Â I didn’t even know sleep. Â It was pretty much twenty-four seven ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn.â€ â€“ Deadpool

One girl I dated in High School asked if she used too much makeup.Â I replied, â€œDunno, depends on if you are trying to kill BatmanÂ®â€

â€œGreat, now itâ€™s the end of the world and we canâ€™t get a new dishwasher,â€ The Mrs. actually said, after I finally relented that it would probably cost more to fix the dodgy old dishwasher than a new one would cost.Â Plus, the old dishwasher is stainless steel, so if it were a hundred yards away, it would make quite a nice practice target.Â I call that a win-win.Â Besides, AmazonÂ® actually has them in stock, so I could theoretically have one by next week.

See?Â You can get quality appliances during the end of the world.

I started working from home yesterday, which was nice.Â When it was lunchtime, I wasnâ€™t hungry, but I was nice and warm so I took a nap right in my home office which is also known as the couch.Â Good times.Â I do have a concern â€“ The Mrs. slapped my heinie as I walked by and said, â€œnice buttâ€ so Iâ€™m thinking of bringing this up with HR.Â I want to be treated as more than a sexual object.Â I mean, not much more, but more.

As much as you might be interested in my derriÃ¨re, I really do want to talk about COVID-19 and get to the bottom of how the issue will progress in the coming months.Â While each crisis is different, they are all sort-of-predictable because in the end, people donâ€™t change all that much, even though circumstances do.Â Certainly we want to get this all behind us, in the rear view, so to speak.

Okay, Iâ€™ll stop.Â Seven synonyms for the posterior in two paragraphs are quite enough.Â I donâ€™t want you to think Iâ€™m a bum.

But what is this pattern I mentioned?Â Here are, as near as I can determine, Eight Stages of a Crisisâ„¢, a level at which each crisis can be evaluated compared to the other â€“ this is my modification of work originally done by Zunin and Myers.Â This is like the KÃ¼bler-Ross five stages of grief, but with the apocalypse in mind.Â Why settle for one death, when you can have millions or billions on your mind?Â Itâ€™s so nice and cheery.Â The nice part of using this model is that you can gauge where we are in the current COVID-19 mess.

Who would he assassinate for a KlondikeÂ® bar?Â Apparently Archduke Franz Ferdinand.Â

The Warning

This is the opening stage of a crisis.Â It may be short, as in 9/11, or it may be a slow-motion collapse like the gradually increasing troop buildups and mobilizations that led to World War I.Â Everyone wanted to stop it, but no one was sane enough to say â€œno.â€Â The Warning before the first Civil War was literally decades in length.

In the current COVID crisis, The Warning came during and just after the December impeachment.Â With the focus of the country elsewhere, who cared about the flu?Â We donâ€™t trust the media very much.Â Why?Â They donâ€™t seem trustworthy.Â Example: Â when Trump shuts down air transport to China, CNNÂ® says itâ€™s racist.Â When China shuts down air transport from the United States, CNNâ„¢ says itâ€™s a wise and prudent move by Chinaâ€™s benevolent leadership.

In a world where CNNâ„¢ and the Chinese government have similar levels of credibility we tend to forget the ending to the story of the boy who cried wolf:Â in the end, wolves really attacked.

How did they not see this coming?

The Event

The Event is generally not long, but it can be.Â Itâ€™s the Shot Heard Round the World at Lexington and Concord in the Revolutionary War.Â The Event is when the rules change forever, and nothing can ever make the world go back to the way it was.Â Itâ€™s the spark that lights the fire.Â When people look back, everyone can see The Event.

Nothing is ever the same afterwards â€“ The Event changes everyone that it touches, and often ends up changing systems permanently.Â It is disruptive.Â It may not be the reason that everything fails, it might just be a small event toppling an already unstable system.Â In a crisis like 9/11, the event is obvious and instant.Â COVID-19 has led to a slow-rolling avalanche across the economy.Â Was it poised for a fall anyway?Â Possibly.

As a longer cascade, what will be The Event that history will use to remember COVID-19?

In one of my more frightening thoughts:Â what if we havenâ€™t seen The Event yet?

Iâ€™m not sure heâ€™s koalafied to make that decision.

Disbelief

When things have changed, and changed drastically, people refuse to believe it.Â When the power is out because a tree fell on the power lines, I will walk into a room an automatically flip the light switch.Â Why?Â Habit, partially.Â But thereâ€™s a part of my mind that is existing in Disbelief, perhaps, that doesnâ€™t believe that the power could ever be gone.

Disbelief isnâ€™t a coping strategy, and itâ€™s not an attempt of the mind to protect itself, at least in a healthy person.Â Itâ€™s more inertia.Â Youâ€™re used to the world being a certain way, and when it isnâ€™t, part of your mind isnâ€™t quite ready to process it.

This might be an overreaction â€“ COVID-19 might be no worse than the flu.Â But that isnâ€™t explained by the reactions weâ€™ve seen so far from places that got it earlier than the United States.Â Italy is locked down.Â In two weeks, we will know more.Â In a month, I think, we will have certainty.

In order to calm panicked customers, Wal-Mart opened up a second register.

Panic

At some point, the mind is confronted with the new reality and forced to accept it.Â But the rules are new, and unknown.Â What to do?Â One could take a deep breath, and review the situation and think logically or?Â One could Panic.Â Panic is easier, and doesnâ€™t require a lot of thought.

Panic is the natural reaction when your brain realizes that it has done zero to prepare for the new reality.Â So, what to do? Buy staples as required to build up the stockpile youâ€™ve accumulated over time?Â Or buy 550 cans of Diet Mountain DewÂ®?Â Or just buy toilet paper, because everyone else is and you donâ€™t know what to do or have any independent thought?Â Â Toilet paper purchasing is Panic.

Not all heroes are able to walk.Â I mean, some gained 400 lbs on the couch.

Heroism

While the Panic is ongoing, the first glimmer of Heroism starts to show.Â Brave men and women working in the medical field are the first signs of Heroism.Â Donald Trump talking with Al Sharpton to address the problems he sees is Heroism â€“ realizing that there is a greater good, and that sacrifice is required.Â Heroism is embodied throughout the response to the crises where a few have an opportunity to save many, and where enemies put aside squabbles for a time because itâ€™s the right thing to do.

There was a family story â€“ Grandma Wilder went during World War II to weld Liberty ships at the Alameda Ship Yard.Â She would regularly get things sent to her from her mother who lived in the country in the middle of Flyover.Â Needles were rationed in San Francisco, but not in Flyover.Â Sugar was rationed in San Francisco, but not in Flyover.Â Why ration needles and sugar?Â To build common purpose, so even people not piloting P-51s or jumping out of landing craft at Iwo Jima could feel like they were doing their part.Â To be fair, rationing was necessary in wide segments of the economy, it wasnâ€™t a fake, but it did help bring everyone together.

Right now Heroism is going on, and we arenâ€™t even asked to do anything more than to sit down and watch NetflixÂ® unless weâ€™re keeping vital industries going.Â Hereâ€™s a link to Aesopâ€™s place that shows the quiet heroism going on out there (LINK).Â Read it all.

I read the other day that coyotes are about 10 miles an hour faster than road runners.Â My entire childhood was a lie.

The Cliff

Keeping order requires energy.Â Some part of the energy of the system is put into keeping order.Â In a time of significant social cohesion, like World War II, the United States didnâ€™t face The Cliff, even though virtually every other developed nation did.Â Instead, the energy that the crisis took was replaced by people working together.

Most of the time in a real crisis, however, thereâ€™s The Cliff.Â I wrote about it here: Senecaâ€™s Cliff and You.

We have not fallen off The Cliff.Â Is it certain that there is one?Â No.Â But every single leader, elected or appointed, is acting like itâ€™s there.Â I believe we will see it.Â The new normal will be grow from events moving quickly.Â Already at Wilder Redoubt, weâ€™ve had nothing but home cooked meals for the last week, with a couple of store-bought sandwiches being the exception.

Will home cooked food, family dinners, and homeschooling be the legacy of COVID-19?

I expect that weâ€™ll see The Cliff soon enough.Â How deep will it go?Â As Iâ€™ve mentioned before, no one knows.Â The worst case is that the economy crashes through levels to Great Depression era lockup in two weeks or so.Â Only 40% of Americans are able to absorb an unexpected $1,000 expense.Â 80% are living paycheck to paycheck, and those paychecks just stopped.

Dead.

Going first will be car payments.Â The average monthly car payment is $800.Â Me?Â Iâ€™d sell you my daily driver for just two months of that, so expect car finance companies to seize up like an ungreased stripper pole.Â But the businesses that employ those people arenâ€™t much better off.Â The best restaurant in Modern Mayberry came pretty close to closing down shop six years ago, but pulled through.Â The second best restaurant didnâ€™t survive.Â There will be cascading failures as the debts owed from one business to the next go unpaid, and this wonâ€™t just be for small businesses.Â I feel confident saying that several businesses with 10,000 or more employees will go bankrupt.Â Overall loss to the economy?Â 40% of the GDP this year?

Is there a better case?Â Sure.Â We contain COVID-19 in a month or so, and then call it good.Â We only lose 10% to 20% of our GDP this year, and government pumps five or six trillion dollars into the economy to juice it back up.Â Thatâ€™s the best case.Â And thatâ€™s just in the United States.

Iâ€™m not kidding, thatâ€™s how deep The Cliff is.Â If weâ€™re lucky.

Something, something, Dark SideÂ®.

Disillusionment

After the fall, things suck.Â We had heroes, but the time for Heroism is over.Â Disillusionment sets in when things donâ€™t snap back to normal.Â Things will seem rosy, only for failure to crush hope.Â The more government â€œhelpsâ€ during this phase, the worse recovery will be.Â Roosevelt â€œhelpedâ€ so much during the Great Depression that he extended it for years.

But politicians will take drastic steps, because they canâ€™t help themselves.Â The length of time Disillusionment lasts?Â Months to years.

Some re-assembly required.

Rebuilding

This is the other side of The Cliff.Â Whereas, as Seneca said you go down a cliff pretty quickly, you only build up slowly.Â Rebuilding the economy will take years.Â If we do it right, weâ€™ll build a stronger economy, less dependent upon foreign supply lines, that guarantees freedom while preserving the traditional values that built the wealth in the first place.

If done poorly?Â The system is controlled, oppressive, and coercive.Â Leaders matter, but the quality of the citizenry to fight back against the system is even more important.Â Rebuilding takes years, and by my best case scenario, four to eight years.

So, I guess Iâ€™ll get a jump start on rebuilding.Â Dishwashers on the Internet.Â Amazing.Â My only problem is that thereâ€™s this lady at work who keeps making suggestive comments and touching me all the time.Â Just a few minutes ago, she told me that she expects me to share a bed with her!Â They always told me not to get my honey where I got my money, but what happens when you work at home?

If . . . Then . . . The Two Words That Allow You To See The Future

â€œAnd so, Arthur, we learned that gambling is bad and yet in a certain sense, isn’t life itself a gamble? Â You can never be sure of anything. Â Like who would have thought that dolphins could go bad and that fish were magnetic? Â Not me, no sir, not me.â€ â€“ The Tick (Animated)

But you were expecting the Spanish Inquisition?

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is most famous for his 2007 book The Black Swan:Â The Impact of the Highly Improbable.Â Itâ€™s a great book â€“ I wish as many people read the book as bought it.Â Then they might have at least understood why home prices plummeted faster than Californiaâ€™s self-respect in 2008-09.Â Heck, if people would just retain a little bit of this book after they read it, theyâ€™d be better off than most MBAs.Â The title of the book comes from Taleb describing Europeans touching down in Australia, and seeing something that they never thought possible:Â a black swan.Â All European swans are white.Â Therefore?Â All swans are white.

Until you see a black one.

Taleb defined his â€œBlack Swanâ€ events as having some important characteristics:

Black Swans are extremely rare. Standard techniques (like normal probability distributions) will never predict them.
Black Swans have huge consequences.
Everybody looks at the Black Swan event (after having gone through it) and concluded it was obviously going to happen.

Iâ€™ll throw out one other idea to mix with Talebâ€™s Black Swan concept â€“ this one was from James P. Hoganâ€™s wonderful 1982 book (that Hogan says helped topple the Soviet Union, and he might be right – LINK) Voyage from Yesteryear.Â In this book, Hogan has a character talk about the difference between a phase change and a chemical reaction.Â When you freeze water or melt ice, itâ€™s just undergoing a phase change.Â Warm the ice up, and you get water.Â Make the water cold enough, and itâ€™ll change back.

Phase changes are simple and reversible.Â Itâ€™s only a matter of energy.Â But burn a piece of paper, and like the girl you had a crush on your freshman year in high school?Â Itâ€™s never coming back.Â Burning the paper is a one way trip.Â Itâ€™s a chemical reaction that you canâ€™t reverse.Â Or a restraining order in the case of the girl.Â It turns out they donâ€™t like you standing outside of their house holding a boom box over your head in real life.

In real life, John Cusack blocked me on TwitterÂ®.Â I probably deserved it.Â I just wanted my two dollars.

Changing the guard from Republican to Democrat and back to Republican is a phase change.Â Same stuff, different day.Â But the American Revolution?Â That was a chemical reaction â€“ after the war we could never go back to being British subjects â€“ the ideas of independence, freedom, and self-governance were too firmly rooted.Â 9/11 was another phase change.Â Despite Wâ€™s desire that we â€œgo on as normalâ€ we never have been normal again and conventional ideas of privacy, freedom, independence, and self-governance are dead.

Oops.

All Black Swans are chemical reactions â€“ they are irreversible, even though people expect a return to the â€œway things wereâ€ it never happens â€“ you canâ€™t unburn the paper.Â The change is a one-way event.Â In one (for me) particularly striking story in The Black Swan, Taleb wrote that his relatives from Lebanon were still waiting for things to return to normal, even though it had been thirty years since the war had ripped Lebanon apart.Â No, they werenâ€™t crack dealers, and they werenâ€™t alone.Â Even as late as 2012, 76,000 people were displaced within Lebanon, waiting for things to get back to normal.

Wuhan Flu, COVID-19, is a Black Swan.Â Itâ€™s not quick and immediate like Pearl Harbor or 9/11 or the Great PEZÂ® famine of 1986. Â Â This Black Swan is unfolding in slow motion across the economy and the world.Â When this is studied in classes in fifty years, the students will think it happened all at once, rather than unfolding, day-by-day over the course of a year.Â In a week, weâ€™ve gone from business as usual to shutting down restaurants.Â Itâ€™s the new normal.Â And yes, I said a year.Â Weâ€™ll be lucky if it doesnâ€™t last a decade.

A woman born at the beginning of the French Revolution would have already had kids by the time Napoleon was booted off stage permanently after Waterloo.Â But history teaches it like it happened during the two minute warning at a football game.

As Iâ€™ve written about before, the economy is facing a crisis thatâ€™s at least twice as big as the 2008 Great Recession.Â The stage was set beforehand for a phase change â€“ from functioning economy to recession and then back again.Â Trump had really juiced the economy in an unusual way:Â clearing out regulations.Â Sure, he pumped money back via tax cuts, but those tax cuts were targeted toward non-millionaire types and businesses.Â This was, perhaps, the most wholesome way to grow the economy â€“ by people making money rather than by government choosing who got to win.Â Bernie, Iâ€™m talking about you.

In due time, we would have had a recession anyway.Â Probably a big one, since the economic expansion has been going so long.Â But just like Wuhan isnâ€™t really the flu, this economic upset really isnâ€™t a recession â€“ itâ€™s far worse.Â DowÂ® 8,000 or less isnâ€™t out of the question on the downside.Â Really.

Itâ€™s that bad.

The government is going to take unusual actions.Â I mean, more unusual than usual.Â Today, it was floated to just start writing checks to most people.Â â€œMillionairesâ€ were excluded.Â Free health care will come on the table soon enough.Â We havenâ€™t even scratched the surface of whatâ€™s going to happen.Â And we will never go back to the way things were.Â This isnâ€™t a phase change.Â Like a board game that you let a toddler open, things just wonâ€™t go back in the box the same way, ever, and all of the pieces are covered in cookie/saliva mix.

Honestly, I donâ€™t miss toddlers, what with them trying to poison you or cut your brake lines or eating all the Cheeze-ItsÂ®.

Once upon a time, I got paid to think about disasters as a short time gig at a company I was working for.Â It was a lot of fun.Â I researched probabilities of things like civil wars and floods and tornadoes and visits from my ex-wife demonic manifestations.Â My life for those months included a LOT of surfing of doomer porn sites and thinking about how the world could go to hell.Â So, I guess that makes me sort-of a retired professional doomer.

And my thinking pattern developed a rhythm . . . If (generic disaster) happened, Then (outcome).

It was thinking about the outcome that was the most fun.Â If a tornado hit the headquarters, Then what?Â Well, based upon the statistics that I could find, it was an average wait of 500 years for a tornado to hit any given spot in the geographic region of the HQ.Â Even for someone as old as Ruth Buzzi Ginsburg, thatâ€™s not very often.Â I tracked down and tried to figure out how much money the company would lose if it got hit by a tornado, volcano, hurricane and earthquake all on the same day â€“ a Torcano Hurriquakeâ„¢.Â After researching with every department, it was concluded that we might not be able to collect on a few hundred thousand dollarsâ€™ worth of payments that people owed us.Â As this company was a multi-billion dollar company where the executives had BMWsÂ® that were designed to stop an RPG strike, that was less than the company spent on Featureless Grey WallpaperÂ® in a year.

Hey, everybody who thinks exactly alike gets a bonus, right?

They didnâ€™t think it was funny when I told them that a Civil War was 10 times as likely as a natural disaster shutting down operations.Â When I showed them the math, they couldnâ€™t argue, but they werenâ€™t happy.Â They didnâ€™t like it even more when I pointed out that they could afford to spend about $100 a year in disaster prep â€“ most of their systems already had offsite backups.Â And no one was even slightly interested in shooting RPGs at the executives.

What the executives were interested in was things that they were used to, floods.Â Torcanos. Hurriquakes.Â Civil War?Â Iâ€™m not sure I even brought up a pandemic, but they would probably have looked at me like I had six eyes.Â â€œJust not credible.â€

No Black Swan event is credible when you try to describe it to someone who is stuck in thinking normally.Â Just like Talebâ€™s relatives looking for stability in Lebanon or me wondering when TSA will stop fondling my man parts, itâ€™s not going to happen.Â But describe trying to get on a flight in 2020 to an American in 1995?Â Theyâ€™d think it was a silly science fiction story.Â If only we could convince the TSA to fondle Lebonese?

Which brings us back to COVID-19.Â How do you discuss it with someone who is stuck thinking normally?Â Itâ€™s difficult.Â Their minds arenâ€™t even playing in the zip code as people who prepare.Â But even to them, it is undeniable that things have changed.Â They just donâ€™t realize itâ€™s like herpes:Â forever.

When I went to school, school lunches were something to be avoided.Â The Lunch Ladies did their best with the USDA Approved sources of, I guess Iâ€™ll call it protein.Â Now, school food is deemed to be a requirement even when school is out of service.Â And they say that there isnâ€™t a hell.

Yes, it was just Spring Break, and the school kitchens were closed.Â And they close during summer, last I checked â€“ every summer.Â But now?Â School food is a must.Â Here in Modern Mayberry, theyâ€™re offering the school lunches for free to anyone who comes to pick them up.Â I think itâ€™s because at least someone in Washington pulled their head away from the bacon-wrapped-shrimp trough long enough to realize that weâ€™re in trouble.Â One of the brighter ones probably had the following thought:

If (Lunches are Free) Then (How Long Until They Become Free Community Lunches)?

If (Free Community Lunches Exist) Then (How Many People Remember Typhoid Mary Was A Lunch Lady Cook who spent 30 years in prison isolation because she wouldnâ€™t stop killing people by infecting them with typhus cooking?).

Oops.

If you cook them too long, they get all crunchy.

Schools are being closed.Â This, in my opinion is good.Â But If (Schools Close) Then (Are Daycares Any Safer?)Â Your takeaway should be this question: Â how long until daycares are closed?Â If they can close the NBA, Then they can close daycares.Â But I repeat myself.

What can you do?Â The best time to prepare was last month.Â The next best time to prepare is now.Â I canâ€™t tell you if you have enough cans of corn in your pantry.Â And, no, thatâ€™s not a creepy metaphor referring to some orifice you may or may not have.Â I mean actual corn.Â Or tuna.Â Still not a metaphor.Â Or mayonnaise.Â Whatever you normally eat, you have some extra, right?

As of now, the supermarkets are functioning.

If (Supermarkets Close) Then (what)?Â The average supermarket used to have inventory for three days.Â The average house, food enough for three days.Â Â Add that up, and American is pretty close to being hungry.Â What happens Then?Â Martial law?Â Food distributions?

If (Your Job Ceases to Exist) Then (what)?

Thatâ€™s the key to preparing yourself, not only physically like those people building blanket forts with a semi-load of toilet paper in their basement as structural wall material, but also mentally.Â To understand whatâ€™s going on, to be one step ahead, you have to imagine what could happen.Â You have to let your mind make it real and run it to a logical conclusion.

Then you have to see if it makes sense.

Okay, not everything bad can happen.Â I mean, cats with thumbs?Â Silly.

When an idea makes sense, follow it through. Â If so, Then whatâ€™s the consequence?Â Donâ€™t limit your thinking.Â Itâ€™s a fun game.Â Sure, sometimes it ends up in global thermonuclear war, but so did The Terminatorâ„¢, and look how much fun that was.Â But when you really think about it, youâ€™ll look to see what happened in the past.Â While the future wonâ€™t look exactly like the past, it will rhyme.Â The cause and effect of many things doesnâ€™t change.

If weâ€™re quarantining, Then we wonâ€™t drive as much.Â If we donâ€™t drive as much, Then we wonâ€™t use as much of that sweet, sweet gasoline.Â If we donâ€™t use as much of that sweet, sweet, gasoline, Then the price of oil, refineries, and oil producing companies will drop and some will go out of business and lots of people will lose their jobs.Â Thatâ€™s exactly what happened last week, and will happen in the next month.

If.

Then.

COVID-19 wasnâ€™t in my projections â€“ I was expecting cake.Â It wasnâ€™t in the mindset of the people of the world.Â Then it was.Â So what happens next?Â What chains will snap, further unraveling our civilization?Â What changes will be permanent?

If you want to keep your doctors alive, Then how will you protect them from COVID-19?
If you want to save the people with the most future, Then how many over 40 will get one of the 60,000 ventilators? Besides me, I mean.
If your customers are being impacted, Then will they fail?
If your customers fail, Then who will pay you?
If government wants to control people and how they move, Then theyâ€™ll start using the tracking information from cell phones.
If the government tracks cell phones, Then why would they ever stop? About the time they stop touching your no-no areas so you can go to Cleveland?
If the clerk at Wal-MartÂ® tells you that â€œtheyâ€ have been telling her to have a minimum of two weeks of food, Then will you listen?
If you hear from another Wal-MartÂ© employee that they are setting up special hours for employees to shop after the store is closed, Then will you pay attention?
If the government starts paying people just to breath, Then will they ever stop?
If I tell you that hope is not a plan, Then will you . . . plan?

We are in a Black Swan event, probably the biggest of your life, and 9/11 was no slouch.Â Neither I, nor anyone else can tell you exactly what the future will bring.Â But as I mentioned in my last post, the universe is a harsh grader.Â The final exam is pass/fail.Â And passing means you live.

Until the next exam.

If.

Then.