Category: Elon Musk Week

Tesla: Overvalued, But Pays For The Best Space Program On Earth

“You guys taking it all in? Because this is what it looks like when Google acquires your company for over 200 million dollars. Look:  Dustin Moskovitz. Elon Musk. Eric Schmidt. I mean, Kid Rock is the poorest person here.” – Silicon Valley

I hear Elon Musk’s car insurance premiums are astronomical.

I’m a fan of Elon Musk.  Singlehandedly, he’s shown that even though getting to space is very, very hard, that he can do it.  Beyond that, when working with NASA®, they noted that working with SpaceX™ they accomplished in a month what would normally take NASA™ a year.  NASA® kept saying the work was too Falcon Heavy.

Musk has also proven that if you focus on getting things into space, you can do it.  NASA® gave up on getting things into space right after Von Braun died and is now a jobs program that hires gender and grievance studies majors.  I’m not kidding.  Really.

Instead of, oh, going into space, NASA© chases imaginary offensive names of astronomical features (NASA© corroborates this here – LINK).  From the press release:  “The Agency will be working with diversity, inclusion, and equity experts in the astronomical and physical sciences to provide guidance and recommendations for other nicknames and terms for review.”

If Elon Musk’s wife breaks up with him while he’s on Mars, will that make her his Space X?

Because that’s the important thing, right?  We don’t want people thinking of the Eskimo Nebula or Siamese Twins Nebula.  Because . . . colonialism?  I forget.  Is there a scorecard I could download?

One thing I’ve been fairly consistent about, though, is that Elon Musk’s car company, Tesla® is a scam.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great scam.  I’ve heard that the cars are wonderful.  And from a speed standpoint, the Tesla™ can go from 0-60mph (that’s 27.39 parsec per eon) nearly as fast as any car on the planet.

But the price of Tesla®, even after losing 25% of its value in the last few days, is ludicrous.  Tesla’s™ market cap is $307.7 billion dollars.  Volkswagen® is worth $77.5 billion, Toyota™ is worth $210.8, and Ford™ is worth $27.5 billion.  So, if Elon looked under his couch cushions for some spare change, he could trade Tesla™ for VW®, Toyota©, and Ford™.

But at least communism means always having enough to eat, right?

Is Tesla® a good company?  Sure.  But Tesla™ made 367,000 cars last year.  Ford©, Toyota® and VW™ combined made 27,000,000 cars.  That’s nearly 74 times the number of cars that Tesla® makes.

I think most people have invested in Tesla® because Elon Musk gets things done.  And, it amuses me that Elon Musk takes the money he’s earned from Tesla™ to work on arguably the best space program since Apollo, back when NASA™ had real engineers working on real engineering problems and done it in his spare time.

Tesla® is a symptom.

I hear that Coronavirus symptoms start right off the bat.

When money is flooded into a market by bankers looking to prop the market up, it flows oddly.  The faster the flow?  The bigger the imbalances.  When people are rushing to put money into the market, they look for the shiny objects.  One of the shiny objects in this case is Tesla®.  There are others.  Dozens of them.

It is my theory that the entire market is filled with imbalances right now.  The money that was flooding in to prop the market up is leaking everywhere.  Reasons don’t matter.  That’s the way that markets work over the short term.  Silly things happen – you’ve seen it earlier this year with toilet paper.  What I’m saying is that, yes, Tesla® is just like the toilet paper of the stock market.

The best way to steal a Tesla® is to put it on auto-pirate.

The Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020 was just that – markets working in a panic.  The world is ending, so what do I do?  Make sure that I can poop in comfort.  Like getting into a war with Italy as one of your allies, it’s not a great strategy, but is a strategy.  In mid-late 2020, the market is flooded with money, attempting to buy whatever looks best and prettiest.

Just like the TP 2020 Terror®, the Reinflation Bubble of 2020© isn’t at all rational.  And, like Tesla™ lost 25% of market value in a few days?  It’s my theory that will happen across the whole market.  Note – I’m not a financial advisor, so use the advice of a random guy on the Internet as just that.  I pulled my money from the market, mostly, in February.  After that, I’ve been spending my time collecting the three precious metals:  gold, silver, and lead.

As I get older, I’ve discovered a simple truth – I have no idea if my kids will enjoy getting shares of Tesla® when I die.  But I do know that if they each got a suitcase of untrackable gold and silver, half a dozen rifles and a few thousand rounds of ammo at my funeral, they’d smile.

My buddy Ty won a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics®.  China won’t give him the medal because they won’t recognize Ty won.

I know this column is short, but I stared at that last line for about an hour and wouldn’t change a word.  Not a bad place to end.  Let’s call it a day.  I know that NASA already has . . . .

Investing? Invest In Yourself.

“If M.A.D starts making gold out of lead, it will undermine the world economy!” – Inspector Gadget

CAT

I invested in a series of walking trails for mental patients, but it failed.  I guess Psycho-Paths® was a bad name.

By the time the stock market crashed to signal the beginning of the Great Depression, the economy of the United States had already gone through an amazing decade of change.  Electrification was moving rapidly across the country, and prisons could finally retire the acoustic chair.  Radio was a miracle that was now bringing masses of people together as the radio waves propagated across the country at the speed of light.  Natural gas, long a nuisance in the oil patch, was being piped and compressed and shipped across larger areas of the country, bringing instant heat (and some explosions, since they hadn’t added the stuff that makes it smell bad yet) to millions.

Perhaps one of the biggest dislocations was that horses were rapidly being replaced by cars and trucks.  The economy was being motorized.  Some have even come to the conclusion that part of the dislocation in the economy was that the millions of horses required to plow, move freight, and move people weren’t required anymore, leading to an oversupply of horses.  That’s not a situation that lasts long – the oversupply of horses, can, um, be solved.  I mean, too many horses for the barns?  That’s un-stable.

But if once the oversupply of horses is solved what about the oversupply of food for the horses?

Well, what are they going to do with all of that farmland, now suddenly made even more productive through the addition of tractors and cheaply made nitrogen fertilizer?

Produce more.  Which drives prices down.  Which leads to . . .

Deflationary depression.

AMISH

It’s hard for the Amish to travel – their system is a little buggy.

I would say that “for the want of a horse, and economy was lost,” but in hindsight the real problem was the bankers.  The bankers during the 1920’s and 1930’s even developed the first birth control – their personality.  The Federal Reserve Bank® (which is neither part of the government nor really a bank) managed to destroy the economy through poor currency manipulation choices.

Part of the secret of the efficiency of market economies is that there is no controller telling people to start restaurants or PEZ® vineyards or bikini ranches.  The feedback from the economy is measured in customers buying the product, and if the product is good enough, profit encourages people to make it.

The flip side of that is business failure.  I originally wrote that was the down side.  It’s not.  Businesses, in a normal economy, that can’t produce a viable product should fail.  Note that I’m forced to write in a normal economy.  2020 has created the situation where tens of thousands (I’m not exaggerating) of businesses have failed due to the restrictions from the reactions to COVID-19.  It’s even been an international problem – Finland closed their border.  No one will cross the Finnish line.

COVID

The riots in Detroit don’t get many news stories, but I heard the rioters there have caused $20 million in improvements.

That’s not normal, of course.  Hair styling places are failing in the more restrictive states.  In Modern Mayberry?  Not so much.  But in San Francisco?  You can’t get your hair styled, unless you’re Nancy Pelosi.  I guess that the rules prohibiting business operation are only for common people.  St. Nancy can go in and get a cut and a blow dry when no one else can.  Sadly, Nancy wasn’t wearing a mask, which was the only positive thing about CoronaChan since the whole thing started.

In normal times, business thrive or fail, and both of those things lead to a stronger overall economy.  The services and goods that aren’t wanted anymore go away, like Beanie Babies®.  Thank Heavens.  But in these times of artificial economic crisis?  Good, strong businesses fail.

Regardless of the type of crisis we have now, it is upon us.  Whether or not the business would have failed is irrelevant.  The only real question is what happens next.

One thing that is sure, the economy after this crisis passes won’t look like it used to.

I’ve posted about possible good investments in the past – if I were betting, I’d bet that gold in ten years would be a better bet than Netflix® or Tesla™, even if Tesla© starts its own religion, and builds Elon Mosques.  But who knows what the economy will even look like after this crisis?  I can’t guarantee any of it.

TESLA

I hear that Space-X has designed electric grass for Mars.  They call it E-lawn.

So what to invest in?

Yourself.

Time is potentially quite short.  How should you invest your time?  In yourself.

There are so many skills that are required of a human.  PowerPoint® is probably not really high on them, so I wouldn’t spend much time there.

The first place I’d begin to prepare is mental.  In the United States, we have become very used to the most modern conveniences.  Air conditioning when it’s hot.  Central heat when it’s cold.  Even in Modern Mayberry, day or night I can go and get gasoline, a gallon of milk, and some beef jerky.  Fast Internet that allows me to stream a television show that’s been off the air for nearly 20 years.

What happens when you don’t have those things for a day?  A week?  A month?  When you’re used to being able to see what the temperature is in Moscow, Manila, Manhattan or Manchester, what happens when the weather becomes a mystery?

At least Biden can hide his own Easter eggs.

When you’re used to seeing real-time riots in Kenosha or Portland, what happens when you don’t know what’s happening in your own city?

I’m not saying that’s going to happen – the Internet is robust, and the systems we have built for delivering milk, gas, electricity and natural gas have redundancy.

But still, these things are possible.

Have you put your mind in a place where they have happened?  What would you do?  I mean, if your spouse convinces you to go to a psychiatrist, will your couch talk you out of it again?

After the mind, invest in your body.  If you’re out of shape, get in better shape.  Anything will help.  Get out and run.  If you can’t run, walk.  Being able to count on your body is always good – and if you’ve been neglecting it because of work, it’s time to pay back that debt, with interest.  I am fortunate enough to already have the body of an athlete already – a sumo wrestler.

Hmmm.  Maybe I need some work, too.

SUMO

I got a sumo wrestler for Christmas one year.  I had asked for a heavy sweater.

What other ways can you invest in yourself?  There are thousands of skills that are valuable, no matter what the future brings.  Can you do basic medical care?  I’m not asking if you can sew up a lung, but can you clean a flesh wound?  Do you have Band-Aids® and Neosporin™ for a year or two?  Iodine?  All of that is cheap and available now.  Will it be in six months?

The Mrs. bought a book on medicinal plants that showed up the other day.  I was surprised that it didn’t list thyme as a remedy – I heard that thyme cures all wounds.  What kind of books do you keep?

Can you garden?  Annually, The Mrs. spends about $117.53 to grow about seven tomatoes.  I would make fun of that, but I would also say that The Mrs. has learned lots of ways to not grow tomatoes, too.  Her gardening knowledge is better than mine.  It’s a little late to invest in gardening this year, but it wouldn’t hurt to start to understand what it takes.  There’s a whole Internet.  Heck, you could practice by killing some houseplants, like I used to do.

This isn’t a bad time for a hobby.  What kind of hobby?

  • Lots of farms have auctions and I’ve seen farmer forges there.
  • Carpentry, with and without electricity.
  • Small engine repair. Small engines can do a great deal beyond weed eating.
  • Always easier when ammo isn’t so dear, but we are where we are.
  • Making wine or whiskey – both are great for barter, and legal to make in most places.
  • Fixing things around the house. When’s the last time you patched a leaky roof?

I could probably come up with a dozen more in ten more minutes, and I imagine the comments will fill up with them.  Again, in some circumstances, these are nothing more than hobbies, and if you pursue them with a local club or group, you’ll build more community in addition to building yourself.

Regardless of the future we will see, investing in yourself pays dividends.  Plus?  It’s always better to try to grow tomatoes and fail when failure is just results in a humorous story.

Money, Power, Politics, and Soros

“What’s the point of having power if you don’t abuse it?” – Dilbert

GOB

My superpower is hindsight.  But I can see that won’t help us now.

When I was a kid between the ages of 10 and 14, sometimes my dad would take me on his business trips.  They were always to the same city – the capital city of our state.  It was hours away, so it was quite an adventure.  Where I grew up there was exactly one elevator (in a two story building at the college) and one escalator (at the JCPenny®) building within a 130 mile radius from town.  We were so isolated that our Democrats were against communism all the way into the 1990s.

Did I mention I grew up in the sticks?

Pop Wilder was a small town banker, and sometimes the meetings in Capital City were at the Big Banks®, which were inevitably in huge skyscrapers.  It was quite a thrill going up into those buildings.  I’d sit in the lobby on the 20th floor, reading science fiction while Pop did whatever it was he was there for in the meeting room.  One bank in particular amazed me because the bathroom, on the 30th floor, had a full length clear window – you could stand up and pee and stare out at the city below.  There is probably a joke about Big Banks™ in there.  I’ll let you fill in that particular blank – this is a family blog.

These trips were fun.

BANKERS

I kept getting checks from the banks during the COVID-19 social isolation – the kept leaving me a loan.

But one trip, we went to visit the majority owner of the bank that Pop Wilder ran.  I recall this trip rather vividly, since we didn’t go to one of those gleaming towers.  Pop pulled the car into a strip mall.  Not a nice strip mall, but a dingy one in a sketchy area of town.  Pop never talked about why he was having those meetings, so I wasn’t exactly sure why we were there.  Perhaps he was going to sell me for a kid that didn’t keep his room in a condition that was specifically listed as containing elements of a war crime as defined by the United Nations?

Pop and I went up to one of those unmarked doors you see sometimes – just a steel door with a small diamond of glass about head high.  You could tell it was a classy area, because the glass was the kind with the wire mesh inside.  There was a buzzer next to the door, and Pop pressed it.

A voice answered, “Who is it?”

“Pop Wilder.”  The lock on the door made an angry buzzing sound and Pop pulled the door open.  We went up a flight of stairs – this particular strip mall doorway led to a second floor.

MAFIA

The Mafia chemist wanted the brake lines to rust – that way it would look like an oxidant.

I hadn’t seen any mob movies at the age of 12, but after watching them when I got older, the office had that feel.  Run down.  Dingy.  Like the world had passed this neighborhood by on its way to making those gleaming towers that were miles away in the downtown area.

A secretary (they were called that, back then) didn’t say much more than, “He’s waiting.”

I walked into the office with Pop.  The office had a feeling that I associate with movies from the 1940s or 1950s – dark, smoky paneling, a thin, worn carpet.  Even the desk was ancient, but not in the “oh, cool antique” way, but in the “early prison work camp warden furniture” way.

The man Pop was planning to meet sat behind the desk.  He didn’t get up as we entered.  His only acknowledgement that we were there was a glance, like an annoyed man staring at what was on the bottom of his shoe.  He looked, and I kid you not, exactly like Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life.  So I’ll call him that.  After reviewing information on the Internet, I’d estimate his age at that time as about 85.

Pop Wilder:  “Hello, Mr. Potter.  This is my son, John.  I mean, my other son, John.”

Pop didn’t really say that, but it amuses me to write it, since my older brother’s name was John as well.  I guess he was Juan one, and I was Juan two.

Mr. Potter’s gaze fell upon me.  It wasn’t pleasant.  Normally, when I met an adult, they at least pretended to be interested and would ask some questions and make small talk.  Not Mr. Potter.

“Hi,” I said, more to break the silence than anything.

He never said a word to me.  Pop Wilder handed me the keys to the car, and said, “You can go wait outside, son.”  That was fine with me – I had a book.

POTTER

Bad puns?  That’s how eye roll.

Mr. Potter, as I mentioned, was the majority owner of the bank that Pop ran.  Pop and his brother owned a fairly small amount of the shares, but Mr. Potter owned the vast majority of the bank.  From snippets between my parents in those conversations that last the length of a childhood, it turns out that Mr. Potter was far more than an angry bank owner working from a shabby office.  He was actually a kingmaker in state politics.  He was a Democrat, and no one got “the nod” unless he approved.  He had spent decades of his life building up connections with every important person in state politics.

In today’s terms, the big, shining gleaming banks had Money, billions of dollars.  This was the sort of Money that Mr. Potter didn’t have.  Sure, Mr. Potter had millions back when millions meant something, but Mr. Potter also had raw, naked Power.  Want to be governor?  He couldn’t guarantee it, but he could probably make sure it didn’t happen if you made him mad.

Money and Power are different things – most people equate them, but it’s not really so.  Elon Musk has Money, but he certainly lacks Power.  Yes, there’s another fill in the blank joke in there about Tesla™ and power.  If Elon Musk had Power?  They wouldn’t have closed his car factories due to WuFlu. Power is where the governor would have found some way that the factories were found to be “essential” businesses.  Real power is when the governor does what you want before you even ask.

Elon Musk has Money, but as only one out of 157 or so billionaires in California, he doesn’t have Power.  But he does have $46 billion dollars*, so don’t feel bad for him.  *That’s because it’s mainly in stock – a big Tesla™ crash, and it could be discharged.  See, I finally made that electrical joke.

SOROS

Soros was going to organize a riot of amputees, but he was worried it would get out of hand.

George Soros, on the other hand, only has a listed net worth of a little over $8 billion dollars.  But Soros has invested heavily in politics.  He’s created and funded a vast network of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that drive politics globally.  How many connections does Soros have?  According to Discover the Networks (LINK), which looks to understand who funds all of the Leftist organizations, Soros is associated in one way or another with 210 organizations that are hard Left.  How hard Left?  How about “Catholics for Choice”?  It’s like I created a group called “Muslims for Bacon”.

But $8 billion. That seems low.  Can you plot a Leftist overthrow on the cheap?  Not at all.  Soros has spent a staggering $32 billion on his foundations since 1984, including a recent transfer of $18 billion to his Open Society Foundation®.  Heck, it once took Jeff Bezos a whole month to make that kind of money.

George Soros is just like that Mr. Potter I met, but on a global scale.  Just a single one of his initiatives is active in over 120 countries in the world.

SOROS3

I heard that George Soros is the Lucky Charms™ evil twin – he’s tragically malicious.   

What drives that kind of raw lust for Power?  I mean, it must mean something to Soros, since he’s given away tens of billions of dollars to get it.  Soros gives us a clue in his own words in a book he wrote about his favorite subject, himself: “If truth be known, I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood.”  It’s no wonder that Soros looks like the evil Emperor from Star Wars™.

And what drove Mr. Potter?  I have no idea.  It wasn’t luxury – his office reminded me of the chief psychiatrist’s office at the asylum that all of those movie serial killers break out of.  Notoriety?  He had a very sparse Wikipedia page a decade ago – it’s gone.  So not that.  Philanthropy?  Nope, none I know of.

I am always concerned about the motives of people who seek Power over others.  Is it ego?  Is it insecurity?  Is it a genuine desire to help others?

Always remember what Mao said:  “Power flows from the barrel of a gun.”   You can have Money, but when Josef Stalin has the NKVD pick you up, you’ll learn quickly the difference between Money and Power.

SOROS2

Soros has evil lessons with Satan every week.  I have no idea what Soros charges.

While mentioning Money and Power I’d be leaving out one very important part of the equation if I just kept in terms of those two material concepts.

There is at least one other type of Power – and that’s Personal Power.  You can call it Spiritual, you can call it Virtue, or you can call it a dozen other names it goes by.  It’s the Power that comes from standing up for what’s right despite the storms that will come.  It’s telling your boss, “no” when he asks you to do what you know is unethical.  It’s standing up when everyone else in the world seems to be against you, but you know that you’re right.

I’d take that Power over any Power that Mr. Potter ever had.  And Soros? He may gain the whole world, but he’s already lost his soul.

Charles Peguy said, “Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.”  I think this was sometime before his last quote, “Germans, what Germans?” at the opening of the Battle of the Marne during World War I.

Tyranny seeks Money and Power.  Yet?

Freedom keeps winning.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: The Tsunami Begins, But You Knew That

“If we can stop him, we shall prevent the collapse of Western Civilization.  No pressure.” – Sherlock Holmes:  A Game of Shadows

CLOCK

I liked the ticking of the clock I got from the pawnshop, but in the end it was a second-hand emotion.

  1. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  2. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  3. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures.  Just in case.
  4. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  5. Open War.

In the first issue of the Civil War Weather Report, I put together ten steps to a new civil war.  I did not expect that on the one year anniversary of that first report we’d move from step 6 nearly to step 9.  Step 9. is, of course, two minutes to midnight.

We are very, very close.  I debated internally more than a bit whether we were at an 8. or a 9. this month.  I finally decided to stay at an 8., despite multiple jurisdictions doing everything but arming the rioting faction of the protest movement with automatic firearms and bullhorns that make them all sound like Gilbert Gottfried.  It is clear we are at least an 8., and you will see in the graphs section that our Wilder Violence Index has reached new highs.

In this issue:  Front Matter – You Knew Where This Was Going – Violence and Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Balkans or Caesar Might Be The Best Case Scenario – Links

Welcome to Issue 12 of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month.  I’ve created a page (Link) for links to all of the past issues.

You Knew Where This Was Going

The most popular posts on this site have been about the political state of the country.  The Civil War Weather Reports aren’t my usual form of post, but have proven to be very popular.  I’m sure it’s not just for graphs featuring bikinis.  Well, at least not only because of the bikinis.

I think the reason these posts are popular is simple:  many people could sense the fragile peak that it seems all of Western Civilization is perched on.  Whether it is a conscious review of the surrounding culture or just a feeling in the pit of the stomach when confronted with an outrageous news article, something’s just not right.  Society has been changing by increments over the years, but those changes are coming faster and faster and faster.

Claire Wolfe, the groundbreaking and iconic Freedom blogger said it very well at her place last week (LINK):

Each day I think I’ve processed the latest craziness enough to blog something coherent. Useful even. But then new waves of craziness wash over the world. I don’t know what to say. I can’t write good sense against the onslaught of the crazy. I don’t know how civilization is holding together under tsunamis of crazy.

But then, of course civilization isn’t holding together — and I’m not just talking about the one-two punch of totalitarian don’tleaveyourhouseism followed without pause by riotandlootallyouwantism.

Chains of rapid-fire events and chaos like this are not generally the friend of those that love freedom.  The Russian Revolution promised:

  • Peace, through ending World War I,
  • Food, because Communists are well known to produce excess food,
  • Land, whereby peasants would get parts of land owned by the wealthy,
  • Minimum wages,
  • Maximum working hours,
  • Running factories by elected worker representatives and
  • Lots of other promises.

In the end, up to 12,000,000 people (mainly civilians) died in the civil war that followed, and the promises that were made were largely ignored.  The Bolsheviks said and promised anything to get a force of disaffected behind them.  Not sure if this sounds familiar to AOC fans?

LENIN

Hey girl, are you the French Revolution?  Because I keep imagining you sans-culottes.

I get a sense that the Left today is up to the same trick.  They’ve “created” media events and have managed them to get power – political power and power in the street.  Some of the Leftists may even be stupid enough to believe that there are magic economic levers that they can move to keep the promises they’re making.  In reality, they really don’t care:  it’s all about the power.

Lenin’s reintroduction into Russia and subsequent funding from foreign sources bring George Soros to mind.  Soros continually funds groups in the United States that are directly opposed to actual freedom.  The protesters and their associated rioters have a structure that has been funded and provisioned with everything from water and medical supplies to pre-staged bricks and gasoline.  Not saying that George is funding those directly, but . . .

More on that, below.

Violence and Censorship Update

No politician has ever captured the attention of the Left like Donald Trump.  They hated Reagan, and George W. Bush was famous for “stealing” an election.  But something about Trump drives them nearly crazy enough to try to get a job.  The media’s portrayal of Trump as the anti-ChristObama, perhaps?

The violence, of course, is plain for anyone reading any news to see.  It’s not in just the United States:  these protests have been coordinated across nearly every Western nation.  If the protests had been confined to Minnesota, I could buy the idea that they were organic.  And to the extent that they are peaceful gatherings to seek political redress?  I celebrate them.

LOOT

It’s not looting, it’s just an involuntary clearance sale.

But to flash across the world with violence and destruction?  That takes amplification and organization and is clearly the seed of revolution against the West.

The amplification of the signal comes from both mainstream and social media.  Whereas the original death that started the protests was (rightly) exposed, the subsequent deaths of protesters, rioters, and innocent civilians hasn’t been mentioned much at all.  How many dead?

I’m not sure.  This should be a fairly easy number to get to, but I’ve seen numbers between 12 and 18.  Absent media tracking, I’m not sure how you’ll count them up.  If we wait long enough, I’m sure they’ll all be counted and attributed to COVID-19.  To add to the butcher’s bill, thousands have been injured.

Regardless, I have seen, at minimum tens of millions of dollars in damage.  I would expect the number to increase to hundreds of millions, at least.  A fire is, as I write this, blazing in downtown Phoenix.  Odds that it’s related to the rest of the violence?  Nearly 100%.

Censorship is on the rise, as well.  I already spouted off on that last week (Free Speech: Endangered Species – WRSA is Down) in response to Western Rifle Shooters Association being shut down (You Can Find Him Here).  I expect to see that it will be on the increase during the next six months – the election is too important to the Left to leave it in Biden’s hands – chances are good he might wander off to try to buy a rotary phone at Montgomery Wards™.

Updated Civil War II Index

The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time.  They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings.  As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that lead to the index.  On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

May was again a difficult month.  I had to re-scale the graph on violence as this month nearly pegged every meter.  I will assure my faithful readers that I spent extra time this month finding just the right bikini-clad girl, since I want to at least reach the journalistic integrity standards of the Washington Post®.

Violence:

VIOLF

Up is more violent.  Violence had been down because everyone was stuck in the basement.  I predicted that May would be mellow, and then we’d see the uptick in June.  I was almost right.

Political Instability:

POLF

Up is more unstable.  Instability is up only slightly, which might seem weird, but the system is still stable overall.  I may look into another graph next month to measure political change, because it sure feels like we crossed over into a regime where big political changes are more likely – and this graph was meant more about the overthrow of a sitting president, hence the peak in December.

Economic:

ECON2

Down indicates worse economic conditions, and it’s down yet again.  I did change the basis somewhat for this month.  Previously it had been a spot measurement, but this shows more a relative measurement from a baseline.  But did you come for that, or for the bikini?

Illegal Aliens:

BORDF

Down is good, in theory.  This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol.  Down, probably related to WuFlu.  Until Mexico’s economy collapses. Then what?  Regardless, this is at a nearly five-year low.

Balkans or Caesar Might Be The Best Case Scenario

I’ve written both about the idea of the United States breaking up into regional governments that run either as autonomous countries, or close enough to autonomous that it doesn’t matter.  This irritates Right-thinking folks “behind the lines” in Leftist states.  They clearly don’t like the idea of being left behind in a People’s Republic of California or the New York Soviet Oblast.  I can understand that, especially since the divide is so much more rural/urban than on a state by state basis and the Right just wants to be left alone.

Being Balkanized remains a possibility, and probably guarantees border wars for decades unless we put up a big, beautiful wall around California.

I have, over time, began to think it’s much more likely that the nonsense will continue until a strongman arrives and proclaims that he’s “President for the Duration of the Continuing National Emergency.”  I certainly don’t think Trump is this person.  Biden is even less this person.  But some Cuomo or other acting as Wall Street’s puppet?  I could see that being more likely.  If we had a military hero of some stature, that would also make sense.

Maybe Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos?

BEZOS

I guess Jeff divorced his wife because she was past her Prime™?

Is having a Caesar that bad?  Absolutely.  But a strongman will try to have to have some sort of legitimacy and will at least (in theory) have some desire to keep a relatively strong country together to turn over to his children.  The old forms of government will be nodded to.  The Senate may not have power, but there will be Senators pretending to have power.

Not good, especially since that pesky Constitution will be entirely ignored, rather than mostly ignored like it is today.  But Caesar’s United States probably more peaceful than a Balkanized America.

But there is one possibility that scares me more than either of those:  Soviet America.  The riots that started nine days ago (yes, it’s only been that long) appear to be the Left making the first push into creating violence to go along with our economic issues and the lingering Coronavirus.  I brought up the Russian Revolution earlier, because that more than anything is what this latest round of violence feels like:  violence, in part funded and provoked by a foreign enemy with the aim of destabilizing America and making people welcome those who promise what they never can really provide.

Links

links

From Hank:

Sheriff Thinks 4Chan meme (Boogaloo Bois) is real.

From The Mrs.:

Soviet America?  (Great article behind WSJ paywall).

Description of Russian Leftists from the article:

“The idea was that since they knew the theory, they were morally superior and they should be in charge, and that there was something fundamentally wrong with the world when ‘practical’ people were. So what you take from your education would be the ideology that would justify this kind of activity—justify it because the wrong people have the power, and you should have it. You don’t feel like you’re the establishment.”

These are from Ricky this month:

And a few others:

Twitter® shows Mayor with at least some backbone

Saker on Unz.

American Factory and Thoughts on the Future American Economy

“China is here, Mr. Burton. The Chang Sing, the Wing Kong?  They’ve been fighting for centuries.” – Big Trouble in Little China

CAMO

I mean, the camo looks so good, maybe they wanted to show it off?

I watched the documentary American Factory this weekend, and it seemed like a good jumping off point to discuss several topics – globalization, employment, and Jenga®.  In 2008, the General Motors® plant in Dayton, Ohio was closed during GM’s© bankruptcy.  According to American Factory (now streaming on Netflix®), 10,000 people in the Dayton area lost their jobs when the factory closed.  In this current climate, I’m trying to come up with more unemployment jokes, but they all need work.

Fast forward to 2016, and a Chinese company, Fuyao Glass America®, started a new business making windshields for cars in the old GM© plant.  Fuyao bought the empty factory and spent on the order of $500 million dollars setting up the glass factory.  Then Fuyao brought hundreds of Chinese supervisors over to start the facility and train the American workers.  This makes sense – you don’t want to come across an ocean and have an employee like me when I sold used cars.  One customer, looking at a minivan, asked me, “Cargo space?”

I answered, “Car no fly.  Car go road.”  Obviously that didn’t go very well.

One of these Chinese supervisors mentioned that he was committed to stay for two years.  This was a father of two, and he’d receive no extra pay for being away from his family.  The Chinese supervisors were sleeping four to an apartment with furniture from the offices supplies aisle at Wal-Mart™.  Living with a roommate is tough.  One roommate suggested I had schizophrenia.  The joke was on him – I didn’t even have a roommate.

POSTER

Poster from the documentary.  That’s it.  No joke.  Move along.

Clips from workers talking as they were just starting their work at Fuyao made it clear that the Fuyao jobs were nowhere near the pay of the GM© jobs:  At GM™, one worker made about $29 an hour in quality control until the plant closed.  In the new Fuyao plant, she made less than $13 an hour.  I talked to a local dog breeder about a summer job for Pugsley.  She said that she only paid in expensive pure-bred puppies.  Pugsley thought about it, and decided it was income-petable.

And the work is tougher than the GM® work was.  The temperature in some parts of the production area was 200°F, or about 63 kilograms.  One worker spent over an hour a shift in ten minute increments in that heat in the furnace room, and the plant safety guy was trying to figure out how to keep him from overheating.  But that level of heat had a plus side:  during the filming I saw two hobbits throw a ring in the furnace room.

What surprised me was that the Chinese gave such access to the people making the documentary.  They caught candid moments with the Fuyao founder, Cao Dewang, (called simply “Chairman Cao”) throughout the documentary.  There were moments where he was clearly doubtful, arrogant, or out of touch.  We all have those moments, but most of the time billionaires try to avoid looking stupid in public.  I mean, except Elon Musk.

ELON

I kid.  I actually admire Mr. Musk, who seems to be able to do what NASA forgot.  Fly people into space.

On starting the plant, production levels were described as “low” so Fuyao took the step of sending several of its plant supervisors to China.  The clash of cultures was obvious at the start of the documentary, but it was during the sequence in China that really showed the difference in the way Americans and Chinese do business.

The conflict started at the first meeting.  All of the Chinese business people were in suits.  Most of the Americans were in jeans and t-shirts – one of them was wearing a Jaws® movie t-shirt.  In what was probably pretty embarrassing for the Americans, in the next scene you see them wearing Fuyao company logo polo shirts.  How did that conversation go?  “Excuse me, perhaps you would be more comfortable in a new company polo shirt and not your mustard-covered t-shirt advertising a forty year old movie?”

But it was far, far beyond just the informal dress that’s common with line supervisors in a factory.  One sequence showed all of the employees singing the corporate anthem.  Another showed line production employees in a line, yelling out productivity slogans and propaganda like Marines responding to R. Lee Ermey when he was a drill instructor.

LUNCH

They were all out of bat.

One of the American supervisors (who had learned Chinese) was bad-mouthing his employees to a Chinese supervisor.  To me, the American supervisor came across as someone who would do anything to make the Chinese like him – he was a suck-up.  After one negative comment about his own team, the Chinese supervisor said, “You should all be united and concentrate your efforts.”  It was a subtle but nuclear insult – the Chinese supervisor was slamming the American for not being united with his own workers.  And the Chinese supervisor was right.

KIM

So, refresh the page.  Am I still dead?

And working in China sounds as bad as I’d expected.  Workers typically only get one or two days off a month – a five day work week hasn’t made it to China yet.  The workers also work 12 hour shifts.  The Chinese want their workers engaged in the company.

In fact, the American supervisors were there for the company annual Chinese New Year party, where the show was put on entirely by the employees.  And as for engaged?  There were several marriages performed at the company party.  One of the Americans was so overcome with the sense of belonging around him that he was as emotional as a teenage girl watching Titanic.  Me?  I like my emotions like I like my beer.  Bottled.

A quick trip through the Fuyao workers union (which is also the company’s communist party headquarters) showed that the division between company, country, party, and worker is non-existent.  The Chinese are certain that they are superior to Americans – several times in the film this is stated by Chinese people on camera.  But they are also very proud of being Chinese – when Chairman Cao was talking to his Chinese employees in America, he told that that no matter where they go, or where they are buried, that first and foremost they will always be Chinese.

China is nationalist, (mostly) ethnically homogeneous, and unambiguously pro-Chinese at the expense of everyone else on the planet.  Work is for the government and the party.  Why are the Muslims in China in reeducation camps?  Because Islam isn’t Chinese.  China is a country built on unity and Islam isn’t on the menu.  And if you’re not on board?

SOUP

Literally.   

Next, Fuyao fired the plant manager when production and profits were too low, but it was probably the lawsuits on safety that sent him over the top.  The plant manager had been an American – they replaced him with a Chinese guy.  I’ve actually seen this in real life in one company I did business with.  When things weren’t going well, the owners fired the American and replaced him with a person from their country.  I mean, if you’re going to yell at the guy, you probably don’t want to do it through a translator.

The documentary ended with increasing tensions ahead of a vote to bring in a union.

I’m torn.  Nearly every union person I’ve ever worked with has been the opposite of what I see on television.  They’ve worked hard and with great skill.  But to listen to a labor organizer for a union talk makes me feel nothing but that I want to keep one hand on my wallet.  They have a sense of entitlement that seeks to make the worker feel that they are a victim, and to a certain mindset that’s an easy sell.  One person who early in the documentary had been so thankful to have a job, any job, had now put himself in the role of a victim at a union meeting.  Heck, in America we even have unions for pirates – but their claims always end up in arrrrbitration.

As noted above, safety and adherence to American laws wasn’t really a Chinese priority, at least at first.  But with the union vote on the line, the Chinese gave a $2 per hour raise across the board and the Plant Manager committed to solving most problems in just one day.  The plant workers voted to reject becoming unionized, by a 2-1 landslide.  After that, the Chinese terminated several vocal union supporters, but since this wasn’t China, that wasn’t a literal termination.

Some thoughts that this movie brought out:

  • The Chinese like being Chinese, and like being around Chinese people. They don’t have much use for everybody else on the planet except economically.  I’m sure they keep visiting the United States to measure to make sure that their stuff will fit.
  • A factory worker used to be able to support a family as a sole breadwinner. The same can be said of the skilled trades.  Immigration (illegal and legal) destroyed this because demand for jobs didn’t increase, while numbers of workers did.  “Greedy” factory owners get blamed, but the reality is open borders means all jobs that don’t require certificates or diplomas are under pressure from about several billion people willing to do it cheaper, especially if it can be done over the phone by “Bob” from Bangladesh.
  • Every union worker I’ve worked with has been awesome. Every union organizer I’ve ever seen on a documentary has reminded me of a conman.
  • This documentary showed the aftermath of the outsourcing of American manufacturing, a transition that has been ongoing since 1995.
  • The next economic transition is upon us. The new jobs that will be created are going to be quite a bit different than the ones disappearing.
  • The Mrs.’ Grandmother would offer her a shiny nickel to rub her corns. There’s a job that won’t be taken away soon.
  • The documentary ended with discussions on how the Chinese were trying to automate the factory even more – replacing workers with robots. It was less than thirty seconds of the documentary and the equivalent of writing something at the end of the essay that you wanted to write about but forgot.  Given Chinese recent history with something as simple as eating bats, I imagine that automation will turn into automated killer robots that will kill all of humanity.  But, hey, productivity is up!!!

VARMINT

I purchased some suspenders a few weeks ago.  Pugsley immediately pounced.  “Want me to get your varmint rifle, Pa?”

I’d like to think that globalization is doomed, however I read a story two weeks ago about a surgical mask and protective equipment maker in Dallas.  During the Swine Flu wave back in 2012, the owner had expanded capacity to meet with demand.  What did the buyers do after the rush?  They went back to sourcing from China.  The owner was left with high unemployment insurance cost and new equipment that he had to pay for even though it was unused.

This time, the owner was more than happy to expand production, but he’d only do it on a long-term contract.  Last I heard?  No takers.

But nah, I’m sure that we’ll figure out that at least partially, globalization was what made our economy so fragile that a virus could cause it to collapse like a Jenga® game played by a drunk Michael J. Fox.

Celebrate National Blame Someone Else Day With A True Story About The Cat and I In A Duel To The Death* (*Death Not Included)

“Blame Canada!  Blame Canada!  It seems that everything’s gone wrong since Canada came along.  Blame Canada!  Blame Canada!” – South Park:  Bigger, Longer, and Uncut

CONNERY

God Shave the Queen.

In honor of National It’s Somebody Else’s Fault Day (the first Friday the 13th of the year, and no, I’m not making this up, it’s an actual holiday), I provide the following true story that happened to me last week:

It started with the cat.

Actually, our cat.  The Family Wilder has a cat.  Sort of.  This particular cat started out, optimistically, as an inside cat.  When The Mrs. and Pugsley “found” it at the pet store and brought it home, I understood.  They were sad that we were catless.  Without cat.  Feline free.

We had previously had two cats, Cisco® and Frisco, but over time they disappeared when adventures that they were attempting went tragically wrong off screen.  The cats went out, and never came back.  That’s why I understood that they wanted another one, especially since Cisco© and Frisco were great cats.

Cisco® and Frisco were nice, polite, clean, and calm.  The Boy had named Cisco™ after our wifi router, which at least is better than naming the cat Ford Taurus®.  Frisco got his name because it rhymed with Cisco™.  I was okay with that.  Why was I okay with naming cats with names that sounded so much alike?  Because they’re cats, and I have learned that with long hours or intense focus and training, you can train a cat to do exactly what it was going to do anyway.

TOUCH

You could tell – he was always having hissy fits.

This new cat, Rory, was a mess from the start.  Instead of a bundle of fur and purr as a kitten, it was instead a bundle of hate and spite and peeing in the hall closet.  If Satan had a cat, it would be afraid of Rory.  So, we hung garlic ‘round the doors and crucifixes ‘round the window sashes and banished Rory to being an outside cat.

My family, however, has the weak will of the type that doesn’t allow people to tell Madonna that what talent she had left her just like Sean Penn did, and at the same time back in the 1940’s or whenever.  The Mrs. especially lets Rory in from time to time.  Either that or Rory has developed a ninja-like ability to flow through the shadows and silently through the doorway when we go in and out.  I don’t believe it’s a ninja since essentially it’s just a big orange rat.

RORY

The Mrs. buys Rory soft cat food, yet won’t allow me to buy him a trebuchet.

One morning, I was on a vacation day, and was alone in the house.

Or so I thought.

Inside there was also . . . Rory.  I saw it dart through the kitchen.  Rory avoids me because whenever I see it, I throw it out.  This is exactly what I decided to do right then and there when I saw it – throw it out.  I chased it, and it ran downstairs.  Since the kitchen has baby gates to keep The Mrs. barking-minions inside, I closed the baby gates to better corral Rory if it had the bad judgement to try and return upstairs.

After a few minutes Rory came back upstairs from the basement.  It ran into the dining room.  I got it to run out from under the dining table.  It was spooked, and was just a furry flash across the kitchen tile away from me.  Now, the first time Rory ran through the kitchen, the baby gate was open.  Not this time.

The maximum speed of a housecat is approximately thirty miles per hour.  This was the speed at which Rory ran head first into the bars of the now-closed baby gate.

The thunk of metal and skull attempting to occupy the same space was exactly as you’d expect.  If you’ve ever seen a cartoon cat run directly into a dirigible mooring tower owned by the Kaiser and then sit with stars orbiting around its head, well, this was exactly that.  Rory sat there, dazed, just long enough to tease me into thinking that I could catch him.

BABY

Okay, I couldn’t really see the stars, but I knew they were there.

Realizing the large bald man was still chasing him, Rory looked back at me through the haze of concussion and then jumped over the baby gate.

Or, it would have jumped over the baby gate had the stars not been obscuring its cat vision.  As Rory lept in the cat-addled state it found itself in, it didn’t jump quite high enough to clear the baby gate, and as a result, Rory’s back left leg got stuck in the bars of the baby gate.

If you’ve never seen a disoriented cat stuck half over a baby gate, well, you haven’t lived.  I’ll give you a hint – they’re rarely happy cats.  I tried to extract Rory from his predicament, despite having read what Mark Twain wrote about exactly this situation:

SHANIA

Okay, it was really Mark.  But he didn’t look this good in leather pants.

Trying to free a near-feral and likely demonic cat summoned from another dimension where Cthulhu slumbers until the stars are right for its terrible return is necessary.  Especially if said demonic cat has a hip that is stuck on the side of the baby gate opposite of the demonic cat head.

You may not realize it, but angry cats can be pointy even if you are holding on to them by the scruff of their neck.  For some reason, cats don’t like having a concussion and then wandering into a cat version of a torture device and then being lifted by their neck skin by the human that chased them into the concussion in the first place.

Go figure.

Did you realize that a cat can move its front leg just like Michael Phelps swimming through a bathtub filled with mayonnaise?  It can.  And did you know, that in addition to the four claws on the paw, that cats have a fifth one, sort of like a thumb a just behind the other four?

They do.

And as a cat swims that claw flail-ingly into the air trying to get free, that it can reach all the way back and connect to the hand holding it by the scruff of the neck?

When that claw entered the exact center of the back of my hand, it was connected to a cat.

The cat seemed to be bothered even more that, in addition to having a concussion and a nearly dislocated hip that it found its right paw paralyzed, because its claw was firmly stuck deep in the back of my hand.  What did the cat focus on?  Freeing the claw that was firmly stuck in the back of my hand.  Rory jerked his leg back and forth, but found that it the claw was still firm stuck in the leathery sheath that is my skin.  Inside the skin, the point of the claw sliced back and forth against all the internal bits, especially that internal tube that moves the blood into (or out of, I don’t have them labeled) my hand.

SCRATCH

He wore paw-jamas to bed.

I reached with my free hand and pulled the claw out of my flesh.  After freeing the claw I realized immediately that the claw was the only thing that had kept the blood on the inside of my body.  Freed of the stopper, immediately the rich, dark blood started gushing like Dracula’s Super-Soaker® at summer camp.  I took three quick steps to the sink, and turned on the faucet.  There I was confronted with a dilemma.  In one hand, I had a cat that was behaving like a jackhammer attached to a cactus.  In the other?  The water from the faucet was washing the amazingly large amount of blood away from my hand.  Whenever I pulled my hand away from the water?  Rivers of blood formed.  But I still had a cat attempting to imitate John Travolta being electrocuted in the other hand.  I was one hand short.

Without really thinking, I grabbed with the cat hand (as opposed to the blood hand) and grabbed at the paper towels.  Of course, they didn’t rip but instead the whole roll spun away on the tile, leaving me with a carpet of paper towel connected to the bunched up, blood soaked paper towel that I was holding to the back of my hand . . . with my cat hand.  Thankfully, the combination of paper towel and cat soaked up enough blood so that the path to the back door didn’t look like young Jack the Ripper’s path on the playground slide.

HAND

I really nailed woodshop in junior high.  I really liked the teacher, Coach Sevenfingers.

At the back door, I used my bloody hand to open the door, and threw Rory out with my paper towel hand.  I then slammed the door.

There was a sickening thud as the door attempted to close and then bounced back.

Oh, crap.  I had slammed the door, but I had slammed it on the cat.  I looked down, expecting to see an angry cat that was now paralyzed because I had inadvertently crushed his spine with the door.

No.

It was an oven mitt.  Even despite the blood, I was relieved to see it was an oven mitt and not the cat.

Somehow, in grabbing the paper towel to stop my house from looking like Hannibal Lecter’s kitchen, I had accidentally grabbed an oven mitt along with the paper towel, and partially threw the mitt out of the house when I attempted to give the cat an orbital velocity out of the house that Elon Musk would be proud of.

I looked down at my wrecked hand.

Amazingly, there was only one, tiny hole in the back of the hand after it stopped bleeding.  But the flesh on the back was swelling like Johnny Depp’s ego as I watched.  I got some more paper towel, soaked it in hydrogen peroxide, and elevated the hand and applied pressure so it didn’t swell to the size of Robert Downey, Junior’s ego.  I even (briefly) considered emailing my certified medical adviser, Aesop (LINK).  Instead, I remembered that this was (more or less) exactly the place where people got intravenous thingies put into their hand, so it would probably heal.

A week later, it’s still tender.

In honor of National It’s Somebody Else’s Fault Day, I blame Rory.  Your mileage may vary.

And I’m sticking to that story, just like a cat claw in the back of a hand.

Complacency, An English King, Elon Musk, and Bikinis

“Well, perhaps what we most needed was a kick in our complacency to prepare us for what lies ahead.” – Star Trek, TNG

dinos

Q:  Why can’t dinosaurs clap?  A:  They’re all dead.

Once upon a time The Mrs. and I bought a piece of bare land to build a house on, and not a Lego® one like they make in California.  The land was in a county that had (eye roll) rules about that sort of thing.  In order to get a permit to build the house, we had to have our land approved as a subdivision.  We did it the old fashioned way – we did it ourselves.  We prepared the relevant paperwork, hired the surveyor, and worked with the county zoning staff to present it to the Zoning Commission.  After discussing it at the meeting, and observing the property, the chairman of the commission stated:

“Mr. Wilder, the commission would like to reserve a 40’ foot strip of land along the north boundary to put in a road at some future point.  In your zoning packet, we’re going to add that you will deed us this land at no cost if we ever decide to build said road.”

That was over an acre.

The Commission Chairman must have seen the expression on my face.  I’ll admit it, I wasn’t pleased.  I felt, based on my law degree of “reading the Constitution” that this was a clear violation.  It was, I felt, a “taking” of my land with no compensation.  Even though I didn’t say a word, and wasn’t wearing a Gadsden Flag t-shirt, I think he knew right where my head was.

GADSDEN

Snek no lyke step.

“Now, Mr. Wilder, you understand that we as a Commission have a duty, a duty not only to those living here for today, but for those not living yet.  Why, this subdivision will be recorded and be in force for the next thousand years.”  I don’t recall the next sentence, because I really couldn’t believe what I had just heard.

The next thousand years?  Was he taking the same kind of drugs that Bernie does?

The Mrs. and I finished our turn at the podium for the meeting.  We left and went outside.  The Mrs. beat me to the punch.

“The next thousand years?  Was he serious???  What an idiot.”  We actually still joke about it to this day.  You would have been proud of her scoff when I read it to her tonight.  It was perfect.

We had both focused on the same sentence.  It was pompous.  It was self-important.  It was delusional.  It was . . . complacent.

The idea that the governance, the structure, or even a culture that respected property rights would follow a continuous path for a thousand years was deluded.  1,000 years ago, the Danes ruled Norway and England as well as Denmark under King Cnut (yes, that’s spelled right) the Great.  Ever hear of him?  Well let me tell you if you misspell his name just one time in an e-mail to Karen, you’ll have to spend an hour explaining old English history to HR so you can prove you really meant that Karen was displaying the wisdom that old King Cnut was cnown for.

knaren

Yeah, just like Karen, the Commission Chairman was a Cnut.

That more or less proves my point.  I doubt that the records of that subdivision named the “Free Autonomous Reserve Tract” will even exist in a thousand years.  It could be that whatever emerges from the nearly certain Musk Cat Girls on Mars© Uprising of 2257 or the Amazon™ slave rebellion of 2856 against Bezosclone4651 don’t destroy the records, but don’t bet on it.

Elon

Elon apparently has a different version of Cat Scratch Fever.

Expecting a county commission’s decisions to be relevant 1,000 years into the future was an outrageous example, but it proves the point I’m trying to make.  Often, we get so complacent in our day-to-day lives that we’re willing to believe incredible things that we normally would scoff at, like, oh, Joe Biden doesn’t have dementia.  I mean, it’s normal to answer the question, “What is your vision for health care?” with “I remember when it was polite for a man to call a woman a ham-handed yellow-teethed hammer soaker before you made sweet love to them in the back of your tree fort, I mean if you had a dozen or more.  Pinecones, right?  Those were the days when you could rub my legs and watch the hair spring back up and the wood elves would play music for hours on their nose harp.  Ever have a nose harp?  We did, but you could call women broads then, because they liked to get you coffee, what with the skirts and pantyhose and all.  Canada.  And if you don’t like it, you can damn well vote for that Reagan fellow.”

One way I choose topics to write about is I want to look at a subject I know something about, and then dig deeper.  My idea is that often one of the biggest dangers was well defined by Mark Twain:  “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”

It’s a shame Twain never learned to write properly and not use “ain’t” – maybe if he had his career would have gone somewhere like mine has.  Anyway, when I find a disconnect like Twain described, or new information that’s something that I like to write about.

But when I can find that same situation and tie it directly to a problem or situation in society today?

That’s perfect.

Okay, nearly perfect.  It has to be interesting, too.  The relative changes in the combustibility of dryer lint throughout the twentieth century might be not what you expected, but it’s probably not particularly interesting, unless you like to burn dryer lint as a hobby, which I hear is what Jeb Bush is into now, at least when it’s group craft time.

TWAIN

Okay, that’s actually “lightning and lightning bug.”  

I really like learning new things, and I learned something new today:  One thing I like writing about, and keep returning to as a nearly constant theme here is:  complacency.  It’s evident when I write about the economic system (Rome, Britain, and Money: Why You Can’t Find Fine China after the Apocalypse), or prepping (Be Prep-ared) or really nearly any topic I write about.  And I try to live by my advice.

In my life, I try not to be complacent about:

  • Relationships: Love is a voluntary choice.  Being complacent about those around you is a good way to lose a relationship, and that can be expensive.  But, for certain people, it’s worth it.  (That’s an ex-wife joke.)
  • Jobs: Jobs come and go, even within companies.  I have seen entire departments disappear as technology made people irrelevant.  Always be learning new skills, or at least be learning more about the “niece” of your boss.
  • Value of Money: When I was a boy, Bernie Sanders would shine a shinbone for a nickel.  Now?  I think he wants to expand Medicare to do that.
  • Economic Future: The stock market will always go up, right?  Well, no.  Sometimes
  • Limits of Human Knowledge: Much of what is science is a fad, to be replaced by new science in a few years.  Not so much with math.  Mostly not with physics.  Medicine?  75% of it is washing your hands and eating right.  20% is antibiotics.  5% is not step on snek.  And Aesop will change all of these percentages if he gets this far.

Wilder, Wealthy and Wise is absolutely against complacency.  I don’t like complacency.  I like finding places where it has snuck into my life or I see it sneaking into the lives of others.  I especially like sharing things that help people see complacency in their own lives, because then I don’t have to change anything about me.

That moment when I’ve written something, and I imagine that someone’s entire world view changed?

That moment is why I write, though some of you might say that for a writer, I’m a fairly competent typist.  Regardless, that’s the enjoyment I get from this, besides the jokes and the bikinis.  I want to create discomfort in me.  And in you.  And also be able to explain to The Mrs. why I spend so much time looking at bikini pictures.

“Research, dear.  It’s for my readers.”  Oh, the things I put myself through for you.

dogkini

At least it’s not another Kardashian.  But I think the dog has less hair.

Back to complacency.  When it comes to life and health, how often do you step back and question your basic, underlying assumptions?  If never, you should.  How often are they wrong?  If never, then you’re not testing them hard enough.

Assumptions change because circumstances change.  A forty year old metabolism isn’t the same as a twenty year old metabolism.  If you eat like you’re twenty when you’re forty and fifty, you’ll end up weighing 657 pounds and being buried in a piano box.  I guess the good part about that is “all the Oreos®,” and being able to dress convincingly as Jabba the Hut® at Halloween, but the downside is attractive slave girls cost more than you think.

Assumptions change because knowledge changes – we were wrong.  All of us.  Sugar used to be great for you, it was a carbohydrate, and those were good.  But fat?  Fat was bad, as bad as John Travolta acting in a movie that requires his character to be able to use words of more than one syllable bad.  Everyone knew that, and they were right.  But only about Travolta.  Companies even made fat-free cookies in special green packages so you could know that you were safe eating them.  But in 2020, we know that’s insanity.

Lkini

But I hear Darth Braider did her hair.

What circumstances have changed in your life that you need to account for?  What will be changing?

As for knowledge, what does “everyone know” that’s wrong today?  That’s tougher.  I think that the news about sugar (for instance) started to show up in more than “fad” levels about the year 2000, a good 20 years after the war on fat in food began.  Pay attention.  And if something seems too good to be true, it probably isn’t.

Complacency.  Heck, I’ve made mistakes.

Probably enough for 1,000 years.  Just ask Karen.  She’s quite a Cnut.

Dangit.  It’s HR again.  FCUK©.

(FCUK™, of course is the British clothing brand “French Connection, UK®.”)

Silly.

The Coming Recession, Explained Using Six and a Half Bikinis.

“Well, just find yourself a man with a spotless genetic makeup and a really high tolerance for being second guessed and start pumping out the little uber Scullys.” – The X-Files

FIRST

After the next recession, most people will be on their feet in no time, after the bank repossesses the cars.

This wasn’t my originally planned topic. My originally planned topic was a discussion of PEZ® seed pricing mechanisms in 1850’s Great Britain, complete with discussion on how many orphans could be traded per bushel of finished PEZ™. Alas, I’ll have to return to that exciting topic some other time, since the world financial system seems to be imploding.

Okay, imploding isn’t the right word. And it really may not be as bad as it looks.

But today? It looks bad. Maybe not implosion bad, but I heard that some bankers had been discouraged. I guess they lost interest.

How bad could it be?

If it just stays at a financial level, the worst I would expect would be a W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Level 4 (Great Depression) in the United States, though it might hit a W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Level 5 (National Collapse) in China. You can read all about the W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Levels here (The Lighter Side of the Apocalypse) in an article praised by critics as “one of the best things ever written by a man with such questionable levels of personal hygiene, fashion sense, and grooming.”

In order to understand and guess at the future, let’s take a look at the past. The most recent past economic downturn was the Great Recession. What happened then?

sp500

As you can see from this chart, the S&P 500 experienced a big downturn right around the calf and knee area. Feel free to enlarge – just explain that the study of economics is really interesting.

Several things: first, lowered interest rates and the idea that anyone could and should get a mortgage led to a massive mis-investment in housing. Part of the cause were things called stealing and looting mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations. I won’t go into technical details, but it was a way that Harvard® educated MBAs convinced themselves that a strawberry picker making $14,000 a year could afford a $720,000 mortgage (LINK). And, yes, this really happened.

Second, the world was awash in money after the Fed flooded the fields with money after the Dotcom Bubble. Where did that money go? Everywhere. Houses. And . . . oil. Oil prices skyrocketed during that time. Companies rented oil tankers and kept them full, sitting at sea, continually selling futures on the oil in the tanker. They made fortunes by pretending to sell oil. I know that sounds like I’m making an obscure joke, but no, that really happened.

The price of housing hit the financial system like a mousetrap on a cat’s tail. Or a cat with a mousetrap on its tail? Or . . . nevermind. People kept borrowing more on their houses as their houses appreciated. They spent that money on pickups and boats and child care and food and vacations. The people weren’t evil, but they thought that the value of their house could never go down, so the risk was small. Rational people, like bankers, were telling them this. Heck, some even invested in more houses so they could double or triple their magic ATM.

30year

This view of 30 year mortgage rates explains that there have been mortgage rates. Look closely, and you can see them.

Finally, one day the music stopped on the housing prices. Was there a cause in particular? Not really. But the market lost the one thing required to keep it afloat – belief. Every market rises as the beliefs of the participants overcomes the worry of loss. Wow, that sounded poetic and cool. But it’s also true.

In many ways, the stock market is a barometer not only of the actual underlying economic performance, but how people feel about the future. It keeps going up as long as people keep being optimistic and has proven to be a much better barometer of economic activity than the amount of leg hair I grow before each winter and then form into a nice, soft nest to sleep in when it gets cold.

crude

Crude oil prices had Exxon® jumping for joy in 2008!

One thing that brought the mood of people down in 2008 was the price of oil. In the midst of the recession that came from the housing bubble, the secondary oil bubble inflated. Prices increased more than double in a single year – from $70 per barrel to over $140 per barrel at the peak. Oil acts as a tax on everything to do with physical goods. To move a Tom Brady’s booty dinghy from where it’s made in by incontinent baboons in Romania to his rump mechanic in Massachusetts requires energy – energy from oil.

So that’s the “why” for 2008. How does that relate to today?

The Great Recession was brought about by an actual recession – things slowed down in the country because there were only so many houses that could be made. That’s different than today’s trouble. The stock market is tanking not because of a recession, but because the worry about Corona-Chan locking up the flow of physical goods from China. I wrote about that last week (Corona Virus, with a Slice of Recession?).

What have we seen so far?

stand

This was a pretty good miniseries documentary.

The stock market has decreased in value. In general, a stock price has two components – the first is the value of the factories and land and machinery that the company owns. This is boring, it’s like saying a Stradivarius violin worth less than a piece of firewood because the firewood weighs more – in the hands of a genius, the violin can make masterful music, though in the hands of my kids it just made me contemplate the positives of being deaf.

The second and often biggest component of value to a stock is the assumed growth of that stock. This is why older, boring stocks like Ford® are priced closer to the value of the assets they own – no one thinks that Ford™ will end up tripling in size in the next three years. There’s an ex-wife “tripling size in three years” joke, but I’m bigger than that.

But people do think that Tesla© can triple in size in three years. Therefore, people value Tesla™ more than Ford® even though it sells about six million cars a year and Tesla© sold only 370,000 cars in the last year. You’d think that Ford™ would be worth about 10 times what Tesla® is. But in reality, Ford© is valued at $28 billion, while Tesla™ is valued at $147 billion. Is Tesla™ really worth that much? That’s up to Tesla®. But give me $147 billion and I bet I could sell 380,000 cars a year, too. And they would be pretty neat ones and they wouldn’t look like they were designed by a third grader with limited imagination.

cyber

Elon took a lot of heat for the Cyber Truck design, primarily because it looks like something that no human would buy. Thankfully, Elon’s next advance will be robotic customers.

Tesla© has convinced people it is almost six times more valuable than Ford©. That’s what I call optimism. Or a con, but at least a con for a good cause (Elon Musk: The Man Who Sold Mars).

Since the stock market is based on optimism, this latest decline in February of 2020 shows that investors are shaken. The world hasn’t (yet) changed but the implications are now becoming concerning enough to cause the market to drop. Is this going to be a big drop, like in 2008, or another head fake?

I can’t be sure. But I do know that this seems like a good time to trot out what I learned the last time the economy went south.

Lesson One:

Market bubbles aren’t rational. Companies rise faster and farther in a bubble without regard to, well, anything. Uber®, which is basically “Taxi App” is worth $61 billion dollars, which is more than Elon Musk spends in a typical year on hair plugs. Uber© lost $8.5 billion dollars last year while generating tons of bad publicity because its founder is a douche and it treats drivers worse than Mongolian bull milkers. There are tons of companies just like Uber™, and all with an idea that they’ll “disrupt” segments of society. Essentially, disrupting involves an app, a smart phone, and booting someone out of a job. Some are, I assume, legitimate ideas that will be profitable in the future. Others are like GoPro™, which is (in Karl Denninger’s words) just “camera on a stick.”

I heard someone call this the Disruption Bubble, and it’s as good a name as any to describe the distortions and irrational money flows as everyone tries to find the next Amazon™, Facebook© or Google®. In a real panic, stupidly valued things like Uber® deflate, and deflate quickly. But companies that are really worth something will fall in value, too.

The best time to buy a company is when it is cheap. It will never be cheaper than when people are panicking like Godzilla® is hungry for Japanese take-out and orders Tokyo. Finding quality companies that are selling at a 90% discount is possible during a real panic.

Lesson Two:

When the market falls, investors have less money. But they still have bills. So what will they do? If this is like 2008, they’ll sell other things. What kinds of things? Cool cars will be cheap, but not everyone is in the market for a Lambo. But gold dropped, too. During 2008, gold went from $1000 per ounce to as low as $720.

gold

You can see the price of gold really drop around the shoulder area, and take off afterwards.

I can’t guarantee that gold will drop, but I’d be watching if you want to buy some – there might be a great opportunity to buy gold at a lower price than the current $1655 per ounce.

Lesson Three:

In past recessions, the interest rate that is charged for the 10 Year T-Bill generally dropped. Why? People wanted to get to a safer asset. That asset has generally been the dollar. The most likely candidates to replace the dollar were the Chinese whatever-they-call-it and the Euro. As China is now in the grip of Corona, it’s not a flight to safety. Every European country with a beach is thinking about dumping the Euro and exiting the EU so they can print wrapping paper and call it money, the Euro isn’t a great one, either. The Swiss Franc is kinda awesome, but they only make so many of those.

10year

Look closely and you can see that the Fed doesn’t have a lot of room to lower rates.

Nope. It’s the dollar. In times of economic uncertainty, the dollar will increase in value relative to other currencies. Does it make sense? Maybe? It seems that the world notices the Navy, Army, Marines, and all of those nuclear weapons and those make the banks in New York seem a bit more secure.

Expect that if this goes like 2008 for a while you can buy foreign stuff like a king. For grins I track the New Zealand dollar – it’s right now at its lowest value in five years. I bet it goes even lower soon, so sheep should be quite a bargain. Remember New Zealand’s national motto: “We’re not Australia.”

Don’t expect to find a great place to get a good yield anytime soon if Uncle Sam is paying less than a 1%, you’re not going to get even that good of a deal. Negative interest rates have already hit Europe, and there’s no reason they won’t hit the rest of the world. Investing in cash in mason jars buried in the backyard might be a good idea. Send me your map, and I’ll keep it safe.

Lesson Four:

No financial collapse looks the same. Each one of them is unique, and this one has been a long time in coming so, if it’s hitting right now, it could be really bad. Each of the above lessons might be wrong, so look for opportunities where you see them, not where an Internet humorist thinks they might be, no matter how charming and freshly showered he might be. Oh, if you have cash, it does no good if it’s in a bank that collapses. Just sayin’.

A friend of mine made the joke in 2008 that “when the tide goes out, you see who isn’t wearing a swimsuit.” There are vulnerabilities that very few people know about right now that will (in hindsight) become obvious in the days or years ahead. Just nod sagely and pretend like you expected it would happen all along. That’s what I’ll be doing.

Wildcards:

Desperate people sometimes do desperate things. As the Soviet Union collapsed, there was some small risk that an official decided he was better dead than not red, and pushed the button. That didn’t happen – in large part because by the time the Soviet Union collapsed, nobody believed in it anymore: it was as tired as Joe Biden’s campaign.

mankini

Okay, I’m sorry.

sorry

If China were to teeter near collapse, would they decide to launch a regional war to keep the people together so the nation didn’t collapse or fall into civil war? Hopefully not, but the chances of it happening are greater than zero. As you prepare for a world where there is a financial dislocation, don’t forget to prepare for a cultural dislocation as well. Buying food now when it’s cheap and easy to get doesn’t make you a hoarder – it makes you one less person who is drawing on system resources if things go bad. Preparing for bad times when times are good is a profoundly moral thing to do. But don’t forget to complain like everyone else.

Nobody likes a smug prepper.

Disclaimer:

Keep in mind, this is NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. I make fun of Johnny Depp and PEZ® and post pictures of girls in bikinis over economic graphs and am even writing this sober. Consult someone who has those credentials and maybe drinks martinis at lunch since that seems pretty swanky. Also, I don’t own any direct positions in any of the stocks discussed, and don’t plan on taking any positions in them (maybe ever), though I do own a Ford™ truck. I’m betting that maybe some of my 401k money is investing in, well, something and might include these stocks, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s just invested in magic beans?

Status, Money, and Bad Car Jokes

“Dude, where’s my car?” – Dude, Where’s My Car?

mercedes.jpg

I wonder if her Tiffany is twisted, too?

I recall reading a story about several wives at a kid’s soccer game in Dallas.  They were comparing cars – each of them had a new Mercedes® or similar luxury car.  One of the wives, exasperated, mentioned their really wealthy friend, Martha, who drove around in an older car.  “I wish I was as rich as Martha.  Then I wouldn’t have to drive a new car.”

It’s always fascinated me that there are people who feel that they have to spend money for appearances.  The Mrs. can vouch for that – it’s because of her vocal insistence that I spend money for deodorant, which I guess is like a Mercedes™, except Old Spice© is cheaper and costs much less to insure.

I know, I know, having to spend money to impress people is not a club I want to be in, but I find it interesting nevertheless.  After all, I’m in an even more exclusive club:  guys who want to be able to buy a pickup with a stick shift, a vinyl bench seat and rubber flooring instead of carpet.  As nearly as I can tell from the domestic pickup truck market, this particular club has one member.  Me.

The world seems to have gone into a mode that is based in luxury.  A few years ago, I visited a friend, Dave.  Dave had a new pickup truck.  As we drove around on a fairly warm day, I noticed that my butt was getting . . . cold.  That’s not something that normally happens to my butt by itself.  It turns out his pickup truck didn’t have just have heated seats, it had climate controlled seats that also got cold.

elon.jpg

I’m sure it has seats that cook you at 350°F or freeze you to -40°F.

I was amused – I didn’t even know that such a thing existed.  I hadn’t had my butt chilled for my pleasure before, except for that one time in Amsterdam.  Dave, however, didn’t buy the pickup because he was showing off or because he wanted specifically to chill my butt – he bought it because he wanted it.  And he probably paid cash.

Just kidding.  Dave probably wrote a check.

I wasn’t jealous of Dave’s truck.  It wasn’t something that I’d ever buy for myself.  My current daily driver is older than Pugsley, and has nearly 180,000 miles (3,500 kilograms) on it, and only 36,000 miles (45°C) on the latest oil change.  I’m wanting to keep it until it’s driven at least one light-second, which is 186,000 miles (63 meters).  Fingers crossed.  But I’m pretty sure I won’t get my car to the Moon – that’s 226,000 miles (5 liters), and I’m nearly certain my fuel pump will die again before then, plus Allstate® won’t insure translunar travel, I mean, at least not with full coverage.

neil.jpg

I’m sorry.  I Apollo-gize.  And, yes, I know that Neil never had a sweet ride like this one.

I’m not against spending money, but I think you should spend money like Fuzzy Pink Niven (Hugo® winning author Larry Niven’s wife) spends calories:

Potato chips, candy, whipped cream, or a hot fudge sundae may involve you, your dietician, your wardrobe, and other factors. But FP’s Law implies: Don’t eat soggy potato chips, or cheap candy, or fake whipped cream, or an inferior hot fudge sundae.

I think that advice on calories applies to many areas of life.  I have a budget of money.  There are things I have to buy, and have to spend it on – The Mrs. gets rather cranky if I don’t feed her.  Beyond those necessities, with any left over, I have a choice as to what I spend it on, and when I spend it.  Where Dave chooses to spend his on a really cool pickup truck, and a collection of pinball machines, my choices are different.

But those choices are mine, just like Dave’s choices are his.

florida.jpg

My ideal truck, complete with DIY garage!

Money represents potential.  It is the potential to create, the potential to build, the potential to serve.   In many ways, it represents the potential for future choices.

Time represents the potential for future choices as well.  We choose how to spend our money as if it is limited, but we choose to spend our time as if it’s unlimited?  Money comes and goes, but my budget of time is my life, measured in minutes and seconds.  Spending my time is nothing less than spending my life.  Just like a pickup seat determines how warm or cold our butts are, how we spend our time (and who we spend our time with) determines who we are.

butthead.jpg

Is it just me or does this picture of Beto O’Rourke look just a bit off?

Knowing this, go and make your choices today.

Because my butt is warm.  (That’s supposed to be motivational.)

Addictions – You Have Them. Now Laugh At Them.

“His breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted.” – Fight Club

airplane.jpg

Every day is the wrong day to give up Wilder.

It was the first day of third grade.  I was new to the class, and was nervous.  As I walked through the rows of desks, I felt very shy, apprehensive.  One third grader approached me.  He pointed at a girl sitting in the desk next to his.

“That’s my girlfriend.”

So many emotions.  There was a fierce determination, an aggression in his eyes.  I felt threatened, and I’ll admit, I panicked.  I balled up my fist and hit him.

The rest was a whirlwind.  I can’t remember anything after that until I looked at the face of the school nurse, who stared back at me with a shocked expression on her face.

“What did you do?  His jaw is broken!”

I guess I’ll never teach at that school again.

Okay.  That never happened, except on 4chan.

But I was involved with an elite paramilitary organization mentioned in Red Dawn where we went camping on a regular basis.  One rule of the Troop was that no cell phones went on the trip – in a tent full of boys there is NOTHING GOOD that happens with a cell phone on a campout.  So we left them home.

reddawn.jpg

Pictured working on their merit badge in Escape and Evasion.

Little kids didn’t care.  But eighth graders?  Cell phones had become a part of their lives.  I saw one particular scout become despondent for a whole campout, all from missing the connections he normally got from his phone.

He was addicted to it.  After a day, he was better.  But he was also very happy to get back to his phone.

There are many things in life that we can become addicted to.  There are the obvious ones that everyone thinks about when they use the term:  Alcohol.  Drugs.  Gambling.  Tobacco.  PEZ®.

The prime addiction from the Boy Scout’s phone was social media.  Much has been written about social media and its addictive effects.  All of social media is designed to be addictive and features are tested on a regular basis to make sure that it engages us, that it maximizes user interaction.  That maximizing user action breeds addiction.  But how it is addictive isn’t the point – the fact that it is as addictive as Mel Gibson movies is.

So, what do I mean by addiction?  Everyone thinks of a junkie shooting marijuana in his eye, but that’s overly simplistic, not to mention probably not what junkies do.  By addiction, I have a broader definition:  the psychological need for a substance of set of conditions that aren’t required for life.

You’re not really addicted to oxygen.  It’s required.  The Mrs. is a type one diabetic, which means that without insulin injections, she will die.  I used to kid with her, “Honey, when are you gonna realize it’s a problem?  You’ve got to kick that stuff.  Just say no.”

While I thought it was clever, The Mrs. was less than amused.  So I punched her and broke her jaw.

Again, I kid – The Mrs. has reflexes like a cat.  She also has a deceptively low center of gravity – very hard to push over.  But are there things that are beyond what we normally think about when we think about addiction?

Certainly.

How about . . . air conditioning.  I lived in Houston, and it was easily the most awful climatological experience in my life.  It was heat plus humidity – and when the wind hit you, it felt like the devil was breathing on me.  Plus I wilt like lettuce in the heat.

Having moved to Houston from Alaska, we paid roughly $422,721 a month in bills for electricity to cool our house.  Was it required?  Well, probably not.  People live, have lived, and do live in places much hotter than Houston without air conditioning.  I have no idea what kind of people, but people.

Dare I say it?  We were addicted to air conditioning.  We could have kept the house far hotter, and saved roughly the total cost of an aircraft carrier plus escort vessels during the two years we were there, but not enough to also get the extended warranty, which is really overrated with aircraft carriers.

Likewise, when we moved to Fairbanks, Alaska, we kept the house about 55-60°F (239°C) in winter when we moved there.  Since Alaskans build without regards to things like, oh, building codes, our home inspection found substantial work that needed to be done to prevent our garage from collapsing.  Really.  The seller had a local contractor doing the work after we had moved in.

“Where you folks from?”

We told him.

“No wonder you keep the house so hot.”  Yes.  He considered 55-60°F hot.

redgreen.jpg

Including the hat.  Our contractor looked exactly like Red Green.  I learned later that Fairbanks hosted a summer event called the Red Green River Regatta, sadly now discontinued.

So, in his eyes, we were addicted to hot homes.

But let’s swap to food:

What today is considered the bare minimum level for life today is, in reality, a greater degree of luxury than we’ve seen in nearly the entire history of mankind for a greater number of people.  Ever.  Are there crappy places to live?  Yes.  But the scene of the “refugee” in Tijuana saying that the beans and tortillas given to her by local people trying to provide help to her was “food for pigs” and that she might starve to death.

Given her size, that might take, oh, a decade or so.  The bad news is that she’s been deported from the United States and is, “very thankful to be back in Honduras.”  It’s sad – we really need more people who will assault other people with deadly weapons like Frijoles Lady did.  She’ll do the attempted murders Americans won’t.

illegal2.jpg

I guess she’s a lot like that alien, E.T.  She finally went home.

But the fact remains – we have people going across international borders because of . . . comfort.

What was it like in the past?

I did some research for a post once, and tried to figure out what medieval French peasants (called villeins, which translates from metric French to “Dave”) did in the wintertime in the year 1315.  The links that I was able to find described them as living in their mom’s basement eating pizza rolls and playing Red Dead Redemption 2 on Playstation®.  Just kidding!  The winter as a time of great poverty, and the families would essentially huddle under blankets in bed most of the winter to reduce food consumption, conserve warmth, and not die.

When you view today’s world through medieval eyes, nearly every person in the world has better winters than that, at least outside of the Democratic People’s Republics of Korea and California.  The example of the French also shows that we’re addicted to eating regularly.

lenin.jpg

Fasting was easy in the U.S.S.R.  Comrade Stalin was concerned about your health.

No.  You don’t need breakfast.  You don’t really need lunch.  The fact is, unless they have an unusual medical condition, lots of people voluntarily go for days without food with zero negative health consequences outside of a slightly looser waistband.  And the desire to tell everyone about it.

Are people who are fasting hungry?  Absolutely.  Is there a payoff?  Yes.  From personal experience, the first food you eat after four days without eating anything will be the best burger you had all year.

But the bigger point is this:  we live in a world of unparalleled luxury.

  • In the United States, we have the distinction of having our poorest people having access to so many calories that there seems to be a correlation (in some studies) that shows that poorer people are fatter. Whereas those French peasants had all the time in the world, and none of the food, poor in the United States have all of the time, and all of the food.  And Playstations®.
  • Virtually no one freezes to death, or dies from the heat. In fact, Pugsley sometimes walks around in workout shorts and a t-shirt (no socks!) and complain that the house is too cold.  He does this in winter and summer.  We keep our house ludicrously cold, like our hearts.
  • Most movies made in the last 40 years are available to you after a quick Internet search and a nominal fee. Nearly every book, ever (that we still have copies of), can be had instantly electronically.  Those in paper?  Might take two days.  I have a lot of books, and they’re everywhere around the house.  I guess you could say I have no shelf control.

I won’t say these things are dangerous luxuries.  But they are luxuries, luxuries that we often take for granted.  How long has it been since your power has been out?  How long since you huddled in a cold tent on a freezing winter’s night or sweating on a hot day with an endless noon Sun?

elonsad.jpg

But it’s okay, his butler will go get it.

How long since you went a single day without food?  How long since you went two days without it?

Our ancestors did all of these things, and more.  They called it “Tuesday.”  Well, not “Tuesday” since their language was a series of unintelligible grunts that sounded like tubas played by jabbering twits.

When we become addicted to and accustomed to luxury, it weakens us.  Constant luxury may weaken us physically, but addiction to it weakens us mentally.  Mental weakness screams that when we’re in a cold or dark house that it’s intolerable, even if it’s only mildly uncomfortable.

When we can meet adversity and understand that what won’t kill us, that being away from the Twitter®, Instagram™, and Facebook© might actually be good for us, and that sweating all day in a hot house without air conditioning is just tolerable discomfort?

Then we win.