Fight Club – Page 2 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Maybe The Kids Are Alright?

“We’re a generation of men raised by women. I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.” – Fight Club

The French love my generation. They say it has a certain Gen X sais quoi.

I can see what’s going on, I really can. To be fair, there are dozens of things, each day that I see that are signs of The Change. In many ways, The Change has been coming for decades, and has hit us harder than old age has hit Madonna.

Many of the changes we’ve seen are negative. I generally write about them on Mondays and Wednesdays. But Fridays? No. Because despite of all of the negatives that I see, I am as certain as the outcome of a vote if a Leftist is counting it that we will win.

What does winning mean? Well, it doesn’t mean that things will go back to “the way they were” – whatever that was. We won’t see that because those times are gone. The new good times will be different in many ways. Some I can guess because they’re inevitable, and some I can’t even fathom.

No, winning means a place for freedom and families and the things we associate with virtue. It doesn’t mean endless wealth, and it doesn’t mean endless amusement.

Why is Michael Jackson bad at bowling? He’s dead.

The big reason that this cannot last is because the current trend is the most unnatural and unstable in the history of humanity, with a few potential exceptions here and there that only lasted for a few decades.

This instability is in our favor. We can already see that the current boys in high school are fed up with Leftism and everything Woke. They’re done with it. They see that Leftism is poison. They’re rejecting it.

One reason is simple – it’s in the nature of youth to rebel. And, the Leftists having won so many battles are now The Man. They’re the ones the boys are rebelling against, and it’s glorious. The Leftists thought that when they took over and had the ability to control what went in the minds, that was the end of the story.

Yet, the Leftists still think they’re rebels working against the system when they manifestly are the system. The boys in school can see that, and they react accordingly, completely making those Leftists spitting out the propaganda go crazy. The Leftists are like like that guy who is in his forties and still is wearing his letter jacket because he wants the kids to think he’s cool. Now, based on every picture I’ve seen of every Leftist, the word “cool” isn’t remotely the first word I’d use to describe them. It’s not in the top 100. In reality, they fall somewhere lower than “turd stooge”.

The Three Stooges can do anything. They have Moementum.

This turns off the boys. Now, the girls are another subject altogether because the feminist imperative to teach the gospel of avoiding consequences of actions at all costs seems to resonate with them. In the turmoil to come, it’s the views of the boys that will matter the most.

The youth has also seen the fruits of Peak Leftism and are disgusted by it. Just like Gen X was shaped by the time they grew up in, being latchkey kids that learned from an early age to be independent, Gen Z is learning lessons about not trusting the government.

Their pivotal moment (so far) was the insane combination of COVID plus the Fentanyl Floyd riots. They see that their concept of “equal justice for all” has been tainted by racial politics to twist a system where punishment is based not on the crimes committed, but rather by the victim status of the alleged criminal.

Over three years, drug free!

How will that manifest? I think it will manifest in a deep distrust of the justice system, and I think that it will lead to, ahem, extrajudicial endings to criminal cases.

They’re also viewing the world and seeing it fall apart with cops that are prevented from arresting mobs looting stores week after week. As I believe white Gen Xers were propagandized to be the least racist generation in the history of humanity, I believe that white Gen Z kids will view race the same way black Gen Z kids will, with huge distrust.

The next thing in the mix is what hasn’t happened yet – the economic changes that are due. Just as there is a distrust being built up in the justice and governmental systems, there will be a distrust of money being created out of nothing. The system is going to, very soon, fail them in a spectacular way.

The economic changes will change them. We’ll still be able to send billions to the Ukraine, but it won’t matter because a billion won’t buy a Happy Meal®.

In the Ukraine it’s called corruption. In the United States we don’t talk about it.

Gen X was cynical. Gen Z will likely be a force of nature. If they aren’t the hard men, Gen Alpha will be. We’re that close, folks.

The pendulum is swinging back, and will swing back with a vengeance. We really have reached Peak Woke or Peak Clown World (honk honk!) and it’s here. I’ll see the start of The Change, but likely won’t live to see the next Golden Age.

That’s okay. I know it will be back, and I know this – there will be free men living on this world as long as there are men living on this world. There are ups and downs, but nothing is finished, this isn’t over.

We will win because we are strong. And we will win because for thousands of years we’ve been winning, and that won’t stop anytime soon, no matter how dark it looks outside right now.

Enjoy your day. It’s dark out, but the ending to this story will be glorious.

The Kids Aren’t Alright: Sex

“I don’t know much about geopolitics, but that is one cool name for a country: Chad.” – Norm Macdonald Live

Ever notice you never see Chad with Chad in Chad? Hmmm.

Technological change has been very difficult for the kids of today – it has changed entirely the way that they relate to each other, how they spend their time, how they are rewarded, and the very nature of the male-female relationship. Since I’m writing this post, it’s about as positive as Biden’s impact on the economy.

Of course, technology had changed the way that previous generations lived. When I was a kid, our entertainment on a Friday night was cruising main. We’d get in cars, and ride up and down the street, listening to loud music, revving engines.

Why?

To see each other. To find out what was going on. To meet girls. The girls would go to meet guys and chatter and drink some occasional peppermint schnapps snuck into a Big Gulp® cup. Often the girls and boys would do no more than flirt. Sometimes, though, well, more would happen.

This was an in-person interaction that was natural. The technology of the car and cruising Main were just minor adaptations of behavior that was certainly as old as the concept of the very first city – boys wanting to watch girls, and girls wanting to be watched.

Does mentioning cruising Main make you feel old yet?

This in-person interaction gave us the dopamine hits of the day. And, even at the breakneck speed of 25 miles an hour, there was an absolute limit to the number of boys a girl could see in a night of cruising Main of, maybe, a few dozen.

The reality is, of course, that we all have a finite number of choices of people to date (and mate) with. Cruising Main was a dance that was as old as time. In this dance, the woman offered her youth and beauty in return for the commitment of a good man. The man offered his commitment for the youth and beauty of a woman. And, when I was much younger, if I stayed up late enough I could watch it all on Cinemax® after my parents were asleep.

Those trades are, generally, good trades. They create a stable society, and provide a woman the chance to find, marry, have children with a man and raise them. Women tend to try to date and mate upwards in socio-economic status. Men? Well, you know.

Hey, derpy girls need love, too.

Now, for many, the meeting place is Tinder©. In Tinder™, women have infinite choices – they are the commodity to be possessed, and they swipe left or right, alternately accepting or rejecting hundreds of men in a minute. In this new bargain, the woman now trades her youth and beauty for endless one-night stands with Chad Tinderchuck. Example:

Chad always has a date, since girls always swipe to talk to him. In this, Chad ruins women. Chad’s a 10, but when it’s 2am at the bar, Chad’s fine with the average 4 or 5 or 6. In this way, that 4 (Flora Foura) thinks that, for the rest of her life, she deserves a Chad Tinderchuck in the prime of his life. She is a widow, forever pining for that man that she thinks she deserves. Don’t believe me?

Wait, is that a lunch lady from 1983? And she’s calling anyone mediocre???

The actual 5 or 6 guy Flora should be with? Well, after Chads marry and disappear, and younger Chads start ignoring her, she’s ready to “settle” for that 5 or 6 Andy Average. And, she’s angry about it every day that she sees Andy, since, deep down, Flora knows that she’s good enough for Chad.

But we’re seeing now that Andy Average isn’t quite so interested in Flora Foura after she’s spent her twenties on a revolving carousel of men, maybe picking up a child or two.

Let’s be fair – most of the things that most men do (especially young men) is to get quality females. If those aren’t available, Andy Average shuts down. Why work overtime when Xbox® is cheap? Why pump iron when Flora puts him on ignora?

¡Jeb! is always on ignora.

Men then go NEET – Not in Employment Education or Training. Why work hard? Why try to get great education? Why work at all? One segment of men has gone beyond MGTOW – they’ve gone full NPNW. I’ll let you sort out what NPNW means.

And who can blame men? When I was in high school, women liked men taking charge. Men were supposed to try, and women were supposed to put up a struggle so they didn’t feel like tramps. To be clear, I never engaged in any behavior that the young fräulein didn’t enthusiastically support, and when she said “stop” and meant it, I did.

It was well ingrained in women that they didn’t want to look like tramps, so they had to pretend they didn’t like or want to make out. Meat Loaf’s song trilogy Paradise by the Dashboard Light is a perfect description of a healthy sexual dynamic of the type that produced . . . me, and probably you, too.

We now live in a world of #MeToo. Russell Brand (who I don’t know because he doesn’t return either my emails or my calls) is being accused of, hear me out, having sex with (really!) a girl who wanted to have sex with him, who was (drumroll) of legal age. The cad! If a multimillionaire celebrity can be accused and lose a couple of million dollar a year of income for doing legal things, well, what chance does Andy Average have, especially since the average woman don’t need no man?

This is, perhaps the biggest lie. Women who don’t have children or a husband in their 40s are, perhaps, the unhappiest demographic on the planet. And, as I noted earlier, women want to marry up. The big paradox is women want to get a college degree (skip having children) and earn a lot of cash.

Women won’t marry men who make less than them, so they die childless and alone.

But, hey! At least they got to make cool PowerPoints™ between boxes of chardonnay and the trip to the vet for Sir Buggles Von Fancypants. I’m not exaggerating. Check this out:

When you sold your family, soul, and children for Internet likes.

Did I mention this is ruining the economy, the family structure, and the future?

The good news (for me) is that I wrote my notes on this post, and I’ve only touched a third of them. That means probably the next two Wednesday posts will be around this theme.

The bad news is that there are two more posts. As much as I’d like to say the kids are alright, they’re most definitely not. This has tremendous impacts on the near-term economy, as well as the future of the West.

But, hey, at least Biden’s still Building Back Better!

Oh. That didn’t age as well as a cat lady.

Unfrozen Caveman Interview

“Hey, business is business. You use a gun, I use a fountain pen what’s the difference? Let’s put it in my terms: you’re in a hostile takeover, you snatch us up for some green mail, but you’re not expecting some poison pill to be running around the building, am I right?” – Die Hard

Sorry I edited out Worf. He was such a prima Dorn-a.

I’m here with my friend, Coroc. Coroc was frozen in an accident in the year 5000 B.C. which may or may not have been related to the first recorded time a man said, “Oh, yeah? Hold my beer.”

Coroc was thawed after his body was found while a construction crew was excavating the foundations for a McDonald’s® that was being built in Kharkov. Coroc has since gotten a degree from Harvard® Law and an MBA from Wharton© and has also killed an elk with a pocket knife in the parking lot of a Wendy’s™. I’ve asked him for an interview so I could get in a few questions about his unique experiences in dealing with business and economic situations.

John Wilder (JW): Coroc, I image the world is much different than when you were frozen into a block of ice near Kharkov 7,000 years ago. What’s the best new invention that you’ve seen?

Coroc IceBeer (CI): PEZ®. It is a light and fruity brick of flavor that explodes in your mouth like Magorthath’s axe explodes the skulls of his feeble enemies. It makes me laugh, but not too much, for that is womanly.

JW: Your last name is IceBeer. Did you have beer back then?

Coroc: If we didn’t have beer, there would have been many maidens left unplowed, if you know what I mean. So, yes. Beer is, how you say, awesome, although I can assure you we would not have had any of that Bud Light™. We would rather have consumed the flat body of a badger that had been walked on by many horses and then left out on the ground for a week.

A crying Möbius strip walks into a bar, crying. The bartender asks, “What’s wrong?” The Möbius strip says, “Where do I even begin?”

JW: Whoa, that escalated quickly! Let’s change the subject a bit. When dealing with a middle manager that didn’t give you the appropriate chance for advancement, what did you do back then?

Coroc: This happened many times. When a leader was too old or feeble, we would simply say, “You, you are not fit to lead! Go and gather berries with the women or I will split your skull with my axe.” Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

JW: What happened if you fought?

Coroc: Well, depends on if you win or lose. Lose? No problem, since you were dead. Win? No problem, since you took his women, took his hut, and took his things. Only a real problem if his women were named Karen.

JW: Sounds violent.

Coroc: Yes, it was the original hostile takeover.

I don’t like sweeping. Floors are beneath me.

JW: Did people ever not have jobs?

Coroc: No. Everyone had a job. Need someone to go hunt? Yes. We always needed that. Need someone to go and fight the idiot tribe next door that wouldn’t turn their music down after eleven? Yes, men needed. Need someone to fish and drink beer? Yes. Always needed.

JW: What if someone didn’t want to help out?

Coroc: I don’t understand. I already told you about the hostile takeover.

JW: Let’s shift gears. Here in 2023, we have a complex economy that uses electronic ledgers to keep track of the movement of goods and services and the payment from one country to another. This is enforced with many central banks working together to balance the flow of currency from one country to another. How did you do that, Coroc?

Coroc: Crom. I thought 7,000 years would have made you people smarter. In my time, in Scythia, we had horses. We had women. Fiery, lusty women with big manes of blonde hair, massive thighs that they could crack walnuts with. Strong, birthing hips. We rode our horses, took our axes, and made piece with other tribes.

JW: Don’t you mean “peace” instead of “piece”?

Coroc: No. They gave us a piece. Simple. And no problem with Human Resources, since we treated every tribe exactly alike. And there was no corporate debt to worry about.

What do you call a heavy metal band with financial problems? Megadebt.

JW: When it came So you didn’t have to worry about interest rates?

Coroc: The only interest I had was in the rate my enemy would die so I could hear the lamentation of his women. I think that was our major metric on our KPI, the relative volume of the lamentation of the women.

JW: What about your stock market?

Coroc: It was pretty stable. You can only eat so much steak per day. We kept a close eye on our stocks.

JW: What was your retirement like?

Coroc: Retirement meant, mostly, hanging out with the gods once you died in battle. It was a pretty good plan, leave 5% of your lootings in a plan, get 2.5% tribal match. And there was free healthcare! If you had poor health, we didn’t care. See? Free. Simple.

JW: So, were you ever plagued by guilt over your colonizer attitude?

Coroc: (Sadly) Yes, we were sometimes feeling guilty of our ability as colonizers. There are only so many men that we could use to fight, so our ability to conquer even the feeble toothless enemies we had was limited. Why, some years we would only vanquish a few kingdoms and petty princelings.

Is the sculptor of his statue a Khan artist?

JW: Was there much poverty in your tribe?

Coroc: We had a great poverty prevention program. It was called starvation. Worked wonders.

JW: Last question, what about inflation? Did your tribe ever see inflation?

Coroc: Only under one leader who tried to make smooth round rocks currency. Worked horrible, pretty soon everyone was strong, though, infinite amount of small round rocks back in Scythia, so it was great leg day.

JW: What happened to that leader?

Coroc: Hostile takeover.

Through A Glass, Darkly-or-You Can’t Die Without Scars

“How much can you know yourself if you’ve never been in a fight? I don’t wanna die without any scars.” – Fight Club

Bach used to be a composer. I guess he’s now a decomposer.

I remember listening to the radio . . . you remember the radio, right? That’s where people take a part of the Internet and send it out using big towers and as many watts (ounce-inches per fortnight in non-commie units) of power as is used in the The Mrs.’ hairdryer so that this faint amount of energy can be picked up by a metal strip and then amplified a zillion times so you can rock out while cruising Main.

Sorry for the digression. I remember listening to the radio way back in the before time, and hearing a song that sounded pretty good. The singer mumbled most of it, but the big, brassy chorus of Born in the U.S.A. was pretty strong.

Made me feel good, made me think that in 1985 we were ready to unite as America. Then I finally made out the lyrics. Hmmm. After listening to them, I came to the (correct) conclusion that typical Leftist-Simp Bruce Springsteen was just another Leftist-Simp who made a bunch of money because he had a good chorus and everyone thought he was on America’s side.

I’ll leave you with this, “I’m embarrassed to be an American” – Bruce Springsteen, talking about Trump to Australians in 2016

I have not changed that position. If you like him, fine. You’re wrong. Springsteen is a tool.

Another song like that was All I Wanna Do by Sheryl Crow. When I first heard it, all I heard was they chorus, and figured it was some empty-headed pop song. Meh. I’ll skip it.

Then I listened to it. Wow. Deep. I was shocked. I thought it was vapid pop, but here was a song that had some soul, and talked about people drinking beer at noon on Tuesday in a bar because that’s all they have. The lyrics . . . “And a happy couple enters the bar, dangerously close to one another” is shocking – it jarred me because these people were a contrast to the gloom and despair on display in the bar.

Another one that I just found out about was Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonny Tyler. What’s it about? Vampires that want to share more than blood (wink wink). Honestly, I didn’t really care about this song ever, and still don’t, but like it a bit more now that I know that it’s just a bit weird.

Did she have to book a second ticket on the flight just for the hair?

Don’t even get me started on Squeeze Box by The Who® since when I heard it I was certain that it referred to a particularly musical family and even made the defense of the virtuousness of the song to a friend’s mother with all of the innocence of an entirely ignorant 10 year old who is smarter than he is experienced.

My Friend’s Mom: “That song . . . is that song about . . . sex?”

Young John Wilder: “No! That song is about a family and the mother has a concertina, an instrument played by compressing air and passing it through a series of reeds to make a melody like an accordion. She plays it and the house is filled with glorious music all night.”

My Friend’s Seventeen Year Old Sister, Butting In: “No. The song is totally about sex, Mom.”

Barbie? If you’re reading this? Yup, I got that one really wrong.

And don’t get me started on how badly I misunderstood Lola. I’m ashamed to say that I was over 21 before I got that joke. In my defense, that wasn’t a thing anywhere around Wilder Mountain, and the only burned-out old tranny I was familiar with was the one in my 1976 green GMC® truck.

Good news! It just needed a new clutch. Sometimes young drivers get a awkward and anxious and burn out clutch pads by popping the power too soon to the drive train.

I miss the days when working with a difficult tranny meant it was an automatic transmission.

Life, and experience, changes interpretation of events. Like a song, an experience may have one meaning when young, but yet another experience when older. The very experience of living life changes the message we get from those experiences. All through life “we see through a glass, darkly”, but as we age, we see the world differently.

That is natural. We age, we learn, we understand. Our innocence is, especially in 2023, horribly brief.

Cell phones and the Internet bring knowledge to children long before they can really come to grips with what they are seeing. In my age, a furtive glimpse at a Playboy® was how we gained forbidden knowledge. In 2023, 10-year-olds know all about Lola and are even taught in class that what once was forbidden is now exalted – there’s even a month for pride, yet not even an afternoon set aside for humility, but I guess if you’re Hunter Biden there’s a 20-minute plea bargain case with the DOJ.

So, I read today Hunter didn’t pay taxes on over six million dollars, and deducted the amount he spent on whores as business expenses. I wonder if he ever paid Lola?

Change is part of growing up. I am certainly not the person I was at 18, nor the person I was at 38. And wisdom has a price – innocence is free, but innocence is also harmless. As we grow and learn, we learn what is worth passing on, and what is worth fighting for.

I also believe this one weird thing, that this knowledge is not without structure. When I look back at the hard things, the difficult things, the things that seemed like a catastrophe at the time, all of those things led to better things as I grew up. I just had to live through them to understand.

My life will probably never go back to the simpler days. Like a character in a spy movie, I now know too much. But I can still, on a summer day, roll down the window and listen to a song and sing too loudly as I drive.

But it certainly won’t be Bruce Springsteen.

He’s a tool.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: National Divorce? Getting Closer.

“Dolores, I am making a citizen’s divorce.” – The Man with Two Brains

Big Alarm Clock is a conspiracy! Wake up people! (all non-regular memes are as-found)

Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
Open War.

I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom the same. Again. This is moving sideways, but things can unravel quickly. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – The National Divorce – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Silly Season – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue 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. Also, subscribe because you’ll join over 740 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

The National Divorce

I remember reading about research a while back that (my fuzzy memory says) indicated that when a married couple didn’t want to have a divorce, one of the easiest things they could do was not talk about a divorce. I guess that would mean that the first rule of staying married club is don’t talk about divorce club.

Marjorie Taylor Greene brought up the issue in a big way:

It’s a stark question: do we want to stay married, or not. Folks on the Internet followed suit, with this poll:

The Internet is what it is, and a poll like that isn’t at all scientific. But 19,000 people (75% of respondents) were done. They were ready to get lawyers, and decide how we get to split up California and Virginia and who got alternating weekends with Michigan.

A much more scientific poll was done by Rasmussen® (more on them later in this Issue) and it emerged that a majority of Republicans wanted out. 47%, plus an 11% who might be in favor, but they wanted to know if they could still get Netflix™ off of Uncle Tim’s account it he were stuck in a Blue State before they made up their mind.

Leftists are never in favor of making anything smaller, since it lowers their power. Remember, it is Leftists who are on the side of international and world governments. I’m pretty sure they’d love to include Mars, too, since it’s Red. This is shown in the poll below:

Fully a third of all people (based on Rasmussen’s™ report) are ready to check out. That’s a lot. Although Gallup® wasn’t around to do a poll, most literature I can find seems to indicate that only 1/3 of the folks living in the Colonies wanted the Revolution, so 1/3 is a big, big number.

I’ll add in this other (entirely unscientific) poll:

Again, unscientific, but it shows that there are a sizeable number of folks out there who believe that soldiers would, if ordered, shoot on American civilians. That’s another scary thought, and perhaps feeds back into the idea that people would much rather have a peaceful exit rather than a violent one.

I read that this year’s CPAC (Republican fanboy convention) was poorly attended, and lacking in energy. And why not? The most fervent people in the Republican party are done, and don’t trust the vote, and don’t think that their votes may ever matter again.

Spiderman®, though, seems to have an opinion:

Violence and Censorship Update

Cancelling really isn’t government censorship, but it’s censorship nevertheless. Scott Adams, noted cartoonist and author, really rustled the collective jimmies of the Left. Rasmussen™ had a poll about whether it was “okay to be white” and 47% of black people indicated that it was either not okay, or they weren’t sure.

Scott has a YouTube® channel (still!) where he talks about whatever he wants to talk about. In this, he opined that if that was the way that black people felt, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be around them. The following cartoon describes it in such a way that Scott retweeted it:

The outrage was both predictable, even though Scott noted that many black people he knew called him up and said that his stance was completely reasonable. Mr. Adams’ publisher dropped him. Mr. Adams’ cartoon syndicator dropped him. Mr. Adams’ agent . . . dropped him. His new book, due out in the fall? Cancelled.

I don’t feel bad for Scott, he knew what he was doing, and he has tens of millions of dollars. But what is it about that simple narrative that makes the Left explode? I’ll cover that in a future post.

The Silence of the Adams

It’s not violence now, but Illinois has now decided that most crimes short of murdering someone and taking selfies with the victim are now non-detainable. Burn someone’s house? Out without bail. Kill someone while high? Out without bail.

Florida. Sigh. Why? They want to make bloggers who write about elected officials register if they make money for their efforts. Is this the single stupidest thing to come out of Florida since they elected ¡Jeb!?

The publisher of Roald Dahl is going through his books an removing whatever they don’t like based on political correctness. No more “ugly” or “fat” or . . . black. Paging Scott Adams . . . These “corrections” are showing up in people’s previously purchased e-books, too. This is why physical media is good. And why I have lots of books.

It’s not censorship, exactly, when programmers prevent A.I. from coming to conclusions based on fact, but it’s close. There are certain facts that are inconvenient, like boys have xy chromosomes and girls have xx chromosomes, so programmers prevent A.I. from talking about that. Elon Musk says he’s going to do his own, non-woke A.I.

When the trains carrying ethyl-methyl-death crashed in East Palestine, it was a story that was minimized until it couldn’t be. I follow stories like this that are under the news, and was aware of it within a few hours of it happening. But the news? No reporting on it, since it didn’t impact Baltimore and had the potential to make the Biden administration look even worse than it normally looks.

Biden’s Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month . . . .

Yup, up again, and, like Kamala’s womb, this graph doesn’t eggs. Here’s a recap:

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 combine to become the index. On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Violence is still minimal right now. I’m betting it stays down until June at the earliest.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it was down a bit more. I think this is a conscious attempt to keep things together, Biden just came out in favor of “law and order”, because I think he saw it the show on cable.

Economic:

Economic numbers took a big dive this month, which surprised me. The numbers look fairly unstable from month to month, which still isn’t good.

Illegal Aliens:

The number took a big drop! Yay! Oh, it’s still higher than ever for that month. I’d say border is wide open, but we have no border.

So, when can we ask the Mexicans to leave?

The Silly Season

One way to deflect a story is to not tell it. The other way to deflect a story is to flood the media with, well, nonsense. My favorite this month? The Chinese Spy Balloon™. During World War II, the Japanese decided they would make Americans afraid. They launched 9,000 balloons filled with explosives at the United States. As near as I could find with an in-depth three-minute look, one exploded. Out of 9,000.

Ohhh, I’m so afraid.

I’m not sure what we’ve found out about the Chinese Spy Balloon©. I think that we’ll find out they were trying to check up on why Americans weren’t buying more extended warrantees based on those cell-phone calls. Since we haven’t heard anything, I’m think that it may actually have been a weather balloon. Regardless, they can solve their problem with just a little bit of camouflage that the United States would never shoot down:

Was this the story that they were attempting to distract us from?

It’s a scary one. Why do we need so may people? Why aren’t all the traditional people who would go into the military signing up? Oh, yeah. They’ve been told they’re racist. They’ve been told they have unearned privilege? They’ve seen the military force people to take the vaxx. And now they want them to sign up to fight?

What could be next?

LINKS

As usual, links this month are courtesy of Ricky. Thanks so much, Ricky!!

Bad Guys

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11761485/NYPD-release-images-four-brazen-thieves-staged-50-000-raid-Manhattan-Givenchy.html

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1628194739987046400

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1626367620151738375

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1626397252334809090

https://twitter.com/nofones2/status/1626369625314279426

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1626447147225718786

Good Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1621965430930669569

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1628225095893131264

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1627464538609139714

https://twitter.com/762sfuxk/status/1626379421065134080

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11735803/Armed-intruder-left-critical-condition-shot-neck-homeowner.html

One Guy

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11632047/Vigilante-killed-robber-Houston-restaurant-breaks-silence.html

Body Count

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11732497/More-48-000-Americans-committed-suicide-year-report-finds.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11711353/Seven-states-eye-legalizing-assisted-suicide-America.html

https://goodsciencing.com/covid/athletes-suffer-cardiac-arrest-die-after-covid-shot/

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/new-paper-an-estimated-13-million

https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/is-coincidence-now-the-leading-cause

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11738179/Still-think-secure-Joe-Moment-500-Venezuelan-migrants-walk-southern-border.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11730363/Biden-preparing-mass-deportations-non-Mexican-migrants-Mexico.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11733577/Map-shows-14-million-Americans-live-5-miles-cancer-gas-emitting-plants.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11776999/The-blanketed-fentanyl-NINEFOLD-rise-deadly-opioid-use-western-US.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11701187/Zombie-Nation-Shocking-images-lay-bare-Americas-drug-crisis.html

Vote Count

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11761979/Kari-Lake-vows-Arizona-gubernatorial-defeat-state-supreme-court.html

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/02/08/maricopa-heat-maps-the-story-keeps-getting-worse/

https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/15/everything-you-need-to-know-about-democrat-gov-tony-evers-bid-to-overhaul-wisconsin-elections/

https://alaskapublic.org/2023/02/17/launch-of-campaign-to-repeal-ranked-choice-voting-draws-a-crowd-in-anchorage/

https://raheemkassam.substack.com/p/fox-vs-dominion-discovery-docs-show

Civil War
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/keith-olbermann-calls-economic-civil-war-institute-gun-control

https://www.foxnews.com/media/olbermann-urges-blue-states-wage-economic-civil-war-red-states-starve-red-states-submission

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/internal-atf-docs-show-zero-tolerance-guidelines-shutting-down-gun-stores

https://www.carolinacoastonline.com/tideland_news/opinions/article_bec42134-ad30-11ed-979b-4365a8a67e62.html

https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/17/idaho-house-approves-talks-to-annex-oregon-counties/

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/lost-cause-2-0-desantis-and-republicans-inspired-by-racist-confederate-history-re-writes/

https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/newswire/gops-civil-war-republicans-confront-bitter-divide-no-clear-path-forward/

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/06/megadonor-gop-richard-elizabeth-uihlein-00081267

https://www.reformer.com/opinion/columnists/nicholas-boke-what-would-a-civil-war-look-like-anyway/article_c6beefac-aca1-11ed-9fa4-d74d7a722a44.html

https://sundayguardianlive.com/world/will-2022-witness-american-civil-war-2-0-will-happen-2024

https://news.uchicago.edu/us-headed-toward-another-civil-war-william-howell

https://www.businessinsider.com/mtg-defends-call-split-up-us-says-civil-war-looming-2023-2

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/marjorie-taylor-greenes-national-divorce-was-the-civil-war.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/marjorie-taylor-greene-secession-civil-war/673142/

https://www.theringer.com/2023/2/24/23613267/emasculation-proclamation-civil-war-ii

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/project-veritas-has-forced-out-james-okeefe.html

https://hard-drive.net/hd/technology/ken-burns-releases-4000-part-tiktok-series-on-the-civil-war/

Is The End Of The Road Nearly At Hand?

“If they have him, and they can somehow piece the country together, get communications up, they’ll control everything; the Federal Reserve, the military.” – The Last Ship

Where does the Fed® hide its monetary mistakes? In debasement.

Pa Wilder was a banker, and when we communicated via a while back, I’d send him long-ish messages about most everything. One time, I broached the economy with him. As a small farm banker with more than 50 years of experience, he was familiar with the way the system worked.

When I first heard that the Federal Reserve™ wasn’t owned by the government, but by the member banks, I asked him. I figured he’d tell me, “Nah, John, it’s really owned by the government, aliens aren’t real, go back to sleep – we won the war.” Nope. He then went through how each member bank was required to buy stock in the regional Federal Reserve Banks (as I recall) with at least 6% of their deposits.

Whoa. His bank owned a tiny part of the Federal Reserve Bank®. Certainly not much, but part of it. The Federal Reserve Bank© is a private institution. It was the 1913 mechanism to get the politicians out of the economy. The Great Depression shows how well it worked.

What do you call a talkative Colombian? Hablo Escobar.

After World War II, there was a time of relative stability – Europe and Japan were shattered, and the United States had industry that was just waiting to stop making weapons and start making washers. The sudden influx of labor with the demobilizing G.I.s made a combination for economic growth. After they drank the bars dry and made a zillion babies.

Even with the added costs of Social Security, it worked. The economy was working so well that we could build an interstate highway system without breaking a sweat. The highway system even added to the economic boom by lowering the cost and time required to move goods, effectively shrinking the country.

However, every good party has to end. Johnson’s Great Society and financing for the Vietnam War out of “money we just made up” caused Nixon to end the last tether between gold and the dollar. Sure, the Fed® had been cheating about the amount of cash it had been printing, but when the bluff was called, Nixon had the option of sending all our gold to France or saying “just kidding”.

He chose the latter. I think it was a good idea, because it wasn’t like France was going to do anything about it, anyway. The result was the petrodollar – the idea that all international transactions in oil would take place in dollars. That also resulted in almost all transactions taking place in the dollar. The inflation of the 1970s was the result – it was before we figured out how to tax the world by printing dollars in a sorta responsible way.

If I had a dime for every time I didn’t know what was going on, I’d say, “Hey, where did all these dimes come from?”

So, people all over the world needed dollars, even though we were printing them like we were, well, the Fed™. As long as the Soviet Union existed, there was a counterbalance to the United States, so at least there was some check. But after they went tango uniform?

That’s when the responsibility completely ended, the cash was printed, and the instability really started.

The Dotcom Bubble was the first – fed by cash from the Fed® with no place to go. And then it tanked. So the Fed™ printed a few trillion bucks. That led directly to . . .

The Housing Bubble. You probably have heard of it.

But this was different – it actually lead to protests against the banks. A reprogramming was necessary – “put the bankers in jail” had to be stopped, because bankers like to use our money to buy themselves nice things like that tiny part of France where they don’t let Muslims in. Except the Saudis.

I read that photographers and art thieves both take pictures.

A reprogramming was needed – Occupy Wall Street™ had to turn to . . . something. That reprogramming of the Lefty rank and file was into “white people are awful” and it got the heat away from the bankers. And made movies suck.

Meanwhile, the money hijinks led to country after country having revolutions, from Libya to Egypt to Syria. Why? Because inflation in the United States (at that point) meant that people had to pay a nickel more for Cheetos®. In Egypt, that meant that one of the children had to be sold into medical experimentation.

The key to all of this was keeping the dollar as the key currency used in international transactions. To be clear, Russia was a big threat in this. Sure, Russia is ruled by corrupt folks who kill people who threaten them, but I can raise you a Jeff Epstein, a Hunter Biden, and Hillary.

The Russians certainly threatened all of this with Nordstream® and Nordstream II©. These pipelines pushed natural gas straight from Russia to Europe. Now, Russia could take . . . euros for gas. Dollar not required.

Watch a 10-hour movie? No. But have Netflix® break it up into 10 one-hour movies?

And scary. All the investment of the Left in Green Energy® led them to shut down nuclear power plants (Germany, I’m looking at you) and replace them with natural gas plants. And you see the results.

(hint: Ukraine and certain underwater explosions)

Now we find that we have a currency that’s becoming worth less every day, foreign folks are building ways to not take the dollar. So they need fewer of them. And want fewer of them in their pockets.

It doesn’t help that we’re in debt by (spins wheel) over $25 trillion bucks, the economy is distorted, and that Medicare® and Medicaid™ will soon cost more than Joe Biden’s hair plugs. And we’re going to double that in the next eight years, and double it again in the next eight. That’s $100 trillion dollars.

Does anyone reading this believe we can last that long?

Oops.

Pa Wilder said 20 years ago that he didn’t see how it could last. But many folks have gone broke by betting against the Fed™. That one day they can’t paper it all over?

Nah. Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.

The Destruction of the American Education Society – On Purpose

“And I say to you gentlemen that this college is a failure. The trouble is we’re neglecting football for education.” – Horse Feathers

Remember, if you teach homeschool, you can’t get fired for drinking on the job.

Jimmy Carter doesn’t deserve all of the blame he gets. He handled inflation poorly, energy poorly, lost a lot of helicopters in the desert. Oh, wait, was I talking about Biden?

Nope. Carter. One of the biggest things to blame on Carter was the creation of the Department of Education, which he did in an election year to get more votes. Of course, Carter didn’t start the rot, that really started with Franklin Roosevelt, who attempted to federalize education, because he wanted to further centralize power. Roosevelt started a quite lot of rot, but it took longer for some of it to surface than the run time of Avatar 2.

What has happened since education has come under the control of the feds?

How many introverts does it take to change a lightbulb? One, unless he needs help. Then it’s still one.

Previously each state and local area ran its school system. The schools themselves were, generally, of excellent quality. But a bigger bureaucracy led to two things. The first is the activation of Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy. Dr. Pournelle’s description of it is below:

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

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

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

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

Sure there are local school boards that are awful. I’ve heard horrible things about Los Angeles, and other large cities. Why? Because the boards are so large that they have to have massive infrastructure – the idea of the neighborhood school disappears, replaced by massive numbers of administrators in a Soviet-style collective.

I couldn’t answer my daughter’s question, “What does a ballerina wear?” I couldn’t put tu and tu together.

To make this better, we add in the feds???

Yikes. That’s like solving an ingrown hair with a flamethrower. It works, but what’s the cost?

Good teachers, for one. Teaching has always been an important profession, and with local control, the messages that went out to the kids reflected both American values, and local values. Even if you didn’t agree with the values of Los Angeles, you could move to a place where the school district mirrored your values, like mine, which has classes in PEZ™ dispenser maintenance.

But with federal control, you get federal rules on what can and can’t be done. The result was the second problem with federal control:

Indoctrination.

I tried to indoctrinate a hairdresser, but I couldn’t condition her.

Schools used to start with teaching basic skills. If there was a student who wasn’t getting it, they were flunked. Try to flunk a kid today? It can’t happen. The result in (as I recall) the Baltimore school district is that the parents are suing the schools because, after 13 years of education and a diploma, graduates can’t read. For the sake of the school district, I hope the plaintiff’s lawyer went to school there.

But why can’t the students read?

The idea was that there was a certain minimum competence in reading, writing and math that was required and expected. The basics of history and geography were also taught, as well as classic literature.

And that was it. Bring your own lunch. Need someone to talk to? Go talk to your friends.

The basic function of the school was education. Sometime around 2006, though, the competence level was reset to “breathing”. Now? Biden’s Department of Education wants “projects” that increase Critical Race Theory usage in schools. The same initiative is called “Promoting Informational Literacy Skills” which essentially involves coming up with ways to convince kids that The Current Thing is correct, i.e., not to “do your own research” and to only trust .gov sources.

I guess she was just biden her time.

The bureaucracy was bad enough, but the indoctrination is worse. The difficulty is that most school districts compete for federal money, and when they accept it, every single rule applies. Remember, the first rule of government club is that you do whatever the government says.

Back during Obama, the Department of Education even put out a “letter” that indicated they would investigate any school who didn’t discipline students the way the Leftists in Washington wanted. So, suspensions and detentions essentially ended in many school districts. The result? Well, I don’t think anyone is complaining the schools have too much discipline nowadays.

Why would they want that?

We can be assured that the Department of Education never educated a single kid, in fact whoever was responsible for my algebra homework was fired. But they have been responsible for indoctrination with Leftist values.

If you listen to Pink Floyd and eat ice cream, you become comfortably plump.

The solution starts with saying no. No to federal rules, no to federal money. And if anyone wanted to actually improve education in the United States, the first thing to do would be to abolish the Department of Education and every single one of its rules.

After that?

Time to think about that pesky Department of Energy . . .

Pfizer: Mutating COVID For Fun And Profit?

“No, no, this can be explained. Dad, we had clients, Pfizer® clients. Champagne.” – The Wolf of Wall Street

I think that Pfizer® is going to find this a knight to remember. All memes this post – as found.

I had originally planned to do a post on COVID tonight. Then, Project Veritas® dropped a video directly on point. So, I had already prepped for this subject, and then, *poof* out of nowhere appeared another bombshell story that once again proves the Wilder Theory of Greatest Amusement: The Covid-Mutating-Grindr® guy.

For those of you unfamiliar with Project Veritas©, that’s James O’Keefe’s sharp stick in the eye of the liberal establishment. It broke into national prominence when he nearly single-handedly brought down Obama’s Leftist useful idiots, ACORN™ in 2009, the community organizers created to pump the system for the Left. If you recall, O’Keefe pretended to be a “sex worker manager” and brought in a teenaged “sex worker” and asked for advice on how they could hid her earnings from the IRS.

A hoot.

When I was single I often tried to impress my dates by talking about my war crimes.

He’s done similar sorts of hidden camera shenanigans poking his pimp-cane in the eye of the Left for years. The latest one, though, is perhaps the best. Ever.

A quick rundown if you haven’t heard about this one, and please take this with all of the “allegedly” that a developing story like this deserves:

A guy accepted a date on Grindr®. Grindr™, if you’re unfamiliar, is a hookup app for gay guys. This particular guy was Jordan Walker, M.D., with the title of Director, Worldwide R&D Strategic Operations and mRNA Scientific Planning for Pfizer™. I have three of his email addresses, and two phone numbers for him that /pol/ certain unnamed Internet resources dug up. Given what happened on his Grindr© date, I think it’s probably safe to say that Jordan Walker is a former Director, and now is Totally Unemployed.

The first rule of Pfizer® Club? Don’t talk about Pfizer™ Club on a gay date.

I’ll give the most charitable interpretation of the video that’s out there now: Walker claimed that Pfizer® was discussing force-mutating COVID so that they could make more mRNA “vaccines”. Several of the snippets of later conversations would seem to indicate the Pfizer™ was already doing this.

When confronted by James O’Keefe, he did what every single person who was credible does: he freaked out, claimed he had been lying, assaulted O’Keefe, threw O’Keefe’s iPad® to the floor, and threw a tantrum like a spoiled four-year-old who didn’t get his way. As I said, that type of behavior just reeks of credibility.

So very dignified!

What was the name of the Chinese restaurant in the song Werewolves of London? Oh, yeah. Lee Ho Fooks. That was my first thought about this situation – if true, not only was Pfizer© even more evil that I thought they were, they were to the point where they make the Soviets under Stalin and the Chinese under Mao look like saints.

So, if true, Pfizer™ has entered the ranks of the most Evil organizations ever to have existed, slightly above whatever organizations did the forced mutations to create Sarah Silverman.

My advice to our intrepid Grindr™ guy? See an attorney and turn whistleblower. Now. And don’t tell the stuff you know about the Clintons – remember how that turned out for Epstein.

All this comes at a time when the evidence is growing that the vaxx is . . . really bad for lots of people. Everyone? Dunno. But people under 55 who took it are certainly more at risk from the vaxx than from the ‘vid as evidence has become clear.

Even formerly staunch supporters of the vaxx are flipping, and admitting that not taking the vaxx was the right decision. For me, this was not a hard decision to refuse the vaxx. Why?

It is an untested technology.
The beta testers are the vaxxed.
It requires me to trust Pfizer.
I hope it turns out well, but many effects may not be apparent for years.
COVID was not that bad, and I liked my chances.

There are other reasons as well, but those are enough. I know two people who took the J&J® vaxx in the early days, on the same day. Both of them have had major heart surgery, within a month of each other. Coincidence?

Remember, to Pfizer™, we’re all redshirts.

Probably not. Yet with lightning speed they rolled out the vaxx to younger and younger kids. It was if they said, “Hey, three year olds should smoke cigarettes because they’ve been smoking them for a month and, outside of a raspy voice and smelling like Robert Downey Jr. after a night out, it seems to be good for them.” It’s that level of stupid.

COVID wasn’t good, but the vaxx, like Sarah Silverman, was an entirely preventable tragedy.

I’m running a bit behind tonight and will end this early, but I think the following clips, presented without comment, show where we’ve been, and where we’re at. To be clear, COVID is over. Forever. There will never be another reaction like the last time in the lifetime of almost anyone alive now.

100 years? Maybe. But this was a big enough goof that while there will be another, future, Virtue Signal sent out, it won’t be COVID. And I’m thinking that Pfizer® will be trotting out a corporate policy that employees can’t use Grindr™ anymore. At least they’ll do that before the war crimes trials start.

A Little Friday Memefest

“Not random at all, maybe. Like there’s some pattern here?” – Silence of the Lambs

Thank you for attending my TED talk.

Tonight I got in really, really late. As such, I normally have some notes and plans. Not tonight, since I’ve been very busy. However, what I do have is a collection of dank memes from all around the Internet. Okay, that’s a lie. Most are from /pol/. But they are still pretty good. I’ve collected them into several sections.

This is pretty short, but illuminating. I would have originally thought that Canada would have been more stable than the United States, being more homogeneous and under less pressure. Nah. They’re going off the rails on the crazy train faster than Hunter Biden, full of crack, at Burning Man.
Leftist Logic. This is a series of items that define Leftism in ways that they would probably hate. So, please share with a Leftist to help in their re-education process. It’s easier than the camps or the wall.
The biggest hacking attacks Wilder, Wealthy and Wise®™© has ever seen has been from some of my COVID articles. Cool! The narrative is falling apart, and here are some memes that deal directly with that crumbling narrative.
Just that. Random, yet hilarious to me. YMMV.

Canada:

This is how I imagine a medical consultation goes in Canada. I’d tell someone to “kill himself” but I don’t want to get arrested in Canada for practicing medicine without a license.

The Canadians are sorta British, right?

Imagine how comfy their kids must feel when they tuck them in.

This is my shocked face.

Leftist Logic:

Carbon is so bad it made the Sun warmer.

Donna Brazile has the memory of a goldfish.

Mayo? The 457^th gender.

I identify as someone who has a full head of hair. Dang. Maybe I sould sue the mirror?

We had to kill the baby to save it.

Joe’s garage is more secure than Trump’s Secret Service patrolled personal office. Right?

The Resistance. Thankfully they have most major corporations, the Joint Chiefs, the universities, and most government bodies on their side. Wait, who are they resisting?

I think Pugsley lost these.

Thank Heaven! At least we won’t have any pesky actual women in sports.

Hmmm, one of these things is not like the other.

I think this is the Netflix® version. Oh, wait, that’s not how this works . . .

I’m sure this will help us win wars.

Finally, the end goal of feminism has been realized!

Have they thought this through?

Did you think the goal of transhumanism was actually to make most people better?

Uhhhhhh

COVID:

I guess I’m not supposed to talk about this. Thankfully we have the CDC:

Certainly, there are no uncomfortable facts showing up about the ‘Rona?

But one thing is certain. No refunds.

Random:

I don’t have comments, these speak for themselves:

And a good song ends on the note that started it . . .

The Most Dangerous Thought Of The Day

“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” – Fight Club

Amber lost the lawsuit to Johnny Depp to the tune of $15 million. I guess she’s now deep in Depp.

One thing that I like to do is test ideas. Sometimes, like PEZ® and velvet Elvis posters, the idea is a classic of Western Civilization. Other times, like communism, communism, and communism, the idea is horrible. Others? Others are a kludge that we’ve made work. Or the idea is just the system that we have.

This post will test an idea that just might be the most dangerous one I’ve ever shared.

An idea that has been with us for most of recorded history is the concept of interest rates. The idea is simple – I borrow $10 today, and next year I give back $11. The extra dollar is the fee I pay for borrowing the money. There are records that compound interest was charged by the Sumerians back even before your momma was born, back in 2,400 B.C. They even had the math to accurately calculate it. Area of a circle?

Nah.

How much you owe me? That’s easy as pie. But not as easy as a nearly 22/7 pies, I guess.

Sorry, that joke was irrational.

Regardless, interest rates have been with us a very, very long time. And they have been vexing us for just as long. The good properties of interest are that it allows for people who don’t have money to get it, which they like. It allows people with “excess” money to get something for having the money, which they like.

There are some pretty significant downsides. Let’s take a simple example: There are several people on an island after a three-hour tour. A three-hour tour.

There are 10 ounces of gold on the island. I need to borrow them because, well, I have no idea. Assume it involves me trying to get to Mary Ann’s coconuts. Whatever.

A year later, the person who lent me the 10 ounces of gold wants 11 back. But there aren’t 11. I default. I default because there is a limit on the currency. This simple example shows that, in a society where interest exists, eventually there must be either a default, or there must be an inflation of the money supply.

I guess there’s a reason The Mrs. buys coconut shampoo?

This leads, inevitably, to a series of booms and busts. It also leads to, over time, a greater and greater concentration of money (or cash) in the hands of those who actually do nothing more than have the cash. In our society, these people often just print the cash, unbacked by anything, like it’s some amazing Sumerian money magic.

I hear the ladies love a man in cuneiform.

Thus, the financial sector, through the use of interest, both (over time) gains control over society through the concentration of capital. The golden rule? He who has the gold, makes the rules. In this case, the Federal Reserve® (which is not federal, and doesn’t have reserves) is actually owned by the member banks. So, the banks own the Fed™. Which makes the rules.

As I said in a previous post, there has been a concentrated effort to remove the political from the economic, and the economic from the political. Sure, Congress passes $1.7 trillion spending bills so we can send lots more money to the Ukraine, but who finances all of these shenanigans?

The Fed®. Look in your wallet, and pull out some cash – it says “Federal Reserve Note®” – not United States Dollar. A difference. Congress doesn’t print the cash – the Fed™ does. And the Fed© has to print more of it each year, because people keep getting charged interest.

This leads to cyclic bouts of inflation and/or currency default due to the accumulated debt. The Great Recession of 2008 was brought about because of a debt-fueled housing spending spree that collapsed.

What car does the Chairman of the Fed® drive? A Fiat™.

So, what happens if . . . we don’t allow interest to be charged?

It’s a big thought. And the world has had interest rates for a long time. In Imperial Rome, they varied from 5% to 25% depending on the time and on what was being invested in, and there are records of just the same sorts of credit crunches as we see today. And also the need for the Romans to take their silver coin, the denarius, and turn it into a mainly base-metal coin by the end of the Empire.

But I’m not alone in speculating about what would happen if we stopped charging interest. Aristotle himself (and not the Aristotle who makes the gyros at the fair during the local harvest festival in Modern Mayberry) had the idea that it shouldn’t exist because, heck, I’ll let him tell you:

“The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.”

I’m not sure if Aristotle was upside down on a used goat that he bought, but what I think he’s trying to say is this: the act of lending money creates no value. If I buy a building and build a PEZ® factory, the PEZ™ factory either makes a profit or makes a loss. If it makes a profit, that’s one signal that it has created value for society. It has employed people to make a wholesome product that, when consumed in moderation, is harmless. If I can make a profit doing that, I’ve created value in society.

If I lend money? Not so much. My singular objective is only the profit from making money.

It takes an infinite amount of Zenos to screw in a light bulb.

How would such a world work? Perhaps people combine to lend money to businesses based on the idea that they might create value (and thus a profit) and take the gain in their money from that value created through the business? People combine to finance a business for a purpose, and thus gain.

No interest required.

How about a house? Why would I loan money, absent interest, on a house? Perhaps the payment could be based on the assessed value (thus making the loan an investment, rather than a loan). If the value goes up, the payment goes up. Down? Payment goes down.

This would put skin in the game for the banks, and they would have a vested interest (pardon) in making sure that the investment was good. No incentive for the housing crisis. Payments linked to . . . value created.

Car lending? Yeah, that’s harder, since that is a declining-value asset. I’m sure that it could be figured out, since I’ve already solved tons of loan issues with the two solutions above. I’ll leave solving the car loan problem to the class. Oh, and the student loan problem, too.

I hear that $221 million in student loans were canceled. Those lucky seven people!

It can be done. It has been done. Oddly, I think it would result in a freer world where, rather than focusing on ways to, uhm, view people as assets to extract value from, people would be forced to seek to provide value for their fellow man. Making happy customers.

Think of it as a thought experiment. A dangerous one that would change who has power in this world.

See, I told you this was my most dangerous post.