Category: Fight Club

Resolutions, Fasting, and Wilder’s Cult of the Blue Bikini

“I’ve never been great at conflict resolution.  Not without a blade, and several rolls of plastic wrap.” – Dexter

wings

I would say that the writing of this book is both Original and Crispy.  This was actually released for free in 2017 by KFC. 

I got home on Wednesday night and the aroma of baked chicken filled the house.  It smelled like Colonel Sanders® had developed a scented candle, and it was amazing.  I wanted to rub the smell under my arms, in my hair, and maybe on my pillow so I could smell it in my sleep.

I had just dropped Pugsley off for wrestling practice, and The Boy had just gotten back from his wrestling practice and had dropped in to grab his term paper to go meet with a study group before flying out of the house faster than a floozy egghead on a baboon crotch.  I am not at liberty to tell you what a floozy egghead on a baboon crotch is, but I assure you it is quite fast.

The Mrs. and I were left alone in the house, a rare enough occurrence, and The Mrs. pulled the hot, plump, greasy, piping-hot chicken thighs and legs from the oven, slowly, letting them linger and adjust to the kitchen air, their moist meat hidden only by the sheerest of skin.  Whew.  I’m getting goosebumps just reading that.

Given that Pugsley and The Boy were normally there for dinner, she’d made about forty-five pounds of chicken.  She had also made gravy and some sort of low-carb mashed cauliflower that was pretending to be potatoes.  I generally try to avoid mashed things that aren’t actual potatoes – I’d just as soon use the mashed cauliflower for drywall repair, or execute it for being an impostor.

“Food’s hot, come and get it.”  The Mrs. walked back with a single chicken thigh and some of the drywall spackle on her plate, covered with gravy.

“I’m fasting.”

“Okay.  Crap.  Now who’s going to eat all of this chicken?”

The Mrs.’ dog Emo looked hopeful and fat.  Her other dog, BWL (broccoli with legs, because he’s so stupid he’s nearly a vegetable) just looked confused.  Which is normal.

Wait, what?  Did you say fasting, John Wilder?

fastcult

Yeah.  On a lark, I decided to fast for two reasons.  The first one is that it tied into a New Year’s resolution to get in better shape.  I’m a strong proponent New Year’s resolutions – they’re a good sign that even when you’re as awesome as me, you have the amazing humility to realize you could be a bit more excellent.  Truth:  it would not hurt me to lose a few pounds, especially if there’s a good story to it and it was unusual and did NOT involve X-Acto® knives and a vacuum cleaner.  I’m not doing that again, at least not without more tarps and duct tape.

The second reason I decided to fast is that I can’t remember going more than, say, two days without eating.  Ever.  I’ve got an iron stomach, and even when I was sick as a small child I never missed more than a single meal.  Could I go longer?  I remember when The Mrs. and I were first married that The Reverend Al Sharpton© had declared a “hunger strike” to protest that he wasn’t getting enough media attention a bombing range in Puerto Rico.  The Mrs. and I were listening to the radio one day when it emerged that Al’s “hunger strike” included actual food whenever he was hungry.  So, immediately we christened it “A Hungry Strike” as in, “I sure am hungry, I could use a lot more soup.”  Imagine that line in Al Sharpton’s voice, it’s funnier that way.

Our society is seems to be built on the idea that limitless on-demand food is normal and has existed since the aliens first created us as a slave race to develop PEZ®.  It’s also taken as gospel truth that if you don’t eat every four hours YOU WILL DIE.  It’s almost like most people think that for all of the history of humanity, we had a Schlotzsky’s Sandwiches© to serve salami subs on sourdough in the Serengeti or a Denny’s™ dishing dinners and desserts to Danes in dusty diluvial Denmark.  But the sad truth is that there has been the precedent of a society going from abundance to starvation in short order – just look at the fall of the Soviet Union, or that night that Wendy’s™ was closed because the Frosty© machine exploded.

overlordcat

Cult leader Mr. Fizzlesticks liked Kool-Aid™ before he got beamed to the Mother Ship.

I’d imagine that for most of history (which is before McDonalds®, Taco Bell©, or even agriculture), when you ate, you ate really, really well from that mammoth you took down.  When you didn’t eat?  Well, that might be a week.  I can see that ancient people wouldn’t get all trendy and put out websites and courses devoted to fasting.  No, they just didn’t have any food.

But even people you thought were tough, well, I remember watching a biography about T.E. Lawrence, the famed Lawrence of Arabia.  In it, a friend (of his, not of mine) related how Lawrence once went 45 hours without eating or sleeping just to see if he could.

Hell, I called that finals week in college.  But, again, never can I recall going over 48 hours without food.  What the heck, I’d give it a try.  And as I write this sentence, I’m on hour 94, so in two hours I’ll have gone four days without food.

I’m not dead.

And the really, really odd thing is that for most of the 94 hours I haven’t been horribly hungry.  After I started the fast, I started doing some research.  It turns out that there are a very large number of people in the world who fast, not because they don’t have food, but because they think it has more benefits than being Jeff Bezo’s $65 billion dollar ex-wife:

  • Weight Loss
  • Cancer Prevention
  • Increased Lifespan
  • Make You Telepathic on Wednesday
  • Reduced Inflammation
  • Urine Glows So You Don’t Need Bathroom Lights
  • Lower Blood Pressure
  • Reduce Type 2 Diabetes
  • Make You Bulletproof
  • More Better Braining, er, Thinking

Okay, some of these are sketchy, and not just the ones that I obviously made up.  It turns out the “increased lifespan” claim was based on some sort of worm that they starved.  The worm lives an average of 21 days and they starved it for a day.  Which is like you or I not eating for three years.  Yeah.  And the cancer claims from starving rats every other day.  If there’s one thing medical science knows how to do, it’s how to cure cancer in rats.

The main reason I did it, though, was curiosity.  Could I?

Yes.

I started out with the idea of doing three days, or 72 hours.  At the end of the third day it was going so well I said, hey, how about doing four days?  I’m glad I did.  I’ll explain below:

On day one it was like . . . nothing happened, because I regularly go 24 hours without eating, and have done so since I was a kid.  I had three mints and a dill pickle.  So, yes, this is technically not a complete fast, but the total number of calories was about thirty.  For the day.

Day two was a bit tougher, and was about four mints.  And three pickles.  So, sixty-five calories.  I felt fine, and not very hungry at all.  Day three was the same, but after exercising (which I do at lunch) for about 40 minutes I felt nearly comatose and my hands were very, very cold all day.  Then, almost like a light going on, I felt fine, and had plenty of energy for day four.  On day four, I had a pickle and two mints, so, 25 calories.

I justified the pickles based on the tiny amounts of calories and the salt that I wasn’t getting anywhere else, even though I was still engaging in some pretty intense and sweaty exercise.  The mints?  Those were for my coworkers.

Total calories:  185 in four days, plus all the coffee and water (both plain and carbonated) that I could drink.  Which was a lot.  185 calories is 18% of a Double Whopper with Cheese©, or like two bites.  Over four days.  So, I count that as fasting even though The Mrs. rolled her eyes and made some comment about “sounds like a hungry strike” under her breath.

cult

Bringing snacks at Fasting Cult?  Best duty ever.

But I’m an amateur at fasting and I know it.  One thing I have learned, however, is if there’s a human activity, there’s a cult on somewhere on the Internet devoted to it.  When started researching, I found people were fasting for periods of up to 100 days.  My little four day fast wasn’t much in comparison to those people.  They had to plan for two things for such long durations without eating, electrolytes/vitamins and refeeding.

It turns out the dangerous part of fasting for a long time, besides starving to death, is starting to eat again.  It turns out that if you start eating again incorrectly that you can short out the lithium battery in your heart, or strip the gears on your lungs.  Or something.  I’m not a doctor, but the Internet Cult of Fasting says you can actually have a fairly dangerous phosphate demand, especially if you eat a lot of carbs when you let your inner fat person out to eat everything in sight.  Your body requires phosphates to process carbs, and you can pull ‘em out of your blood (where it’s required to keep the lithium battery in your heart going) and into your cells (where they’re required to process the carbs).  It would be really stupid to die because of Pop Tarts™, but they probably kill more people than cookie dough (The CDC, Raw Cookie Dough, and Sexy Theocracy).

bikinicult2

There are some cults where recruiting is easy, except for the heretic on the left . . . no respectable cult has maroon bikinis!

Phosphate balance (along with some other conditions) can kill you.  I’d try to be funnier, but refeeding really can be fatal and leave a really stupid headline like “Popular Internet Writer Killed By Eating Pop Tarts® After Not Eating On Purpose.”

But hey, if Al Sharpton can make it . . . .

First Meal in 96 Hours Update:

Three pieces of baked chicken, two handfuls of blueberries, and two hamburger patties from the nearby Sonic™ since Pugsley got the wrong order.  Still not dead.  I’m feeling as full as a French bloomer weasel on Thanksgiving Dinner.  But the French bloomer weasel is endangered . . . .

The Caravan:  Warfare by Other Means

“Don’t worry, man.  Those aren’t narcs, they’re Las Emigras; you know, the Immigration Service looking for illegal aliens.” – Up in Smoke

crossback

Who knew that would be the impact of that one little change? (H/T me.me LINK)

The Caravan on our southern border is an expression of war, and it’s abetted by collaborators right here in the United States.  Or at least in Chicago, which I hear shares a border with the United States.

I’ll explain.

We live in an era dominated by 4th Generation warfare, and have been living in that era since Vietnam.  The “Caravan” of illegal aliens on the southern border of the United States is a concerted attack on the United States using 4th Generation warfare techniques.

Huh?  What the heck is 4th Generation warfare?

Don’t worry – I’ll explain.  I’m a trained professional member of Blog Club™, and the first rule of Blog Club™ is to mention your blog whenever possible – this thing won’t market itself.  Regardless, don’t try this at home or you might end up with and adverb slammed up your philtrum.  To understand what the 4th Generation is, let’s move back in time and understand the first three generations.  These descriptions follow concepts originally developed by William S. Lind (LINK).

In the 1st Generation of warfare, Lind picks the formation of the Treaty of Ghent as his starting point.  Or maybe it was the Simpson’s Treaty of Springfield and Shelbyville.  Regardless of what treaty it was, it essentially took warfare out of the control of small feudal lords and placed primary conduct of war in the smooth clammy fish-like hands of nation-states.  Since warfare back then consisted of cannons, very inaccurate muskets, and lots and lots and lots of dudes, the height of military strategy consisted of lines and masses of men moving to fight lines and masses of men.  It (sort of) made sense.  The muskets were crappy, so everybody shooting all at the same time was a good way to kill the enemy.  Besides, the cannons were inaccurate, too, and needed big targets to shoot at.  Napoleon was certainly the best general of 1st Generation warfare, but, you know, that whole “don’t get involved in a land war in Asia” started with him.  He won lots of battles, but lost the war.  Twice.

napoleon

2nd Generation warfare showed up when machine guns and accurate artillery made standing up in huge masses of dudes a certain prescription to lose the battle and also lose all of your pesky taxpaying citizens who used to be alive.  The real innovation of the 2nd Generation was “hiding” from the machine guns and artillery.  The Civil War in the United States started as a 1st Generation war, and finished with aspects of the 2nd Generation.  The trench warfare during the First World War was the height of 2nd Generation warfare, proving to be an even better way to eliminate your own citizens than standing them up in a line.

dibs

Guess that’s a last tag with Todd.

ktinder

The Kaiser is still on Myspace.  Sad.

The 3rd Generation of war incorporated mobility and the idea that the most rapid gains were based on combining infantry, armor, artillery and air power into a war of motion and position.  The German Blitzkrieg, literally meant “lightning war”, which is probably a good description for the 3rd Generation.  The French had ended 2nd Generation warfare by perfecting it – they created the Maginot Line, a series of fixed fortifications.  This forced the Germans to invent an entirely new method of war to defeat it.

During and after World War II, the United States perfected this 3rd Generation warfare – learning every lesson that the Germans could teach.  And then spending trillions of dollars to perfect an armed forces that is perfectly designed to win World War II.  Again.

panzerfest

Those panzers won’t fuel themselves!

The 4th Generation of warfare started in the latter part of the Vietnam War.  4th Generation warfare strikes at the legitimacy of the state.  Tanks, bombs, and mobility don’t count.  The idea is to win the war without (necessarily) winning any battle.  Whereas the 1st Generation of warfare arrived with the nation-state, the 4th Generation arises as people around the world cease to identify as citizens and begin to primarily identify with tribal, racial, religious or cause-based allegiances.  And yes, you can make the argument that Julius Caesar faced the same sort of guerilla tactics when he invaded Britain, but he didn’t have PNN© (Parchment News Network) showing photographs of the slaughter.  Pics or it didn’t happen.

picts

H/T:  Weapons and Warfare (LINK)

What are some examples of 4th Generation warfare?

  • The Intifada: Palestinians use children to attack Israeli soldiers, hoping for an Israeli soldier to kill the children for an awesome photo opportunity.  Palestinian leaders then launch rockets and missiles at Israel from hospitals and schools, again hoping for as much of their followers blood to be spilled as possible.  Israeli victory depends on . . . not killing these kids.
  • Mogadishu: The warlords walked the streets, surrounded by women and children, again knowing that an American Marine is not going to shoot up non-combatants to get to a bad guy.
  • Antifaâ„¢: To the mother that left her kids out in Berkeley, could you come pick them up?  They’re beating up both Antifa® and the police.
  • The Caravan.

Wait, what?  The Caravan?

Illegal aliens strike at the heart of the nation-state.  If a nation isn’t allowed to control its borders, then how is it a nation?  And there is a group of people inside the United States that are collaborators with the invasion.  They deny that borders should even exist.  An example of tweets from #abolishborders:

  • Shooting teargas at women and children is not “border security”. It’s terrorism.
  • Guess it wasn’t enough for the U.S. government to throw children in concentration camps. This is beyond inhumane. All dirt is the same, and free movement is a human right.

Military force is ineffective against an invasion like the Caravan.  Scenes of violence against unarmed people on TV is powerful propaganda against the middle portion of the United States population that can be swayed to support the aliens.  Imagine the sympathy fest as weepy single moms emote on their way to drop off Brayden, Jayden, Hayden, Aiden and Kirk to their dad who lives in a one-room apartment above the pool hall hear the news on NPR®.  How sad!

Von Clausewitz talked about war being waged on three levels:

  • Physical – Breaking stuff and killing people and taking land.
  • Mental – Making the enemy think what you want them to think. Confusing them.
  • Moral – You have to believe that what you’re fighting for is right, just and correct.

Most military thinkers through the ages (including that French dude, Napoleon) feel that the moral level of war is the most crucial.  If you think what you’re doing is wrong and evil, it’s probably a good bet you’re going to lose.  And if the people back home think you’re evil?  Well, we have Vietnam where news that was looking to support a narrative convinced the majority of the American people that we were on the wrong side morally in the war.  So, we declared victory and left the communists to win.

What if you decide you’re the bad guy?

But there are 4th Generation collaborators on the inside of the United States right now.  A primary organizer of the Caravans is the United States based organization Pueblo Sin Fronteras.  Started by leftist Emma Lozano, this organization is also affiliated with La Familia Latina Unida (LFLU, “The United Latin Family”), and Ms. Lozano is virulently against the United States, noting, “We ride for freedom from our oppressors and we don’t say, ‘please, accept us, we are good workers,’ and make contributions, and wave the U.S. flag.  We know our history – half of the entire United States was originally Mexico.  We have every right to be here.”

According to an email obtained by the Washington Times:

Lozano told supporters that “we will march and run our own Latino independent candidate for president of the United States.” When a staffer for Rep. Gutierrez announced that the congressman wasn’t interested in running for president, Lozano responded that “we’re obligating him to run, we’re not asking him. We’re in a war and when you’re in a war you fight. We’re drafting him.”

You can find much more about Emma here (LINK) or through a casual Google® search.  Based on everything I can find about Ms. Lozano, I would expect that she’s in favor of a racially-based communism that results in the destruction of the United States as we know it and lots of free stuff for people she likes.  And lots of concentration leisure camps for the rest of us.  Free RV parking!

Ms. Lozano is a general in a 4th Generation war.  She is actively seeking to abolish the United States – by directly replacing its people with people that she likes better.  And these activists seek photo opportunities that allow them to establish moral superiority.  I watched footage where a Mexican police officer said (more or less, I’m going from memory):  “Please, please don’t put your women and children in front like this man,” pointing to an activist, “tells you to do.  It’s dangerous.  And he doesn’t care about you or your children.  I’m begging you, don’t put your children up front.”  Pueblo Sin Fronteras is certainly willing to sacrifice your children for a cool photo.

How an organization that encourages and abets breaking the law (Pueblo Sin Fronteras) can operate and not be indicted based on conspiracy charges is beyond me – if this were a right-wing organization I believe the organizers would have been taken to the International Space Station just so they could be shoved out of an airlock as a lesson to others that embarrassing the state is simply not an option.  I guess that I’m forced to conclude that Pueblo Sin Fronteras is doing exactly what government wants them to do.

These activists want pictures of children that were bloodied and killed at the hands of the United States government, and will stop at nothing to get them.  They want to break down the moral will of the United States so that open borders are allowed.  Rather than attempting to take over Dallas at the head of an army, they want to influence the families of the people who live in Dallas to surrender as they never would to what this really is:  a leftist invasion based on an ideology of open borders.

americaclosed

But the logic for open borders is easy to refute:

  • How many people would move to the United States if they could? The answer is:  several billion.  This is simply not realistic.  Where would we keep them?  Does California have a closet and a spare bedroom we don’t know about?
  • Moving all the Guatemalans here doesn’t make Guatemala better – it just makes the United States into Guatemala. Where I live, nobody locks their doors.  In Guatemala?  Locked doors aren’t enough.  You can even argue that, after a point, it does the people who move here no benefit as the system breaks down and the benefits they looked for disappear.  This may be the reason that California is the New Mississippi – the greatest poverty rate in the nation.
  • The values and cultural norms that made the United States great aren’t the values of the invaders. Conscious or not, invasion by an unassimilated alien culture leads to the destruction of the American culture and norms.  And the big value generation-device that our economy has been for 120 years ceases to work.  We become poor.

In order to win this war:

  • The aliens must be gently, firmly, and quickly be sent home.
  • We must stop supporting them with cash if they are here.
  • We must make life here so unhelpful that they voluntarily deport themselves.
  • We must not give their nations cash if they keep coming here.
  • We must stop cash flowing from individuals to their home country.
  • We can help their home countries to build industries and meaningful jobs.
  • If the people like, heck, we could come in and run the country for them since they seem to suck at running countries and we seem to be good at it. Is illegal immigration really the best argument for colonization ever?
  • We must win at the mental and moral levels.

We are in a war.  Are we ready to fight?  Because I don’t think that the 5th Generation of war will be quite as nice as the 4th . . . .

The Funniest Post You Will EVER Read About Genetic Engineering, Now Available in Cream or Roll-On

“Right, then!  I do the best I can for you, the bloody best, to set up your sniveling, snotty-nosed kid the way you want, and all I get in return for pouring fifteen years of research into the bloody boring composition of the bloody damn DNA molecule is a pair of pathetic twits, who, when confronted with bloody stats start a pathetic wiffle-waffle.  Right now, Mr. and Mrs. Stolwry, you have a perfect, beautiful specimen of a stocky, blond-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned, quilted, male shrimp-head welder, with pods.  Now, what more do you bloody want?  Frankly, it makes me sick!  Why don’t you go have your child naturally?” – Eric Idle on Saturday Night Live (1976) – I can’t embed the video but it’s here (LINK) and hilarious.

betteronpaper

Now you know why chicken wings are getting bigger.  If only it would make its own sauce.  I bet it does, in the Twilight Zone©!

We are at the beginning of a new age of humanity, and maybe even an entirely new type of humanity.  The first humans have been born where sections of their DNA (the genetic information that defines most everything of what they are) have been replaced with new information.  It’s exactly like someone recutting Toy Story® using dialogue from Fight Club™.  Oh, someone did that?  I do live in the best possible timeline:

It’s only two minutes: give it a watch, please.  My therapist says I need to share things.  But the first rule is that we shouldn’t talk about it.  Thankfully, I’m typing instead of talking.

But in this case, the genetic information that defines a living human being was cut out and replaced with new information.  And the human is an actual living human.

How did they do it?

Tiny scissors.  Really small ones.  And itty-bitty pieces of Scotch® tape.  Okay, they actually used a technique called “CRISPR”, which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.  But for all you care it could stand for Clever Reindeer Intentionally Shooting Panda Rifles.  It doesn’t matter.  Let’s pretend it’s really tiny scissors and itty-bitty pieces of Scotch™ tape.

CRISPR allows editing of the DNA strand by using segments of DNA to match up with and replace the parts of the DNA that we don’t like.  And even though DNA is comprised of lots of molecules, in reality DNA is just information like pages in a book, or dialogue in a movie except if you try to replace passages in your book with DNA all you get is a mess and sticky fingers from turning the DNA soaked pages.  But back to the DNA:  some of the information on the DNA appears to be actual junk – it may not mean anything – but the rest of the information defines your height, weight, hair color, maximum intelligence, ability to play guitar, affinity for bacon, and, well, ability to write real good word thoughts (PLOT POINT!).

Editing the DNA with CRISPR allows the editing of new pages into a book, and even the individual letters in the book.  But better not end up leaving out the wrong word:

wickedbible

This Bible was printed in 1631 and is known as the “Wicked Bible.”  If anyone actually followed the instructions, there was probably oodles of amateur DNA transfer.  Hopefully not on the pages.

CRISPR can be used to edit mushroom DNA.  Or cow DNA.  Or . . . human DNA.  And now two human girls have been born and inserted into their DNA is the resistance to AIDS.

The first time I ran into the concept of genetic engineering was when I was a kid, watching Star Trek®.  When I was a kid, it was a law that every other show on television was a repeat of Star Trek™.  The idea of one episode, Space Seed, was that a group of genetically enhanced (mentally and physically) supermen led a war.  When they lost the war, they were shot into space in suspended animation.  Because prison was too complicated, I guess.  The leader?  Khan Noonian Singh, played in scenery-chewing fashion by Ricardo Montalban.

khan

Even Kirk is skittish about genetic engineering.

Any measurable human trait or combination of human traits from DNA can now be changed.  And almost every human trait is genetic in nature.  I know this from experience.  As much as you might think that I was conceived of during an immaculate conception witnessed only by the angels and attended by a gaggle of singing heifers in bloomers, well, that was not exactly the case, no matter what I tell my kids.  It was sweaty teenagers.  But I digress.  I’m adopted, but in the weird way where I’m actually related to the family that adopted me.  I couldn’t even get “unwanted abandoned child” right.  Such a failure.

Anyway, for every moment of my life until I was 35, I had zero contact with my biological father.  Zero.  None.  Nada.  Zilch.  Empty set.  And zero contact with any of his relatives.  Complete isolation from that side of my personal biodiversity.  But I had been told his name.  Then, one night under some assistance from a bit of Coors Light® I did an Internet search and . . . called a number.  He wasn’t there, but a week later we talked.  And it was unusual.

If you’ve read this blog, you know that I have a rather strange set of interests.  One day, jokes about fizzy toots, the next day political analysis, then genetic engineering.  But when I called my biological father it was odd – there was almost no subject that either of us brought up that the other hadn’t researched.  Oh, and he’s a writer (THIS WAS THE PLOT POINT PAYOFF).  Please don’t get me wrong, in no way do I want to imply that I feel anything but the strongest loyalty to the family that raised me, but I could see the similarities so much that I made up a really clever original phrase:  “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”  I’m glad that when they rebuild the last remaining Internet server after the Nacho Cheese War of 2331™, that I’m certain to be credited with my wonderful, original phrase.

But your grandma who didn’t like that little tramp you were dating was right:  genetics matter.

CRISPR puts the tools to optimize human traits in the hands of . . . humans.  Sure, we’ve been doing the amateur kind of genetic engineering for, well, ever.  And it’s resulted in some pretty interesting people, like, say, you.  Our genetic engineers were our mothers and fathers.  Men have broad shoulders because women like broad shoulders.  Women have . . . well, we’ll skip that for now.  Don’t want to say the wrong thing and have everyone think I’m a boob.

3boob

Beware of 12 year olds with the ability to create genetic modifications.

Who gets to play with CRISPR first?  The rich.  Specifically rich Chinese people.  Yes, regulations exist in China, but the regulations exist to protect the State, not the people, silly.  The only reason the Party would restrict rich kids from having SuperBabies 3000® is if the Party feels the technology is too powerful and keeps it for itself.

Make no mistake, this is an incredibly powerful technology, like alcohol on prom night.  I think that the Chinese elite will start snipping and tucking DNA so that their children are smarter.  Taller.  Stronger.  More confident.  Better nose hair, you know, the kind you can braid.  If you’re a billionaire, why not?  The Party will be fine with that, since it gives them the ability to see what the technology does.  I mean, understanding the complicated interactions between DNA molecules is tougher than dancing a polka striptease with a gopher.  And we all know what that’s like.

khan2

Khan we fix your DNA?  Yes we Khan! 

Can you imagine being the master of this technology?  You can eliminate undesirable human traits, such as enjoying Taylor Swift® music entirely from your gene pool.  You can, if you are the Party, create the perfect Chuck Norris-like soldier.  A 9 foot tall (37 meters) basketball player.  The most loyal citizens.

If you are willing to sacrifice and experiment to quickly understand what the interactions are between multiple genetic changes and patient enough to await the results, you’ll quickly lead the world in a technology whose limits we can barely perceive.  And in a state controlled by a central Party, well, soon enough we could see a split so wide in human ability that humanity might look more like a colony of insects with different classes of humans genetically modified to follow their role as drone, soldier, queen, scientist, and blogger than the normal wild and feral band of humans we’re used to.  They’d be farther apart than Morlock© and Eloi™.

timemachine

H.G. Wells couldn’t have imagined that 800,000 years of human evolution could be done in an afternoon in an uncomfortably warm doctor’s office. But he also couldn’t imagine that Leonardo DiCaprio would ever win an Oscar®.

In China in a few years embryonic DNA modifications might become as common as vaccination in the United States.  Once the DNA gets into the gene pool of the country, it will stay there.  Perhaps in two or three generations China will have citizens that are entirely immune to some sort of biological agent that just, whoops, “accidentally” gets released to depopulate the planet and leave it free for China.

Shhh, but I think the Chinese have already measured Africa to see if all of their stuff would fit.

But in a twist resulting from an interaction between a snip that removed unsightly ear hair and a tuck that allowed all men to grow mustaches as full and perfect as the one Burt Reynolds had in Sharky’s Machine©, the remaining citizens develop an insatiable desire for eating humans.  What an ending!  Then Rod Serling can come out, smoking, with a good moral to the story.  Yay!

plagues

Okay – I love comments, and would love to have more, so don’t make me change your DNA so you’re chattier.  And don’t forget – you can just subscribe to this in the box above, and I’ll show up at least three times a week in your inbox.  Which won’t break it, unless you have a weak, girlie-man inbox.  And I won’t send or sell your address, ever.

Twitter, The 1%, and Thanksgiving (Not Available in Canada)

“If you could fight any celebrity, who would you fight?”
“I’d fight Gandhi.” – Fight Club

twitterfight

I’m not saying that an evil psychic entity made me send those tweets at 2am.  But I’m sure the wine had nothing to do with it.

Twitter® is living proof that the IQ of any group can be measured by the taking the average group IQ (which should be close to 100, I would hope) and dividing it by the number of participants.  Since there are over 6,000 tweets per second on the system, well, that means the IQ of Twitter® is 0.02, which is slightly above a rock, but still slightly below anyone dating a Kardashian or a common houseplant.  But I repeat myself.  Slap fights between dim kindergartners are often more founded in firm intellectual rigor than a Twitter© argument, and said arguments are generally about as productive as trying to teach a dog to say “milk.”

But I hadn’t figured that out a year ago.  It was back then that I commented on a breathless news story about the evil top 1% in the world.  I pointed out that almost everyone on Twitter® was in the top 1%.

The howls of outrage began.

outrage

I admit the whole Handmaid’s Tale obsession on the left cracks me up, you know, because we’re on a course to live in a theocracy.  But if we have to live in a theocracy, can’t it be a sexy one?  Sexy, sexy theocracy.  Mmmm.

Okay, it was mainly just this one guy – I think he was from Great Britain.  He was incensed that I would make such an outrageous statement.  His idea was that the 1% was evil.  It must be taxed, and taxed ferociously for the betterment of the entire planet.  He was filled with a mixture of outrage and envy.  Outrenvy?  Anyway, I then cited statistics that stated that to be in the top 1% in income in the world you need to make only $32,400 per year, or whatever the equivalent was in the fancy wrapping paper that he used for currency instead of sweet, sweet American dollars.

englandmeme

Ahhh, England, using children to do the jobs Americans won’t.

There was a long pause.  $32,000 per year is only $16 per hour.  $16 per hour seemed like not a lot of money to him.  Certainly he didn’t want to be taxed, he wasn’t an evil rich guy.  Other people are evil rich guys.  So, he switched the argument to wealth.  To be in the top 1% in the world in wealth, yes, the bar is a little higher.  Including all sources of wealth, homes, chickens, cars, that toenail clipping collection, and your mom’s secret spaghetti sauce recipe (tomato paste and a little garlic and oregano), to hit the top 1% requires $770,000.  That’s a taller hill than the $16 per hour, but still one that’s achievable for many Americans in their lifetime.  I don’t know about Great Britain, since my conception of their economy involves lots of singing chimney sweeps with bad teeth and I have no idea what chimney sweeping (singing or not) pays.  But let’s be frank, $770,000 isn’t Bond villain-level money, unless James Bond’s villain is living in a partially paid off house in the suburbs and maybe has a decent 401k balance.

bond villain on a budget

Times are tough, even the Bond Villains are on a budget.  Hope they have enough credit limit left for date night and a space-based orbital laser system.  You know how much date night can cost.

So, in the big scheme of things:

  • You’re doing okay.
  • You’re alive.
  • You’re likely in the top 1% in income . . . in the world.
  • Besides – you’re more than your money, more than your income, more than your net worth. You’re also your Rolex® collection.
  • You’re a handsome devil, and have an intellect way above average.
  • You’ve got a lot to be thankful for.

We’ll get back to the big picture soon enough in future posts, but in the time it took you to read this sentence, you have to admit – you were doing okay.

And me?  I’m thankful that I figured out not to get involved in Twitter© slapfights.

So, Happy Thanksgiving, wherever you are.  Except Canada.  You can’t even get that right, Canada.  Thanksgiving in October?  Is that when the Moose and Beaver signed a treaty not to invade Nova Scotia or something???

candian navy

The Search for Meaning Might Drain Your Bank Account

“They haven’t said much about the meaning of life yet.” – Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life

20150624_193844-001

So, is the meaning of life having a super sweet car like this?  If so, would having a Bat Cave be like double extra meaning?  If so, count me in!

One tragedy of our current culture is lower amounts of social interaction leading to meaning.

So what do I mean by meaning?

Meaning is significance.  Meaning is working on something important.  Meaning implies actions that change the world for the better, or at least change someone’s life for the better.  Ideally, this work is something that you are uniquely suited to do and that you’re good at, but those things aren’t absolutely necessary.  The idea is that you have some way that you can actively change the world for the better.  And you don’t have to paint the world to make it better, because the world is really big, and it would take a very long time to paint it, kind of like my house exterior, which, at last count, has taken me 10 years to paint, mainly because I haven’t started yet.

But meaning takes time.  And it takes persistence.  And sometimes it takes money.

Those things can be difficult, especially if you’re lazy like me.

So where can you get meaning?

  • Your job. A job is a good and admirable place to find meaning, and ideally yours is such a place.  But it probably isn’t.  Some people, like those at the IRS, actually have a job that implies they will make others angry with no real discernible benefit to society.  How about being a prison guard?  Tough duty.  And how many jobs are, well, just plain BS?  If you have one of those or aspire to one of those, you’re in luck!  There’s an entire web page dedicated to generating job titles for you!  (LINK)  Chances are better than even that your job is just that – a job.  It’s a job that people pay you to keep doing rather than a saintly crusade to save the planet.  Hey, at least you get paid, right?
  • Your family. This is a great place to get meaning.  But if you’re a dad like me, your main job is to produce independent and tough children who view the world as a challenge that they want to beat.  It’s like you light a bottle rocket and then . . . off it goes.  After you’ve done lit the fuse, well, it’s gone.  And it doesn’t need you anymore – it has a purpose and a path.  I apologize to anyone who really desires to make dependent children who are needy basket cases, but that’s not the way we roll at Casa Wilder.  So, by definition, my children need me less each and every day.

What are the alternatives if you don’t get meaning at work, and need more than family can provide?

meaning

In the United States we used to take part in civic organizations to do meaningful work, or at least drink and smoke cigarettes, pipes and cigars while we pretended to do meaningful work.  Or smoke and talk drunkenly about the meaningful work that we really, really intended to do.  But those civic organizations really did accomplish a lot – from scholarships to the foundation of hospitals and clinics to funding zoos and draining swamps to get rid of disease-carrying mosquitoes.  And our forefathers accomplished all of that with a hacking cough and a buzz on.

Sadly, one last civic organization I attended spent more effort complaining about other members of the organization that weren’t there than it did changing the world.  And they didn’t even drink.  I don’t go to meetings anymore, though I did suggest beer would be good at the meetings.  If we’re not going to do something to help humanity, at least we should drink, right?  I don’t smoke, but I’d be willing to learn, if it helped.  Alas, this sober and smoke-free organization does little to change the world.

As a nation, our civic participation is down overall – the book Bowling Alone recounts how membership in groups that meaningfully participate at the local level of communities is . . . down.  Rotary.  Lions.  Boy Scouts.  Knights of Columbus.

It even reaches from structured clubs to bowling leagues.  Bowling leagues?  Well, the author used that data to show that social interaction was down across the board.  The overall number of bowlers is up, but the number of participants in bowling leagues is down.  We’re bowling, but we’re only bowling with people we already know.  We’re not using any sort of social energy to meet other people and forge new friendships and relationships that strengthen the civic core.  But at least you can drink and bowl.

If I was a cynic, I’d say the system was designed to do decrease civic participation – if we’re not actively making our community better ourselves, well, we can leave it for government to do.  Government likes this a whole lot.  Things that used to done by ordinary citizens in the community, say, being on the volunteer fire department, can now be replaced by professional firefighters who get paid.  Government wins both ways – the fire department employees like to get paid and vote for the people that pay them, and government has assumed another duty that it must tax for.  A win-win!

Unless you’re the guy paying taxes.

Regardless of why civic participation is down, it is down.  The reasons might form a future post.  And that removes a very significant opportunity to be, well, significant.  Thankfully there are other outlets.  Me?  I write this blog.  I know it’s seen by nearly every person on the planet right now.  Okay, okay, it’s not.  But traffic is heading that way.  At current growth trends in the year 2371 everyone on Earth will be doing nothing but reading my blog six hours a day.  Which is as it should be.  Then I will be officially meaningful.

However, there are other outlets besides writing that are preferred by other people:

Gaming.  I think I’ve told this story before on the blog, but keep in mind, when I originally wrote it I was getting about 1/10th the traffic I’m getting now.  So, if you’ve heard this story before, pretend you haven’t, because I’m going to tell it even better this time:

In the 1990’s, I remember watching the HBO™ series Dream On.  In this series, a newly single guy in New York had numerous adventures.  Since it was on HBO®, many of the adventures involved scantily clad females.  Or completely naked females.  But I turned away from the set and read my Bible during those naughty, naughty scenes.  Thank heavens the VCR was recording.

The main character had an office job in New York.  He also had a secretary, Toby.  She was written as a nearly worthless secretary with an attitude.  In one particular episode, she does nothing but play a video game on her work computer.  You could do that before the Internet and the IT department tracked every keystroke.

The game involved a supermarket.  Toby started the episode as a stock boy in the game.  Then she worked her way up to bag boy a few scenes later.  Then, cashier.  Then a few scenes later?  Produce manager.

Finally, at the very end of the episode, she yelled:

“I DID IT!”

“I’m the MANAGER!”

“Of a supermarket . . . that doesn’t exist . . . .”

With each phrase, her emotions changed.  At first, joy in achievement!  Secondly, a questioning voice . . . a manager.  Finally, her voice got very small.  She realized her accomplishment was really no accomplishment.  It lacked meaning.

If you like games, if you like escaping in them, that’s fine, more power to you.  But remember, they’re not really a substitute for actual achievement.  Plus, this is Wealthy Wednesday – how much money do you want to spend on games, anyway?  And how much time do you want to spend on them?  Yeah, I know, I spent two hours today.  But . . . umm, I’m sure I had a good reason.

Consumption.  Yes, this is Wealthy Wednesday, and as such we finally have to get around to this.

Consumption is used as a replacement for actual significance and achievement.  It’s even encouraged.  Why does it work?

Where else can you go, hunt for something, find it, and then get it.  It’s certain to work, every time.  You can’t fail.  Yet you get the opportunity to experience the flush of success, the dopamine rush from having found and purchased what you were looking for.  And if you bought it off the Internet, you get a second rush when the little brown box from Amazon shows up*.

That purchase gives the same feeling as accomplishing something that has actual meaning, and there’s none of the work and none of the uncertainty.  It almost doesn’t matter what the thing is.  It could be shoes.  It could be books.  It could be lightbulbs.  It could be PEZ® dispensers.  As long as it’s something that you can actually do, your brain can take this stimulus and turn it into a replacement for actual achievement.

And it has been culturally jammed into our heads – we’re not who we are, we are the sum total of what we own.  We are our car.  We are our house.  We are our slacks.  We are our PEZ® dispensers.  This consumption has replaced civic virtue.  It has replaced the Lions Club.  It has replaced the Rotary, the Kiwanis, and the Knights of Columbus, but unlike those groups, you can do it alone, at night, downstairs in your underwear, after a few beers.  At 2AM, feeling like you haven’t lived up to your potential in life?  If you’re tired of being the manager of a supermarket that doesn’t exist, well, perhaps you can check in at Amazon.com® to see what you can buy to fill the achievement and meaning-sized hole in your heart?

This post is about wealth – and the first requirement of being wealthy is that you don’t spend thousands of dollars on useless crap to replace meaning in your life.  Especially if you don’t have the cash to spend.  If you don’t have the cash to buy that new truck and you buy it anyway?  Now you have debt.  And the debt removes your peace of mind and you go in search of more meaning, so you buy the boat.  And you and your wife have to work for years of your life to pay for it all.

That’s okay, it’s not like you can become a slave to your own consumption based on your search of meaning, is it?

Nah.  I’m sure that doesn’t happen.

*I refuse to say how I learned this.

How much money should I save? Depends on if you want to be free . . .

“Lost in oblivion, dark and silent and complete, I found freedom.  Losing all hope was freedom.  It’s OK.” – Fight Club

DSC00024

Alia S. Wilder, showing her prowess at falling into debt holes.

My daughter, Alia S. Wilder, texted me today.

“How much money should I be saving?  Is 20% enough?”

My response?

“Depends.  I’m going to try to end a World War.  Are two bombs enough?”

Oh, sure, the question sounds simple, but the answer is more complicated.  Unless you’re Japan.

“Is 20% enough?”

Certainly, and certainly not.

Savings is good.  I’m throwing that out there as an absolute.  Saving money represents potential.  If I use my money to buy a pile of PEZ® today, well, when they come out next week with the President™Millard Fillmore® Commemorative MegaPEZ© dispenser?  I won’t be able to buy it.

FILLMOREBALDWIN

If ever there was a head that was made to be a PEZ® dispenser it’s Millard Fillmore, who looks exactly like Alec Baldwin.  Fillmore, when running for reelection (he became President when Taylor died) won only . . . Maryland, which is the only State to be named after Mary Poppins©.

I won’t go too much into detail, but Alia S. Wilder has debt.  Mountains of it.  Not the Himalayas.  Maybe more like smaller mountains, like the Alps.

Should you save money when you’re in debt, or pay off the debt?  Yes, save money.  Save money until you have at least six months’ worth of living expenses in cash available to you.

Why six months?  Given six months’ worth of time and space, you can make miracles happen.  You’ll be able to work your way through the emergency.  Oh, and the emergency?  Yeah, you’ll have one.  You’ll get a flat tire and accidently run into the town statue of Tom Petty and then it won’t back down, but will be freefallin’ over onto your 1972 VW® Bug™.  And then?  You’ll have to pay, or they won’t allow you to come ‘round here no more.

So, emergencies happen.  Even Petty ones.

And if I were young and had debt, the first thing I would do is build that emergency fund.  There’s nothing worse than having no money and no options when an emergency strikes.  Not if.  When.

After that, I’d save money in my 401K, if the company offered a match.

401k’s are awesome – generally you can save 6% or so of your salary, and the company will match some percentage of that – say, 50%.  And there is no place on Earth where you can get an immediate 50% return on investment, unless you’ve managed to marry into the royal family of England.  Then?  Yeah, that lip gloss and the Pilates class paid off.

So, you’ve got an emergency fund.  You’re taking full advantage of 401k matching.  Next?

Get rid of the debt.

Debt is perhaps the most evil thing we allow in society today except for Harry Potter© themed AR-15s.  I mean, I like guns, but Harry Potter™ guns?  But back to debt – it allows stupid current you to sell future you into slavery.  You have to pay the debt.  Mortgages and car loans are bad, but the worst?  Student loans.

harry potter gun

You can declare bankruptcy and get rid of mortgage and car debt.  But in order to get rid of student loan debt?  You have to pay it off or die.  I’m not kidding – that part isn’t a joke.  Student loan debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy.  Like herpes, it’s almost forever.  Unlike herpes, you can pay it off.

Why is debt so very bad?  Well, for every dollar you have in debt, you have to pay interest.  So, if you have $100 in debt, and are paying 5% interest, you have to pay off $5 every year.  No problem, right?

Actually, that interest is insidious.  Let’s pretend it’s a house, and you owe $200,000.  At 5% interest, that’s $10,000 a year.  That $10,000, divided by 12?  In year one that’s most of your mortgage payment.  Your debt remains – you only pay a little bit off in the first year.

Interest on debt destroys your happiness.

In a logical world, you’d pay off the highest interest rate debt first.  That gets rid of the most interest, right?

Nah.  Pay the one that you can pay off first.  The smallest one.  That allows you to feel good about digging yourself out of the debt hell you dug yourself into.  Then?  The next biggest one.

And this works.  How do I know that?  I’ve been there.

When my first wife and I decided that a mixed marriage wouldn’t work (I was human, she was a demon from hell) we mutually decided that she should move out.  Nice!

She handed me a plastic grocery sack.  In the grocery sack was a half a cubic foot of bills.  She then handed me a checkbook.

“I don’t know how much money is in there.”  Meaning the checking account.

She walked out the door.

I pulled the first bill off the stack.  It was a credit card statement from a gasoline station.

It was over $700.  And my soon-to-be ex-wife hadn’t paid them anything in months.  Sadly, this story kept repeating as I went down the pile.  I had massive debt.

I started paying them down.  One at a time.

Seven years later?  The only debt left was my mortgage.  I remember the day – it was January 15th.  I remember writing the check.  I felt like I was Batman™ Kirk©.  Like if Batman® had a starship, or if Kirk™ could fight anyone in a realistic way.  Yay!  But paying down those first few cards and bills was huge.  It gave me a sense of control.  It was saying that I could take small bites and make them matter.

kirkfight

But one day you sign the last check to pay off the last debt, and you realize that you’re no longer working for someone else – every dollar you’re making is going to you or things you want.

And at that moment you’re free.

So, is saving 20% enough?

I have no idea.  How soon do you want to be free?

Purpose, Retirement, and Life. Spoiler: You need a purpose.

“We’re the middle children of history, man.  No purpose or place.  We have no Great War.  No Great Depression.  Our Great War’s a spiritual war.” – Fight Club

Retirement-pencil

I love Demotivators.  You should buy a calendar a year from them.  Or more, if you have more than one year each year.   

Men must have a purpose.  If they don’t have one, they’ll either find one, or die.

During the vast majority of my career I’ve been a supervisor of between one (which is the minimum you can be a supervisor of, unless you have multiple personalities) and 200 people (they worked for the eight or so people working for me, so I was like a great-grand boss).

I’ve seen all sorts of weird things – an employee on day one had his company laptop stolen out of his hotel room in New Jersey and then got punched in the face at his apartment building the next day and showed up to work with two horrible black eyes (this story is true).  I worried he would be an awful employee – bad luck often seems to follow some people around, but he turned out just to be unlucky that week – the rest of his career has been pretty good.

I’ve seen employees quit for no real good reason, I’ve seen them quit for very good reasons.  I’ve (unfortunately) been in the position of forcing an employee out (i.e., letting them know that the hammer is coming down so they’d better find something soon) and I’ve had to fire people.  Firing is the roughest, but it also helps the employee find a place that they can be that will help them – most of the times, they’re just not a fit for the job.  One employee developed diabetes and ulcers while working for me.  The job wasn’t high pressure, but the employee just wasn’t cut out for it.  Or, maybe I’m an amazing jerk.  Nah, it must be he wasn’t cut out for it.

Sometimes the happiest occasion is when an employee retires.

fozzie bear

Not that I want them to retire, especially if they’re good at what they do and fun to be around.  But after 45 or 50 years, it’s nice for them to be able to spend the next few months before they die doing whatever they want to.  I kid!  But how many people retire and then die within a few months?  Far too many, and I think I know why.

I was fortunate enough to be a supervisor to two employees that retired on the same day, Kermit and Fozzie.  Kermit and Fozzie had worked together for decades.  They had vacationed together.  They lunched together.  I think they even shared shoes and toenail clippers.  It was only fitting that they retire on the same day.

Fozzie was ready to retire.  Really ready to retire.  He had plans.  He had a big RV, plans for fishing and grandkids.  He had bought a house about 100 miles away and sold the one near to town.  He’d calculated his retirement down to the penny – and figured out how to maximize every benefit he could think of.  And he was done.

About six minutes after we cut the retirement cake, he was gone.  The last time I heard from him was as he walked out the door at his retirement party, essentially telling us if we ran into any problems and needed his help, he’d be available approximately never.  His last act was to place a huge poster on his office door specifically mocking in a humorous way about a dozen employees that he found fault with.  (Thankfully I wasn’t on the poster.)

Fozzie was done.

In truth, he was probably done two or three years earlier, but he had waited for Kermit.

kermitretire

Kermit had a house that he had bought that was closer to 200 miles away.  But Kermit didn’t have plans.  He rarely saw his grandkids, and his hobby, his passion was really work.

Both Kermit and Fozzie had a great amount of technical knowledge – and I promised either of them that they could get an hourly consulting contract to assist teaching the 24 year old kids that were replacing them.  Fozzie told me in rather distinct medical terminology exactly where I could put that contract.  Again, nothing personal.  Fozzie was done.

Kermit?  Three months later Kermit was in the office at least 20 hours a week.  I rarely tasked him with anything specific – I mainly had him help and teach the younger employees (which I think he loved).  I’m not in that position anymore with that company, but Kermit is still coming in every week.

Why does Kermit keep coming in?

It’s his purpose.  If he wasn’t at work, he wouldn’t have a purpose.  That’s not an indictment of Kermit – he’s a heck of a guy.  He simply understands (or maybe feels) that he has the ability to keep going and to keep adding value in the workplace.  And he’s got nothing in his life outside of work that makes him that happy.

Kermit would do it for free if he wasn’t being paid.  I actually think there are some months he didn’t bill the company – and I recall having to nag him about turning a bill in at all.

I’m certain that if Kermit wasn’t coming in?  He’d die.  It’s who he is.

Men must have a purpose.  If they don’t have one, they’ll either find one, or die.

What’s your purpose?

catpurpose

 

 

What should you do in an economic downturn? Depends . . .

“Out these windows, we will view the collapse of financial history.  One step closer to economic equilibrium.” – Fight Club

Since 1940, the United States has had 12 recessions, as recorded by the Fed.  The graph is below.

fed unemployment

Want to start a small business?  Just buy a big one before a recession, and wait!  Saves a lot of hassle!  The gray bars are recessions.

Why do we have recessions?

There have been several economists who have tried to explain this.  One of the earlier explanations was from Ludwig Von Mises.  Von Mises, being Austrian, was the founder of what is known as the “Austrian” school of economics.  Austrian economists are the mortal enemy of Keynesian economists (named after John Maynard Von Keynes, it being a new rule that every economist must now have “Von” in their middle name).  Often the Austrians and Keynesians will have gang fights over who has better economic theory, but they’re economists, so the gang fights look like slap fights between anemic three-year-old girls.

Von Mises felt that recessions were caused by a debt cycle.  At a time (like today) you can borrow massive amounts of money at very low interest rates.  My current house is mortgaged at 4% or so, but my first house was financed at a rate just over 9%, and that was a bargain at the time.  And my current savings account pays interest in dust and, on a good year, in little balls of dryer lint.

voneconomics

Little known fact:  Ludwig Von Mises (Miller) was Superbowl® 50 MVP!

This condition (like we’re in today) encourages investment, and discourages savings.  An example:

The little town I’m in has one hotel that was built since Bill Clinton was president.  There are a collection of at least two other (nice) hotels around town.  And, there are about three hotels that were constructed when the building code required use of lead pipes, lead paint, and asbestos carpet.  So, there are hotels for moderate budgets (like $90 a night) all the way down to hotels that take payment in squirrel pelts (tanned only – no raw pelts).  No five star hotels, but, really, this town isn’t one you’d come to visit as a tourist.

But somebody decided we needed another hotel.  And they built one – a brand new, brand name hotel in a town that already had enough rooms.  Why?

Interest rates are low, so the hotel company is just looking for places to spend money.  If they can borrow it at 5%, they don’t have to make too much money for the investment to pay off.

In an environment with low interest rates and large amounts of money available, companies will borrow money to do almost anything – projects that are crappy at 10% interest look great at a 5% cost of capital.  So they borrow first to do the “great” projects and, once those are done, companies then borrow to do the so-so projects.

What happens when the interest rate goes up?  Or the business ideas that are presented are so silly (strawberry picker making $15,000 a year buys $720,000 California house – LINK) that when they make the papers they become legendary.  Another way to tell is when a Wells Fargo® bank has a Starbucks© inside it’s lobby – and the Starbucks has a Wells Fargo™ bankette inside.  With a tiny Starbucks©.  You can tell that maybe, just maybe, the economy is nearing peak stupid.  (This happened in Houston – there was a Starbucks™ in the mall in front of the Target©.  The Target® had a Starbucks™ just inside the door.  So did the Wells Fargo© bank. Next to the Target™.)

As we watched the housing market collapse, as well as the financial shenanigans machine industry that supported it, my lawyer friend said to me . . . “Well, when you’re at the beach and the tide goes, out, you see who wasn’t wearing any clothing.”  The length of time of artificially low interest rates and the greater the amount of “silly” investment is like a drunk’s binge – the longer it lasts the bigger the hangover.

Examples of irrational thought:

  • The price of a house never goes down – it’ll go up forever. And this one is in a great location, right next to the high paying jobs at the chemical plant.
  • The price of a stock never goes down – stocks will go up forever. And that new car will never replace horses!  Silly!
  • Comics are totally the best investment anyone could ever make. This issue of Teen Manga 2000 will be worth millions!
  • “It’s different this time.”
  • “Stocks have reached a new permanent high plateau.”
  • “This company, Montgomery Ward Toys ‘r’ Us Sears Tesla will last forever . . . .

And then, something happens.  Oh, sure, it looks like . . . 9/11.  If the economy were healthy and operating on all cylinders, 9/11 wouldn’t have led to a recession.  The reason for the recession isn’t what’s in the papers – the economy was sick from too much bourbon.  It was going to throw up anyway.

Make no mistake – the United States is an economic engine.  2% growth is middling, but a 2% contraction is catastrophe.  Why?

All of the jobs are created at the margin, at that 1% or 2% of growth.  A small contraction ripples through the economy – now people are losing jobs.  A 2% contraction is really a 3% or 4% contraction.  That can set off a chain reaction (like during the Great Depression) – those people aren’t consuming, so the next group of people lose their jobs/businesses.  And so on.

Also, in the past, inflation was a thing that happened.  Now we pretend it doesn’t, even as food goes from a $5 lunch to a $10 lunch, minimum.

Eventually, however, the Central Bank (in the case of the United States) can hold back the interest rates no longer – it has to raise them or risk the currency (dollar) becoming worthless.  Interest rates rise.

Formerly profitable projects and businesses are no longer profitable at the new rate.  They get cancelled, or in some cases abandoned during construction.  Or the entire business fails.  The average business lasts . . . 10 years, regardless of age.  Big ones, small ones, they get eaten or fail.  It’s part of that regrowth that’s actually nice about capitalism.  Wouldn’t it be nice if the DMV had to compete to get you to come in and get license plates or a new driver’s license?

So how should you behave in an economic contraction?

First, the pitfalls:  being right early is EXACTLY the same as being totally wrong.  In 1994 I saw that Marvel® had a great group of characters, and if they could only exploit them, they’d have a franchise that was worth millions.  So, I placed a big bet – $2000 – on Marvel™ Entertainment stock.  Which promptly went bankrupt, making my investment worth a handful of magic beans.  Sigh.  Again, being right early is exactly the same as being wrong.

Second:  Getting out early (which I’ve done a time or two or almost always) has proven to be a killer.  Getting out while the market is still going up has cost me a lot of gains.  Not that I’m complaining – the world has been awesome for me, but I really wish I could afford a private island with a heliport inside and extinct volcano.  I’ll have to buy an island without a volcano.  Again.  Sigh.  Is an extinct volcano too much to ask?

So, what do you do when faced with an economic downturn?  I’ve developed a helpful graphic:

Size of Downturn Best Investment Amount of Panic Beware of: Move to:
1-3% Stay the course – keep investing every month. Bernie Sanders waves his hands and screams for more aid. Falling stocks. A nice property you bought at a bargain.
Less than 5% Whiskey.  AAA Bonds of solid countries, like Switzerland.  Gold. Bernie Sanders takes his hand out of his pockets and puts them in yours. Communist revolution.  Oh, wait, they already got California. Montana or Idaho.
More than 10% Ammunition.  Even more whiskey. Bernie Sanders forms a cannibal paramilitary organization. Better Call Saul being cancelled. Your island with a helipad in an extinct volcano.

The real answer is that response to a downturn depends on:

How much money you have.  If you have plenty, you’ll be fine.

How long the downturn lasts.  If a year or two, you’ll figure it out.  If a decade or more?  Yikes!   (Unless you have lots of money.)

How severe the downturn is.  See above.  The “More than 10%” is not really all that much of a joke.

How much your job is impacted.  This you can figure out now.  If your company could do fine without you, you don’t figure into any strategic initiatives, and you make a lot of money?  I hope you saved some, because you and dozens of people that look just like you will be looking for a job soon enough.

Ma Wilder’s family, the McWilders, took in a batch of neighbor kids during the Great Depression and helped to raise them.  Great Grandpap McWilder was wistfully employed on the railroad and operating a boarding house.  Plus he ran a gambling house (I think) that sold illicit whiskey.  He did what he had to do to get by during the Depression.

Great Grandfather Wilder ran a bank that did fine during the Depression.  Never had to hustle, worked banker’s hours.  Depression?  Not for him.

So, be like Von Mises and Great Grandfather Wilder!  Blitz that recession!

Increasing Returns or: Problems are our Friend

“Hey, I have a little expertise in government pensions.  I could increase your annual return if you just let me invest a small portion . . . .” – Bones

DSC03828

My current computer techs.  Yeah, I’m not kidding.

In my first job after getting my master’s degree I ended up in a department with 10 other folks, all of us technically minded.  During college, I had built my own computer and had also done a fair amount of programming.  I even knew DOS (no, I’m not yelling “TWO” in Spanish – DOS stands for Disk Operating System, and it was what originally put MicroSoft® into a profit making position).  I knew DOS due to some patient friends, and I bought my original PC from a certain frequent commenter (GS) to this site for about $100.  When I started my new job, I knew more about computers than most of the people in the group.

And when anyone in the group had problems, they’d ask Willie (the other guy who knew computers pretty well) or they’d ask me to fix it for them.  This actually predates the company having an IT department or even a coherent IT policy.  If employees with computers made more money for the company than employees without computers?  Buy the employees computers.  If the employees are too stupid to use/fix their own computers?  We’ll get new employees.

So when I was asked a question, I generally (80% of the time) knew the answer quickly.  About 20% of the time, I had no idea, but knew enough on what sorts of things to try that might get to a solution for my coworkers friends.  (This job was generally sitcom-level fun.  We were all recent college grads and we were constantly at each other’s houses for parties, dinners, and what-not.)

Soon, I’d seen most problems you could have with PC software – since I was solving my own problems plus the problems of 10 other people (Willie and I would collaborate on the toughest problems).  The company finally got an IT department, but the first commandment was:  Don’t Let John or Willie Know Where We Keep The Servers.  I have no idea why they did that, since we didn’t know much about servers at all.  Maybe they thought we’d take our trial and error methods to the entire company and erase the payroll files while we were installing new screensavers?  Maybe they were wise in not letting us know where the servers were?

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that neither Willie nor I knew all that much about computers when we started, but we knew just a little bit more than our friends.  A little bit of knowledge combined with solving the problems of 10 people builds the foundation for a LOT of knowledge.

I know a little bit (tiny bit) about making computer chips.  Intel®, however, knows a LOT.  Intel© has been making computer processor chips for nearly fifty years.  So they have fifty years’ worth of experience, right?

No.  Intel™ has about 100,000 employees.  Let’s pretend that 10% of the staff solves problems in production – learning how to make chips quicker, more reliable, minty smelling, etc. at any given time.  That’s 10,000 people.  For fifty years.

Doing the math, Intel® has invested up to 500,000 man-years into making awesome chips.  To catch them?  You’d have to duplicate that level of investment.  Numerous examples exist where entire geographic areas become excellent at doing some sort of manufacturing – Japan led the consumer electronics boom.  China makes I-Phones® faster than any other country could.  Detroit.  Well, it used to make cars.  And as much as I kid, Detroit still has amazing technical skills when it comes to cars.  Silicon Valley?  Yeah.  They’re the current bright spot for information innovation.  Southwestern Art?  Go to Santa Fe.  Really good at lying?  Try Washington D.C.

This isn’t a new phenomenon.  If you look into the trash piles of ancient Britain, you find that during the Roman period, the dishes used by the common man were – pretty nice.  (And archeologists LOVE dishes.  They break, and you have to get new ones, so they tell you a lot about what’s going on with a culture.)  Dishes were shipped to Britain from Southern Gaul (France) where they specialized in making plates.  Once Britain was cut off from the collapsing Roman Empire?  The dishes got crappy – the British hadn’t had to make their own dishes in hundreds of years.

When Rome collapsed, dishes got bad, not only in Britain, but everywhere.  When the trade routes and common currency collapsed, the plate makers had to do something else to survive.  The trade routes, currency, had created a center of excellence that disappeared pretty quickly once the Empire was gone.

Solving problems to get better works for Nations.  It works for Regions.  It works for Companies.  And it works for Individuals.

If you want to be awesome, solve hard problems.  Sometimes the biggest problems are the biggest blessings . . . except that DOS is about as familiar as hieroglyphics nowadays, so solving that problem is probably not important.

Did I mention that you should learn to solve important problems?  Yeah.  My bad.  Important problems.  Solve those . . . .

Machiavelli, Business Advice, and You

“Among other evils that being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised.  That’s Niccolò Machiavelli.  Now get!  I need to use your bathroom.” – The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre

 MachiavelloHistorico

LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT NOSE!  You could park a jet airliner under that thing!

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, better known to us today as simply Machiavelli, died in 1527.  I know, I know, these posts seem to be stuck in the 1500’s recently – but what better place to study the economic effects of an empire built on plundered gold (LINK), genetics of the amazingly inbred Hapsburgs (LINK) and now . . . political philosophy and business.

Machiavelli, besides having his name turned into a word for amoral behaviors used to get power (Machiavellian) was also a great-great-great-great-grandfather of Madonna, Cher, and Meatloaf which is why they use only one name.

I kid.

Machiavelli’s best known work is The Prince.  Reportedly, he wrote this political philosophy book for Lorenzo de’ Medici.  Niccolò had recently been fired from his job as a diplomat when he wrote The Prince, and back in 1516, being fired didn’t mean “here’s your crap and two weeks’ wages,” it meant, “we just might torture you and imprison you – just because.”  And Machiavelli was tortured by the Medici family – merely because they thought he might have once known a group of people who might have been plotting against Medici rule.

So what does Machiavelli do?  He writes an entire book and dedicates it to one member of the family that tortured him.  Yeah – I guess he missed that job he got fired from.

Note:  All quotes in this post are directly from The Prince.

The Prince has been written about a zillion times.  Heck, I had to write a paper on it when I was in college.  So what’s my take with this post?

Machiavelli wrote the book with an eye to a ruler in 16th Century Italy.  Does it have applicability in today’s business world?  Let’s see.  Yes.

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.” 

I’ll mostly skip chapters 1-5.  Although there is some applicability, I’ll leave you with these notes:

Machiavelli writes about differing kinds of states – including conquered states.  His advice?  Kill off all of the old rulers after you take over a place.  I’ve seen this in business – one factory I knew about was bought by a new company.  Step one?  Fire all of the leadership.  Not some.  All.  Every department head except one was immediately fired and replaced.

To quote Niccolo:

“If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.” 

So, if you think you’re not replaceable?  We replace our President every four or eight years.  A business can do without you.  And if you’re bought out?  Getting rid of the leadership is a great way to immediately change the culture of a company.  No mixed loyalties.

If a company or department was ruled by a tyrant, a new leader will find it pretty easy to start out in the department/division/company.  If the previous leader allowed or encouraged a large amount of autonomy and freedom?  You’re going to have problems.  This type of business might be a tough one to lead after you take it over.

“He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command.” 

Chapter 6:  Conquest by Virtue

When looking at rising to the top, Machiavelli strongly favored doing it based on your own skill and cunning.  This type of power, he felt, was quite durable.  This is the company you built from the ground up – the company you bought with cash, the department manager role you won through years of hard work and dedication.

“The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.” 

The major danger of this type of power was the idea that you could reform the system after conquering it.  It is difficult to do so:  the people who liked the old systems will fight hard to keep them – those that might benefit from the new system often won’t fight, since the benefits are in the future, and vague.  Machiavelli favored the use of force to make change happen.  And by force, Machiavelli meant swords and such.  Since running down the hallway cutting down poorly performing employees with swords might be a bad idea, you might want to consider firing them instead.

Chapter 7:  Conquest by Fortune

This is the power that you get when you’re appointed – you have powerful backers that want you to have the job/company.  Whereas when you take a business over due to virtue (above), here you have to make the people that put you into power happy, as well as deal with the people in the company or department.  If you’re lucky, and very, very good, you can keep the job after your father-in-law retires.  But it’s not likely.

“A prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent, so that if he does not attain to their greatness, at any rate he will get some tinge of it.” 

Chapter 8:  Conquest by Criminal Virtue

If you’re going to take over a place via immoral means, Machiavelli says to do all of the evil up front.  If done completely enough, then you can (over time) make people forget your cruel and wicked actions over time.  The worst of all possible immoral takeovers is one where the cruelty and evil continue over time.

I don’t really recommend this, but we see it all of the time, and the people who do it are amazingly rich.

Hmmm, maybe I should consider evil?

“The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.” 

Chapter 15:  Reputation of A Prince

Machiavelli didn’t think much of the common man:

“How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.” 

But that’s plain enough.  As a manager, what do you think your reputation should be?  Here, Niccolo cuts to the quick:

“And here comes in the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both; but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.” 

Ouch!

But he’s right.  If people love you, they can discount that feeling, especially at times when they feel joy.  But if they fear you?  They will be vigilant every minute of every day.  Fear is a much more potent motivator than love – just ask Maslow (LINK).

How does this apply at work?  Sadly, as a manager you have to remove yourself from the after work drinks.  You have to remove yourself from the “work parties.”  You have to be above and beyond that.  If you are just another person in the group?  Your authority means nothing.  And you have to use your authority – quickly and suddenly, but with complete justification every so often.  Why?  Because theory would say you should know more than your employees – at least occasionally.  Unless you use it – it won’t exist.

Chapter 16:  Generosity vs. Parsimony

It’s a sad state of affairs – if you’re generous, people don’t appreciate it – they simply want more.

“Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.” 

And if you’re generous with your employees?  Oddly, it makes them respect you less.  Yes.  Less.  If you have to pick a reputation, being cheap is better than generosity.  People understand cheap.  Your employees understand cheap.  They have to make choices everyday with their money.  Being generous just means you’ve got so much money that your generosity means nothing . . . .

Chapter 17:  Cruelty vs. Mercy

“Men worry less about doing an injury to one who makes himself loved than to one who makes himself feared.”

Machiavelli is pretty simple in this chapter.  Create fear if it helps you – the idea is that fear should help your business.  But if it’s excessive?  Eventually people will leave you.

I’m sad to say that being cruel is a much better way to create loyalty than being nice – it seems that’s just how humanity works.   A strong man who is justifiably cruel gets our respect over someone who loves us.  Every time.

Chapter 18:  Keeping A Prince’s Word

“He should appear to be compassionate, faithful to his word, guileless, and devout. And indeed he should be so. But his disposition should be such that, if he needs to be the opposite, he knows how.”

A Prince should be virtuous.  A Prince should look virtuous.  A Prince knows when not to be virtuous.  Your team, your group, your company will look the other way when you decide the company is more important than your compassion.  Oddly?  They will love you for it.

Chapter 22:  Nobles and Staff

Get good people to work for you.  Make them loyal to you.  Value competence over cool tee-shirts.

“Because there are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless.” 

Don’t have idiots on your staff.  And understand the differences between intellects.

Chapter 23:  Avoid Flatterers

This might be the most powerful quote by Machiavelli, well, ever:

“There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making men understand that telling you the truth will not offend you.” 

If you hide yourself from the actual truth, and punish those that would tell the truth to you?  Well, the game is over.

“Men are so happily absorbed in their own affairs and indulge in such self-deception that it is difficult for them not to fall victim to this plague; and some efforts to protect oneself from flatterers involve the risk of becoming despised.”

If you’re a leader?  Being despised is the end.

Chapter 25:  Fortune

Here Machiavelli starts looking at risk.  Here’s a rough passage, if you’re a feminist:

“It is better to be impetuous than cautious, because fortune is a woman; and it is necessary, if one wants to hold her down, to beat her and strike her down.”

Well.

Anyhow – Machiavelli makes a great point:  risk is not an enemy.  Risk is risk.  And when you’re in a risky situation at work, why not take it up a notch?

Actual story:  I knew that my boss had interviewed (don’t ask me how) someone for my position.  At the next available opportunity, I asked him about it.

I’ve never enjoyed a work situation more.  “How did you know?”

My response:  “If I told you, would you ever trust me with a secret?”

The look on his face was priceless.

When you have nothing to lose?  Doubling down is for sissies.  Go all in.

Remember this:

“If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.” 

‘nuff said.