Category: Silly Predictions

Cassandra Says: Look Out Below

“Doing so might allow the energy to escape, with potentially catastrophic results.” – Lost

What do you get when you cross the Titanic with the Atlantic?  Halfway.

There is a rumor in The Mrs.’ family, that her Great-Grandpappy, the banker, warned all of his clients to pull their money out of the banks before Black Monday on October 28 of 1929.  According to the legend, he was a hero because he saved that money for all of his friends.  I heard that as an old banker he was sad, because he always drank a loan.

I have no idea if he saved all of that money, but the legend serves a purpose:  it confirms that, in most people’s minds, that there are wise people who can see trouble coming.

I can do that, too.  When The Mrs. chucks a can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew® at my head, well, I know instinctively that if I don’t duck I’ll end up with a crescent impression on my favorite noggin.  The Mrs. generally chooses stew instead of soup, because when she checked the pantry we were out of stock.

Pattern recognition and seeing trouble coming was something that the dead Roman philosopher, Seneca did fairly well.  Like a good Roman, he took a stab at it.

In one observation, Seneca noted that it’s really hard to build things up:  whether it be getting into good physical shape, or building a house or creating a civilization.  Purposeful, positive growth is hard and takes time.

Where did Brutus get his knife?  Traitor Joe’s.

But if I want to ruin my health it only takes half the time as it does to get into good shape.  A modern American house burns down so quickly that firefighters tell me that they don’t even try to save them.  If a Goodwill® store catches fire, they stay far away – they don’t want to inhale second-hand smoke.  If you want to destroy a civilization?  Well more on that later, but they evaporate much more quickly than it takes to build them.

Here’s what Seneca said:  “Increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.”  Actually, he said something in Latin, but when you quote Latin it sounds like a doctor is trying to pick up on a lawyer while gargling vodka.

I came across this concept while reading Italian chemistry professor Ugo Bardi’s blog (Cassandra’s Legacy) back in 2011.  That initial post I read back then is here (LINK).  Since that time, Dr. Bardi has written two books and now bases most of his blogging on that one philosophical statement.  Some people ride that one pony and ride it hard, and it looks like Ugo has found his.

There are some other things I’ve noticed that are related to this concept:

Generally, things go on until they collapse.  Is it easier to tear down a system and build a better one, or keep the old one going?

Duh.  People don’t like change.

They aren’t mentally wired for change.  During the few times in my life when electricity was out for extended times at the house (think hours or days), I find that I’ll walk into a dark room and absently reach out to turn on the light.  My rational mind knows that the power is gone, but I expect it to be there.

I hear at this blackout, people in New York City were stuck on escalators for hours.

When things collapse, there is generally a lot of energy built up in the failing system.  People try to prop up the system with all of the duct tape and baling wire they have.  This rarely makes things better.  Filling a failing dam up with more water doesn’t make the flood that comes after the dam fails better.

It makes it more catastrophic.

Failures like I’m describing tend to have the following characteristics:

  • They are cataclysmic. The end state isn’t predictable.
  • They happen all at once. As systems fail, they trigger the failure of related systems.  And so on.  It’s a chain reaction.  To go back to the flood analogy, these failures scour the landscape, ripping out useful and useless features alike simply because of the amount of energy that was released.
  • The more energy that’s stored (i.e., the longer we push back paying the piper), the bigger the destruction and the worse the hangover.

What’s the difference between a dam and a sock?  Almost everything.

Examples of this sort of near-apocalyptic societal transformation are actually abundant in history.

  • The French Revolution. In just a few short years, the French monarchy was deposed and replaced by a ruling junta of Leftist animals.
  • The first United States Civil War. It went from zero to armed combat across half a continent in just a few months.
  • The First World War. The Russian Revolution.  The Second World War.
  • The collapse of the Soviet Union.
  • I could really keep writing this list until dawn, but at some point I need some sleep.

The penalties are tough for misgendering in France. 

Just because the initial change happens in an instant, doesn’t mean that those changes will resolve in an instant.  The French Revolution started in 1789.  If you date the unrest that started on that day, you could pick the date that Napoleon went into his final exile as perhaps the end.  That was in 1814.

A girl born in 1789 in France would have been, perhaps, 25 then.  She would nearly certainly have been married, and probably would have her own child by then.  When we study history we encompass entire generations within the span of a paragraph, though some say that Moses started history when he got the first download from a cloud onto a tablet.

As I said, The Mrs.’ Great-Gramps apparently saved the day for his depositors because he looked around and saw what was going to happen.  True or not, it sometimes happens in reality.

Michael Burry did it, and more than once.

Who is Michael Burry?  Well, he’s the guy who shorted the real estate market in 2008 and made $100’s of millions of dollars for himself, and nearly a billion for other people in the process.

Christian Bale was movie him in The Big Short.  Burry just might have an idea or two about the economy.  What’s his take?

I wonder if they could get Chris Hemsworth to play movie me?

All I can say is be prepared – a day too late is far worse than a year too soon.

Money And Computers – Disaster Coming?

“Cats and dogs, living together.  Real wrath of God type stuff.” – Ghostbusters

A hacker got my friend’s bank account.  The hacker was so disappointed he started a fundraiser for my friend.

I drove up to the local generic national pharmacy that has systematically absorbed all the local pharmacies like Hillary Clinton absorbs the souls of the innocent.  The Mrs. had asked me to pick up a prescription for my scalp polish – she said she wanted to bounce a signal to the people up in the International Space Station.

To my surprise, I drove up to the drive-through window and saw this sign:

I had cash, but I figured it must be a nightmare inside for the people in the pharmacy.  I figured it would be easier on them for me to wait until they got it figured out before I came back.

After I saw the sign, I knew what was up:  yet another critical failure of an electronic data system leading to (probably) a nationwide outage.  I was right.

This is scary to me because of . . . money.

Money today is much more complicated than it was 200 years ago:  back then, it was (mainly) gold and silver and copper bits that we traded back and forth.  Most citizens of the newly-formed United States didn’t trust paper because the Continental Congress printed so many stacks of Continental money that it became as worthless as a math book to AOC.  This inflation and currency collapse gave rise to the phrase, “not worth a Continental.”

This is the direct reason that the Constitution had the clause that “no State may . . . make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts”.  Today, however, an arbitrary thing we all call a dollar exists.  But in many cases, those dollars may be entirely virtual.  I got paid by a direct deposit of electronic dollars into a bank account that, when I write a check, will send some of those electronic dollars to another bank.

This requires secure computer systems to work.  As we have seen, from oil to water treatment systems to my pharmacy, these systems are very capable of being hijacked.  Just this week, a list of 8 billion (yes, billion) passwords were being downloaded into the Internet, 6 billion of which were just “password”.  Chance are good that one of them was mine.  And one of them was yours.

It gets worse.  Should we even be trusting our computers?

A Russian research team found something scary:  undocumented instructions on Intel® computer chips.  As the researchers found out, these particular instructions couldn’t be run in the chip’s “normal mode.”  But why are they there?  Who could have put them there?

The NSA?  The CIA?

Want to bet that the NSA doesn’t really care how you encrypt your communications because they can read your typing and watch your screens in real-time?  I don’t know if the “Odin” post is some anon just making up a story, but with everything we’ve learned over the last decade, I’d be surprised if something like this didn’t really happen.

I would be shocked if they didn’t have the ability to take full control of my computer.  The United States government certainly reacted in a pretty negative way, pretty quickly.

What happens when you find a vulnerability?

Even turned down from sharing information about their data at the world’s most elite gathering of hackers.

Why wouldn’t Intel® want to know about vulnerabilities on their chips?  Hmmm?

Maybe the NSA could share tech with McDonalds®?

But if that backdoor vulnerability is there, what’s important to know is who has access to it.  As we look back, Stalin had not only a better mustache, but also better regular progress reports on the Manhattan Project than Truman did.  Who wants to bet that China doesn’t have backdoor data (if it exists)?  Who wants to bet that Chinese manufacture of motherboards and other electronic control architecture don’t have little extras added in?

I wouldn’t.

And, I’m not saying that the Chinese are evil for attempting to gain these particular secrets or this advantage – it’s a matter of self-preservation.  If I were President of the United States and had the ability to infiltrate all of the industrial, financial, and military assets of potential enemies, would I do that?

Sure.  But in this case, if you’re President of an increasingly weak government over an increasingly fracturing population, what do you do?  Anything you can in order to keep control, even if it means building in dangerous backdoors to critical products.

Which brings us back to money.

Money is essential to society as it is now configured.  A breakdown of the electronic systems that control the flow of money would, at minimum, bring utter chaos.  Matt Bracken famously asked this question nearly a decade ago:  “What if a cascading economic crisis, even a temporary one, leads to millions of EBT (electronic benefit transfer) cards flashing nothing but ERROR?”

We saw what three days without gasoline shipments did on the East Coast.  That would be nothing compared to what we’d see if the money system broke down.

Well, I think the pharmacy will be back up tomorrow, and the impact, for us, has been zero.

This time.

Welcome To The Exponential, Including One Bikini Graph

“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?” – No Country For Old Men

When I went to Ireland I met some shy people, which surprised me.  No one expects the Irish inhibition.

I had noticed it some time ago a strange mathematical relationship – the National Debt (sort of) doubles about every eight years.  Is it an exact mathematical relationship?  Nope.  It varies a bit based on which eight years that you pick.  But the relationship is simple – the national debt is growing faster than yeast in AOC’s armpits, at about 9% per year.

It wasn’t always like that.

I also looked at the national debt between World War II and 1970 or so.  During that time period, the national debt was as flat as Joe Biden’s brain activity scan.  Hmm, whatever could have happened around 1970?

You’ll be happy to know that my search for “Richard Nixon bikini” came up empty.

The reason for most of our problems is that understanding the idea of exponential growth is difficult.  Our minds are (mostly) made for understanding linear things, or things that happen slowly.  No one really expects that, no matter how badly they eat, that they’d double in weight overnight, or even over the course of a month or year.

Yet, a lot of natural processes do follow exponentials, at least for a limited amount of time.  Take a baby.  Please.  I really have no use for them anymore.  Even the thought of a baby makes me exhausted.

Babies start with one cell, then two, then four, and then eight, and so on.  The initial growth of a child is exponential.  Thankfully, that levels off, or else there would be no way that I’d be able to afford to feed Pugsley.  If that exponential growth rate had continued, he’d be the size of the Solar System and need to eat cheeseburgers the size of Saturn just to make it to lunch.

Want fries with that Saturn?

No.  He’ll settle for the rings.

So, exponentials can’t continue on forever.  Math proves that.  If exponentials could continue forever, by the year 2032, the only blog left on the Internet would be this one, and everyone on Earth would have to spend 18 hours a day reading it.

Ahhh, I can dream.

But our national debt is following that trend.  Here’s a graph I put together:

Actual conversation with The Mrs.:  I said, “I promise I can make this [economic idea] interesting.”  The Mrs. responded, “Bikini graphs aren’t interesting to me.”

One of the lines is the actual national debt.  It’s the red one.  I just picked actual national debt data every eight years going into the past from today.  The other one?  I extrapolated back into the past from today: I just assumed that the national debt doubled every eight years.

How accurate was I?

In 1973 the actual national debt was $466 billion.  My backwards approximation?  $438 billion.  Close enough that a snake that was 3.14 feet long could be called a πthon.

Sure, in the middle, sometimes I was higher, sometimes lower.  But in general, I stuck the landing.

That means that in 2029 (if the United States is made of math) that we’ll be seeing a national debt of $56 trillion.  And in 2037?  $112 trillion.  Jeff Bezos sometimes works a whole year and doesn’t make that much money.

I heard he didn’t want to be CEO or president, just Prime® minister.

Does it make sense to anyone that the world will still keep accepting a doubling of debt every eight years and still keep sending us oil and steel and copper for the dollars that we print?  Sure, it worked for a long time.  Having an unmatched military and all the nukes gives a lot of room to dictate terms.

But how many people remember back to 1980 when the winner of the Cold War was in doubt?  The United States couldn’t print all of the dollars it wanted to without inflation.  The rule that the dollar followed changed, though, when the Soviet Union decided that it wanted to retire and spend the rest of eternity in Boca Raton in a retirement community gumming applesauce.

After that, the United States printing press could go wild.  Inflation?  Well, why bother with that?  The United States could print all the money it wanted and ship it overseas.  What else were people going to want?  Rubles?  Marks?  Rupees?

No.  The way that international trade was done was with the dollar.  We could print them up, and the world would soak them up and then the inflation could be exported all over the world, since the demand for dollars was now the entire world.  The United States could, in essence, tax the entire world to allow them to use the good old dollar.

I heard my chiropractor owes back taxes.

It was a good ride.  Need oil?  Print a few billion and send it to the Saudis.  Need copper?  Print a few million and send it to Chile.  Need cars?  Print a few billion and send it to Japan.

There are good things that happen when you win it all.  You get a trophy.  You get a party.  You get oil and copper and cars.  But if you have too much fun at the party?

There’s always the hangover.

Exponential growth can continue, and it can continue for quite a long time.  Without it, life itself wouldn’t be possible.  But life proves, again and again, that there is only so far that growth can go.

But, hey, it’s different this time, right?  The national debt can go on forever, right?

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: The Cold Civil War?

“You didn’t bring a gun to the final shoot-out?” – Seven Psychopaths

This month the clocks were supposed to go back, but I forgot where I bought mine.

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

March was had increased violence as the country warmed up.  Sadly for the Left, none of the violence measured up to their requirements – they were looking for very specific circumstances.  They needed a white guy with an AR-15 killing four or more people, kids if possible.  The Left was disappointed.  All of their lottery violence tickets turned out to be of the wrong ethnicity, and then they were immediately disappeared from the news.  Poof.

I’m holding March at “just” a 9 out of 10.  That’s still two minutes to midnight.

I currently put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) holding at 650 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

As close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful.  Things could change at any minute.  Avoid crowds.

In this issue:  Front Matter – The Cold Civil War – Violence And Censorship Update – Enter The Leftist Panopticon – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Running The Gun Gauntlet – 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, feel free to subscribe and you’ll get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern, free of charge.

The Cold Civil War

Loudoun County, Virginia – A group of school staff and elected officials formed a Facebook® group:  the “Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County”, which sounds nice enough, I guess.  What they were doing was, however, the opposite of nice.  They were plotting how to publicly destroy people who differ with their ideology.  You can read about the details here (LINK).

The Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County primary spokesthing, Jabba The Teacher.

What was the difference?  The “Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County” believe strongly in Marxist societal division theory Critical Race Theory (CRT).  If you haven’t read much about CRT, I can assure you that CRT is 100% a collectivist’s dream.  The laundry list of things that CRT advocates is pretty rough:

  • Dismantling merit-based systems
  • Removing rationality
  • Removing legal equality and Constitutional and legal race-neutrality
  • “Naming one’s own reality” – as in “My Truth” and not The Truth
  • Reparations, and nationalism (but only for non-whites)
  • And a lot of other things

In most bullet-point lists, I throw in a few silly ones just for fun.  Not in the list above, since almost everything that CRT stands for is very, very silly.

But here is a case of a group of Leftists wanting to destroy people because they don’t want them to judged by, apparently, their spelling:

Yup, this is real.  She can’t spell the name of her school (LINK) and goes from third person to first person in the same sentence. 

This is cancer in our country.  CRT is specifically designed to create division.  It is working.  The scariest part of this is that a group of publicly paid teachers and elected officials have set up a secret club to publicly destroy parents who disagree with them philosophically.

Welcome to the Cold Civil War.

 

Violence And Censorship Update

The biggest story in censorship this month is the censoring by Amazon® of the book When Harry Became Sally by Ryan T. Anderson.  The reason?  “Amazon™ has “chosen not to sell books that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.”

Now, since one study showed that 41% of transgender folks had attempted suicide, well, there is at least an argument that mental illness may be at play in some cases of transgenderism.  That’s a weak statement, and almost certainly true.  Yet, Amazon© wouldn’t allow that to be published in 2021.

What message does that send to a writer?  More importantly, what information does that send to a publisher?  Since Amazon™ sells between 50% and 80% of the books sold in the United States, would a major publisher take a chance on ideas that Amazon© might find objectionable?

No.

And it’s looking like YouTube™ wants to remove the “dislike” button.  Why?  There are several theories, but one that amuses me the most is that Joe Biden’s handlers are upset that whenever he has a video out, that the dislikes overwhelmingly swamp the people who hit the “like” button.  The comments are already turned off.

I built an IKEA® bookcase I called Joe.  It was pretty shaky and leaned hard to the Left.

In YouTube©’s latest idea, the “dislike” button will still be there, and you can still use it.  The video creator can see the number of dislikes, too.  So, if it’s an anti-bullying campaign, it’s the stupidest one ever because the bullied person can still see how many people don’t like them.

I’ll note that in the videos I reviewed for this post, none of them have comments available.

They know you don’t like them.  They know what you think of them.  They just don’t want other people to be able to see it.

Enter The Leftist Panopticon:

There was a creepy English guy named Jeremy Bentham who was a “social” thinker in 18th century England.  One of his inventions was a prison.  The idea that Jeremy had was a prison where just a few guards could look and see everyone at once.  This panopticon was a prison where you were never really free of the gaze of the guards.

Welcome to 2021, so we have to be able to do better than that, right?

If Donald Trump had indicated that he was going to use government money to hire private companies to scour social media to find people that opposed him, and use the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to run the program, Elon Musk would have been able to hear the Leftist outcry from his pleasure palace on Mars.

On the plus side, I’m thinking my FBI agent is happy as I make those small, but necessary changes to better my life.

But swap out the name to “Joe Biden” and there has been remarkably little negative comment.  Have a need to update the No-Fly™ list with pesky people from the Right?

Go for it.  And here’s the (LINK) to prove I’ve not been making this up after watching too much Alex Jones.

The Left will certainly do it.  And it won’t be limited to recent ideas, either.  The way that Leftists feel about the Right is simple:  if you ever, ever supported something the Left is against now?  You’re a heretic.  Cancelled.

Do you expect the DHS to be any different now they’re in the hands of the Left?

We have entered an era of technology where every move that you make can be tracked.  I noticed this on my phone when I stopped at a new restaurant.  Google® popped up with, “Hey, can you tell us if this restaurant has any typographical errors on the menu?”  Google’s® A.I. was asking little old me to help it know absolutely everything about everyplace.

That same Google® data was used and cross-referenced to bring charges against people who were in the Capitol on January 6, 2021.  This data went from, “we can’t use” to “we won’t use” to “we will use” in just a few years.  It’s now a primary tool for law enforcement.

As will be your friends, your email, your web history, your web search history, and, soon enough, a track of you moving from camera to camera in any urban space.

The Civil War 2.0 implication is this:  the Left is using this information actively.  Act accordingly.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Up is more violent, and violence is up in March.  I expect it to jump in April.  If Chauvin is found not guilty?  Through the roof.  The state-media propaganda of “home grown terrorism” is increasing the public perception of violence at this point.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability is near record levels, as the Right doesn’t believe in President *, and the Left wants to cancel the Right.

Economic:

I expected this number to be more positive.  It’s not.  I think we will find that April is the month that we find that inflation moves from a thought to a widely-felt reality.

Illegal Aliens:

This data is at record levels for this time of year.  Comments from the Left?  “There needs to be more.”

Running The Gun Gauntlet

I had predicted that the ludicrous Sheila Jackson-Lee bill for gun control would be dead on arrival.  I was right.  But the other bills keep moving along and are a lot more likely to pass.

They’re smaller bills.  Increasing the number of background checks by making almost all transactions require background checks.  There’s a “family exemption” that soon enough will become a “family loophole” after the appropriate victim and shooter combination is found.

Guns don’t kill people, Democratic voters kill people.

In reality, there’s no way to track these background checks, since a very large number of guns in existence have absolutely no paperwork of any type connecting them to their current owner.  After the background checks don’t stop gun violence, the call will come for a national gun registry so that ownership can be tracked.

Registration at the Federal level won’t happen, because people won’t register.  Okay, some would.  But most won’t.  When Connecticut tried to get “assault” weapons registered, it is assumed that only one weapon out of eight was registered.  People know what is at stake.

Doing all of this at once is too much, and too far.  The average American gun owner simply will not comply with registration in 2021, and even the stupidest Leftist understands that widespread noncompliance just gives people a reason to understand the relative strength of individuals and the relative weakness of the government.

As I’ve said before on another post (LINK), the largest army that the world has ever seen are the 80,000,000+ members of the Right in the United States.  As soon as the Right realizes that, they will understand that we truly are only ruled by our consent.

And that is truly what the Left fears.

LINKS

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

The MSM narrative remains fragmented.

The Alt-Right Civil War

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/30/jan-6-capitol-riot-jail-time-478440

https://www.opb.org/article/2021/03/28/proud-boys-clash-with-anti-fascists-in-salem/

https://wwmt.com/news/local/fbi-testifies-wolverine-watchmen-were-trying-to-instigate-a-second-civil-war

https://www.newsweek.com/pastor-rick-joyner-urges-american-christians-prepare-civil-war-1576570

https://napavalleyregister.com/opinion/letters/trump-s-undeclared-civil-war/article_16821682-efae-5831-868b-a239815747ba.html

https://napavalleyregister.com/opinion/letters/the-real-civil-war/article_6c453064-39db-5540-949e-e8f9dfd071be.html

The Republican Civil War

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/03/31/cold-civil-war-being-waged-republicans

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/3/29/a-cold-civil-war-is-being-waged-in-america

https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-next-battle-for-american-democracy-is-around-the-corner-and-moderates-must-be-in-the-fight/

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/4/1/22356594/conservatives-right-wing-democracy-claremont-ellmers

The Black Civil War

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/04/the-many-lives-of-grandmaster-jay/618408/

https://allhiphop.com/features/the-nfacs-grand-master-jay-speaks-out-on-legal-status-hip-hop-freedom-and-the-future/

https://www.msnbc.com/craig-melvin/watch/-it-means-that-you-re-preparing-yourself-to-defend-yourself-nfac-leader-on-militia-name-meaning-108925509977

https://news.yahoo.com/inside-look-black-militia-group-110636647.html

https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/armed-protesters-in-douglasville-were-peaceful-sheriff-says

The Armed Forces Civil War

https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/2542699/seac-dod-will-move-fast-against-extremism-after-completion-of-stand-downs/

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/03/19/some-troops-see-capitol-riot-blm-protests-similar-threats-top-enlisted-leader-says.html

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2021/03/29/civilian-employee-who-allegedly-advocated-for-civil-war-banned-from-air-force-base/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/aaronsmith/2021/04/01/gun-sales-soar-from-stimulus-and-bidens-gun-control-plan-amid-mass-shootings/?sh=378c7e866020

https://slate.com/technology/2021/02/3d-printed-semi-automatic-rifle-fgc-9.html

https://www.amestrib.com/story/news/2021/03/25/iowa-state-isu-students-emailed-3-d-printed-guns-day-after-boulder-mass-shooting-colorado/6995202002/

https://www.19fortyfive.com/2021/03/could-the-u-s-ban-guns-australia-tried-something-pretty-close/

 

The American Civil War

https://www.aier.org/article/the-end-of-america/

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17179/hr1-for-the-people

https://wirepoints.org/mass-federalization-how-washington-is-bailing-out-failed-states-decapitating-competitive-ones-and-ending-america-as-you-knew-it-wirepoint

https://www.persuasion.community/p/john-mcwhorter-the-neoracists

https://thecritic.co.uk/schools-gone-woke/

Pyramids, Captain Kirk, And Skills

“Seven days ago one of my satellites over Antarctica discovered a pyramid.” – Alien vs. Predator

A friend tried to rope me into a pyramid scam.  “Don’t you want to be your own boss,” he asked me.  “No, I hate working for jerks.”

When I graduated from college, I graduated at the same time as one of my close friends.  The employment market was only so-so, but we both managed to grab jobs in a town near the college.  Whereas my job was, um, more rough and tumble (I was a rodeo clown at for chubby people at the Golden Corral® – my worst day was when Megan McCain and Oprah showed up together), my friend’s job ended up being at a suit and tie kind of place.  Thankfully, we still were working in the same city, and we got together frequently.

One night he asked a question over Buffalo wings and too many beers:  “Where did they go?”

“What?  Where did who go?”

“All the old guys.  I mean, I go to work, and I see that there are dozens of people less than thirty.  Then, maybe twenty percent are between thirty and forty.  After forty?  It’s a wasteland.  Hardly anyone but upper management is over forty.”

I thought about his question.  Where did they go?  The company I was working at (and most of the companies I’ve worked at since then) had a similar pyramid shape.  Some have been steeper, and some shallower, but all have had that shape.

I have a good construction joke, but I’m still working on it.

So, where did they go?

Well, they didn’t retire – not from the company they were at – they didn’t make nearly enough to retire at 27 and live on the island with Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Robert Johnson.

Nope.  The vanished people were gone.  Where?  Somewhere else.  Some other industry, some other career.  It was uno, dos, and then they vanished without a tres.

Probably the biggest reason for that pyramid shape is that younger people cost less.  Do they know less?  Sure, but inexpensive is an attribute all of its own.

But any hierarchical organization has fewer slots for leaders than for followers.  The armed forces are a similar example.  I once made the acquaintance of a (no kidding) Captain Kirk.  Now, this Captain Kirk wasn’t in Starfleet®, he was in the United States Army.  And he was sweating for promotion.

Captain Kirk was denied promotion.  I’m thinking that someone the Pentagon saw that Captain Kirk was trying to be promoted to Major Kirk, and that there was no way that the Army would ever give up the numerical superiority they had over the Navy in their number of Captain Kirks.

No, not this Kirk.

The armed forces are a classic example of that pyramid structure:  there are fewer generals than colonels, and fewer colonels than majors.  And, if officers (in a certain range) fail to be promoted a certain number of times?

Well, there’s the door.  So, Captain Kirk soon enough was in the private sector, and I lost track of him from there.  I think he got lost somewhere in the Veridian System.

Most (but not all) companies are built upon this pyramid model.  I’ve seen high-end consulting firms where it’s a paradise for everyone born in the Eisenhower era, but those are the exception, not the rule.  Plus, they charge enough to pay for the most expensive video-streaming service ever:  college during Corona.

So, the rub is that for many, the rule is up or out.

What to do?

Invest in the one thing that can never be taken away from you:  your skills.

My poor reading skills cost me a career in sex-worker management.  On the bright side, now I own a warehouse.

In 2017 I would have given a completely different list of skills than 2021.  It would have been far more dull and predictable.  But 2021?  2021 is like a tarot card reader’s business:  unpredictable.  Part of it will come down to plain dumb luck and good timing.

I’d suggest:

  • Have general skills. General skills are widely applicable and get a job quickly in lots of different locations.    Teacher.  Tom Brady’s tooth polisher.
  • Or, have skills that are so specific that they are nearly impossible to replicate. (Specific skills require a time and a place.  I’m sure that all of the folks working on the Keystone XL pipeline had great skills.  Until those skills aren’t needed.)  If you want a great choice for the Biden year, I’d suggest a carbon-neutral way to turn cash into Democratic votes.  Oh, wait, they’ve got that figured out.
  • Protip: growth industries will be the ones that the Left loves for the next two years, at least.  If it’s green and fuzzy, the Left will fill it full of money.  I’m thinking of investing in pool tables.
  • Have skills that can’t be done remotely from a foreign country. Right now, that includes teaching.  I’m sure there are more, but I’ve been at a loss since Biden figured out how to be the president from China.
  • Have skills where a certification that a foreigner can’t get are required. Top secret clearances are nice.  I’m working on a top-secret project to ferment honey to make ethanol for cars.  The project is all on a mead-to-know basis.

To be fair, I had an addiction to stealing traffic lights.  But I could stop whenever I wanted to.

A lot of the suggestions above would have made the 2017 list.

In 2021, however, I must stress that the world might get a lot more, um, basic than we’re used to.  The reason that my Great-Great-Grandma McWilder (GGGMcW) did fine during the Great Depression was she knew how to make clothes from cloth, a needle, and thread.  And if the cloth wasn’t big enough for a dress?  It was big enough to be made into part of a hand-made quilt.  Like Jean-Luc Picard, she could make it sew.

GGGMcW also knew how to raise chickens.  And raise a garden.  Probably 30% or more of the calories they ate came from the backyard – as he added soil to the garden, I’m sure he said, “so, the plot thickens.”  But Great-Great-Grandpa McWilder was no slouch, either.  He didn’t have a great repair shop, but the man fixed every aspect of his house, by himself.  Roof leaked?

It was his job to fix.  Ants?  His to kill.  Broken suitcase handle?  His to fix.

Honestly, I don’t recall them buying anything much more than flour, sugar, bread, chicken, and hamburger and the occasional vegetable.  I don’t think the area was friendly to corn so I think they got that in cans.  They would have grown more vegetables, but they weren’t from Okra-homa.

I installed a beer tap in my house – now The Mrs. complains that she can’t take a shower.

But there was more.  The Great-Greats were also tied into their community, and had been there a decade.  The connections they had bonded them to the community.  How so?  During the Depression they raised another child from a family that couldn’t afford to feed the kid.

The pyramid is real.  In many ways opportunities may diminish over time.  But life goes on, so keep investing in the skills that you might need.

All of them.  Because you have no idea what the future might bring.

Money In 2021? (Explained With One Bikini)

“Well, Saddam owed us money.” – Arrested Development

What does Superman® dry off with?  A Tow-El.

Money.

What is it?

Really, the truth is money is anything we accept as having value that we can trade for something else.  Cigarettes have been used for money.  Cowrie shells were used in China for money nearly 4,000 years ago.  Booze has often been used for money.

I read an article back in 2013 that bottles of Tide® were being used to trade for drugs in New York City, so you know that there are plenty of insane.  Heck, I hear the Germans are even raising money online through Krautfunding.

Ideally, money has some sort of scarcity attached to it.

Gold has a historic role as money.  You can cut it up into very, very tiny pieces, and you have lots of tiny pieces of gold.  It hasn’t changed – you can melt it back into a single bar again, having lost nothing.  You cut up a dollar bill into very tiny pieces?  You have a pile of gerbil cage fluff.

Gold is nice.  So is silver.

But, like anything, there are problems.

I found a little gold once while prospecting – it was a minor success.

Well, generally always the same problem.  Government.

I’ve mentioned Rome before, because it’s a great illustration of what happens when government designs money.

At the beginning, Roman silver coins were, well, actually silver.  The problem with silver coins is that you can’t make silver show up out of thin air.  Oh, wait, if you’re a government, you can.  The Imperial Romans managed to maintain enough restraint that their silver coins were over 90% silver for a little over 150 years after Empire.

Proving once again I definitely deserve the Nobel Prize™ in Economics for my discovery of Bikininomics©.

After that, the percentage of silver in the coins declined rather quickly.

So did the Roman Empire.

Interestingly, where it took Rome 150 years, it took the United States 142 years for the same thing to happen:  from 1792 (when the Coinage Act was passed) to 1934 (when Roosevelt confiscated United States silver and gold).  History may not repeat, but it sure does rhyme.

Sure, there were silver coins produced after 1934, but silver coins were (largely) discontinued as United States currency in 1965.  (*There were exceptions for dollar and half dollar coins in selected years.  That ended in 1976.)

As soon as the non-silver coins were minted, the silver coins began to disappear from circulation.  Gresham’s Law states the simple fact:  bad money (non-silver coins) drives out good money (silver coins).

But it’s had an impact on people’s thought processes as well:  they have (largely) stopped thinking about gold and silver as money.  Want proof?

Yup.  When Mark Dice offered people either a King Size® Hershey’s™ chocolate bar or a 10 ounce silver bar, everyone chose the candy bar.  As bad money replaced good, people stopped even thinking about silver as money.

The money supply today is fiat money.  I’ve written about that before – it means that our money is entirely made up.  No silver backing, no gold backing, the only backing is the faith of the people who accept it.  Oh, and several thousand nuclear weapons, if you’re talking about the United States dollar.

The next step from that are the cryptocurrencies.

Those are entirely a mathematical concept, though Ricky has noted in comments that this mathematical construct can cost upwards of a million dollars in power a day.  Bitcoin is currently at $33,000.  Four days ago?  $40,257.

Used with permission.

Is Bitcoin a bubble?  Will it go to zero?  Will I go to $500,000?

Honestly, I have no idea.  I would have bet against it going to $40,000.

The scary part of today is just that uncertainty.

  • Gold has (generally) held its value over time, performing far better than the dollar since the Federal Reserve© came into being.
  • Gold hasn’t performed as well as stocks over the same period – creative people added more value than a motionless metal.
  • Stocks are today at a valuation that is (by my reckoning) insane. They can stay that way longer than I can bet against them.
  • Bitcoin? Who can say?  I think its primary role right now is to indicate bubble tops.
  • Bonds? Who wants to buy bonds at nearly zero interest rates?

This is probably one of the more difficult times to invest in my lifetime – risks are very high, but returns don’t seem to have kept up.

First role of 2021?  Don’t talk about 2020.

We seem to be, everywhere I look, near to a breaking point in our systems – economic, political, and social.  Who knows, maybe we’ll be back at cowrie shell money by 2030.

But I think I’d prefer the booze, since I don’t smoke and, well, if you have booze do you really need clean clothes?

Penultimate Day And 2021 Thoughts

“The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace.  It failed.  But in the year of the Shadow War, it became something greater: our last, best hope for victory.  The year is 2260. The place: Babylon 5.” – Babylon 5

Why did 2020 cross the road?  To get to the other cyanide.

This year we didn’t celebrate our traditional Wilder family holiday, Penultimate Day.  What does Penultimate Day entail?

Well, you drive south for two hours or so.  Then you go to Best Buy® and, under no circumstances do you buy a cell phone.  But you must look at cell phones.  Then, after not buying a cell phone, you go to Olive Garden® and have some nice pasta.

This celebration started (I think) in 2011 or 2012, I think.  The Mrs.’ cell phone (a Blackberry®!) was going south.  We drove to the nearest cell phone store that was tied to our carrier, which was a Best Buy™ about two hours from us.  We got frustrated attempting to figure out the deals after the phone clerk wheeled out a surgical gurney to take out part of my intestines.  I told him, “No way!”

“Really?  You need to look at the contract closer.  It’s in the appendix.”

We gave up on buying a phone.

Then, frustrated at our lack of being able to find a phone, we gave up and decided to have dinner.

Hobbits always use vibrate on their phones – they don’t want the ring to give them away.

And then we drove home.  It was impossibly silly, driving a total of four hours to go to not buy a cell phone.  And we did it on December 30.  So, I made the joke that since the New Year was a made-up holiday, why not make up our own?  Thus Penultimate Day – the next-to-last day of the year – became an official Wilder holiday.

Over the years, we took Penultimate Day seriously.  There were one or two exceptions where we skipped Penultimate Day, primarily because Pugsley or The Boy had a sports event.  That is, of course, acceptable.  The goal of Penultimate Day is to do something fun together as a family.

We stuck to celebrating Penultimate Day.  Why?   Because it was fun, it was silly, and it was ours.

We didn’t celebrate Penultimate Day this year.

First, traveling into a major metropolitan area didn’t make sense to us – here in Modern Mayberry the case-rate for the WuFlu is relatively low, and we have no idea what the requirements are to even go into Best Buy® in Major Undisclosed Metropolitan Area.  Second, while we enjoy going to the Olive Garden™, I’m still convinced that the free breadsticks are some kind of con game.  I keep expecting a bill to arrive from them in 2028:  “owed to Olive Garden© for “free” breadsticks:  $257,065.”

What’s the only pasta you can get during COVID-19 lockdown?  Macaroni and sneeze.

Instead, we slept in late, played a few games, and more-or-less relaxed the entire day.  Our contribution to the economy of the United States?  We had a nice dinner The Mrs. cooked for us at home, used some natural gas to fire our heater, and spent about $3 in electricity for lighting the place.  That was it.  Our participation in the economy on December 30, 2020 was probably less than $20, total.

That’s the problem if you’re running an economy.  No gasoline, no money heading to the Olive Garden©, and no tip to the waitress.

I read that Christmas spending was down this year, to $851 from $976 in 2019.  That’s a drop of 13%.  But this is Monday, not Wednesday when we talk about economics.  On Monday, we talk about the big picture.

But 13% is a huge drop-off.  And when you add in all of the activities that people aren’t doing?  I imagine it was even more.  The big picture?  Economic contraction increases instability.

I wrote in 2019’s Penultimate Day that we were entering a period of chaos, where entire edifices that we used to stand behind would crumble.  Now, we sit in 2021, and a majority of the people who voted in the national election think it was rigged.

How do you get a baby alien to sleep?  Rocket.

Also rigged?  The system of justice in the nation.  We see Antifa® and BLM© “peacefully” destroy cities.  The massive number of unindicted felons?  It’s okay to loot.

2020 was a mess, but it looks like we got to get a glimpse of the man behind the curtain.

2021 will certainly start out like a mess.  January is going to be chaotic.  Regardless, I’m optimistic about 2021 – not because I’m insane, but because I know what starts the upward rise:  the upward rise starts after you’ve fallen and hit bottom.  While we around the world have fallen and are headed toward the bottom, the biggest lesson is this:  bring something back up with you.

That’s the question for today:  what can we bring back up with us?

  • Understanding that the world can change around you in an instant. One moment, the world was normal.  The next?  Lockdowns, the destruction of an economy.
  • Understanding where your vulnerabilities are. Food?  Toilet paper?  What can you do to fix them?
  • Knowing that your job is not “safe” – the entire economy isn’t safe. Be prepared for more dislocations.  What skills are you working on?

These are important realizations.  In 2021 and for the foreseeable future, complacency will not be your friend.  Constantly question your assumptions.  Constantly try to understand your side, but also periodically ask yourself, “What if I’m wrong?”  Try to understand the other side of the issue, too.

You may or may not be wrong, but questioning (not doubting, but questioning) yourself is key to deep understanding.  Hold your own beliefs up to the same scrutiny you use on opposing beliefs.

Thankfully, hindsight is 2020.  Or did I get that backward?

As I wrote on Friday, I’m not sure that 2021 will be a great year, but it will be a birth year for the next phase of what happens to our society.  What’s probable this year?

  • Unemployment continues, and likely gets worse. Ideas of a quick rebuild will be crushed.  People at the bottom end – twentysomethings and service workers – are already hoisting a white flag.
  • Society will become even more fractured. Left and Right are guaranteed to be further apart in 2021 – the way this presidential election has gone is sure to inflame both sides, no matter what happens.
  • The very mechanisms that we normally see as protecting society will continue to erode. People on the Right who are defending the “thin blue line” will become aware that many (not all!) of the police will do whatever the people signing their checks tell them to do.  This is not the year to be a cop in Portland, Oregon.
  • People will continue to flee California and large Leftist cities in a locust-like plague. They will not leave their Leftist ideas behind.
  • The debt of the United States will continue to climb. My bet?  We add another $4-5 trillion this year.  That doesn’t include personal debt and business debt.  The idea that printing money is better than earning it will continue and probably increase in 2021.  This idea will only stop when events force it to stop.

But as I said in the introduction to Friday’s post, I remain weirdly optimistic that, even given all of these trends, this will be a year that we will look back on and say, “That was the year that things changed.”  Certainly, 2020 was a year that will likely be looked on as the start of the crisis.  2021 will be looked at as the year that the seeds of the new are planted.

How can I better describe it?

1776 is they year that most people associate with the birth of the United States.  What most people forget is that it wasn’t until 1787 that the Constitutional Congress was held.  Likewise, it wasn’t until 1789 that George Washington was sworn in as our first President.  That was thirteen years after 1776 – thirteen years where there was war, economic failure, and finally a coming together over a very unique document.

Change takes time.

What did Washington say before his men got in the boats to cross the Delaware to attack the British?  “Get in the boats.”

So, if I’m right, people will look back on 2021 and say, “That was when things turned around.”

And the good news is, Penultimate Day or not, you’ll be there for it.  Again, I never said it was going to be easy.  It will likely be the complete opposite of easy.

Freedom rarely is easy.  And I’m still pretty sure that the Olive Garden© has a comprehensive spreadsheet somewhere charting my breadstick consumption . . . .

America: Walking The Razor’s Edge

“The pathway to salvation is as narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor’s edge.” – The Razor’s Edge (1984)

What did the hobbits say as they rode the Ents into battle?  “Run, forest, run!”

It was on July 4.  I had convinced two of my friends to follow me on a bizarre quest – we were going to climb one of the tallest mountains in North America.  By one of them, it’s in the top 50.  So, in my book that counts.

The trip started using gasoline – we had a borrowed Jeep® that we took as far up the hill as we could, since it was a borrowed Jeep™.  My friend who had borrowed the Jeep© didn’t want to wreck it, since it was before YouTube® and we wouldn’t even get likes from a cool video if we wrecked it on the amazingly rough road.

We decided to make this hike a three-day event.  On the first day, we’d do nearly a mile gain in elevation while we camped out 1000’ below the summit of the mountain.  Then, we’d summit the mountain and spend the next night at our basecamp.  Then we’d hike out the next morning.

Of course, it rained.

At the elevation of our basecamp, trees can’t grow, so we boiled filtered water in the rain.  It worked, sort of.  At that elevation, water boils at less than 190°F.  It was enough to reheat a fifteen-year-old dehydrated Mountain House® Chili Mac, even though the beans couldn’t get hot enough to not be crunchy.

After climbing up a mountain, crunchy beans and all, it was the best dinner I’d had in years.  I think I ate two.

The chili mac wasn’t red hot, but there was no way I was going to give it away, give it away, give it away now.

The next day morning we were sore – but we could leave our packs at the camp so we’d just be carrying ourselves and our water.  It was nearly half of a mile to get to the summit – a half of a mile straight up.

The trip up was a true scramble – a broken field of boulders that we sometimes had to ascend on all fours.  It was steep – very steep.  As we intersected the ridge that led to the summit of the mountain, I looked forward to seeing what was on the other side of the ridge.  I was certain that it must be flatter than the steep boulder field we’d just climbed – there was no way it could be as steep.

I got to the edge of the ridge, and looked down.

Until that moment in time, I had never been afraid of heights.  But I was not expecting to see what I saw.

It was a cliff.  A sheer drop off – I was looking at a certified Wile E. Coyote precipice.

When I was stuck on that cliff, they told me not to “look down.”  So, I smiled.

I don’t know if you’ve ever looked straight down and seen a cliff that went nearly three-quarters of a mile straight down when you weren’t expecting it.  For the first time in my life I was experiencing vertigo – it felt like the mountain under me was going to slide off down that cliff.

I moved back down the ridge.  But I still had to climb a few hundred feet upward to reach the summit.  Up the side of the ridge I went.  I assure you, I stayed back from that knife-edge as we crawled up that hill.

Then, finally, tantalizingly close, there was the summit.  I was nearly to the top of one of the highest mountains in North America.

There was one little problem.

Between the ridge I was on, and the top of the mountain there was a path.  It was about six or eight feet long, and probably a foot wide, and it was flat, like it had been machined.

What’s the difference between Humpty Dumpty and 2020?  One of them had a great fall.

On one side of it was, you guessed it, a sheer cliff that bottomed out 3,000 feet or so below me.  On the other side of the path it was a lot better.  There was only about a 1,000 foot drop.

Wait, was 1,000 feet better?  I’d get more time to live if I fell down the 3,000 foot side.

Choices.

But when facing that last few steps, shaky with the first vertigo in my life, I’ll admit those were some of the toughest steps of my life.  But, hey, what was I going to tell the folks back home?  That I climbed to a spot nearly three miles into the air to stop two feet before I reached the top?

Nope.

But that ridge (to me) was a razor’s edge.  On either side was disaster.  I took a deep breath.  I put one foot in front of the other.  And I walked – one step, two steps, three steps – to the top, where my friends were waiting.

What brought this to mind was an email forwarded by frequent commenter, 173dVietVet, where he said (in part) this on discussing where our country is:

“(I’ve) Done a bit of mountain climbing in my Ranger days and I know full well the meaning of knife’s edge, where any wrong step throws you headlong forever into the abyss of death that lies on BOTH sides . . . .”

We are in that zone.  In climbing mountains, the knife edge is more than a metaphor – it’s real.  On either side is death, and it’s not metaphorical death, it’s mangled into a wadded pile of Wilder by the combined forces of gravity and the sudden stop on the rocky outcropping at the bottom.  Sure, Wile E. Coyote could survive, but not me.

Everything went downhill after gravity was invented.

But in life, the knife-edge is a metaphor.  We’ve created a financial situation where the economy is horribly broken, and for the last year we’ve survived mainly by printing money and not allowing people to be evicted from houses, despite the questionable legality of that.

A bigger component to our knife edge is that the rule of law has been progressively ignored in the country.  Where is the right of the Federal Government to stop evictions of tenants?

Oh, there isn’t one.  They just made it up.

That would be (at best) an action by a State, though even then it’s of questionable legality.  But then the Patriot Act made spying on American citizens “legal” so who cares about legal, anyway?  Then every agency with three letters of an alphabet decided to swallow up all of that online data, and all of the phone calls, despite laws to the contrary.

Of course, Federal employees were put in prison.

Hahahaha!

No.

The NSA:  a government agency that actually listens to you!

Despite obviously illegal orders, no one was put in prison, and the only one likely to be put into prison is the whistleblower (Edward Snowden) if he ever shows back up in the United States.  It used to be the Constitution that was ignored, but that’s so 1940s.

Now, the government can ignore any inconvenient law it wants to ignore.  Of course, the people that can ignore the law are those that are either leaders, government employees, or those favored (think Antifa™) by the government.

Destroy evidence?  A felony for most.  But when the government does it?  It’s “a regrettable incident.”

What people misunderstand is that Trump isn’t at all the cause of our problems today.  Trump is a symptom.  Without Trump, the answer would have been (yet another) Bush, this time Jeb, versus (yet another) Clinton, this time Hillary.  Oh, the excitement for electing ¡Jeb!

The difference between another Clinton and another Bush?  Nothing, really.  And America didn’t want that – so America elected Trump.  If anything, Trump cleared the fog, and made the knife edge we were walking clearer.

Jeb has a perfect place in government, as the Secretary of Low Energy.

And now, we are walking, and the knife-edge is sharper and narrower than the one that I walked to get to the top of that mountain on July 4th a couple of decades ago.

We have left the bounds of Constitutional governance some time ago – people think it’s quaint when I bring the entire idea of the Constitution up.  Is there a path back to an actual Constitutional government?

Sure.  It’s narrow – a knife-edge.  But so was getting that Constitutional government in the first place.  But getting that original Constitution depended upon men climbing a mighty steep mountain several hundred years ago.  Were they afraid when they saw the cliff’s edge, the price of failure?

I’m sure they were.  But yet they continued.  And when it was time to thread that final few steps to the summit?

They did, and damn the dangers on either side.

We face the same knife-edge.  Where are we going?

Money In 2021: What’s Next?

“I picked a hell of a day to quit drinking.” – (Randy Quaid) Independence Day

When the aliens finally decided to invade Earth, they started with Poland – didn’t want to ignore local customs.

2020 has been . . . unexpected.

If anyone would have submitted it as a draft for a screenplay, Hollywood would have rejected it since it was too farfetched.  Unless Randy Quaid was in it, flying a biplane to attack aliens.  Then it would have made perfect sense.  Oh, wait, a high ranking Israeli says we’re already in negotiations with the aliens?

Never mind.

That being said, 2020 is (thankfully) nearly over.  That gives us a chance to look forward to 2021.  Keep in mind that no one said that 2021 would be better . . . we just seem to hope it will be better.  It certainly is time, however, to look forward.

I know that whatever things we think 2021 will bring, the actual events of 2021 will be crazier than that.  Regardless of who is inaugurated on January 20, 2021, what are some of the things that we can look forward to?

Here are some of my guesses:

Congress and whatever President we have will keep spending as fast as they can.  Taxes may or may not be raised, but they certainly won’t match the increased spending.  Obama nearly doubled the national debt – he took the United States from $11 trillion in hock to $20 trillion.  Right now, after four years of Trump, we’re at $27 trillion or so in money owed.  This is completely on track to take the national debt to at least $36 trillion in the next four years, which is a little more than I have the last time I checked around the couch cushions.  But I did find out where all the spoons were going.

And to think I’d blamed Pugsley.

The Presidents of the United States must all be Irish – during their terms the debts are Dublin.

But $36 trillion in debt?  That’s certainly gonna leave a mark.  Like Oprah’s dressmaker learned after Oprah demanded Spandex®, you can only distort an economy so far and so long before there are consequences, and I expect that this is near the breaking point for ours.  Thankfully, when Oprah’s dress finally went, the injuries to her crew were covered by worker’s comp.

Of course, I’ve been wrong before.  I would have thought this level of debt was poisonous.  If it was, it’s at least been a slow poison.  The system is so broken that interest rates are low, in some places less than zero.  For now.

Is that enough of a bright side?

The biggest consequences of the money printing will first show up in third world nations with relatively weak economies.  The big consequences of COVID-19 have shown up here already in the damage to the economy of the United States.

In a globally connected world, however, the consequences of United States monetary policy don’t show up in the United States first – they show up first in economies where people don’t make much money.  The “Arab Spring” that led to revolutions across North Africa and the Middle East were a direct consequence of the United States spending money like . . . well . . . Democrats in charge of the presidency and the legislature.  The Syrian Civil War is a direct consequence of the Federal Reserve’s® response to the Housing Bubble.

If you watch an Apple® store get robbed, does that make you an iWitness®?

Don’t tell me that bad lending habits don’t have consequences.  When you see riots in the streets of Cairo or Mumbai or Carcosa, you know that the big consequences from the money printing have hit the world.

Once that happens, be prepared for inflation showing up at home.

Poverty rates will greatly increase in the United States, at least in the first half of 2021.  Sure, there have been billions spent on COVID-19 relief.  Almost all of it has gone into the pockets of big business.  People on the streets?  Not so much.  In some places, businesses are locked down.  In others?  Businesses are going, but limping along due to the consequences of previous lockdowns.

I heard Bernie likes to fight poverty – every weekend he goes out and slugs homeless people.

When businesses can’t afford to pay people, poverty is the result.  The average American had only small amounts of savings – by one measure I found, nearly 70% of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings, which is only enough for a minor emergency.  After that, who can say?

The economy is in the process of fundamental change, and the middle class will significantly decrease in the next year.  What has been conserved after the Coronavirus Collapse®?  Big business has done great.  Mom and Pop restaurants?  Horrible.  Modern Mayberry’s main business district got hollowed out long ago by Wal-Mart® – as did most business districts across the Midwest.

All of the small businesses are struggling – imagine owning a theater that hasn’t shown a movie in nine months.  The local theater was even broken into during lockdown – thieves stole $7,000 in merchandise – two small sodas, some Mike and Ikes® and a medium popcorn.

The transfer of economic power from small business to large has been going on for years.  The space for a small business to compete is getting smaller and smaller.  One local shop did 90%+ of its business in online sales.  Amazon® made one small change to the way that affiliates were paid and deleted the business in three months.

That business is now gone, but Jeff Bezos now has a net worth of over $200 billion – which we can all agree is an expensive net.

I got my degree in kids’ medicine online, too.  You can call me a Wikipediatrician. 

And the people going into poverty?  They won’t exactly be customers of restaurants – eating out will become (if it hasn’t already for them) an easily avoided expense.  People will actually learn to cook again.  Which doesn’t help Mom and Pop.

China will be very close to surpassing the United States as the largest economy in the world in actual GDP.  China’s economy grew last year, while the United States contracted.  Even though China has a lot more people, this still translates into political power on the world stage.  Everyone has been predicting that China will collapse for, oh, 25 years.  Instead?  China has grown relentlessly.  Sure, there are structural weaknesses, but it’s hard to bet against that kind of economic inertia.

Why didn’t Chinese factories close during the pandemic?  Kids don’t catch COVID-19.

How does this impact the average person who isn’t Chinese?

Well the good news is that if you like dollars, they’ll still be useful.  But as other countries, like China, grow relatively stronger, the dollar grows relatively less powerful.  Especially if the United States mains determined to keep printing them as fast as it can.

I’ll toss it over to you, now.  Outside of Randy Quaid in destroying the alien mothership, what do you expect to see in 2021?

The Four Best Stocks For After The Death Of The Last Human On Earth

“You kids change partners more than square dancers.” – That 70’s Show

Marie Antoinette should have known the time was right for a revolution in France – she had a Coup Coup clock.

Okay, the title is clickbait.  We all know the Four Best Stocks For After The Death Of The Last Human On Earth are Rock, Paper, and Scissors.  Oops.  I think the real answer is Rock, Rock, and Rock.  I mean, who is going to make the paper and the scissors?

Oh, wait, I said four.

Add Google®, I guess.

One constant theme of this blog since I started writing it is that I want to convince everyone I can that tomorrow may not look like today.  I think this is important, because too often we start to think that our lives of today are the lives that people will live forever.

Why?

That’s the way we’re wired, to think that tomorrow will look like today.  It’s complacency.

Dozens of my ancestors lived as kings, having all the food they wanted and the choice of the peasant maidens in the dozen miles (metric conversion of one deciliter) around the mud hovel they lived in.  It may sound dreary, but it’s still better than Netflix®.

Genghis Khan is far better known than his brother, Gingivitis Khan.  

My ancestors lived every day of their life just like that, until they died at age 32 after they got a nasty infection because they were sharpening their bronze and flint nosehair trimmer, and accidentally conquered China.  That seems to keep happening.  I blame . . . well, all the people that conquered China.

For 100,000 years our brains, as wrinkly and wonderful as they are, grew up in a world where yesterday was mostly like today, and today is mostly like tomorrow.  Except for you people who have wonderful smooth brains.  I think I have some Bernie Sanders™ coloring books for you.

There’s a danger to thinking that tomorrow will be just like today.

Let’s pretend you’re a turkey on a farm.  There’s a nice farmer that feeds you every day.  What a nice guy!  You keep gaining weight, and getting bigger.

What a nice farmer!  Farmers must love turkeys.

Then, one November near Thanksgiving the impossible happens:  the farmer fires the turkey due to the COVID-19 outbreak and his turkey 401k drops 90% and his turkey wife tells him that . . . all those eggs?  Not his.

That turkey has found a fate worse than being roasted at 350°F for three hours (6.02×1023 Watts for six fortnights).  Turkey alimony.

The point remains:  life changes in an instant, never to return to the way things were.

I shot my first turkey this year.  Scared everyone in the meat aisle, and now I’m banned from Wal-Mart.

Here’s another one (I’ve used this example before):  I’m quite sure that there was a British guy at the dock watching as the last Roman Legion left Britain in 407 A.D.  What was he thinking?

“The Romans have been in Britain since 43 A.D.  They’ll be back.  Why wouldn’t they?”

It’s nearly a 100% chance that was exactly what he was thinking.  Our hypothetical British dude had never lived a single day when Roman troops weren’t controlling Britain.  They have to come back, right?

Well, not really.

There are reasons that hordes of Roman coins are found buried in Britain.

When Rome was strong, a Denarius (Roman coin) contained about $4.00 worth of silver at today’s prices.  As Rome continued, successive Caesars trading in Rome’s military might, reduced the amount of precious metals in the Denarius until it hardly contained a whiff of silver.

I hear there are extraterrestrials living in Rome – someone said that there were Italiens there.

Then one November near Thanksgiving, the impossible happens:  the guy in Britain gets fired and the Roman 401k drops 90% and his British wife tells him that Joe Biden (who was only 35 in 407 A.D.) was elected.  The worst part?

Joe Biden is carrying the British woman’s baby.

Our Roman’s world collapses.  Everything that he knew changes overnight.

When archeologists go digging in old British trash piles, they find something interesting.  The trash at the bottom of the pile (when Rome left) contains really cool broken plates.  Archeologists love plates.

Why?

Because angry wives break them all the time, so they make it easy to date a culture by the number of wives that go crazy and start throwing plates.  Apparently, the number of mad wives that throw plates is a scientific constant like the speed of light, so trash pickers archeologists can date the change in a culture based on broken plates.

The archeologists determined this:  the broken dishes at the time the last Roman Legions pulled out of Britain were awesome.  They were great dishes.  And everyone had them.  It turns out that dishes in the Roman Empire were mass-produced in southern France and shipped everywhere in the Roman Empire.  Southern France was the Wal-Mart® of quality dishware.

You can plainly see that Indiana Jones’ least favorite band is the Rolling Stones.

Then archeologists looked at dishes that were 100 years later in the trash pile.  They knew this particular trash pile was a king’s trash.  The dishes in the king’s trash were something that a kind parent would have congratulated a mildly retarded child for because the mildly retarded child tried really hard.

But these Roman plates weren’t widely available – only a king could afford them.

History happens one day at a time.  People lived it, the hard way.  Let me give you some examples that might add some perspective:

  • A French girl born at the start of the French Revolution would have been 26 and had multiple children when Napoleon finally lost at Waterloo.
  • A German girl born at the end of World War I would have been 27 and had multiple children before the end of World War II.
  • An American girl born at the end of the Clinton administration already has 43 earrings, sixteen tattoos, and herpes.

What I’m trying to explain that there are two types of changes the first one is fast, really fast, like the turkey’s bad November day.  The second type seems fast only when viewed from 200 years in the future.  Remember, love can last for a lifetime, but herpes is forever.

In my estimation (for what it’s worth) we are in an atmosphere where both types of change will happen.  We will have sudden changes, like the turkey, or like Marie Antoinette. These will be changes we cannot go back from.  If you burn a receipt from Arby’s©, there’s no going back to get those curly fries if they shorted you.

We all burn our receipts from Arby’s™ as soon as we get home, right?  Otherwise The Man would know how much we like Horsey Sauce®, and you where that leads:

Tyranny.

I digress.

But I will* note that I had a conversation with a friend over a year ago.  He and I were talking about investing and other things.  During this conversation, I had an epiphany.  Where was my money?  Mainly in a single bank (this has now changed).

Where does the Federal Reserve hide its economic failures?  In debasement.

My question to my friend then was this:  “How much of your money is diversified?”

His response was, “Well, it’s in mutual funds, and in a wide variety of stocks and bonds.  So it’s diversified.”

I followed up:  “No, I mean how much of all of that is in dollars?”

There was a long pause.  “All of it.”

I guess this post is mainly to point out that just like we don’t buy things in 2020 with a pocketful Roman coins, and we don’t buy things with French Francs from before their Revolution, and we can’t buy things with Soviet Rubles, how long will we be able to buy things with Dollars?

Just asking.

I’m not even suggesting any particular path, though I will disclose that if everything goes well, my kids might inherit some silver and gold when The Mrs. and I pass on.  Like any turkey, I know one thing:  tomorrow generally looks like today.

Until it doesn’t.

*Standard I’m Not A Financial Wizard Blah Blah Blah And If You Listen To Me For Financial Advice You’re Insane Differently Mental Disclaimer.