Category: TEOTWAWKI

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

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

CLOCK

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

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

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

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

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

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

You Knew Where This Was Going

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LENIN

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

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

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

More on that, below.

Violence and Censorship Update

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

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

LOOT

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

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

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

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

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

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

Updated Civil War II Index

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

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

Violence:

VIOLF

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

Political Instability:

POLF

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

Economic:

ECON2

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

Illegal Aliens:

BORDF

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

Balkans or Caesar Might Be The Best Case Scenario

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

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

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

Maybe Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos?

BEZOS

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

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

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

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

Links

links

From Hank:

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

From The Mrs.:

Soviet America?  (Great article behind WSJ paywall).

Description of Russian Leftists from the article:

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

These are from Ricky this month:

And a few others:

Twitter® shows Mayor with at least some backbone

Saker on Unz.

Questions: Important For Llamas And Finding The Truth

“Have you calculated the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything?” – Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

CONNERY

Sean Connery is a stickler for grooming.  I was stuck in a burning building while he was using the extinguisher to keep a path open for me.  Then he told me, “shave yourself!”

A few years ago I was meeting with a person that reported to me at work.  I was asking a question with a yes or no answer.  One thing that being in thousands of hours of corporate meetings has taught me is that if you ask an open ended question, people will talk.  And talk.  And talk.  Even if they have nothing to say – those meeting room corporate doughnuts aren’t going to eat themselves.

So, a lot of my questions were phrased in the form of, “Do you know where the llama is?”

My company doesn’t use llamas except for unlicensed medical experimentation to find a cure for chronic nose picking, so in this case “llama” is really easier than referencing the “Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator” that we really make.

There are really only two answers:

  • “Yes, John Wilder, the llama is in the break room playing beer pong with Vladimir Putin.”
  • “No, John Wilder, I have no idea.”

MARVIN

Well, I guess we know what’s going to happen in July.

A pattern that I had noticed was that when the answer was “Yes, I know where the llama is,” people would just say, “Yes.”

Simple.  We’re done.  Move on to the next question.

But if people didn’t know where the llama was, what I mentally thought of as “The Story” started.  The story had a million variants:  “No, John Wilder, I don’t know where the llama is because it had sticky glands and we were out of llama soap and a friend came in from out of town and I just quit heroin and Vladimir Putin took off his shirt and making sweet talk to the llama last week.”

The Story is long.  The Story isn’t really relevant.

People didn’t want to tell me “No.”  If they had, and knowing where the llama was mattered, I could follow up with a question.  Most of the time my question was, “Well, when are you going to find the llama?”  Frankly, I’ve heard more excuses than Joe Biden has lost memories, so “Why don’t you know where the llama is?” was most of the time something I didn’t really care about.  But they made the decision that I cared why they didn’t know where the llama was.

ILLAM

Never worry about food when you travel with llamas.  Alpaca lunch.

I had one very bright employee, Bill Nothisrealname, that a recent college grad.  He started to explain why he didn’t know where the llama was:  he was winding up to tell The Story.

I stopped him.

“Bill, you were first in your class in high school, right?”

“Yes.”

“And then you went to college at Southern North Eastern Midwestia State, which is a pretty good school.  Heck, I bet that you were in the top ten in GPA in your degree?”

“Yeah, I was in the top five of the class.”

I gestured at the offices up and down the hallway.  “Bill, everyone here was at the top of their class in high school and graduated at the top of their class from college in a degree just as tough as yours.  My boss, Boris.  He’s as smart as a Vulcan that crossbred with a computer and has the personality to match.  When he asks me a question, he wants me to answer that question.  He’s no dummy.

“And Boris isn’t afraid to ask questions, either.  He’s realized that even as a top executive in the company, he doesn’t and can’t know everything.”

Bill nodded.

APOC

I never really liked that Coppola movie, Alpaca Lips Now.

“Here’s what I think.  When you were in third grade, you were smart.  When the rest of the class didn’t know the answer, the teacher looked at you, right?”

“Yes.”

“And that didn’t change in high school.  Or, for you, even in college.  I think that you think you have to know the answer, because you were the smart kid.  Bill, everyone, and I mean everyone here is that smart.  You weren’t hired because you knew all of the answers – you were hired because you were smart, and had good character.  Don’t be afraid to not know everything – asking questions is a sign of power.  And . . . answer the question that was asked.

“Bill, do you know where the llama is?”

“No.”

MARIOT

But don’t-a worry – health is her new issue.  She’s still all-in for Ollamacare.

I moved on to the next question.  In this case, the llama wasn’t all that important, except as it related to teaching Bill that he didn’t need to know everything, and that asking questions isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of self-confidence.  And if it sounded like the exchange was mean, it really wasn’t.  Bill’s worldview was just a bit off.  Besides, I knew that once Putin got his claws into a really pretty llama like this one, we wouldn’t see either of them until they’d ridden through the mountains together and hunted the Rocky Mountain Spotted Poodle – the only true sport for men.

The point is still valid.  Whenever I’ve seen a good leader, that leader isn’t afraid to ask questions, and isn’t afraid to admit that they don’t know everything.  Part of writing this blog is me answering my own questions.  And I have to be right – you’re a tough but fair crowd, and you tell me when my participle is dangling.

Questions are important.

The first thing I like to question is myself.  Scott Adams says that two people might watch the same event and give it entirely different meaning – he calls it watching two movies on one screen.  An example is Trump:  Leftists think that everything, and I mean everything he does is comprised of a pure evil that requires he eat a live puppy every day.  There’s even a name for it:  Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).  The symptoms include being triggered, literally shaking, wandering around in a circle muttering, “impeach . . . impeach . . . impeach.”  Thankfully, many sufferers have found work as extras on The Walking Dead.

That’s one movie.  There’s a second group that views Trump as a genius God Emperor who is sixteen steps ahead, playing 11-dimensional chess.  This group thinks that the riots are perhaps his crowning achievement since he can use the riots to . . . ummm, I’m not sure what.  I bet that plan shows up soon.

Both groups are wrong.   My experience is you can talk to the God Emperor crowd, but the TDS sufferers just can’t discuss Trump.  At all.

How much of my reality am I allowing to be filtered?  How much am I deluding myself?  These are the questions I repeatedly ask as I look for Truth.

TRUMP

Or you could just take their lunch money and buy yourself something nice.

The second question are my sources.  People write all sorts of things, and on the Internet I can find a theory that all of the Challenger space shuttle crew survived the explosion and are still living today.  Why?  Because the Earth is flat.  Really, that’s what they believe.  There are also people who believe that the world is run by reptilian aliens who run the banks.

Of course those are absurd.  The Internet is so questionable when it comes to facts that I’ve even seen Internet reports that I have hair.  But how many shades of truth do we believe in each day without checking?  I know that I’ve been shocked when I do research for Wilder, Wealthy and Wise that it’s not what I know that shocks me:  it’s what I know that isn’t right.  Who knew kittens couldn’t fly, even if you used a really big slingshot to give them a good takeoff?

The next question are my viewpoints.  How many are wrong?  In some cases I have taken years to figure out what I think about a subject, because I just hadn’t figured out the right way to look at it:  I just don’t have a mental or moral model that fits it properly.  I ended up being a ping-pong ball.  There were good points on each side.  How do the pros and cons line up?

When I was younger, I was more of a pure libertarian, even sometimes a Libertarian.  I believed that if McDonalds™ wanted to sell me a hydrogen bomb and I had the cash, I should be able to order a McNuke®.  As I get older, maybe not.  And I now think that young children shouldn’t have guns:  they’re much more effective using a crew-served weapon like a heavy machine gun or a mortar since they can overcome their inherent weakness by working together.  If only a six year old could lift artillery shells….

CREWED

My militia may be small, but they work for chocolate milk.

The final question is what can I learn from others?  And I can only do that by asking questions – and having the humility to listen to the answers, no matter how stupid they are.  I kid.  I really have learned a lot by listening instead of talking.

So, anybody know where the llama is?  Did another one fall in love with Putin?

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, Issue 12: Censorship and COVID-19

“You were going to bed hungry, scrounging for scraps. Your planet was on the brink of collapse. I’m the one who stopped that. You know what’s happened since then? The children born have known nothing but full bellies and clear skies. It’s a paradise.” – Avengers: Infinity War

CLOCK

After several years of looking, I found a book on Amazon® about how clocks work.  It’s about time.

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

The clock didn’t move this month for the third month in a row.  That’s good.  But I see pressure building up quickly.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Violence and Censorship Update – Steps On the Way to Revolt – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Real Story: Economic Collapse – Links

Welcome to Issue 12 of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month.  Here are the links to the previous issues:  Issue One (LINK), Issue Two (LINK), Issue Three (LINK), Issue Four (LINK), Issue Five (LINK), Issue Six (LINK), Issue Seven (LINK), Issue Eight (LINK), Issue Nine (LINK), Issue Ten (LINK), and Issue Eleven (LINK).

Violence and Censorship Update

April was a big month for censorship.  Like a toddler in a Toys’r’Us™, Facebook® and YouTube© decided this was the month to crack down on speech they didn’t agree with.  And that speech was from the Left.  Just kidding.  It’s never a crackdown on the Left.  Who did they go after?

Well, David Icke was shut down.  I like listening to David Icke, because I sincerely think that he believes that shape-shifting reptilian aliens run the governments of the world.  As in Queen Elizabeth II is a secret lizard lady.  That is WWE© level of conspiracy, and it sure makes 40 minutes of treadmill time go faster listening to it.  But now, he’s gone.  His sin?  Nothing to do with lizards.  Nothing to do with the Queen.  No, Mr. Icke committed the sin of breaking the party line on COVID-19.

ALIEN

When WHO makes David Icke look reasonable.

In fact, any YouTube® video that puts forward an opinion that differs from the World Health Organization (WHO) will be removed.  Do it too often?  Your channel is banned.  For life.

I must admit that I am a sinner in committing heresy against the WHO.  In May, 2019, I did a frighteningly good post (The Who, The WHO, Cavemen, Child Labor, and We Won’t Get Fooled Again) about their silliness in describing “Burnout” and “Gaming Disorder” as new plagues that were going to destroy mankind.  To quote me at the time:  “When a cell behaves like the WHO and most other government agencies do, it’s called cancer.”  Yup, that’s probably enough for the YouTube® ban hammer.

But now it seems that having an opinion different than the WHO is enough to bring the full weight of Leftist censorship down.  There were several doctors that disagreed with the WHO, and they were shut down, even though the WHO’s opinion on COVID-19 has been proven wrong again and again and again.  And that is scary.  The WHO (and the CDC, who I skewered in the post (The CDC, Raw Cookie Dough, and Sexy Theocracy)) have proven to be little more than government agencies that have lost their primary mission in a race to pander to news outlets to secure funding.

Facebook™ announced it was not only trying to get rid of COVID-19 “misinformation” by deleting posts, but also was actively censoring people trying to use it to organize “end the quarantine” events.  That was chilling.  You may or may not agree with these protests, but the idea of peacefully petitioning government is a clear right.  Libertarians and (increasingly) Leftists will make the argument that “Facebook® is a private company and can do whatever they want.  Nanner-nanner.”

But know them by their works.  They want your data.  They want to market you as a product.  A compliant product for them to sell.  And, it appears, snitch on you if you are a bad-thinker.

WATER

He only needed a sip.  Zucculents are excellent at storing water and can thrive in areas with dry climate.

Likewise, the Unz Review (LINK) got kicked off of Facebook®.  Ron Unz’s website is a hotbed of controversial thought that’s not afraid of challenging almost any opinion:  I’ve read a lot there I disagree with.  The owner of the site, Ron Unz, does not stand behind every article published – it would be impossible because many of them are 100% contradictory to each other.  But, even though I disagree with a lot I’ve seen there, I’ve learned a lot there that I never would anywhere else.  I’m surprised Unz lasted this long on Facebook™.

Where does this censorship take us?  Nowhere good, since after the first censorship, taking down the next site becomes easier and easier.  It’s for the public good, after all.  Can’t have people thinking unapproved thoughts, right?

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.

April was a difficult month for the economy, and that shows up in the graphs.  I don’t think that May will be quite as bad, but I’ve been wrong before.  I did, however, try to spend significant time on selection of the bikini pictures to accompany the graphs, since I want to at least reach the journalist integrity of the New York Times®.

Violence:

VIOF

Up is more violent.  Violence had been down because everyone is stuck in the basement.  But now the end of quarantine is near, and people will become violent if it isn’t lifted soon.  I expect big upticks in June, July and August.  I think May will be fairly mellow, and might be the last mellow month for ages.

Enjoy it.

Political Instability:

POLF

Up is more unstable.  Instability is down – having the field reduced to two likely candidates for the November election helps calm people, plus people are advised not to make sudden moves around Joe Biden, since his predator instinct could kick in and he might give you a good sniffing.  Instability will go up if Biden falters or starts drooling oatmeal during an interview.

Economic:

ECOF

Down indicates worse economic conditions.  The graph speaks for itself – I had to search through a LOT of bikini photographs to find one that fit with a plunge like we’ve seen.  I expect April to be better.  But not by a lot.  I’ll likely change the basis of this one or add an entirely new one next month – this is an instantaneous graph to measure mood, and we should start to look at cumulative numbers to measure how screwed we are.  Upside?  One more bikini graph.

Illegal Aliens:

BORF

Down is good, in theory.  This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol.  Down.  Until Mexico’s economy collapses. Then what?

Economic Collapse – The Real Story

When I first started the weather report, one criticism was that we would never see Civil War 2.0 while things were good economically.  And I admitted that this is true.  As a people I can see limited acts of disobedience, but not outright insurrection while the economy is good.  Full bellies and full bank accounts don’t lead to fighting in the streets.

The economy is in free fall.  That’s not an overstatement.  There has been no month as bad in the world economy as April, 2020, at least not in my life.  Unless you’re in your 80’s or better, this is the worst economic month of your life, too.  To find such a disaster in the United States, you’d have to go back to the 1930’s, at least.

FED

The goat entrails have spoken!  The cure is yet more debt and money printing!

As I’ve mentioned before, a strong economy could take this sort of shock.  Our economy isn’t strong.  Let’s take New York City.  What does it produce?  Debt, real estate sales, insurance companies, financial irregularity, the stock market, and national “journalism” that at best is as biased as a Kennedy mother bailing her kids out of jail.  If New York City were to disappear tomorrow, the only thing from NYC the Wilder Family would miss is the television show Impractical Jokers®.

Yet New York City controls the money flows in the country.  It also controls the bets made on wheat production and pork prices.  NYC produces nothing, but acts as a tax on those that actually produce.  In 1947, the proportion of the economy devoted to Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (F.I.R.E.) was about 10%.  In 2017, it was 20%.  And we do need a certain percentage of our economy devoted to moving money around, but the point of our economy isn’t moving money, it’s making things and feeding people.  Oh, and doing taxes.

Are we richer because of what comes from New York?  Are we more stable?  Does making another loan to a big corporation so they have enough debt on their books so a New York financier can’t buy them with their own money make us better off?  Is it better because the dollars aren’t backed by anything other than a printing press?

NYC

Hey, that might make a good movie.

In that same time period, manufacturing dropped from 25% of the economy to 11%.  Does that make us better off, when critical goods are made an ocean away?  Does that make us more stable and able to weather a crisis?

As the economy collapses, it’s collapsing because it has been hollowed out for decades.  I will say that studies show, before 1980, Democrats were strongly focused on keeping the manufacturing and construction industries strong, since the unions that dominated that sector were lock-step voters for the Democrats.  But, when a shiny new toy of being paid by the big banks plus being able to bring in a whole new class of voters (legal immigrants and illegal aliens) got too big, the Democrats dumped manufacturing and construction.

This collapse has been decades in the making.  It won’t be done quickly.  And it just might provide the pain to slingshot us into Civil War 2.0.

Links

LINKS

All are from Ricky this month . . .  enjoy!

How Dead Romans Can Help You Be Happy

Jack: (tapping on the walls) Two, three feet thick, I’ll bet.  Probably welded shut from the outside and covered with brick by now.
Wang: Don’t give up, Jack.
Jack: Oh, okay, I won’t, Wang.  Let’s just chew our way outta here.
-Big Trouble in Little China

OPTIM

I keep turning negatives into positives, which may explain why I can’t jump start a car.

I have, from time to time, been accused of being an optimist.  I don’t really think I am.  I am certain that I am going to die.  I am certain that, of the things in life I have to face, the toughest ones are ahead of me, not behind.  Gentle retirement in the world that we’ve made and are preparing to go through now?

Probably not.

I’ll argue that the strange things that we’ve seen so far aren’t even close to the strange things we will see in the days and weeks ahead.  And the last six weeks our lives?  Who would have expected that the state house in Michigan would be filled with armed protesters?  Not me.  Although some people have predicted the way that the next financial crisis would happen, I certainly didn’t see it happening because of a Chinese bat.

But what I’m not particularly good at is giving up.  The real enemy of life isn’t death – the enemy of life is giving up because life isn’t what was planned.  Seneca put it pretty well:

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient.  For he that is so wants nothing.

SENECA

I wonder how long he had to sit still for this selfie?

One way to read Seneca’s quote would be to read it as justifying laying around smoking weed and eating PEZ® on the couch until you exhibited a gravitational field that could influence minor planets.  I assure you, that’s not what Seneca meant.  Seneca and most of the other Stoic philosophers that I’ve read were accomplished people in the real world, not professors at some East Coast liberal arts college.  Seneca had worked and made himself one of the wealthiest men in ancient Rome.  Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor who daily wrote down notes to himself on humility and virtue and being of service.  Marcus himself pours cold water on the idea that inactivity was the point of life:

So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being?

So, giving up isn’t the point, and sitting around feeling “nice” isn’t the point, either.  Despite all of this, there’s no reason not to stay in bed all day in your footed pajamas with a cup of hot cocoa, right Marcus?

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work.  I’m a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for, the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?

Nope, I guess that won’t work.  I think there’s a chance that Marcus wrote this while out campaigning with his Legions against the Germans.  In winter.  After millions of Romans died in a plague that’s named after him, the Antonine Plague, his full name being Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.  How bad was that particular plague?  It’s estimated that one out of nine people in the Roman Empire died.  Unless you’re a communist, having your own people die is considered a bad thing.

GERMAN

When the Romans counter-attacked, they always went for the German with the ax, hence the phrase: “We’ve got to get to the chopper.”

I probably would have given a good, long thought about staying in bed, too.  But Marcus didn’t give up, he probably worked harder.  Part of being a Stoic is to go out and give it your all.  That’s what you’re supposed to do.

What you’re not allowed to do is get fixated either on success or failure.  Sometimes you win.  Sometimes you lose.  There’s virtue in neither of these.   There is, however, virtue in going out and doing your best, leaving nothing back, fully committing yourself to your cause.

None of us will escape death.  All of us will fail.  Suffering?  Yeah, that’s going to happen, too.  To all of that, I have a simple response:

So what?

All of those things will happen to every human that’s ever lived or ever will live.  You’re not a special snowflake that the world revolves around.  There is no particular way your life “should” turn out.  Your life right now is mainly the sum of all of the choices you have made, both good and bad.   Was there luck in there, both good and bad?  Sure, but not as much as you might think.

BIGMAC

You may have been sad, but you’ve never been Ronald McDonald™ in a McDonalds® crying and choking down fries sad. 

And if you made bad choices that have led you to a present that you don’t care for?  Deal with it.  And even today on most days if you look around life might appear to be dark, but this very second you probably aren’t suffering.  You have electricity.  You have Internet.  You probably have some sort of food in the house that you wouldn’t mind eating.  And if you’re thinking of making a tuna sandwich, I’ll take one, too.  You know, while you’re up.

PJBOI

I don’t imagine PJ Boy does a lot of quoting Seneca.  Unless Mommy makes him.

Part of life is getting rid of excuses.  Most of the time when we say, “I can’t” we mean “I don’t wanna try (I might fail).”

Others?

  • I’m too young, or too old, or just too darn pretty. It’s probably the pretty one, right?
  • I’m too busy. Good news!  After the economic Coronacane passes through, we’ll probably all have time on our hands.
  • I don’t know how to do ______.   Unless it’s differential equations.  Then just do what the book says.  Nobody really understands differential equations.
  • Skipping today won’t matter/I’ll start tomorrow. These two excuses are the same excuse, and they’re exactly the same one as Marcus Aurelius mentioned when he talked about being warm and toasty in bed instead of doing your job.

It’s today.  What can you get done today?

What are you waiting for?

EXCUSE

The Coming End of The United States

“Hello, I’m Dr. Bean.  Apparently.  And my job is to sit and look at paintings.  So, what have I learned that I can say about this painting?  Well, firstly, it’s really quite big, which is excellent, because If it were really small, you know, microscopic, then hardly anyone would be able to see it.” – Bean

SAVAGE

If you look closely, you can see itsy-bitsy fur bikini women. 

The death of the United States as we know it is near.  COVID-19 isn’t the cause of it, despite being in the news nearly as much as a Kardashian.  Coronavirus is, rather, a symptom.  Like any organism, as soon as a nation is born it begins the process of growth and eventual death.  This cycle is a common theme in history, and I’ve visited it before in posts here because I find it more fascinating than, say, beekeeping.

One post I wrote about the how empires have a natural cycle and end date is here (End of Empires, PEZ, and Decadence).  That post contains information about Sir John Glubb’s paper called The Fate of Empires.  You can also find Glubb’s original paper here (LINK), and you’ll be pleased to find it’s been translated from Glubb’s original fish language.

Which brings us to Thomas Cole.  Mr. Cole was an American painter.  I say “was” because he’s now dead.  This is good, because otherwise he’d have to explain to his wife where the heck he’s been since 1848.  Cole did a series of five paintings depicting Glubb’s paper between the years of 1833 and 1836, which was pretty amazing, since Glubb’s paper wasn’t published until 1976.  Cole’s five paintings are collectively known as The Course of Empire.

The first of these paintings is called The Savage State.  It’s the first picture up above.  Cole wasn’t horribly inventive with names, and it’s rumored that he had a dog named “Dog” and a cat named “Cat” and subsisted entirely on a diet of unsalted boiled potatoes.  His painting, The Savage State is just that, a savage land dominated by nature, which is also how The Mrs. describes my side of the bedroom.  In his painting, you can see that the civilization matched the landscape – rudimentary and rough.  It’s chaotic, but that describes a great deal of the prehistory of man.  This period of history can last a very, very long time, and would have lasted even longer if humanity would have failed to invent shag carpet.

PASTORAL

If you look closely, all these paintings are set in the same place, at different times.  Cole even changed the time of day from morning in the first one to night in the final one.  I guess this is what you had to settle for as an 1836 version of HD television.

The next painting in the series is The Pastoral State.  Each of the paintings presents the same area, just at different stages in the development of the civilization.  The land from the original painting has been tamed enough for farming and herding animals.  The wild nature of The Savage State has been at least partially replaced by enough control of the land that a greater degree of specialization and start of civilization is possible.

At this stage in the civilizational cycle, there is generally a single dominant culture.  If there are two competing cultures, they’ll fight.  This explains the Spartans and the Athenians, the North versus the South, or my ex-wife and humans not possessed by Satan.  Having a single culture breeds trust, and the uniformity of purpose required for this phase.

The theme of the pastoral state is expansion along the frontier, and is characterized by growth and optimism.  It’s how it feels to be on the winning team.  Religion is dominant, as are ideals that are higher than self – in Rome, public service was considered honorable.  Plutarch wrote about Spartan mothers and their attitudes when their sons went into battle:  “Another woman handed her son his shield, and exhorted him: ‘Son, either with this or on this.’”

Legend has it that at one point when Athens was fighting Sparta, that a Spartan, hidden by a hill, taunted the Athenians by yelling, “One Spartan can beat a thousand Athenians!”  Enraged, the commander of the Athenians selected his thousand best men and sent them over the hill to kill the insolent Spartan.  After fifteen minutes of battle sounds and screaming, a single Athenian, mortally wounded, limped to the top of the hill and yelled down to his general:  “Don’t fall for it!  It’s a trap!  There are actually two of them.”

This state ends when there is no more expansion and frontier.  At that point, someone always gets the bright idea that they want to make a buck.  The pursuit of profit then replaces the pursuit of honor.

CONSUMM

This is the most beautiful and intricate of the paintings.  Of course, I had to meme all over it.  And looking at the multitudes of people in the painting I had to wonder, “What would a decent three bedroom in the suburbs cost?”

After profits have been pursued for a time, the Empire then reaches the height of power.  Cole depicted this phase in his painting The Consummation.  Both as a military and economic entity, the Empire will never be better off than at this time, well, at least until it builds that Death Star®.  It is here that the greatest works of arts and literature of the society will be created.  While the society retains the myth of the expansion, the reality is that is no longer a concern.

Also at this point, intellectuals will start rejecting all of the values that allowed the society to be great, and replacing them with ideals that are often the direct opposite of those that led to success.  Virtue is replaced by vanity.  Honor and discipline will be mocked as the philosophy of a fool, and be derided as inferior to the values and beliefs of amorality, nihilism, materialism, and collectivism.

Not that I have an opinion, or anything.

Somewhere about this time, with the Empire ceasing to grow, powerful groups figure out that it’s much easier to steal wealth than create it.  Politicians devise ways to maximize how much money and power their group can take from the others.

DESTRU

This is the Cole painting, The Destruction of Empire, I see most often out of this set.  Perhaps it’s a sign of the time, or perhaps it’s a sign that everyone likes a good Viking raid?  Okay.  Not everyone.  But remember that Roman soldiers are trained, but Vikings are Bjorn.

With the Empire past its peak, the wealth is used to create decadence.  Focus is on material goods, and religion declines across the Empire.  Since the focus is on wealth, the welfare state forms – Romans had bread and circuses, we have EBT and Netflix®.  Historically, foreign peoples from across the Empire stream towards the original culture.  Why?  Again, the focus is on material goods and not a cohesive society.  Why would a Greek want to leave Greece for Rome?  I prefer to read books about Rome in Braille – it makes it feel like ancient history.

And as the focus grows on material goods, the originality of the goods disappears.  Art becomes a cynical mechanism of control and a means to harvest cash.  The remake of the original is remade or rebooted to once again drag the culture for profits.  I heard that Hollywood was even going to remake a Muslim version of Footloose, but this time without the Bacon.

An example of that is Spain after the conquest of the New World.  Spain found itself with immense wealth in gold.  How much wealth?  So much that the Spaniards decided that they didn’t want to do the day-to-day things in life, and drew workers in from all across Europe to Do The Jobs Spaniards Wouldn’t Do.  So much gold flew into Europe that it changed the exchange rate and wrecked the market for gold.  After a century of such luxury, the Spaniards ceased to be the conquistadors that boldly conquered a continent with grit and bravado and became a culture that complained when the Dutch help didn’t peel the grapes correctly.

As an example, in one park I found a cannon seized from a Spanish warship during the Spanish-American War.  I looked at the engraving on the cannon – it was beautiful.  But this cannon, taken from the Spanish in 1898, was actually forged in 1780 or so.  The United States was using cannon that were state of the art and sophisticated, with more than a century of technological advances on the Spanish.

Heck, when a friend got at tattoo in Spain, I was shocked.  It was really good.  Why was I shocked that it was good?  No one expects Spanish ink-precision.

The destruction of Empire can flow not only from battle, but also from a checkbook – a financial collapse can be nearly as devastating as a foreign army, as Spain proves.  Regardless, when vigor is gone, pessimism prevails, and sacrifice for the common good to a trustworthy state disappears?  Why would you want to be a hero, as all of the national myths and heroes are, one by one, destroyed to make way for the new myths of the intellectual class?

Destruction is just around the corner.

DESOL

If you look closely at this picture, there are no people, only birds, which must mean that Cole felt that the birds would take over the Earth.  This is my favorite, because it makes me feel better about how my yard looks.

Cole’s final painting in the series was the Desolation of Empire.  The Empire is over.  The drama is over.  What remains are a scattered people and the ruins of a great civilization.  It sounds bleak, but it doesn’t need to be.

The desolation of Empire isn’t the ending for every person in it, it’s just the ending of the golden age of the way things were.  Imagine someone near the end of the Roman Empire, worried about what they saw going on around it.  Would the Roman Empire collapse?  Certainly.  Would all of the people die as a part of this collapse?  No.  But the globalism of the day did.

And the Roman Empire, in its death, set the stage for a new series of cultures all around Europe – from the reuse of Caesar as “Czar” in Moscow to the United States, which consciously adopted many of the symbols of ancient Rome.  What was the first name of the United States Army?  Under its first commander, Major General “Mad” Anthony Wayne, it was known as Legion of the United States from 1792-1796.

This isn’t the end of the world, it’s just the end of what we have now, and the end of the United States as we knew her.  It’s the beginning of something new as the old structures cease to serve us.  There’s a common phrase that I can’t find the source of but that describes the cycle simply and well:  “Hard times breed strong men.  Strong men breed good times.  Good times breed soft men.  Soft men?  They bring hard times.”

We are in for hard times.  But don’t fear.  This will make strong men, and, if they are strong enough, a new United States that deserves those strong men.

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

“Though in war, you only get killed once; in politics it can happen over and over.” – Battlestar Galactica (2000’s)

confuse

“The taxpayers are sending congressmen on expensive trips abroad. It might be worth it except they keep coming back.” –Will Rogers

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

Politics is, like our economy, about motion.  It’s about creating fear enough to spur people into an emotional frenzy, or bully bureaucrats.  One of my favorite stories along this line was when Amy Klobuchar, D(emon)-Minnesota, wrote to the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) about . . . Buckyballs®.  Buckyballs™, if you don’t remember them, they were small strong spherical magnets that were fun to play with.  They were generally marketed as a desk toy for adults.

One toddler died from swallowing seven of them.  Apparently, during the life of the product, there were 19 other injuries as well, though I don’t have details on those, but I have it on good advice (Ma Wilder) that nearly anything will put your eye out or result in a severed limb.  Maybe I would have taken her more seriously if we had more adults who looked like Captain Hook.

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

But dying because of small magnets?

buckyb

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

That’s somewhere lower than “being hit by lightning while holding an aluminum replica of Celine Dion above my head on a pole while covered in barbeque sauce and crushed potato chips.”

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

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

I’m just sad that Amy didn’t volunteer to catch the Jarts© when her brothers were playing and she was a kid.  Seriously, Jarts™ were fun.  Jarts® child death toll over a span of 35 years before the CPSC banned them?  3.  Thankfully, you can still buy them, but to beat the CPSC, the company asks that you assemble them yourself.  It’s a kit.

Ha!

Jarts®, when played right.

The problem wasn’t with Buckyballs®, the problem was that there wasn’t anything else pressing that Amy could complain about and get away with.  Her party held the presidency, so most national issues were out of the question because if they failed, the Democrats would own the failure.  But she could complain about a tiny toy company.  The only victims would be the owner and the people who liked the toy.  Confession:  I bought six sets of Buckballs™ in their going out of business sale to help contribute to the owner before he lost his business.

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

Everything.

schumer

Chuck saved me some joke writing.

Politics in 2020 is still about doing something.  But, more importantly, it’s the art of been seen to be doing something.  One day when I came home from work, The Mrs. was incensed.  “Schumer wants to allocate $4 billion to the Corona virus!  He’s insane!”  The Mrs. was skeptical at that point, primarily because we’re used to the media crying wolf about every little potential crisis, and secondarily because the Corona death toll was smaller than Jeffery Dahmer’s.

My response was simple:  “$4 billion?  Trump should say, ‘Make it $8 billion, Little Chucky, think big,’ but put in an asterisk that we’ll spend the money only if necessary, and in ways deemed by the President to stop a pandemic.  Heck, he could even get a few miles wall out of that.  Aren’t you tired of the Canadians, dear, coming in with their beavers and maple syrup asking ‘aboot’ everything?  Initiate Operation Leafblower*.”

“But John,” she replied, “the country doesn’t have $8 billion to spare.”

“So what?  We don’t have $4 billion, either.”

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

bikini

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

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

Nah.  We’ve lived through, and thrived through, worse.

But are we the same people who did that?

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

You can see this in the stories of the infantile people licking products, spitting on food, and stating that if they came down with Corona, that they were going to go to Trump rallies to infect as many people as possible.  There are people who think, “Well, the rules on staying home don’t apply to me.”  There is no us to them, no commonality, only the idea their needs, right now.

biden

I’m Joe Biden, and I forgot this message.

Why isn’t there a greater good?  It’s primarily being driven by the political rift between Right and Left, though there are other factors, as well.  Decisions are made not on the basis of what is for that greater good, but on the basis of what looks good for the cameras and can get more money for “my” group of constituents, and get more votes for me.

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

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

The best way to explain what these errors are is to use an example that always stuck with me:   prescription drugs.  The two primary jobs of the FDA are to approve drugs for sale in the United States and surf social media during the day.  When the FDA approves a drug that it shouldn’t have approved, that’s a Type I error.  What happens with a Type I error is that there is a body count.  Drugs that show up on the market that kill people (even terminally ill people) make the FDA look bad, so they just won’t do it, and will go to ludicrous lengths to keep drug company profits high.

HOT DOG

So, the cat did warn the dog not to eat out of it’s bowl.

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

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

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

Does he get any credit if he does this?  No.  No one will count the dead bodies that didn’t exist because he took decisive action.  In fact, he’d be called a racist xenophobe abusing his powers by the media.  You can read various articles making exactly this point that were written around the end of January and the beginning of February.    My favorite of these articles is one written by an avowed communist that includes the line, “The Trump administration’s ‘state of emergency’ should be regarded as a piece of more substantial and systematic hostility in its relations with China.”  The author then complains that people should move freely.  There’s a lovely comment at the bottom, “Well, this article aged poorly.”  I expect articles like these to be scrubbed from the Internet as people get around to it.

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

ISOLATE

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

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

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

But politician response has to be played for the crowd:  Nancy Pelosi is already blaming everything on Trump’s past decisions.  Her quote, “But as the President fiddles, people are dying,” seems to ignore Nancy’s own banjo lessons during the impeachment.

knuckle

I’ve never seen a more non-essential employee . . .

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

All political decisions are coming through these filters:  Type I Errors and Assigning Blame.  Don’t be surprised by the mindboggling amounts of money and silliness that will come shortly.

But sometimes sanity wins.  Buckyballs™ were made legal again when the CPSC got thrashed in the courts back in June of 2018.

How I Learned To Love The End Of The World

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

Shelves

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

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

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

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

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

FRY

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

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

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

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

Why?

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

I blame the heat ray vision.

ORPHANS

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

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

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

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

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

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

MADMAX

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

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

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

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

PA

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

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

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

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

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

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

BALTIMORE

I think Baltimore jokes are just a riot!

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

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

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

Trust me.  We will.

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

Eight Phases of Crisis: COVID-19 Edition

“You had a dishwasher box to sleep in?  I didn’t even know sleep.  It was pretty much twenty-four seven ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn.” – Deadpool

BATSLAP

One girl I dated in High School asked if she used too much makeup.  I replied, “Dunno, depends on if you are trying to kill Batman®”

“Great, now it’s the end of the world and we can’t get a new dishwasher,” The Mrs. actually said, after I finally relented that it would probably cost more to fix the dodgy old dishwasher than a new one would cost.  Plus, the old dishwasher is stainless steel, so if it were a hundred yards away, it would make quite a nice practice target.  I call that a win-win.  Besides, Amazon® actually has them in stock, so I could theoretically have one by next week.

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

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

As much as you might be interested in my derrière, I really do want to talk about COVID-19 and get to the bottom of how the issue will progress in the coming months.  While each crisis is different, they are all sort-of-predictable because in the end, people don’t change all that much, even though circumstances do.  Certainly we want to get this all behind us, in the rear view, so to speak.

Okay, I’ll stop.  Seven synonyms for the posterior in two paragraphs are quite enough.  I don’t want you to think I’m a bum.

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

FRANZ

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

The Warning

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

In the current COVID crisis, The Warning came during and just after the December impeachment.  With the focus of the country elsewhere, who cared about the flu?  We don’t trust the media very much.  Why?  They don’t seem trustworthy.  Example:  when Trump shuts down air transport to China, CNN® says it’s racist.  When China shuts down air transport from the United States, CNN™ says it’s a wise and prudent move by China’s benevolent leadership.

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

DINOS

How did they not see this coming?

The Event

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

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

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

In one of my more frightening thoughts:  what if we haven’t seen The Event yet?

DISB

I’m not sure he’s koalafied to make that decision.

Disbelief

When things have changed, and changed drastically, people refuse to believe it.  When the power is out because a tree fell on the power lines, I will walk into a room an automatically flip the light switch.  Why?  Habit, partially.  But there’s a part of my mind that is existing in Disbelief, perhaps, that doesn’t believe that the power could ever be gone.

Disbelief isn’t a coping strategy, and it’s not an attempt of the mind to protect itself, at least in a healthy person.  It’s more inertia.  You’re used to the world being a certain way, and when it isn’t, part of your mind isn’t quite ready to process it.

This might be an overreaction – COVID-19 might be no worse than the flu.  But that isn’t explained by the reactions we’ve seen so far from places that got it earlier than the United States.  Italy is locked down.  In two weeks, we will know more.  In a month, I think, we will have certainty.

PANIC

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

Panic

At some point, the mind is confronted with the new reality and forced to accept it.  But the rules are new, and unknown.  What to do?  One could take a deep breath, and review the situation and think logically or?  One could Panic.  Panic is easier, and doesn’t require a lot of thought.

Panic is the natural reaction when your brain realizes that it has done zero to prepare for the new reality.  So, what to do? Buy staples as required to build up the stockpile you’ve accumulated over time?  Or buy 550 cans of Diet Mountain Dew®?  Or just buy toilet paper, because everyone else is and you don’t know what to do or have any independent thought?   Toilet paper purchasing is Panic.

HERO

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

Heroism

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

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

Right now Heroism is going on, and we aren’t even asked to do anything more than to sit down and watch Netflix® unless we’re keeping vital industries going.  Here’s a link to Aesop’s place that shows the quiet heroism going on out there (LINK).  Read it all.

CLIFF

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

The Cliff

Keeping order requires energy.  Some part of the energy of the system is put into keeping order.  In a time of significant social cohesion, like World War II, the United States didn’t face The Cliff, even though virtually every other developed nation did.  Instead, the energy that the crisis took was replaced by people working together.

Most of the time in a real crisis, however, there’s The Cliff.  I wrote about it here: Seneca’s Cliff and You.

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

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

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

Dead.

Going first will be car payments.  The average monthly car payment is $800.  Me?  I’d sell you my daily driver for just two months of that, so expect car finance companies to seize up like an ungreased stripper pole.  But the businesses that employ those people aren’t much better off.  The best restaurant in Modern Mayberry came pretty close to closing down shop six years ago, but pulled through.  The second best restaurant didn’t survive.  There will be cascading failures as the debts owed from one business to the next go unpaid, and this won’t just be for small businesses.  I feel confident saying that several businesses with 10,000 or more employees will go bankrupt.  Overall loss to the economy?  40% of the GDP this year?

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

I’m not kidding, that’s how deep The Cliff is.  If we’re lucky.

EMPEROR

Something, something, Dark Side®.

Disillusionment

After the fall, things suck.  We had heroes, but the time for Heroism is over.  Disillusionment sets in when things don’t snap back to normal.  Things will seem rosy, only for failure to crush hope.  The more government “helps” during this phase, the worse recovery will be.  Roosevelt “helped” so much during the Great Depression that he extended it for years.

But politicians will take drastic steps, because they can’t help themselves.  The length of time Disillusionment lasts?  Months to years.

FIX

Some re-assembly required.

Rebuilding

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

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

DISHWASH

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

COVID-19: A Brave New World

“Because if just one of those things gets down here then that will be all!  Then all this – this bulls**t that you think is so important?  You can just kiss all that goodbye!” – Aliens

NEWT

I can’t stand people who are xenophobic.

Corona.  COVID-19.  There’s a catastrophe always lurking, but it’s never what you think.  But it’s always something.  Beer Flu.  Kung Flu.

Do you understand the magnitude?  Most people don’t.  I’m not even sure I do.

The last few nights here at Stately Wilder Mansion Redoubt have been especially enjoyable.  I took off some time last week, and plan on taking some time off this week, as well.  It’s a great time, especially if you’ve never read Poe’s Masque of the Red Death (LINK).

Rarely do things change so quickly:  we Wilders were preparing to go to a state-level event where Pugsley was going to compete.  Competing was an honor – it means that he was one of the very best in the state at competitive freestyle dramatic baking rhythmic knife combat.

The championship was cancelled – 6,000 people in the same place probably doesn’t make sense.  Why?  Mathematically I’m betting that at least one of the competitors or spectators would have been COVID-communicable.  6,000 would have been a wonderful place for one person to donate billions of virus fragments to thousands of others, just like one South Korean was responsible for over 1,000 cases.

batstew

Ahhh, panda.  So very tasty.  I like it with a side of bald eagle.

One of my friends and I were talking before the event was canceled and said to me, “John, it’s cancelled.  There is no way that’s going to happen.”  There was no uncertainty in his voice – it was clear he was 100% certain.  In my mind, I thought that somehow this event would sneak under the radar.  It did not.  And in retrospect, I found myself guilty of one of the chief sins of the universe:  thinking that normal can win in abnormal circumstances.  Thankfully, the penalty here wasn’t the usual penalty for such a sin:  death.  Okay, that was dramatic.  Mainly it’s feeling stupid.

Pugsley was disappointed since he had his katana sharp, his Hamlet memorized, and his recipe book tattooed on his left thigh, but cancelling the event was the right call.

The Boy was back in town for spring break, so the four of us Wilders are hunkered down in the basement as I write this.  The other three idiots have been taking turns invading my writing space playing a video game.  Thankfully, we like each other and have a reasonable supply of deodorant and soap.  If the soap runs low, I volunteer to try to make some out our fire pit ashes and the cat.

SOAP

But is it made from cat?

The Boy and Pugsley have been out into the world since COVID-19™ hit more than The Mrs. and I.  The Boy went back to his college on Saturday.  They say that the college will open at some unspecified time in the future, but sent a note out that maybe you should think about coming to get your stuff.  The Boy and Pugsley took a road trip for just that purpose.  While The Mrs. hasn’t had her job officially cancelled for the foreseeable future, I expect that will be the case.  I don’t expect either of the three of them to be required to be outside of the house in the month of March except for runs to Wal-Mart®.

TRIPS

Okay, it wasn’t that bad.  They didn’t even ask me for gas money.  Hey, have you guys seen my credit card?

My job?  It’s probably not directly required for the United States to keep going on a daily basis, so I could see myself being restricted to working from home unless I absolutely had to be somewhere to defuse a bomb or perform a circumcision an alien.  As it is, if I have symptoms of Corona, I can’t come back to work unless I’ve been cleared via a doctor’s note.  Assuming I can find one of the six doctors in the county, but, hey, I can sign a signature that might look like a doctor?  It looks just like an Ebola© virus, right?

I’ve really enjoyed the time at home.  It’s surreal, since as I listen to the Internet radio, I can hear everything crumbling as the news gets weirder by the day.  I dumped my 401k (the part that was in stocks) into the money market fund this morning on Sunday.  That means they’re supposed to dispose of it tomorrow.  But as the market is lock-limit down already, what does that even mean?  Can my money even find an exit point?

I’m betting the Fed dumps a trillion dollars, or maybe even two trillion into the market.

Tomorrow.

It’s that bad.  I hope I’m wrong, but I think it’s going to be October in 1929 bad.

COLLAPSE

Maybe this will work.  Seems stable, right?

It’s obvious that the world around us has already changed.  As we drove to Wal-Mart© on Friday for a scouting expedition, I looked at a parade of businesses that would soon be closed as I drove by them one by one on the street.

  • Move theater? Who’s going to go, especially since the movies are crap?
  • Diner frequented mainly by old people?   Old couples are going to be self-quarantined watching the Price is Right® until they welcome COVID-19 to escape each other.
  • Car dealerships?   I’d like to buy that new Jeep® Coronaâ„¢ Wagon.
  • Scented candle places? Okay, I’m not sure how they stay in business anyway in 2020, unless they launder meth money.
  • Insurance companies?
  • Laundromats?
  • Thrift shops?
  • The VFW?
  • Churches?
  • Bars?
  • Liquor stores?   Let’s not get crazy here.

People don’t really need those things.  Except for liquor stores.  From start to finish, what do people need in a modern society?  I left off Law Enforcement because they keep people I don’t like away from me.  Yeah, some of them are tools, but for the most part we really do want them around for a modern society.  Or, if we don’t have Law Enforcement, a lot more ammo.

HILLARY

But the FBI seems reluctant to stop them.  Even for speeding. 

And need is not for the basics of life, it is for the basics of life for a modern society.

  • Water
  • Transport
  • Grocery Stores
  • Electricity
  • Their Bank
  • Pharmacies
  • Internet
  • Gasoline/Fuels
  • Natural Gas

But each of these requires people going to work to make things happen.  The people who run the water system have to purify the water.  The farmers have to farm, ranchers have to ranch, and dairy owners have to, um, dairy?  The systems that provide water, milk, eggs, meat and corn are fundamental.  They keep us in Doritos® and salsa and Monterrey Jack™ cheese.

What will keep the system going?  The city water department needs chemicals, so we need a chemical plant to make chlorine.  But will we open the potato chip factory, or expect people can figure out how to cook potatoes?  Will we open the frozen food factory, or assume people can make their own pizza?  We move from a market economy to one where “shortages” are created based upon allocations – what’s the best way to minimize the number of people that congregate while minimizing the spread of CoronaChan?

I don’t know.   But I do know that some foods will be considered so frivolous or interpersonal contact intensive that good sense won’t let them be made.  Eating at a restaurant?  That involves additional people, from cooks to servers that are potential additional viral vectors.

BEAN

And as far as the tip, wash your hands.

What else don’t we need?  That’s a tough question.  Do we need the latest spring fashions shipped in from China?  Do we need the latest iPhone®?  Do we need Stephen Colbert?  Definitely not.  Heck, I’m not sure we need most of those things on any given day at all, let alone during a catastrophe.

And that’s just consumer products and a lame late night host.  How much gasoline do we need if we’re not travelling to and from work?  Not very much.  Lots of diesel is needed to move products in semi-trucks and on trains.  In the United States, about 9 million barrels (42 gallons per barrel) are used each day as motor fuel.  After Corona?

Three quarters of that?  Half?

This weekend I would have probably used 30 gallons.  Instead?  None.  Multiply that by millions of people, and gasoline demand is sunk.  Get ready for the lowest gasoline prices you’ll ever see in your life.  And, since we’ll not be transporting a lot of “stuff”?  The lowest diesel prices, too, and unlike the hoarded toilet paper, they’ll hit bottom.

ESSENT

Maybe there will be new markets???

I look at this from a standpoint that I’ve got some food in my house that I’ve bought for times just such as this.  I don’t owe much to anyone.  As I’ve indicated before, if you have money (and if money is still good, which may not be a given) you’re in for the buying opportunity of a lifetime.  Want an oil well?  You’ll never have a better chance at getting a good one, if you have money.  Especially the baby oil wells.  Contrary to popular opinion baby oil isn’t made from babies, but from toddlers.

But it’s the people who don’t have money that I’m concerned about.  The theater owner can’t keep the theater going if there are no butts in seats.  The diner waitress can’t make the payments on their car if they can’t bring plates filled with eggs and bacon with a side of biscuits and gravy to Grandpa Verne.  She depends on the tips that pay the bank for that car, since Virgil can’t hold a job now that he’s in the county lockup for fighting Clem again.

Most people depend on this week’s income to pay this month’s bills.  I’ve been there.  I lived several years of my life one month and one lost job away from bankruptcy.  Thankfully, now I can live without a month of income.  Most people can’t.

How does that end up?  It’s simple enough to say, “Well, let the banks take a hit on a month of payments.  They’re greedy and don’t need that money.”

But . . . it’s my money you’re talking about.  My money is in the bank.  How does Hells Wargo® pay me back if my money isn’t collected from the waitress and the theater owner?  For every transaction, there’s another party.  And if you have more money than zero, you’re impacted.  That money of yours that your bank has?  You loaned it to them.  And if the loans that they made don’t pay back?  What happens then?

Another system failure.  I’m expecting that the Federal government will just pony up several trillion to make it all go away.  They have a printing press, ink, and paper.  Why not?

INFLATE

It worked out okay for Zimbabwe and Venezuela, right?

From the best available information I’ve seen slowing down the WuFlu® isn’t enough.  It has to be stopped.  COVID-19® isn’t the flu.  All available data indicates that it is far more deadly, and far more contagious.

At the high end of mortality, it would kill up to 7,500,000 Americans, assuming half of the people in the US get it.  What else is a factor?  How quickly we get it.  If you want to live, having a ventilator will be an issue for some percentage, say, 5% of people who get it.  No ventilator for that 5%?  They die.  Mortality rate skyrockets without care – it’s the difference between as low as 0.5% (as observed in South Korea) to as high as 5% in overwhelmed countries.

My trigger for “not the flu” is 30,000.  That seems like a big number, but when you divide it by the number of people in America, it’s really not.  The flu (as near as we can see today) is a LOT less fatal.  And, unless I missed a day in kindergarten, 30,000 is a lot less than 7,500,000.

heaven

Okay, not me.  I have to write.  And I have HBO®.

But until we see how it pans out, I guess I get the big prize:  spending time with Wilders.  And I’ll enjoy spending time with each of them.

Except the cat.

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

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

FIRST

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

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

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

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

How bad could it be?

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

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

sp500

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

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

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

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

30year

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

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

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

crude

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

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

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

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

What have we seen so far?

stand

This was a pretty good miniseries documentary.

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

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

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

cyber

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

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

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

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

Lesson One:

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

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

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

Lesson Two:

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

gold

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

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

Lesson Three:

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

10year

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

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

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

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

Lesson Four:

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

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

Wildcards:

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

mankini

Okay, I’m sorry.

sorry

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

Nobody likes a smug prepper.

Disclaimer:

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