Weimerica – Page 11 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Dunbar At The Fall Of Nations

“Dunbar, not Dumb Bear.” – Dances with Wolves

If beer makes you smarter, that didn’t work out for Budweiser®. (meme not mine)

People are funny. And I’m not talking, “John Wilder after fourteen beers at Chili’s when someone mentions that we’ll have to give up PEZ™ to meet CliMAtE ChAnGE GoALZ” funny. No, I’m talking about the way that we’re wired to react as people, and yet pretend we’re not.

Out of all of the aspirations of the way that we want to think about ourselves, there are some constants. Except for Mark Zuckerberg, we all need air to breathe. We all need food. We all need something to drink. I’ve heard some people drink water, but I keep wonder why they do that when mankind made civilization so we could have a nice beer.

The other thing most of us need is . . . people. Although everyone is slightly different, there seems to be something hardwired into us as to how we deal with people.

I told the doctor I didn’t trust him to stitch me up. He said, “Fine, suture self.”

Robin Dunbar (Grad student for Dr. Batman® Von Unterober) is a British Psychologist. He looked at the various sizes of primate brain, specifically the neo-ocasio-cortex. Er, just the neocortex. Sorry. The neocortex is the most recent delivery to the brain, and allows humans to do complicated things like talking, brewing beer, heating up frozen pizzas in the oven, giving each other chlamydia, and writing columns while drinking beer.

Dunbar sliced up a lot of primate brains, and compared the size of the neocortex to the size of the primate tribe. There was a correlation. Dunbar then said, “Hey, humans are primates, even though we are so very sexy, so what size would a human tribe be?”

His result based on math and brain size, and, I’m guessing a few pints of Guiness®?

Stable human tribe sizes should be about 150 based on Dunbar’s math, and this number is called Dunbar’s Number. I wrote about this before in this post (LINK) where I have the original (as far as I can see) hypothesis that some mental illnesses might have helped small groups survive back when we were killing mammoths to survive, and I write a bit more about Dunbar’s Number in that post.

My friend’s wife is leaving him because of mental illness. Or at least that’s what his cat told him.

This 150 person (let’s be generous and say it’s somewhere between 100 and 250) group size seems to show up wherever I look. Huge corporations may have tens of thousands of employees, but each of the actual operational chunks is small. Most that I’ve seen have been . . . less than 150 people. Even operating locations I’ve been to that have 500 people or more break down into groups. Office staff versus day shift versus night shift, or people who forgot their pants versus people who always remember them, or something similar.

Many folks might say, but Wilder, my country has hundreds of millions of people in it. Dunbar’s Number doesn’t seem to apply. Dunbar himself theorized that this number would only be exceeded when those groups faced extreme survival pressures, like invading Huns or women wanting to vote.

I’ll toss in a different theory here: larger groups than Dunbar’s number can exist when there’s a great degree of wealth that requires cooperation to maintain. My theory was (and is) that civilization was formed so we could make beer (LINK).

So why is it so big now?

How is Alexa® like my ex-wife? She tried to listen to everything and pretended to know it all.

Wealth, technology, and order allow Dunbar’s Number to get immense. If every small town in the United States has a McDonald’s®, then life gets simpler. We have built around an economic “sameness”. Similarly, people watch the same NFL™ teams or NCAA© college teams based on regions. This economic homogeneity is based on wealth and technology.

If you’re a fan of {INSERT SPORTS TEAM HERE} then if I’m a fan of the {SAME EXACT TEAM} we’re not so different, we’ve created a commonality. Dunbar’s Number is short-circuited, and a shallow trust is created.

But what happens when wealth (and the hope of having it) goes down?

I think we’re seeing it. Trust shrinks. People we once put inside our group are now put outside our group because the competition for resources increases. An example is probably in order: if everyone has a job and all of the PEZ™ and Hot Pockets© they want and big houses with swimming pools, having the odd illegal immigrant doesn’t bother them much. But when times get tight and jobs are scarce and Hot Pockets® cost $10 each, the “in-group” shrinks.

The Mrs. cringes every time I call them “Squat Pockets®”.

The greater the stress on the people, the smaller the group gets. Who do I trust? In my circles, it’s my family first. That number is small. Then my close friends – those that I know, based on experience, that I can trust. That number is bigger, but still pretty small. Then there are those who I have strong reason to trust. Then those in the neighborhood. Then . . .

Well, you can see, the tougher the situation, the smaller the circle. If we go back to our history, this is what we find – somewhere between 100 to 250 of us in a group trust each other, and can work as a group. When times are good, technology is in place, and the NFL® is playing that number can certainly be bigger.

I tend to think we’re past the point of Peak Dunbar. As things get tougher, you can see the friction already started as violence has escalated. As jobs disappear, and as hope disappears, this will increase.

But at least right now, I can still have fourteen beers at Chili’s™.

Mechanisms Of Control: Financial

“You must not take the Controller away. We will all die! The Controller is young and powerful. Perfect!” – Star Trek, TOS

Song lyric idea: “The Beautiful Sheeple, The Beautiful Sheeple . . .”

Currency started out innocently enough. If I wanted to sell my wheat and then buy some beer, well, I could trade my wheat to the brewer. But what if the brewer had all the wheat he needed, but needed, oh, hops? My wheat would do him no good. There is evidence of a guy making beer in the Bible, after all there’s a book in the New Testament named Hebrews.

I could try to trade my wheat to the guy who grew hops, but if he didn’t need any wheat, what was I to do?

The problem that currency solved was a simple one – how do I trade with someone who doesn’t need what I have? How can accountants get into amusement parks? How can ATF® agents do, well, anything since absolutely no one has any use for them?

The solution was some sort of medium of exchange. In one sense, it’s magic. As long as everyone believes, it works. When used judiciously (i.e., backed by gold on demand) it transforms into something that is hard to manipulate – what we’d call money.

How do you greet a German wheat farmer? “Gluten tag.”

When backed by nothing, (like now) it’s simply cash or currency.

The history of the last fifty years (and the last twenty, especially) has been the history of printing currency out of nothing and then giving it to a few small groups, and then they use the cash to buy up everything.

Once a group owns everything, there’s no reason for them to worry about profit: they already own all the things worth owning. That’s BlackRock©. The Aptly Named® Larry Fink runs it, and it’s no longer about profits, it’s about control based on his ideology.

What does Fink expect you to do when it’s cold? Huddle around a candle. What about when it’s freezing? Maybe then Larry will let you light the candle.

People (last I checked) still drive cars driven by sweet, sweet internal combustion engines. Those internal combustion engines (for the most part) require sweet, sweet crude oil to be turned into gasoline and diesel. Yeah, ethanol exists and so does biodiesel, but those can’t pull the load, and ethanol actively takes food out of the supply chain.

What if, however, the United Nations leaned on banks to get them to stop the supply of oil by choking off the supply of cash to oil producing nations?

If it wasn’t clear before, it should be clear now: it’s not about humanity or human rights – it’s about control.

Is the reason Saudi Arabia has so much money all the oil cash, or that they won’t let their women spend it?

Please don’t believe me, believe them when they say it. Here is the head of the Bank of International Settlement (BIS) saying that “central banks will have absolute control over all money (sic)”. This is in how each dollar (or whatever unit) is used, what people are allowed to buy, and what people are prohibited to buy.

Why do Central Bankers drive Ferraris®? Because you’re okay with a Fiat©.

One thing I know that they’d love to do is to make money evaporate to force people to spend rather than save. This can be done with electronic currency, and I expect they will do it to make sure that people can’t save and are forced to work every day of their lives.

Even more than now.

35% of Americans think they’ll max out at least one credit card this year.
38% are using their cards for expenses that they never used a card for.
62% are considering a “side-gig”, even if they already have a job.

-Fintech Times, July 25, 2023 (LINK)

Things are looking down for many Americans. When it comes to the point of using credit cards for financing life, it’s getting rough – I know, I was in that trap when I was in my 20s. I’ve seen it here in Modern Mayberry where the labor market is now getting tighter, and more people are looking for work. Employers can now be a bit choosier, which will put downward pressure on wages. The reason for this is simple: people aren’t going to McDonald’s®, they’re eating at home for half (or less) the price.

Another sign of control: in a recent month, 1.2 million “native or heritage”, (i.e., Americans actually born as Americans from American parents in America) lost their jobs. They were replaced by 600,000 immigrants. Low-cost labor is still being imported, and putting even more wage pressure on the middle and lower classes. The Biden administration even ordered that some of the gates in “The Wall” be welded open, which defeats the whole “wall” idea.

Looks like that Bill Gates was in charge of the wall, too. Look at all the Windows®.

To paraphrase William Jennings Bryant (among others), it is difficult to get a person to voice dissent when their next meal requires them to agree. That, then, is the nature of control of economic systems as demonstrated by BlackRock®, the BIS©, and the World Economic Forum™ – the desire is to make it so that the average person cannot resist without being kicked outside of the system that provides food, shelter, and the occasional luxury.

I’m sure it would be easy to start your own Central Bank . . . oh, maybe not.

Even that deal is in danger: the desire to dramatically change the way that people work and live is on the table for these groups. Who, exactly, do you think wants you to live in a pod and eat the bugs, and not own anything? Owning everything that matters isn’t enough – they want to own everything, and make your ability to have anything depending on you giving them all of yourself.

Even your thoughts.

And to think, all we really wanted was a beer. I guess it was pretty expensive.

Electric Cars and Rainbow Unicorns

“It’s logical to assume that something within this zone absorbs all forms of energy whether mechanically or biologically produced. Whatever it is, it would seem to be the same thing which drew all the energy out of an entire solar system and the Intrepid.” – Star Trek, TOS

Electric cars owners should never go down a dead end street – there’s no outlet.

As I have written time and time again, the future of energy is the future of humanity. Cheap, safe, limitless energy is the dream, and that energy is one component of a future that is not nasty, brutish, and short, like George Soros. Because the Leftists have tried to propagandize the subject, they’ve done a great job at muddling the thoughts on what in the end is actually the engineering question that drives the economic engines of the world.

Let’s remove the confusion on the term “energy source”. Electricity, for instance, isn’t an energy source, since it has to be created in some fashion, such as by windmill or coal-fired power plant, nuclear power plant, or tiny faeries hooked up to electrodes while being chained to beds in the basement of Disney® . . . oh, I’ve said too much.

I heard a fairy tale about politics once. It was Grimm.

Electric cars, then, are dependent upon getting their electricity from somewhere upstream. Electricity is an energy carrier, not a source.

On the other hand, crude oil is an energy source. The refining process doesn’t take up too much energy, and the sweet, sweet hydrocarbon molecules in a gallon of gasoline were there (mostly, some have been rearranged a tiny bit) in the refining process.

So, let’s define energy sources as energy, in crude, raw, or potential form that can be manipulated for use and that we get more energy out than we put into it. So, crude oil is definitely an energy source in most conventional and fracking situations, producing up to (depending on how you count it) sixteen times as much energy as used to get it out of the ground and turn it into 89 octane. I will say if we converted the entire economy to biofuels emissions would go down and we could starve at the same time!

Biofuels are entirely questionable, and most of them are poor when compared to gasoline as an alternative, returning just a little bit over break even for both biodiesel and corn ethanol. These products exist as fuels primarily because Lefties like ruining the economy and the RINOs know that farmers vote. Thus, there are tax incentives in place to force the use of biofuels.

“But we could make houses out of it.” “No, you have to bury it.” “But we could make furniture out of it.” “No, you have to bury it.” “But we could heat houses with it.” “No, you have to bury it.” “I’m beginning to think you don’t like people.”

The dream of the Left (at least this version, Arthur Sido has another one here: LINK), then is to get rid of all of the cars to replace them with “clean” electric vehicles. The International Energy Agency (IEA) wants to get electric cars and trucks (EVs) to 45% of the vehicles on the road by 2050 according to their Net Zero Scenario. 45%! The insanity doesn’t stop there – the IEA expects that alternative vehicles will reduce gas and diesel use by 30% by 2030 – seven years into the future.

That’s a stunning number, because the average age of a car in the United States is 12.2 years. I guess I’m pretty close to average, because the average Wilder fleet ages is 11.5 years. That means that the 30% of the car and stock in existence today needs to be replaced by 2030 with electric and hydrogen vehicles. I have no idea where the IEA is getting its dope, but they must get really good stuff.

>Be forest.
>Exist. Die. Kill mankind by raising temperature 0.0001°F.
>Wonder why this didn’t happen 100,000,000 years ago.

That would mean, though, that conventional vehicles that run on sweet, sweet oil and diesel will have to be phased out starting very soon. Further, the remainder of the vehicles the IEA are hydrogen-powered. Now the Hindenburg wasn’t hydrogen powered . . . .

Now, checking back to energy sources versus energy carriers, hydrogen is just an energy carrier. It has to be generated somewhere.

One of the first problems is that EVs are wickedly expensive compared to actual cars since they require massive amounts of material to replace the empty gasoline tank of an internal combustion car. The question is, where do those materials come from? If, all of a sudden, millions of EVs need to be made, the prices for the materials that go into them will go up, too.

>Be forest.
>Burn. Kill mankind by melting 200 gallons of ice.
>Wonder why this didn’t happen 200,000 years ago.

According to the IEA itself, demand for lithium alone will be 4,000% greater in 2050 than it is today. Cobalt increases would be 2,000%. The increase in availability alone is questionable. Resources show up in clumps – I can’t go in my front yard and look for gold, it is where it is. And when Leftists dream of this wonderful economy that they’re creating, they ignore the environmental costs waste of mining all this stuff – how much will that create in greenhouse gasses plant food?

It’s clear, once again, that these plans aren’t serious. China is producing a stunning 30% of greenhouse gasesCO₂, while the United States produces about 15% of human made CO₂. Why do we fixate on the United States?

First, Leftists have to pretend, really hard, that global warming climate change has replaced what real humans call weather.

Second? The Chinese are already communist, so let them do whatever. The people who have to have their economy ruined while they chase unicorns and rainbows rather than actual engineering solutions to actual engineering problems will have their economy destroyed.

Or maybe they’ll just buy beachfront property at a discount?

Or was that the plan all along?

At the beginning of this, I said the future of energy is the future of humanity. That’s just a bit inaccurate – the future of energy is the future of free humans and our economy. Me? I have my own plans.

Leftism Is A Death Cult That May Kill Us All

“This man has the gift of death.” – Zardoz

Whoops, sorry! Just a regular old death cult after all.

This is the second post about Leftist self-hatred this week. This particular Leftist self-hatred is one that uniquely hurts the economy and even the prospects of the survival of humanity, so it’s par for the course for the most malignant philosophy ever to exist, outside of Taco Tuesday.

What spurred this was a note from a friend that suggested a post. I knew where I wanted to go with it, since I had seen a graphic (from Nature Communications® which is a part of Nature™ the magazine, LINK) that surprised me. I mean, knowing what I know about Leftists, it really shouldn’t have, but what got my attention is how starkly it shows the divide in the philosophies of Right and Left. It’s presented pretty weirdly, so I’ll help out a bit on the interpretation since I’m a trained professional.

The graph is shown as a bullseye. Why? I think the researchers might have been drunk and had a bullseye graph generator, so they decided between shots of tequila that they’d use the damn thing since the University had paid for it anyway. They then got the grad students to enter the data for free, and, boom, paper complete.

I remember watching a PBS® show on how fish swim. They shocked a fish by putting an electrode up its behind so they could photograph it. Who put the electrodes up the fish butts? Grad students.

The concentric circles in the graph are pretty simple, though, and the innermost are the things closest to an individual. The rings get rather more distant as they go outwards until they get rather silly:

All of your immediate family.
All of your extended family.
All of your closest friends.
All of your friends (including distant).
All of your acquaintances.
All people you have ever met.
All people in your country.
All people on your continent.
All people on all continents (apparently, screw those guys on islands, they suck anyway).
All mammals (finally got the people on the islands and astronauts covered).
All amphibians, reptiles, mammals, fish, and birds.
All animals on earth including paramecia and amoebae.
All animals in the universe, including alien lifeforms.
All living things in the universe including plants and trees.
All natural things in the universe including inert entities such as rocks.
All things in existence.

So, that’s the scale – what things are the most important to you? For me, this is an easy answer. I like the things that closer to me better, and I could see my feelings about this covered very well under the title listed for “Conservatives”.

Is it just me, or does this graph look very, umm, happy?

In general, I like the people that are close to me more. Yes, I care about Americans more than I care about people in Tannu Tuva, or people in Tanganyika, or even those pitiful island people. I generally care more about my kids than yours, and I generally like all people better than rocks, though there are some exceptions that I make for ex-spouses and members of Antifa®. Heck the entire meme below is encapsulated in the graph above:

Now if that isn’t what’s on his headstone, it sure should be.

Okay, that explains the Right, and how we generally feel according to statistics. What about the Left?

Why did they pick 45°?

Whoa, that’s amazingly different! Lefties are really focused over to the end, with only a minor preference for humans and a lesser preference for people closer to them. The perception of the granola-eating surrender chimp as the model for Leftism is once again validated. They like these things best:

All animals in the universe, including alien lifeforms.
All living things in the universe including plants and trees.
All natural things in the universe including inert entities such as rocks.

Rocks are more important to them than their parents. And if their parents are as disappointed in them as I’m guessing they are, I can see why. They hate themselves, so they hate the things that are closest to them. You can see it when they throw themselves in front of cars when they protest, they have never won anything in life, so the only way they can win, they feel, is to have transferred virtue from their death. “See, I told you I was a good person, but you never believed me!” Thus, the victim Olympics where they compete based on victim status. “Well, Bob, he stuck the victim status, but he wobbled on the virtue signal, and the blind gay judge with AIDs from Ethiopia gave him a 7.3.”

I wonder how many upvotes they got on Reddit®?

To be clear, I’m not sure I would like alien lifeforms at all unless they grilled well, and I think I would be just fine if an entire planet of intelligent, bloodthirsty cannibal lizard-people was wiped out, even in a slow and agonizing way, just to make sure that my family had slightly more comfortable air conditioning. But enough about the people who are related to George Soros.

I’m not kidding. I can come up with entire species that I’d love to see wiped from existence, and I’d start with mosquitos, gnats, wasps, and vegans. Vegans especially, because they eat what my food eats, and that’s just selfish.

To be clear, I love the environment. I love hiking, I love nature, I love hunting, I love trees. The reason I love them is simple: they exist to by enjoyed by Man. If Man doesn’t exist? None of these mean anything to me. There are millions of cows alive on Earth right now. Because we want to make cows happy? No, because cows make us happy, especially when done medium rare with a nice crust. To be clear, I think “nature” has no intrinsic value outside of what it can provide to Man. But I love nature, because it’s awesome to man.

The Moon? Just rock without people. And Soviet Russian ships that landed. A crash is a landing, right?

Oddly, because of these heat maps, people on the Right go out to work to care for the people they know and their country. Why was the Right the primary source of military recruits? Because we like our nation more than we like other nations, and since we are focused on those around us, we’re fiercely individualistic, and focused on family and friends. Why? We like our families and friends, and if they’re loyal to us, we’re more than loyal to them.

When the chips were down and you needed help, would you rather have a friend on the Right, or one on the Left?

Thought so.

People on the Left, though, end up in the traditional Leftist positions, in academia, or, in government. I’ll perhaps discuss in some future post a bit more on Leftism and academia if there’s interest. For today, let’s focus on government.

The idea of government, at least as outlined in the Constitution, is simple, “establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and, ensure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity”. Note, even in the Constitution it talks about “ourselves and our posterity” and doesn’t mention the slave-pirate amoebas from the planet Melkor-7 or trees.

Wait, tell me about the slave girls again?

The people who gravitated to government over time, however, like control. And that control includes enforcing their morals (which rate rocks above people). And in 2023, those are the folks in charge of policy. They like people who live elsewhere more than they like citizens of their own country, and the like clinging vines more than they like their second cousin. Depending on the second cousin, I might agree, but the point remains: they hate humanity.

Rather than environmental policy being about how to best work and preserve the environment for people, environmental policy is now viewed as either one of state control, or the idea that we’ll preserve a beetle that isn’t that much different than millions of other beetles rather than try to provide a future habitat for our grandchildren, or Keith Richards, whichever lives longer. None of these policies have humans in mind.

Right now, I drive a huge pickup truck. I might have bought a smaller pickup, but they can’t be sold because of fuel-efficiency standards – only my massive, hulking pickup with an interior bigger than my first apartment can be sold legally because huge pickups don’t have to meet car standards, but little ones do. That’s also why sedans and station wagons disappeared and massive “sport utility vehicles” replaced them – a consequence of bad environmental policy. I like using less gasoline, but .gov says I have to use more.

Hmmm.

Mussolini was lucky. On his last day he got to hang out with his friends.

Other examples of this are things like nuclear power. The Left has always hated nuclear power because it was something only First World societies could afford, and the thing the Left hates more than themselves is a winner. How can we drag them back down? Oh, yeah, we can make power so expensive and unreliable that no one can afford it.

The biggest question facing humanity in 2023 is energy. Is an energy crisis coming? It certainly is. Will the regulations that the Leftists who like rocks better than their parents put into place make sense for people? Unlikely, since the civilization of humans isn’t on their radar.

To be fair, since we’ve already demonstrated the self-hatred of humanity, it’s pretty simple to note that these consequences that put all of humanity at risk, might not be unintentional at all.

Is Leftism a death cult?

Not if you’re a rock. Otherwise, yeah.

Exclusive: Hunter Biden’s Secret Diary

“Look, you’re corrupt, we’re corrupt. There’s one difference. We’re honest about it.” – Get the Gringo

If Hunter ever goes to jail, I hope he names his prison memoir Biden Time.

We here at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise® have come across a huge scoop: we have found the diaries of Hunter Biden from grade school all the way up to last week. They were left on the doorstop of our law firm, Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe with a note that said, “Too hot for James O’Keefe! Good luck, Johnny, I’m your biggest fan! – J.”

Cataloging the material was difficult, and there were times where I became concerned. Later pages were covered with powdery substances, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be in trouble with the DEA if they raided Stately Wilder Manor. No problem – my dog, Foreshadowing, ate them and then ran around the house 43 times. Then all of Foreshadowing’s teeth fell out and checks from Ukrainian mobsters started showing up in my mailbox.

I’ve skipped much of the information in the diaries, since it’s probably good to keep what happens between a man, his dog, seventeen Filipino hookers and a jar of peanut butter private. Of course, none of that happened, which is why I’m grateful the word “parody” exists.

July, 1977

I wanted my dad to take me to see starwars agin but he said know because dad said that he was woried we’d grow up in a raciall jungle. I like jungles! I talked with Beau, and Beau told me to shut up because I was too stupid to understand. I said, no, Im seven so I know wat a jungle is, but Beau said I had brain damage. I think I wanna coke.

June, 1988

Holy cow, boys, having your dad running for president is just friggin’ awesome! I was busted in Jersey with a bunch of drugs. I just flashed my driver’s license. Biden, bitches! It cracks me up that the old man is all “let’s get tough on drugs” but when I get bussssted, nada happens. Old man says that he’ll make a phone call. Cracks me up when dad says in speeches that all drug users should be held accountable. Ha! Unless your name is Biden. Bitches!

In a dictatorship in Africa, we’d call this corruption. Here? We don’t talk about it.

June, 1994

So, dad explains it this way. My grades at Georgetown were crap, but he pulled strings and got me into Georgetown law, which sucks, because Georgetown is so low rent. Of course, Beau had to go to dad’s alma mater, Syracuse. Today, it all changed! Apparently, dad had Bill Clinton call the dean, Guido Calabresi (seriously Goodfellas vibes) at Yale, and I can transfer from Georgetown to Yale! Dad says that since I’m a Biden, well, “don’t worry about grades, son” and I won’t! Woooo! Yale! It’s awesome to have the name Biden, bitches!!!

May, 2001

So, here I am at a law firm. My law firm! It’s called Oldaker, Biden and Belair. Join the firm, get your name on the door! How awesome is that? I think it’s because . . . I’m a Biden, bitches! Partner in one. The other thing is that absolutely no one here cares about how much you drink or how many drugs you do. Drink after lunch to take the edge off? Fine. My name’s on the door. Parties? Plenty of those, and the booze and, well, other things flow freely. I think I’m in heaven.

I love putting on warm underwear, fresh from the dryer. I then look around the laundromat and wonder who it belongs to.

September, 2008

Dad says I have to quit working as a lobbyist because Obummer said so. Dad said that being vice president was way better than being senator, so I have to stop doing God’s work, lobbying for online gambling, biotechnology companies, and colleges wanting federal funds, I mean, the most needy and moral people. I’m so sad.

February 19, 2014

Kicked out of the Navy Reserve today. Dad and I had a discussion, which means he yelled at me. “You idiot, you understood you were getting a drug test, right? And that coke is only detectable for a day or two, right? The head of the Joint Chiefs said that, and I quote, you had enough cocaine in your urine to qualify your urine as a controlled substance.” Yeah, it was bad. Not bad? My company, Rosemont Seneca Thornton, just got $3,500,000 sent to us from a Russian dude! Why? We’re not sure, but all I have to say is . . . Bidenz, Bitches!!!!

2014 was a very good year.

April, 2014

New job, new job, new job! This one has me being on the Board of Directors of some company in Ukraine. I think they make chlorine gas or helium gas or something. The best part? My salary. $1,000,000. A year! Bidenz, Bitches! Ha! Best part? I’m not sure I have to do anything!

April 14, 2017

My life has kinda been a haze since I got the job at Buriisma. Or however you spell it. A million bucks a year, but they cut my salary to half after dad was no longer veep. Dammit. Why couldn’t he have beaten Aunt Hillary? I think dad was scared, something about, “Don’t cross Hillary, that’s worse than the Chicago Mob.” But today I finally got divorced. Kathy was always upset about the cocaine and the crack and the Filipino prostitutes, but I think it was the video of the dog that got to her. She said, “Hunter, that’s enough. We’re done here.” I didn’t mention that Beau’s widow was looking pretty fine at the funeral . . . I wonder if that’s what finally put her over the edge? Or the fact that I was bangin’ Beau’s babe was on the front page of Page Six®?

Hunter’s date didn’t like bottles, she only liked it in the can.

August, 2018

Stripper? Arkansas? My kid? Jeez, how much crack did I do that night?

April, 2019

So, my laptop is broken. I think I dropped it off to get fixed, but I was so high that I’m not sure I did that or maybe the laptop ran away. I think the running away part was a dream. Regardless, what bad could come of that?

May, 2019

Met a girl, six days later we’re married. This will turn out well – Biden, Bitches!

October, 2020

Guess they found the laptop. Thankfully, all the CIA dudes signed a thing that said it wasn’t really mine. Whew! Dad would be mad about that if it was. I guess I believe the CIA guys, except a lot of those pictures look really familiar.

July, 2022

My art has done awesome! I must be good at art! My paintings have sold for lots of money! So far it’s over $1,300,000 for like 11 of them. It’s not as good as Buriisma money, but it’s still pretty good. I mean, some of those paintings took me hours to make. One person bought almost $900,000 of them. I’m not sure if she’s the one that dad appointed to that special commission, but, whatever. I’m an artist. Biden, bitches!

Shooting down the Chinese balloon is the only thing Biden has done to stop inflation.

June, 2023

My lawyer says I’m not in any trouble anymore. Turns out that he knows the DOJ guy and they have a deal worked out for special people like me that I can just claim I’ll pay my taxes in the future, and won’t buy anymore guns while all coked up. Excellent deal, plus they said they put in a sweetener – gets me immunity from essentially anything I’ve ever done up to now. Bidenz, Bitches!!!!

August, 2023

That stupid judge threw out my special deal. Dad says it will be fine, though. The same guy who negotiated it for the DOJ is now a “special prosecutor” which means that he “especially” won’t be prosecuting me for anything. And I have a child support deal that makes sure that Arkansas stripper’s kid gets some of my paintings. Sure! I can do about sixty of those a day!

You know, sometimes I like to reflect back on my life. I wonder if I would be an asset to society if I were living a clean, sober, honest life and financially supporting my children while not snorting enough drugs to paralyze Robert Downey, Jr while getting into less trouble for federal felonies than the average man would if they were arrested for jaywalking.

Nah.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Corruption And The End Of An Age

“Only a cynical man would call what these people have “lives,” Wayne. Crime, despair, this is not how man was supposed to live. The League of Shadows has been a check against human corruption for thousands of years. We sacked Rome, loaded trade ships with plague rats, burned London to the ground. Every time a civilization reaches the pinnacle of its decadence, we return to restore the balance.” – Batman Begins

“If I were American, I’d vote Trump. But I’m an illegal alien, So I’m voting Biden.”

Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology. Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Open War.

Volume V, Issue 3

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – Watch The Bugs Scatter – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The End of an Age – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 800 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Watch The Bugs Scatter

When I was a kid growing up near Wilder Mountain, we’d often go hiking during the summers. Whenever we’d stop, I’d do kid things, one of which was picking up a rock. Why?

To see what was on the other side of it, silly.

Whenever I’d pick one up and see a batch of bugs, the one thing they’d do is run and hide. They were, I suppose, fine under the rock, or maybe out at night, but the light of day scared them and they would run so they could start hiding.

Biden rhymes with hidin’ so that makes sense. As the Congressional review of Biden Shenanigans continues to show up more and more smoking guns, the pattern remains the same: get Trump.

June 7: FBI releases the FBI form where it’s alleged by an informant that the Bidens took a $10 million bribe.
June 8: Jack smit indicts Trump for having similar sorts of documents that every president has retained.

July 26: Hunter goes to court and gets the sweetheart deal that gave him, essentially, blanket immunity pulled by a judge who decided not to rubber-stamp the thing.
July 27: Jack Smith adds more charges to Trump on the documents thing.

July 31: Hunter’s former business partner testifies that Joe was on more than 20 calls with Hunter’s clients, and that Burisma pressured Joe to use his power to get the Ukrainian prosecutor fired.
August 1: Jack Smith indicts Trump again. This time? For speaking on January 6.

I’m thinking the more dirt that comes out on Hunter, the more dirt they’ll have to come up with on Trump, up to and including trying him as a witch under some obscure 1670 statute from Ye Olde Commonwealth of Virginia for “flying in a most terrifying way” in his jet.

The Bidens have (allegedly) created a crime family that works without any sort of (to this point) review. It is, at this point, established fact that the Bidens used the full force of the “intelligence community” including the FBI and the CIA to help Joe get elected by suppressing the Hunter laptop story, and controlling the items showing up in social media.

Congress has done something moderately useful for once: they’ve shown us that Washington, D.C. is exactly as corrupt as we always thought it was. And now we have proof.

Violence and Censorship Update

For whatever reason, CNN® decided that people shouldn’t go see the new movie, Sound of Freedom. That’s odd, because the movie is mainly about child trafficking. Why would the Left be in favor of child trafficking? Guess that’s just a mystery.

The need to scrub history of everything, well, historical has gone into overdrive. Washington and Lee decided that they could no longer have (spins wheel) the headstone of a horse that, apparently, owned slaves and was the cause of the Civil War. Now that the horse has been erased from history and censored, I’m sure that the Left is done and will stop now.

A recent Pew® poll (LINK) showed that 55% of Americans think that the government should restrict speech. Which Americans? The Left, and the speech is whatever they disagree with, which is called, “false”.

Just before his wife told Justin to take a hike, he took time to blame the Right in the United States because “Canadian” Muslims are against LGBTQ curriculum in schools. Guess we won another one, guys.

Bankman-Fraud (how did they not see that coming?) has just had Biden’s DOJ drop tons of felonies. Odd since Ukrainians took our tax dollars, gave them to Bankman-Fraud, and then he gave millions to Democrats for elections. Nothing to see here.

And a reminder, looking into your bank account is patriotic, looking into the money we ship to Ukraine is treason.

And, to call something racist should no longer require proof, say people who are definitely not racist against whites.

Finally, Leftists who create propaganda for the Left are needing money because not enough people are going to see the Leftist propaganda. Expect to see Hollywood here soon enough.

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again, but not as steep. But people aren’t getting fries with that, anymore.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Violence is down – I was expecting more during a long, hot summer. Perhaps August, or perhaps the endemic violence of the cities doesn’t even register anymore?

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it was down a bit.

Economic:

Economic numbers are swinging back down. The numbers look fairly unstable from month to month, which isn’t good, but the stock market popped up in July, regardless if the cities look like a dystopian science fiction predication.

Illegal Aliens:

The border numbers are down, and I’m a bit surprised, since the infiltration continues. Suppressed numbers?

The End of an Age

Tim Pool, podcaster, called his summary for July, 2023 on August 1:

I think he’s right. The full power of the DOJ has been weaponized against half, but only half, of the citizens of the country. Laws have been passed in state after state to allow irregularities in voting that Enron® wishes were allowed in accounting.

There are active purges of people with classical values and beliefs from the military and even from the corporate world as weird, Leftist struggle sessions are required for employees and soldiers. Failure to enthusiastically take part results in firings.

Another sign of the end of an age is when a billionaire spends $171,000,000 of his own money to become governor of Illinois and then, in 2023, signs a bill into law that allows illegal immigrants to . . . go home? No. Become police officers.

Yes. We live in a nation where we have foreign mercenaries who are here illegally who now have the responsibility to enforce the law. I don’t even thing Rome fell to such a low.

The Roman Republic, however, did fall to the point where they started using the power of the state to put politicians in prison for purely political reasons. The outcome of that was the destruction of the Republic and then the Caesars.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1683999891494785024

https://twitter.com/i/status/1686450113298710538

https://twitter.com/i/status/1680045716427747329

https://twitter.com/i/status/1678170602664763395

https://twitter.com/i/status/1680641692762796032

https://twitter.com/i/status/1681805507428859906

https://twitter.com/i/status/1683261497525321729

https://twitter.com/i/status/1685767050944225280

https://twitter.com/i/status/1684466718234877952

https://twitter.com/i/status/1684619417215193088

Good Guys

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/retailers-strike-back-7-eleven-workers-beat-brazen-mega-shoplifter-stick

https://www.gpb.org/news/2023/08/01/membership-skyrocketing-black-gun-group-touts-inalienable-2a-rights-for-self

https://katv.com/news/nation-world/man-tracks-down-truck-thieves-kills-one-in-shootout-san-antonio-police-department-texas-south-park-village-shopping-center-chief-william-mcmanus-self-defense

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/372412618_Busting_the_Durable_Myth_that_US_Self-Defense_Law_Uniquely_Fails_to_Protect_Human_Life

One Guy

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1681521615232745472

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-jason-aldeans-controversial-hit-song-became-a-cultural-flashpoint

https://www.billboard.com/music/country/jason-aldean-brittany-aldean-try-that-in-a-small-town-number-1-reaction-1235383534/

Body Count

https://news.gallup.com/poll/508886/belief-five-spiritual-entities-edges-down-new-lows.aspx

https://amac.us/newsline/society/10-shocking-examples-of-wokeism-in-the-u-s-military/

https://heartlandernews.com/2023/07/06/air-force-embraces-dei-as-recruitment-falters/

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/diversity-biden-joint-chiefs-chairman-nominee-placed-dei-forefront-air-force-leader

https://www.cfr.org/blog/uncertain-future-us-militarys-all-volunteer-force

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2023/08/03/of-course-young-patriots-are-rejecting-joining-our-failing-military-n2626500

Vote Count

PAST MONTH: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19821/tech-companies-manipulating-elections

BACKGROUND: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/15/revealed-disinformation-team-jorge-claim-meddling-elections-tal-hanan

BACKGROUND: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1419828112

Civil War

https://nypost.com/2023/07/29/staten-islands-congestion-pricing-fight-spurs-push-to-leave-nyc/

https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/scenes-from-el-dorado-state-secession-california-18201138.php

https://www.hcn.org/issues/55.8/north-extremism-oregons-greater-idaho-movement-echoes-a-long-history-of-racism-in-the-region

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/02/america-house-divided-political-lawfare-could-lead-violence/

https://www.recorderonline.com/news/showing-up-for-the-next-civil-war/article_78dc73e0-3086-11ee-90ae-ab45c1f4d94f.html

https://theconversation.com/idiots-criminals-and-scum-nasty-politics-highest-in-us-since-the-civil-war-208272

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/04/politics/american-political-divisions-july-fourth/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/08/style/fourth-turning-pop-culture.html

Inversion of Values, Part 2: The Roman Empire

“Yes, sir! That’s exactly who I am and what I am, sir. A victim, sir!” – A Clockwork Orange

What’s black and white and red all over? A victim of an industrial accident at a newspaper printing press. (All memes today are as-found)

The inversion of virtues: I’ve written on this topic recently, but decided I needed to have another go at it. Part of the blogging theme is that my posts are limited in space. No one wants to read a 10,000-word post on PEZ™ on Friday morning as they drink their coffee.

Virtues make a civilization worth living in. I’d rather live in a poor civilization with great values than a rich one with poor values, and both of those sound better than what we’ve got going on now. And I’d suggest that our current free-fall is due to that loss of virtue.

What were Epstein’s last words before he committed suicide? “You don’t have to do this! I promise I won’t talk!”

Let’s compare values at the peak of Roman Civilization, the peak of Western Civilization, and what the Left is shoving down our throats right now. For instance:

Rome: Worshiped gods.
The West: Worshiped God.
The Left: Worship man (atheism) or the State.

See? Inversion. Who did the cultures idolize?

Rome: Worshiped heroes.
The West: Worshiped heroes and Saints.
The Left: Worship victims.

See, that’s not hard, and yet more inversion. What about sin?

Rome: Sin of hubris.
The West: Sin of pride.
The Left: Sin of privilege.

I’ll just quit making inversion comments, because this is a slam dunk. Who are the spiritual leaders?

Rome:
The West:
The Left: Professors, Leftie politicians.

Ideals?

Rome: Ideal was glory, excellence (Areté).
The West: Ideal was holiness, modesty, courage.
The Left: Social Justice, victimhood.

Ideal social class?

Rome: Warriors and those who served their fellow men.
The West: The middle class.
The Left: The lower class, victims, victims, victims.

Even a virtue, charity, has been turned from a voluntary act that provides spiritual growth in the terms of the classic West, to taxation to provide forced “charity” to the (often) undeserving.

I’m thinking I don’t want to know how my tax dollars are spent because I’m afraid all mine went to buy crack pipes in San Francisco.

This inversion bleeds over into all of society. “Drag Queen Story Hour”?

Wonder why they don’t read to old folks in nursing homes, or to the blind? Whenever I hear about that, my mind sees:

And then there are questions that are more difficult to answer:

Inversion, of course, shows up in the obvious things:

Jazz Jennings is a transgender person who feels no need to change with no sense of irony:

And their goal is that you will live and produce and that you should be okay with not being meaningful or having any joy, so live in the pod, and eat the bugs, wagie.

And we now have a Marine Corps who worries about people’s feelings. Perhaps they’ll land with Nerf™ guns so that they won’t have their feelings hurt.

But the pushback is well underway. Or overweigh:

But there’s a catch:

And I think this has broken the Left, mentally:

And the internal contradictions in their “victimhood” matrix are starting to show:

Canada has shown that it certainly can’t be trusted with the power of life and death:

The inversion has hit, but people (and maybe Higher Powers) are pushing back. And, I think we will win. Why? Because we’re so very pretty. And? PEZ®.

The Great Rollover

“Like I told my last wife, I says, “Honey, I never drive faster than I can see. Besides that, it’s all in the reflexes.” – Big Trouble in Little China

I tried to buy a hamburger with cheese, but they wanted cash instead.

Yellow Freight® shut down. They had been around for 99 years, starting business way back in time when Bernie Sanders was trying to ruin Austro-Hungarian Empire or Bulgaria or wherever he came from.

Yellow Freight© was an old company and 30,000 people lost their jobs. What went on? Well, Yellow© borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars emergency ‘rona bucks. When they went bankrupt, they had an outstanding loan balance (backstopped by you and I) of $729.2 million. During the two and a half years that they’d had the loan, they’d paid down $54.8 million in interest. They’d also paid down $230 in principle.

Not $230 million. Not $230 thousand. $230, so I’m guessing their strategy was to pay it off at $10 a month, which would ensure that they’d pay off the loan in roughly the year 6,079,523.

Oddly, no one would take a risk on refinancing a company that had such powerhouse earnings, and so all of the people who used to have pensions with Yellow™ found out that their pension value would be paid out at the same rate as the loan was being paid out, and it’s pretty hard to split $10 among 30,000 people each month.

I hate to point fingers, but whatever executive thought orange was yellow just might be at fault.

Most of the 30,000 folks from Yellow Freight© will find another job – truckers are still in demand, and other companies have picked up the slack so far.

This isn’t the first. Just like the banks who had money in Treasury paper took a hit (Silicon Valley Bank®, I’d be looking at you if you were still here) because the “super-safe” bonds making 1% were worth a lot less when interest rates went up to 4%. The FDIC™ requires the banks that they insure to report data. It’s kinda scary when the FDIC© uses the X® (the social media company formerly known as Prince) to notify banks (and the American public) that banks might be in trouble again.

I guess no one is making them account for their problems?

The same thing is, perhaps, happening to the dollar itself – today lost its AAA bond rating from Fitch™ and is now producing AA bonds. Still a good rating, but it’s a big hit from “nearly perfect plus has nuclear missiles” and the first step to becoming a “drunk wine aunt country that can’t afford to take vacations”, like Uzbekistan.

As I’ve written before, it’s awesome to have “the reserve currency”, since that means you can print all the cash you want and spend it on things like iPods™ from China, Hello Kitty™ slippers from Bangladesh, and tequila from Mexico (what’s known as a “Hunter Biden Saturday Morning Special”). Losing it means a loss of that ability, and all of a sudden you have to work for all of that stuff rather than just printing cash.

Hunter Biden’s credit card company called him about suspicious activity. Seems that someone made a payment.

That’s difficult, because there’s always competition in having the reserve currency. One competitor, of course, is precious metals. Another is land. My father-in-law liked to say, “if it blows up, at least you still have the hole.” After the debt ceiling deal (translation: spend as much as you want until after the general election), the debt shot up, climbing $1.8 trillion in just two months. I mean, that’s a crazy number, we don’t even give that much to Zelenskyy in a year!

I know mortgage payments are going up, but just try telling a homeless person how lucky they are.

Eventually that has an effect on all assets. Although Darth Powell doesn’t exactly have the understanding of how home prices work, it is closer to say that at the same payment at a 7% mortgage rate, you can afford a heck of a lot less home than you can afford at 2.7%. Unless wages go up or BlackRock© decides to buy houses because they ran out of illegal aliens to import this month.

Or, if the bankers get absolute control over who uses what cash and when. That’s the goal. Will that happen if things are going well, and we’re surrounded by prosperity?

Of course not. In order to get control, the idea is chaos, uncertainty, war, and mayhem. If you’re old enough, how do the 2020s compare to the 1980s? The 1990s? The 2000s? In nearly every way that doesn’t involve ludicrously cheap televisions, each of those decades was objectively better. I’ve noted before that Peak USA probably hit somewhere before I was born to when I was a little kid.

Why do central bankers never travel together? They’re a bunch of loan wolves.

I’m normally a fan of the idea of ineptitude being responsible for at least being some contributing factor to the problems that we have, but when I look at the gross mismanagement of the economy for decades it almost seems like it’s planned.

But I’m sure I’ll hear Bernie lecturing us all that socialism and more government is the way out from the balcony of one of his three houses soon enough. After all, it’s worked out pretty well for him, what with him never having had an actual job and all.

You know, this costs money, but I’m just thinking of the joy of all of those people in India when they get unexpected packages.

Aliens: The Fakest Thing Ever?

“Crazy people can be very persuasive.” – The X-Files

Do werewolves live in warehouses?

I’ve enjoyed Scott Adams for years – the first time I saw his strips were on office photocopypasta in the 1990s where his brand of humor really hit home with folks at the place I was working. So, he’s an awesome cartoonist, and very funny. We’d say things like, “Dilbert’s just like me!” but then realize that we were in color and three dimensional.

Adams also picked Trump as a walk-in winner in 2016 way ahead of the crowd, but was dead wrong on the ‘Rona and the Vaxx®, so he’s not an oracle or a cult leader. But he does have interesting thoughts and I like reading him, and his podcast, while not good as mine, seems to have attracted a slightly larger audience.

So, when he tossed these Tweets® (or are they Xeets™ now??) up I thought I’d share them. Here are the rest:

I’ll admit, I’ve been fascinated by UFOs (the old name before they got fancy and started calling them UAPs) since I was a kid. I’ve been following the unfolding story since the “Tic-Tac®” videos came out in 2017 because any version of an answer for what was observed was interesting. Either the United States had amazing tech beyond anything, .gov is faking it, or it was something that fell into that big bucket of “aliens and demons and interdimensional beings – oh, my!”

Scott presents the idea that this subject is being brought up at the very moment that lots (and I mean a record number) of other things are brewing in the news:

We live in a nation at the brink of civil conflict,
White House Resident Joe Biden is facing a presidential scandal, with amazing evidence, that is the biggest since Watergate,
We might be seeing a soft coup against Biden right now as the Left wants to jettison him for someone else,
(Not anyone else, since no one wants Kamala),
Adding a janitor at Mar-A-Largo© to the list of people who are indicted along with Trump because he helped move boxes (really),
Hunter seems to have lost more cocaine,
Prices for luxuries like food have jumped, and are set to jump again as the Ukraine Conflict enters day 5,000, and
Payments for interest on the national debt are starting to be higher than Johnny Depp.

What’s the difference between Hunter Biden and his prostitutes? His prostitutes probably pay at least some taxes.

Is there something to distract us from? Yup.

Everything.

Why? Because that list above isn’t even close to being complete.

This is the danger. Scott describes it as a secret war, but I’m not sure that there are even two sides, since the FBI, CIA, and most other (but not all) organizations are tied back to supporting the Left.

I bought my ex a big diamond ring. She said, “Thanks, but we really need a new car.” Me: “But they don’t sell fake cars.”

So, is all this fake, the biggest and fakest thing ever?

I don’t know. It would make sense that it was. The Soviets Russians seem to have their “it’s all a lie” face on and China’s doing, well, whatever it is that China does when no one’s watching. Maybe hate-eating a box of Twinkies®?

And as we see all of the shiny, sparkly news going on, keep in mind the important things – your faith, your family, and your friends. There’s a lot of news that we get that we simply cannot do anything with, that for many of us is nothing more than a signal of what’s going on in the greater world.

We need to come together, find like-minded folks who share your values, and be ready for the changes that are coming in the world, because if they’re using aliens to distract us, well, they must be very scared indeed.

I’m glad that Hillary didn’t win, because then so many people would have moved to Benghazi, because at least there she’d leave them alone.

Don’t let it make you fret, and certainly don’t let it control your mood.

Because Scott is right from the standpoint that we have to keep living our lives, yet keep an eye out for the real story.

So enjoy that kitten while you can – they grow up so fast.

Don’t Ask Why People Are Poor. Ask Why They’re Wealthy.

“Some actually value wealth of knowledge over material wealth, Harper.” – Andromeda

My butler just quit his job here at my stately home. He said he refused to be ordered around in that manor.

I find it sort of hilarious that economists spend a lot of time fretting about what causes poverty. I love economics, but often think that they create pocket universes to study that have no real connection to the here and now. I think that’s called sniffing their own . . . uh . . . emissions.

But sometimes it’s not just economists who ask the wrong question. As bad as they are, the worst offenders are politicians. Let’s start with the dumbest question that has been asked in my lifetime (at least in the United States):

“What causes poverty?”

That’s letting Whoopi Goldberg loose in a chocolate factory stupid. It doesn’t help the chocolate and leaves Whoopi sticky and needing an insulin shot.

But why is that a stupid question?

Because poverty is the dominant condition of humanity everywhere since we didn’t have two rocks to fight over. People throughout history have been devastatingly, living in mud hut, sleeping in straw beds filled with more bedbugs than straw. Mary and Joseph had to walk uphill, both ways, to get to the manger.

That’s a joke that keeps you coming back for myrrh.

Only in rare times, and only for a small percentage of the population of the world have some humans felt prosperity. Fewer still have felt prosperity for most of their lives. Fewer still experienced enough wealth in their society for them to think that wealth was normal, and poverty was the exception. We call them Pampered Coastal Elite Leftists.

Why? Because every farmer in the Midwest, every rancher in the High Plains, and every shrimper in the Gulf (among many, many others) knows how close they are to failure, and how close poverty is, especially if a free-range Whoopi Goldberg is free to eat and trample their crops.

Ma Wilder was impacted by the Depression (she was a lot older than my biological Mom, I was adopted) to the point that, living up on Wilder Mountain she’d save aluminum foil and old pickle jars and have enough food for six months because, “You just never know when you’ll need it.” It was kinda cute until she made us re-use Q-Tips®.

The Wolf is always at the door.

I couldn’t find the wolf, which I guess makes it a where-wolf.

So, the question to ask isn’t “what makes people poor”. We can see that as all the systems around us break down like they are now when morons are at the helm.

We should ask the important question: “What makes us wealthy?”

That’s a much better question to ask, since LBJ’s War on Poverty has just subsidized being poor and created a permanent underclass of voters for Leftists to farm, dependent on the Left for a constant stream of handouts. If you were late to Leftist language class, that’s their word for “compassion”.

So, what makes us wealthy? I can only go from history in those places where the world has deviated from the “nasty, brutish, and short” version of life to that “shining city on the hill”. What matters?

The first thing that comes to mind is Liberty, tempered with Virtue.

When a kangaroo gets hurt, it requires a hop-eration.

Liberty is important, but Virtue tempers Liberty and creates a boundary, otherwise Opium and Fentanyl Den™ would be the new Waffle House®. Or is that the existing Waffle House© after 2am?

What Liberty does is provides options, for millions of people to make individual decisions on how to better serve fellow citizens. Virtue means that they shouldn’t destroy their fellow citizens in the process, since that’s generally bad for business. I guess that cigarette companies have found that it’s okay if you kill them slowly after decades.

Not only that, it’s regulation. Who loves regulation? Big companies. Regulations make it hard for small companies to start, make it hard for them to compete, but increases their profit margin. I mean, I would have loved to compete with Pfizer® with my “Super Saline Covid Injection” that didn’t cause myocarditis, but they would probably want to make sure mine was entirely WD-40® free.

Which would still likely have been better for people than the mRNA Vaxx. But who is counting? Not the CDC®.

What else?

I hear Senator Mitch McConnell stole my rabbit. Mitch better have my bunny.

Intelligence. If you ask ChatGPT® about the correlation between intelligence and national prosperity it blows a fuse. Bing™ chimes right in: “There is a correlation between IQ and economic prosperity. A one point increase in IQ is associate with a 4% increase in welfare for the average country. High IQ is associated with high per-capita GDP and fast economic growth, as well as more equal income distribution.”

Ouch! That’ a truth bomb that most folks don’t want to hear. IQ is not really something that anyone can change for the better. Sure, I can drink a few shots of Jim Beam® and take mine down, but what I’ve got, is what I’ve got, from birth.

But smart people in an economy can keep a more stable economy, and can better grow a complex economy than a group of people who don’t know what vowels are. Sure, I’d like to think that groups of dumb people could get together and solve the nuclear fusion problem, but I’ve met dumb people – they can’t figure out how to split a restaurant tab without a knife fight then a follow-up sacrifice of a live chicken to Gorto the Destructor god.

Or I could have just said, “Imagine Haiti” and everyone would know what I meant.

Why is Haiti spelled without an “e”? Simple. They hate e.

Again, I’m not blaming Haitians for making Haiti, well, Haiti, but if you want to cry, go look over the difference in income between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. I’ll save you the time – the Dominican Republic has nine times the per capita income, despite being on the same exact island. The data I found (on the ‘net, mind you) has the Dominican Republic has an average IQ of 80. Haiti has an average IQ of 67.

Haiti has an average intellectual capacity (if this data is correct) at the level where Social Security would consider them disabled (on average).

Having great resources? That doesn’t appear to help. It’s the System. It’s the People. If Hong Kong and Singapore can create wealth out of zero resources in a location that almost anyone in the United States would consider so crowded they’d have to make an appointment to change their mind, it’s not space, it’s not stuff.

We can change our laws to allow more Liberty and increase Virtue and reverse the trends away from the nonsense of the last fifty years that encourage large corporate growth at the expense of the People.

But if we change out our People?

Who are we? Will we see the continuation of turning our cities into Haiti on the half shell?

Studies of the genetics of dead Romans (LINK) showed that “intelligence increased from the Neolithic Era (Z= -0.77) to the Iron Age (Z= 0.86), declines after the Republic Period and during the Imperial Period (Z= -0.27).”

Why did Rome fall? Many reasons. It lost Liberty, it lost Virtue, and it replaced Romans with people who weren’t Romans.

Wonder if we’ll learn this time around?