Essential Decisions: Coming to a Town Near You

“They call it a panic room.  I know that’s a difficult concept for you, because for you, every room is a panic room.” – Monk

TP

I hear that the Australians have really started hoarding toilet paper – they are superstitious about problems down under.

What’s essential?  Right now, there are hundreds of Federal bureaucrats asking exactly that question.

That scares me.

Why?  The Federal government could cause an ice shortage in Antarctica if they were given a mandate to make more ice, so I’m not hopeful that they’ll make the right decisions.  It should probably scare you, too.  When Hurricane Ike hit Houston, we were there.  Here are some examples of the great competence that was on display from our Federal, state, and local governments:

  • Radio telling us to go the FEMA website for crucial information. During a power outage.  Where cell phones weren’t working.  So, I assumed we were to access the FEMA website psychically.
  • Radio telling us to go and bail out “first second responders” because they didn’t have food or water, because no one can plan for a Hurricane in Texas, right?
  • FEMA water showing up over a week later after power was nearly completely restored. Oh, and you could get one case.  In contrast, a local radio station had a semi-load of bottled water delivered for distribution in only two days.

america

Okay, I may have yelled at a hurricane like this during Hurricane Ike after a wee bit of wine.  No flag.  But there was a bathrobe and it was after midnight.  Does that count?

Federal response is good for, oh, responding late and poorly to any real event.  And why did I call government people “second responders” up above?  Because they are generally the second (or later) person to respond to any crisis.  In most cases, you’re the first responder.  Fire at your house?  It’s you and your trusty extinguisher or cell phone.

Bad guy in your hallway?  First responder is you, because the average police response time in the United States is ten minutes.  Then?  They’ll generally not run into the house like Rambo on steroids, they’ll come in slowly so they can go home that night.  It’s not unlikely that you’d be alone with that robber for fifteen minutes after you made the call to 911.

Do you think you’ll have time to take selfies with the burglar?  Maybe share photos of your kids and amusing anecdotes?  The old saying is right:  when seconds count, the second responders are minutes away.

burglar

One burglar stole all my lamps.  I was upset, but I was also delighted.

It’s not that I dislike the government, I think their inefficiency is cute and endearing in the same way that dealing with a young child is.  If government were actually efficient at anything that would scare me.  The government (at every level) is horrible at coordination and planning, as illustrated by my examples above, with the exception of taxation, where money is on the line – they won’t even give fishermen a break on their net income.    Individuals that are motivated by profits, however, are exceptional at planning and fixing bad situations.  Plus, do you really want to be 100% reliant on government for anything important (besides national defense)?

Let’s take an example:  food lines are a constant theme of Socialism.  I know Bernie Sanders says, people lining up in lines for scarce food, “is a good thing.”  But in capitalist systems, the food waits for you, in abundant variety.  Why?  So people can make a buck.  That’s why we have more than one kind of beer, and one kind of ketchup.  Heck, in the local Wal-Mart® there are like 8 different kinds of Heinz™ ketchup in five different sizes.  The market works to satisfy you, in ways great and small.  Especially if covering yourself in ketchup is what satisfies you.  Mmmm, jalapeño-ranch ketchup.

smooth

I got some Heinz™ ketchup in my eye, and now I don’t need glasses anymore.  My optician said that Heinz®-sight is 20/20.

The profit motive is at work even during this COVID-19 panic.  I heard this week an amazingly Good Thing.  At work, I heard we were waiting for some widgets and some polishing compound for a racknpinion molecule, and heard that there was no shipping on some of the stuff we wanted.  None.  Every single truck that normally shipped gizmos and lefthanded-transaxle wax was being put into hauling food.

That’s a lot of trucks.  As confirmation of this, The Boy went to go retrieve his things from his dorm, college having been cancelled for the End of the World®, and noted that there were huge numbers of trucks moving on the interstate.  The Boy estimated there were probably 150% of the number of trucks he normally sees, and this was on a Saturday.  State Troopers were entirely absent.  Even the cops want the food to move.

hillary

So, next time you get pulled over, just roll down your window and start a nasty dry cough.  I’m betting the lights go off and the trooper heads out . . .

This was accomplished not by bans.  Not by government edicts .  Just, “the people are scared and want more food?  Give it to them.”  This is easy because there’s plenty of food in the system.  The corn that’s being turned into Tostitos® was grown with sunlight from 2019.  Next year’s Tostitos have yet to be planted.  Rice?  We have tons.  Fuel?  As I told you several weeks ago – it’ll be the cheapest in the past 20 years.  Taking inflation into account, it may be the cheapest in history, so cheap you’ll be able to start bathing with gasoline instead of tap water, like Jeff Bezos does to clean grease from his moving parts.

You can shut down some parts of the free market because they’re non-essential – we did that in World War II.  My folks tell stories of rationing of sugar and sewing needles and tires.  And at some point those semi-trucks hauling the radishes and rutabaga and rhubarb and redfish will need new tires.  They’ll need oil changes, and wiper fluid, and the drivers will need coffee and meth.

And farmers must farm, and ranchers must ranch, and people must be ready to pick the pizza rolls from the pizza tree when they are ripe.  Someone has to milk the mice.  But farmers live for that, so as long as they have gallon milk jugs, they’ll keep filling them.  Economic incentives are still working.

The longer we go on with “nonessential” businesses being closed, the more businesses will become essential.  In Modern Mayberry, we regularly close down non-essential businesses.  It’s a day we refer to in our local dialect as “Sunday”.  On Sunday, if Wal-Mart® or a fast food restaurant doesn’t have it, you’re not getting it.  That was one of the bigger changes in moving here from bigger cities – businesses close down on Sunday, and the hours aren’t all that long on Saturday.  Most businesses close at 5pm.

So, we live with non-essential shutdowns all the time.  It’s hard to argue that the steak restaurant is essential to the public, though it’s certainly the opinion of the waitress and the owner that it’s essential, but even they agree to close it down on Sunday and Monday.

SUNDAY

It’s the first five days after Sunday that are the always the hardest.

In a true governmental paradox where bureaucrats live on a different planet than the rest of us, schools are closed but daycares remain open.  Having the grimiest, most germ-laden creatures on Earth (first graders) congregate for seven hours at school is wrong, but having those same infested viral fermentation pots play together for eleven hours at a daycare is okay.

I guess daycare workers need better unions.

But reasonable people could work together and come up with a definition of what’s essential.  My job isn’t.  Not today.  In a few months?  Maybe, but probably not.  In a few years?  Yeah, somebody needs to do it, for sure.  And most jobs, even within essential industries aren’t essential.  HR?  Let them work from home, or better yet, work from Nome or the bottom of the ocean for the next year.

Heck, I’d be surprised if productivity of home workers wasn’t greater than working in a traditional office setting.  I had read a statistic when I was starting off at work after college, and it said that up to 2/3 of the average office worker’s day was wasted.  But how do office workers waste time?  I had one boss who would just pull up a chair and talk.  For sometimes two hours or more.  About, well, whatever.

Before you snicker, around the same time I read a statistic that said something like 40% of industrial repairs fixed the wrong thing.  But it’s hard to take a steel smelter home to fix it, unless you sneak it out in your big lunchbox.

Anyway, we’ll soon be seeing what government bureaucrats feel is essential.

I’m just hoping it involves beer . . . .

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

34 thoughts on “Essential Decisions: Coming to a Town Near You”

  2. The sudden emphasis on “essential” is gonna have some profound effects on us. In the current context, it is really “essential TO SOCIETY”. Very few of us are. So what good ARE we, really? Religion used to be the source of answers to that question. Today, not so much. I think most people will not dwell on this question in their own lives. All hail Netflix and bow to the glow of your little screen.

  3. Daycare centers are mostly open because most American “parents” are terrified of their own children if they have to deal with them for more than a few hours a day. I was writing a post on this very topic this morning.

    Ideally this catastrophe, real or otherwise, should lead to some serious introspection about how things are run but more likely we are going to get a series of bailouts for everyone and anyone and that will become the new normal. I am sure that a “debt jubilee” won’t lead to people running up huge debts again and assuming it will get wiped away every 5-7 years.

      1. The big thing that happens is you no longer have private organizations issuing loans. Banks make money from the spread between loans and savings, if they can’t collect interest, they won’t make any money and will stop lending. That means no car loans and no mortgages and just imagine what that would do for the economy.

        1. Yup. People might have to . . . pay cash? Avoid pulling demand into today from the future?

          There are drawbacks. Still thinking about it.

  4. After a half dozen hurricanes, with two major hurricanes, I observed how people adapt. After the initial shock, people become determined, and the result is a demand for accountability. Bad responses, misuse of funds, bureaucrats, and the realization of how government will only make problems worse, leads to scrutiny of those that supposedly have our best interests at heart. It becomes personal. People don’t like to be insulted by platitudes, or being ignored. That, and they don’t like to be corralled by mandates.

  5. I had read a statistic when I was starting off at work after college, and it said that up to 2/3 of the average office worker’s day was wasted. But how do office workers waste time? I had one boss who would just pull up a chair and talk. For sometimes two hours or more. About, well, whatever.

    I’d guess that 2/3 fraction’s about right. I retired back in 2013 from an outfit that built optical imaging/radiometry payload instruments that went on weather satellites. I specialized in optical testing and especially in optical alignment methods, so I spent a fair amount of my time in cleanroom spaces, with my (gloved) hands on hardware, so my personal waste fraction was a little smaller — maybe one-half-ish. The cleanroom wasn’t a very social place, because you had to be wearing the full rig — one-piece coverall, hood, mask, over-shoe boots, gloves. Those who could avoid it did, because all the covering made your physical work unusually hot and sweaty. Also, guys who’d already put in a number of years sitting in their swivel chairs and tapping their keyboards tended to develop the physique you’d expect, and it embarrassed them to have to look for a set of 4XL coveralls and then try to climb into them.

    But, the modern world being what it is, I wasn’t immune from cube farm life, either. And since I was an engineer, albeit an unusually hands-on engineer, I also had to do some actual office work, such as data analysis, procedure-writing, and the like, and also rather more of what passes for “work” in corporate America: keeping your online “training” up to date, making endless powerpoints for endless meetings, and so on. And that stuff … well, if I spent an entire day in my cube, not more than an hour of it was used to get anything done that I was nominally doing. I mean, I was on good terms with pretty much everybody, and I’d have an endless stream of visitors. Some for five minutes, some for half an hour, a few even longer. It got to where, when I really needed to get something done that was real, and not just crapola, I’d come in and work evenings or Saturdays. Just to be left alone. It was a real problem, and I’m sure it still is.

  6. Started working from home last week, i can attest that i’m getting WAAAAAAY more done. I mean, i just started goofing around to read my daily blogs and panic postings and it’s already past 11:30. At work, i’m not usually done slacking off until well after 10.

  7. I’m debating whether to actually do any work today or whether to go finish hanging the garage door, vacuum the house for the third time in two weeks (I let the cleaners go for now), finish the machine work on the rifle stock install, pop down to Costco for a leg of lamb for dinner, or any or all of the above. And it’s 1000 here. Or maybe read a book and watch Die Hard 3.

  8. Daycare centers are mostly open because most American “parents” are terrified of their own children if they have to deal with them for more than a few hours a day. convinced they have to have two full-time or near full-time jobs to maintain a middle class lifestyle.

    FIFY

    Those parents are not far wrong. Especially the ones who still think college is the gateway to a successful future. All immigrants and full-time working women are basically scabs – bringing.down the ability of families to raise their own kids.

    Also, at least from my own experience, I was afraid to start homeschooling because I didn’t think I could do it. There’s no foreign authority mystique to mom and dad. Everything has to come out of the relationship bank.

    1. “All immigrants and full-time working women are basically scabs – bringing.down the ability of families to raise their own kids.”
      ++ Totally stealing this. Never heard it better said.

      “There’s no foreign authority mystique to mom and dad.”
      Isn’t it amazing how kids will behave for strangers so much better than they do at home?

  10. Time to find the George Carlin comedy special You Are All Diseased. It was 20 years ahead of its time.
    It is sad to see a once great republic degenerate into a glass dollhouse of delusion.
    The controllers are having a belly busting laugh over the hive going into panic buying mode.
    This was a test and it succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.
    Chatter overheard at local groceries is about how there was some ground beef scored last week and I saw a pickup with a stockpile of toilet paper in the back. It may have been a honeypot.

    1. Stuff is available here. Good times.

      The Mrs. has talked about the test theory. Also: love the handle!

  11. My brilliant Governor of Washington just ordered everyone except essential businesses to close. He called it his “Stay Home. Stay Healthy” Emergency Declaration, and it has the force of law. So if the authorities find me sick and in bed, I’ll be arrested.

  12. It all comes down to what the meaning of the word “ESSENTIAL” is, and who gets to make the decision. There is not one (1) government employee anywhere in the world that I would trust to make a decision like that.

    From the purely deplorable point of view, all government workers are NON-ESSENTIAL. They provide nothing that is required for life. From the deplorable perspective, pack your shit, and get ready for the sea-bag drag. YOU’RE FIRED. Your services are no longer required. GTFO.

    Since when in my lifetime has a public servant had the authority to order a man to stay in his home? It is essential that these public servants sit down, shut up and get out of the way. Oh, and find work that is essential.

  13. One burglar stole all my lamps. Never in my life have i been so upset AND delighted at the same time!

  14. Why are Australians hoarding toilet paper?

    That’s how they roll.

    Regarding “essential decisions,” I can’t help but view the Iranian recommendation of the use of violet leaf essential oils to treat coronavirus infection as essentially unsound.

  15. I love how the talking heads talk about the “essential worker” without defining it. To my boss and myself my job is essential for my boss if it wasn’t he wouldn’t have hired me for me, I’ve got bills to pay

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