Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Moderation* is for Monks (*and Ruffles)

“Xerxes dispatches his monsters from half the world away. They’re clumsy beasts, and the piled Persian dead are slippery.” – 300

That may be a slippery slope. But it’s a tasty slippery slope.

When I was about 19, I was browsing around a new bookstore that had just opened in the college town where I went to school. The bookstore had an inventory of about sixteen books, and lasted just about that sixteen weeks before it went out of business. They did, however, have one book out of the sixteen that caught my eye. I picked it up – The Notebooks of Lazarus Long by Robert Heinlein. It was beautifully illustrated. I flipped randomly through it, and as I recall one of the first quotations I found was:

“Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.”

When I was in college, I used toothpaste for spackle because I didn’t know spackle existed – not a square foot of wall in my house wasn’t covered in paneling. Live and learn, though my dorm room smelled minty-fresh when I checked out.

I bought the book.

Several of the quotes from that book have been mentioned before in previous posts by your ‘umble ‘ost, especially:

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

The age of 19 is a powerful time to introduce ideas to a mind – new ones tend to burn in deeply, especially those that resonate with your belief system.

But, “Moderation is for monks”? What do I do with that? Is that a formula for hedonism, a nerdy version of YOLO or The Lie of Living Your Best Life (now including cookies)? Taken entirely out of context, it could be interpreted to mean just that. Party on!

I can’t even remotely support that interpretation, however. When taken into proper context, specifically with the second quote, it means nothing of the sort. You can’t be a human that’s capable of doing half of those things on the list if you’re not a person of substance, a person who has devoted their life to learning and service, or John Wick.

John Wick kills about 77 people in the first movie because he’s sad they killed his dog, which is more than I’ve killed all year. I guess that’s just how Keanu grieves.

Moderation may be for monks, but Heinlein wasn’t telling us to party. He was telling us that we only get one shot at life, so we have to live it to the fullest. He’s telling us that there’s danger in compromise. Here’s another quote that gets us closer, from Karate Kid:

Daniel-san, must talk. Walk on road, hmm? Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later, get squish just like grape. Here, karate, same thing. Either you karate do “yes”, or karate do “no”. You karate do “guess so”, just like grape. Understand?

Thankfully Mr. Miyagi wasn’t from Sweden – then he’d only know Ikea®-do.

There’s a danger to compromise. The path to freedom as practiced by the Founding Fathers® isn’t a path of tolerance to deviation. The path to freedom is rigorous. It requires honest and probing self-analysis. Once the self-analysis is done, the solution immediately presents itself. For a real solution, the truth is required – lies are comforting, but never lead to solutions.

Taking an inventory of where your reality is versus where your standards are is important. We all fall short of our standards from time to time, but if you do it long enough, falling short becomes your new standard. The only solution, and I mean only solution is to avoid moderation. If you’ve failed, the “moderate” behavior that got you there isn’t the “moderate” behavior that will get you out of the situation.

Just as the path to freedom doesn’t include tolerance for tyranny, the path to good health doesn’t include tolerance for Snickers® bars every fifteen minutes. On the flip side, going for a half-hour without downing the bag of Ruffles® on the table doesn’t solve your health problems – it’s only the very smallest of steps.

There are no shortcuts.

Okay, tubing down that waterfall might be a short cut. Not a positive one, mind you . . .

For me, avoiding moderation is key – your mileage may vary. But from what I’ve seen, most people who quit smoking, quit smoking. They don’t slow down – they stop. It’s a radical choice. I’ll share my problem a problem that this girl I knew (she’s from Canada, you wouldn’t know her) had. I started out with the keto diet (several years ago) and started getting great success. I was in a time and place where it was possible to follow the diet exactly. After a while, I started reading that people took a day off. So I took a day off.

A day became a day and the previous evening. Which became Friday evening to Saturday evening. Which became Friday until Monday morning. Yes, I’m admitting that I allowed the slippery slope in that girl from Canada allowed the slippery slope in.

Thankfully we’re all out of Ruffles® and chewing gum tonight.

For me, moderation didn’t work on that diet – moderation led to failure, and that’s what Heinlein was talking about. If you have a goal, don’t pursue it half-heartedly – pursue it with everything you have. Moderation really is for monks.

The Impending End of The Age of Oil. But Not This Week.

“You have raw emotion deep under your surface. Frack it!” – The Simpsons

From the movie Sad Max®: Beyond Soy Latte™.

Energy rules our world. Advanced civilization depends entirely on the availability of inexpensive energy, and wars have been fought for energy, and lost because of the lack of energy. Every task you or I do during a day is made easier by the availability of that energy. Every task. Even something as simple as a hike in the woods is made easier due the hiking shoes I wear that incorporate polymers and plastics and artificial fabrics made possible through cheap energy and more specifically: cheap fossil fuels. Cheap energy gives us fresh strawberries in winter, and baby oil for sunbathers in summer.

Even though the oil changes are more fun, I imagine the upkeep is more expensive than a Buick®.

I’d even make the case that when energy is cheap, freedom flourishes. Why have a slave? It’s much cheaper to have a gas powered weed trimmer. Slavery is immoral, but cheap energy removes that pesky incentive. Why have serfs? You have to feed them, which is a big drawback. If the Russian Emperor had used tractors instead, he might have lived long enough to be on Dancing with the Czars®.

Cheap energy is freedom.

One of the biggest recurring questions that has popped up (again and again) during my lifetime has been the impending end of the Age of Oil. If you say “impending end of the Age of Oil” in a really deep, booming baritone like Brian Blessed it sounds even cooler. The first time the impending end of the Age of Oil reached mass public consciousness was in the 1970’s, and for good reason. Texas had passed its peak in oil production in 1973, it was thought that every year after would see the production decline.

True Life Snippet From Stately Wilder Manor: Whenever I agree with The Mrs. by saying, “Indeed” she says, “Now say it like Brian Blessed.” And she’s serious. She won’t let me say the word “Indeed” without impersonating Brian Blessed.

How crazy were we for oil in the 1970s? When oil was found in Alaska on the North Slope, several major oil companies put together a four-foot wide (16 meters) pipeline that brought oil 800 miles (6 kilometers) from the Arctic sea down to the Gulf of Alaska. At the time, the project was one of the most ambitious construction projects in United States history, and cost the equivalent of $34 billion 2019 dollars, or about what Elon Musk spends on weed and hair implants in a year. It was expensive, and even in the 1970’s the lawyers and environmental groups had their knives out. In 1970, they were all NIMBY – Not In My Back Yard. In 2020? They’ve gone BANANA: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.

Nothing as grand or great as the Alaska Pipeline will ever be built again in the United States.

After the Alaska Pipeline oil started flowing and the United States sweet-talked the Saudis into making oil cheaper than a date with Miley Cyrus, oil concerns continued – with oil companies looking for oil in ever more remote locations, including the a mile under the sea, couch cushions, and the faces of teenage boys. Billions were invested in both conventional oil (think about a Texas oil derrick) or unconventional (think about the oil platform used by a James Bond villain as a secret hideout). Exxon© even spent millions trying to learn how to mine shale, crush it, and cook it so that it could be turned into Happy Motoring™ gasoline, but gave up.

These concerns disappeared in 1999 when it became obvious that if you wanted a barrel of oil, in the future all you would have to do is order one on the Internet via Hotmail® after you looked it up on AltaVista™. At that point The Economist© had a woefully stupid cover proclaiming that oil would be cheap from here on out since it was trading as low as $15 a barrel at that point, even though oil doubled in cost over the year. In 2008, crude oil would hit its (so far) all-time high in 2019 dollars of $173.

On a positive note, with her skin Meg Ryan could now do commercials for Jack Links® beef jerky.

The thought in 2008 was that we were certain to have hit impending end of the Age of Oil (indeed!). How certain? George W. Bush, an oilman president from Texas, was in favor of creating incentives to add ethanol to gasoline, despite the anguished cries of people who would rather have consumed the alcohol directly. Ethanol plants appeared throughout the corn belt of the United States, turning seed, sunlight, fertilizer, and diesel fuel into food. Which was turned into fuel. Farmers loved this.

This led to yet more investment in energy alternatives – schemes to turn natural gas into ammonia for fuel, yet deeper wells into the ocean, fracking, turning coal into liquid fuels, turning “switch grass” into fuel, and any other silly idea that would could come up. People even touted the coming “hydrogen economy” because they forgot that hydrogen had to be made using some other form of energy. The world was needing an energy savior.

Or, could he be the foretold Anti-Cat?

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Apocalypse

Of course in 2008, the trend was clear: impending end of the Age of Oil (indeed!) was upon us. But one of the unlikely saviors had turned out to be real.

In 2012 if you would have asked me, I would have told you that fracking was just a great way to turn money into wasted fuel – it took almost as much fuel to make fracked oil as you got out of it – not a good investment. In 2015, I would have told you the same thing – the fracking companies were losing money like there was no tomorrow – if you had to invest more energy (think Btu or kilowatts) into getting oil out of the ground than it was worth in energy terms, you were just sinking yourself faster by using that kind of energy – it’s like burning your blankets to keep your bedroom warm in winter.

I was putting together my notes for a Big Energy Post in October of 2018, and had even written the first few paragraphs (okay, 500 words or so) when my research was showing something different. I skipped the Big Energy Post and moved on to another topic, since it was clear to me that my preconceived notion that fracking was a waste of energy might be wrong. My research was showing something other than fracking was a waste of energy. It was showing that fracked oil might actually be . . . worth it?

It turns out that when anyone first starts doing anything, they suck at it. And unless it’s me practicing singing, I have learned that if I practice, I’ll get better. There’s even a curve that describes this – it’s called an “S-Curve” or logistics curve or learning curve. When you first start walking, you suck. When you first start driving, you suck. When you first start, well, anything you’re awful at it. Over time you get better, and the more you practice, the more competition there is? The better you get.

If you have hundreds of people practicing something with billions of dollars on the line? They get better. Quickly.

And that’s the story of fracking oil in the United States. Water usage in fracking is down. Chemical usage in fracking is down. Drilling costs, energy expended, and labor per barrel are down. After practicing thousands of times on thousands of wells, companies have figured out how to frack a well to maximize crude oil production and minimize cost (and energy) put into it. One metric I saw showed that fracked oil was now competitive (with a profit) compared with the cheapest oil on the planet – oil from Saudi Arabia. Companies have gotten so good at fracking that natural gas in the United States is essentially free.

I guess I’m not a fan.

Fracked oil is on a trajectory to be competitive with the lowest cost oil produced conventionally any place in the world. And fracked oil has some other advantages – it’s “lighter” than conventional crude – that means it contains more gasoline and diesel, and less of the “heavier” stuff that is harder to turn into gasoline and diesel – think asphalt.

The United States is the largest crude oil producer in the world. I never thought I’d type that sentence and it represent a real fact, but in 2019, it does. The United States is, as promised by every president starting with Nixon, actually, really and for trues, energy independent.

[Edit – Chart added after Lathechuck’s comment]

Was it alternative energy, like windmills? No. Was it the communist fever dreams of The Teen Girl Congress Squad®? No.

Is it “sustainable”? Kinda. It is for a while. There are an estimated (as of 2019) 1.7 trillion barrels of recoverable shale oil in the world, 293,000,000,000 of them are in the United States. At 20,000,000 barrels a day in just the United States, using just United States resources, that’s forty years that we have from 2020 – until 2060 – to find an alternative, like, oh, nuclear. And don’t believe me – here’s an actual clean energy evangelist who finally did that math and discovered . . . windmills are worse than natural gas as far as carbon emissions.

We still face headwinds – economic, exponential growth, two billion people that would love to hop the border to the United States, and communists that want to tear the place down. But oil? Oil isn’t the place to look for an apocalypse, at least this week.

And, trust me, if I hear a whiff that any of the above is wrong, I’ll pop it right back up on this blog as soon as I can confirm.

So, at least for today, Happy Motoring©. We have maybe forty years to fix this, so let’s not waste it. This has obvious foreign policy implications we’ll discuss in future posts. Upside? Why do we care about the Middle East anymore?

Success, Luck, and Sexy Bill Gates

“Seriously, I don’t get it. What, do you shoot luck lasers out your eyes? It’s just hard to picture. And certainly not very cinematic.” – Deadpool 2

Yup. I sure feel that way when I accidentally tell the ticket taker “I love you, too” after she says, “Enjoy the movie.”

One novel I recall reading back when I was in a kid in junior high was Ringworld by Larry Niven. Niven’s fiction has always been great because when he thinks about a subject, he thinks about that subject deeply, and spins off great ideas faster than a nudist nursemaid on nitrates.

In the case of Ringworld, the main idea was about taking all the matter in a solar system and putting a big ring around it. This would have about three million times the surface area of Earth, so if you were kinda bored and needed a weekend project to add a little bit of space to your place, building a ringworld might give you enough room so you didn’t need to rent one of those 8×10 storage units. That might save you $30 a month!

I’ll warn you, if your gym teacher makes you do a lap, it might take several hundred thousand years.

Another view of the Ringworld in motion.

Outside of that huge idea of building solar-system-scale structures, Niven had a dozen others in just that one book (and he did it in other books, too) that made it especially mind bending for a young teenager to read. One of the ideas was about luck.

In the future that Larry Niven had constructed, parents were limited to the number of children they could have, but you could have an extra child if you won a lottery. Teela Brown’s parents won that lottery, and so on – for five generations. In this case, Niven speculated that there might be a gene that made you lucky, and her character was brought into the novel with that genetically-based luck as her superpower, which helped move the plot along in an interesting way.

I hear religious cannibals only eat Catholics on Friday.

The idea (like a lot of Niven’s other ideas) stuck with me for a while. I know that there are people who think that the concept of “luck” is magical thinking. Me? I think that to discard luck as a concept in a Universe as vast as ours describes an unwarranted degree of certainty about how things really work. In fact, when talking with people, I often say, “I’m the luckiest person you know.” I really think that I am a pretty lucky fellow. Some would even call me a jolly. And good.

“He is lucky who realizes that luck is the point where preparation meets opportunity,” was an unattributed saying in a 1912 edition of The Youth’s Companion. That’s a great definition, and it is one that firmly puts you in control of your destiny – most “overnight sensations” work, very hard, for years before success hits. It’s a concept I sell to my kids frequently because the last thing I want is to allow them, for a single second, to feel like they’re victims of life. That gives them an excuse not to perform – and they’ll need to pay for my nursing home, and I want them to be able to afford one with pole dancers.

But we need to face an unpleasant truth: like Teela Brown, some people are just luckier than others.

Can you back that up, John Wilder? Yes, yes I can.

People are born with different abilities – attractiveness, speed, strength, intelligence, cunning. It’s only on rare occasions that a rogue like me is born with all four. Er, five.
Many crucial events in history have swung on luck – Lee’s invasion of Maryland was stopped at Antietam in 1862 because a corporal of the 27^th Indiana Volunteers found Lee’s invasion plans in an envelope wrapped around three cigars.
Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin because his bacterial slide was accidently infected with a fungus – a penicillin producing fungus.

Talent is normally distributed – it follows a bell curve – most people have average talent, while some have amazing talent. Most people (in the looks department) aren’t 10’s – they’re 5’s, which is, after all, average. But variable amounts of talent don’t account for the huge differences in success some people see. Bill Gates wasn’t the smartest man born in 1955. Bill Gates wasn’t the hardest working man born in 1955. Bill Gates wasn’t the man born in 1955 with the richest dad.

Virus free is good too, Bill.

But Bill Gates was smart, hardworking, and had a rich dad. And he developed a good system. But he was also the guy who was in the right place at the right time to help create the personal computer business. The luckiest moment of Bill Gates’ life? When IBM© was negotiating with Bill for DOS© for their PCs, and the CEO of IBM said, “Oh, is that Mary Gates’ boy’s company?” Turns out the CEO of IBM® was on the board of the United Way™ with Bill’s mom.

Lucky.

Luck plays a role in your life. If you’re born well, that’s a good start. If you pick the right major at the right time? That’s another step on the way. Get associated with the right things at work? A business that is just the right one at just the right time? Soon enough you’re the CEO.

Lucky Charms® are also part of a complete breakfast, but then again so is a spoon, which is also inedible.

I’m not saying that the CEO is unworthy, but I do think that those who rise to the top should understand that there’s a role for luck as well. Scientific American (LINK) even has an article where a mathematical simulation of talent plus luck equals the creation of the unequal distribution of outcomes we see in the world today where vast amounts of wealth are owned by a small number of people.

Is an unequal distribution an unfair outcome? No, mainly because people make the individual choices that lead them to their fates – very few people are forced to their position in life. If I had made several different choices in my life, could I have been the CEO of a major company? With luck, sure. But I’m sure that whoever got the job is doing fine, as am I, plus I don’t have to live in a big city and wear a tie more than once a year.

And what about lucky breaks that go way beyond probability?

Yup, I think those happen, too. But that’s a future post. If you’re lucky.

Kids, Parents, and Happiness (Plus Orphan Jokes)

“Yeah, but I don’t think anybody would adopt me at this advanced development stage that I’m in.” – The Red Green Show

That’s not true. But I do know that the favorite beer of orphans is Fosters®.

My brother was an only child*. I kid. But he was the only kid in the house when I showed up. And by showed up, I mean when I was adopted – I was, I think, four years old at the time. Of course, this was after the whole virgin birth thing and then being found as a three day old baby by the headwaters of the Odense River in Denmark by Pharaoh’s Mom. But I was just too much for Denmark to handle. And too much for Head Start to handle – they kicked me out (really).

I actually remember the day I first called my adoptive mother “Mom.” As I recall, it was in some utterly mundane sentence, such as “Okay, Mom,” just after the court finalized the adoption. I can even remember my tension while waiting to see how she would react. Would she be upset and cry? Would a whirling orchestral theme surround us as she took me in her arms and wept with joy to have a new son? Would she . . . tell me not to call her Mom?

None of those things happened. She just said, “Alright,” and continued as if I had called her Mom a hundred thousand times before and that me calling her Mom was the most normal thing in the world for four year old John Wilder to do.

Mom probably picked the right reaction since we were so poor that we couldn’t afford a live-in orchestra at our house. I often wondered, was Ma Wilder as tense about that moment as I was? I know she was tense a year later when she was explaining to the doctor over the phone that I ate all of her birth control pills. Man, that was the nastiest tasting candy ever. But the pills had a side effect – I’ve never been pregnant, which I hear is a thing guys can do now.

One day I was asked by a stranger if I was adopted. Me: “Yes, what gave me away?” Stranger: “Your parents.”

The advantage of being an outsider dropped into a fully functioning family is that I was able to see a set of customs that were new to me, like having regular meals. The ordinary day-to-day web of family life was there to see, but it was also there to be disturbed and observed by the alien dropped in the midst of the ranch-style Area 51.

Families have customs, even when they don’t know that they do. One of the first customs I noticed was when I went to bed, the last thing anyone in the house said to me was, “see you tomorrow.”

For some reason, four or five year-old me found that an odd thing to say. It wasn’t good night. It wasn’t good bye. “See you tomorrow.” I found it oddly comforting, a promise that I really would see them tomorrow. That may sound odd to you, but it’s a thing that I really thought about as I stared up at the ceiling from my bed. It was, I thought, the nicest thing anyone could have said.

The original line wasn’t “I’ll be back,” it was “See you tomorrow.” Everyone in the test audience just said, “awwww.”

“See you tomorrow.” Perhaps it was the impermanence that I’d experienced in my life up until then – being adopted represented at least the fourth major living arrangement change I’d experienced since I was born – but the simple stability implied in those words made me happy as I snuggled under the covers on a warm winter night.

Please don’t think that I ever felt alienated by my adopted family, but it was certainly recognized that I was an alien – a shock of blond hair and freckles in a family of brunettes. It was like I was the actor hired to punch up a sitcom and dropped into the season 12 opening episode with no backstory. Again, I was always treated as a regular cast member, and not a recurring guest star.

My family loved me ferociously, and showed it on a regular basis – not only did Pop Wilder give me his name, he also sat and watched every football practice, came to every varsity football game and nearly every varsity wrestling match, and sacrificed years of his life worrying about me.

Kids need families. Even odd kids like me.

And kids help families.

I’m still the odd one, but that’s okay – sometimes I discover new things – such as not liking the taste of raw fish heads.

A recent study out of Europe (LINK), where I thought even saying the words “family” or “child” was considered a hate crime found that married couples with kids were happier than married couples without kids. But there was a catch – the kids needed to have moved out of the house for the parents to be happier.

Why is that?

As a parent who has one kid in the house and some already gone, I can understand that. Raising a kid is tough:

It’s long hours when they’re sick.
It’s home surgery that brings to mind a Civil War surgeon performing an amputation.
It’s being covered in vomit that smells like formula while watching a parade on a 95°F day.
It’s getting a call that they backed the pickup into the lunch lady’s car. Parked car. Not moving parked car. In broad daylight.
It’s learning how to yell loudly enough so they can hear you explain why you’re choking them.

Seven year old kids don’t think it’s funny AT ALL when you tell them that you’re going to have to amputate their arm when they complain about a splinter.

But those are the dark sides. There are the positive sides:

Seeing your child go from C’s to A’s because they finally figured it out.
Seeing your kid finally “get it” and perform better than they ever thought they could at a sport.
Watching them solve a problem – by themselves.
Getting a text from them on a random day – just because they wanted to send you a text.
Seeing them become competent at being an adult.
Hearing them tell you that, “I’m doing it, and it’s none of your business,” when they make a decision.
Having them pick a very nice nursing home for you because you love them so very, very, very much. (I’m hoping they’re reading this when I’m 103 and drooling.)

The research indicated** childless people are happier than people with kids. Until the kids move out. Then the people with kids are happier. From the list above, I can see that. From my perspective, children are like incredibly cute parasites until about age 9. They cost a lot of money, they take up a huge amount of time, and they’re less intelligent than a basset hound who agreed to be on Dancing with the Stars.

Sure, some big headaches come as kids get older. And around middle school is when the final battle for their soul takes place. From experience, with my daughters it was one type of battle (“you’re ruining my life”). With boys it is quite another (“I was supposed to do what?”). None of the battles are easy, but they represent the last stage, the last opportunity for a major influence. After that, it’s nothing but minor course corrections until they move out.

I love Pugsley, who is the last chick in our nest. But I derive a lot of satisfaction from the Wilders who are out in the world – I love seeing them change and grow. I love seeing them accomplish things. And I love late night calls where they ask for earnest advice. I certainly may have given Alia S. Wilder a bit of a hard time in The Lie of Living Your Best Life (now including cookies) and Financial Advisers, Christianity, and Elon Musk’s Hair, but she has displayed a great independence, and has owned her mistakes without blaming others.

But in one way the study is wrong. Tonight, when Pugsley went to bed, he said, “See you tomorrow.” I won’t hear that after he moves out, and I’ll miss that beautiful sentiment. But it will also be their responsibility when they (or their kids) back into the parked lunch lady car.

*For all of you wondering why my brother’s name is also John Wilder? Is it a joke? No, he and I have, in real life, the same first name: John. Really. The adoption explains it. John was born before me, so he had the name first. I was old enough that they weren’t exactly gonna start calling me by a whole different name after my fourth living arrangement in four years. Heck, that might have messed me up enough so I would have gotten a doctorate in social sciences. Thankfully, they already called my brother John by his middle name (Velociraptor, or his nickname “Screech”) before I showed up.

This was in the library at my house – I found it one day, and my parents claimed to have no idea where it came from. Perhaps it was left on the shelf by the Lady of the Lake™ to prepare me for my writing career as John Wilder so I could save the United States? Or maybe they forgot when they got it, since the book was over 25 years old when I found it. One of the two. I’m betting on the Aquatic Tart®.

**Research in social sciences is a problem that we face in society as a whole. It appears that social science research is better than flipping a quarter, but not a lot better than flipping a coin. Where scientists tried to duplicate the findings of a social science study, they could only do it about 65% of the time. Sure, that’s slightly better than just guessing, and probably what you would expect with people who kept going to college so they could get a doctorate instead of following their true calling in the food service industry and then figured out how to use government grant money for gluten free locovore vegan tacos while they study how the patriarchy influenced and controlled t-shirt design in 1978. Don’t forget, these stories are also reported by journalism school graduates. Journalism school is for rich kids who aren’t smart enough to qualify to get into Yale Law® or even Maria’s Authentic Taqueria and Law School®.

Economic Bubbles, Knife Juggling Toddlers, and Sewer Clowns

“Well, I don’t think it’s officially called bubble bath if the bubbles happen accidentally, but whatever, Shawn.” – Psyche

The Four Horsemen of the Wilderpocalypse®, now in living color!

The world is in a weird place. Very weird. And that’s just what it says on my performance review.

What’s really weird is money. Money, capital, whatever you call it, is in a vast oversupply. How much of an oversupply?

Interest rates on about $15 trillion (not that brightly colored wrapping paper some countries naively use for money, but real dollars) is negative. Negative. In my bank account, I loan the bank my money. In turn, the bank gives me a little extra back each month. Not much at all, in comparison to historical standards, but a little.

Alas, there will be no Christmas Goat in Zimbabwe this year.

In Germany, if you loan the government €100 (which is like a metric dollar for feminists) you pay 0.593%, or €0.59 a year for the privilege. If you think this is a really good deal, come on down to John Wilder’s Toddler Knife Juggling School and Bank®. I’ll only charge you €0.25 a year. Plus you get to see videos of all the toddlers learning to juggle knives. I’ll maintain that I’m giving you the much better deal. Well, it’s a better deal depending upon what your insurance deductible is and how coordinated your toddler is.

Heck, keeping the cash in a box under your bed is a better deal than paying the Germans to watch it for you. Why on Earth would you give someone piles of your hard-earned cash and be happy that you got less back,? Well, some pension firms are required to invest in government securities, and some (probably German funds) are required to invest in German bonds. In terms of deals, this is the functional equivalent of a Mafia bargain: “It’s an offer you can’t refuse,” but in this case spoken with an accent like Colonel Klink in Hogan’s Heroes®.

But the shear sum is mindboggling – I could come up with lots of really meaningless descriptions of what a trillion dollars is worth – a football field full of pallets of $100 bills stacked 8 feet high, enough to fill 1.8 miles worth of semi-trucks, almost enough space to hold Charlie Sheen’s spare virus load. So, we as humans can’t really understand a trillion dollars in any meaningful way – and $15 trillion is how much money that’s parked in government bonds earning negative interest. This is a travesty while my toddler juggling students are in desperate need of a prosthetics and eyepatch fund.

Also 50% off vision, but that’s no charge.

When I was just dating The Mrs. (The Mrs. was just The Miss then), we visited her house so her parents could thump me like a melon to make sure I was ripe. In her bedroom I noticed a box of toys. On top was a plastic plane that I assume belonged to her older brother. The plane didn’t look like the one below, but it was of a similar quality – very cheap plastic. If I were buying that toy today, I’d expect it would be $1 or $2. Not much, since it couldn’t be more than five pieces of cheap molded plastic.

I still miss lawn darts. If you’re going to make a hazardous toy, go all out and make it really hazardous.

As I recall, this particular toy plane still had the sticker on it from when cashiers used to manually punch in the prices – not a bar code in sight. The sticker had a price of (I seem to recall) about $7.95. A silly price for a cheap toy today, but in 1978 or so, maybe it was a good deal.

This is what stickers used to look like before iPhones. Or before I was old.

Inflation and Led Zepplin® ravaged the 1970’s, but nobody drank a pony keg and toked up to get psyched up for inflation. A big part of the inflation was the oil shocks as the United States hit (then) peak oil production and OPEC® found they could dictate energy prices. Another big part of inflation was because Nixon pulled the United States off of the gold standard. I know people blame Nixon (and I have done so myself) for taking us off of the gold standard, but the alternative was giving all of our gold to the French. The French. They would have just spent it all on baguettes, berets, cigarettes, and mime school, so it was for their own good that Nixon said, “nope, no gold for you.”

Also, he’s missing track shoes to run from ze panzers.

But as the dollar went from being nominally backed by gold to being backed by governmental promises, there was a messy, messy decade as prices adjusted. I believe this led to many economic horrors. And disco. Eventually the dollar became the currency everyone used to trade with – if you wanted to buy Brazilian waxes and ship them to Japan, the Japanese would have to first trade yen for dollars, and then pay the Brazilians in dollars. The Brazilians would then trade the dollars for more wax, or maybe matches to keep that pesky rainforest burning so it wouldn’t grow back.

The dollar became the required currency for world trade, especially in oil. In the meantime, we had too many dollars chasing everything in the United States, and prices of everything went up. So did interest rates. Pop Wilder once told me that he was going to try to buy a $100,000 Treasury bond when the interest rates peaked back in 1981. He said that it would have paid him $17,000 a year for twenty years, and then would have paid the $100,000 back to him. But, his boss wouldn’t loan him the money while he sold some stock and moved some money around – Pop had the money, but he couldn’t get it that week. That one bugged him for years. He certainly wasn’t planning on paying the Treasury to take his loan.

After the Great Recession, the central bankers at the Federal Reserve® flew around dropping money by buying up mortgage-backed securities. How much? $1.8 trillion at last count – they discontinued the data. And then the Fed went started buying US treasuries so the interest rates would stay low – peaking at $2.4 trillion from a starting point of less than $0.5 trillion.

This was called “Quantitative Easing” since that sounds much more sober than “panicking and throwing money on the fire to try to put it out.” The Fed© pumped through just these two mechanisms over $3.7 trillion into the economy from 2008 to 2015. It’s not like they wanted to keep the party going for a specific president, is it? Nah.

Anyway, the Fed® pumped money, manipulated interest rates, and what happened?

See, it’s topical, it’s current, and it’s a scary sewer clown. Ma Wilder told me these were the three basic elements of humor. Oh, and toddlers juggling knives.

This time, the world currency reacted entirely different – the money was in the hands of the already rich. So what did the rich do? Invested it. Prices went up, but in this case, it was the price not of cheap plastic airplanes, but of investments. Money began chasing profits. As such, the stock market increased a wee amount, going from about 10,000 to over 28,000 today. For those that didn’t major in math, that was an increase of 2.8x. During the same time, the economy grew about 33%, or, 1.3x. Bond interest rates plummeted – that means that bonds were in demand, since it takes a lower interest rate to get someone to buy a bond.

And now you have to pay to buy a bond.

Money has been chasing assets that can be invested in. The stock market. Bonds. Farmland. San Francisco condos. Because of the investor money looking for profits, these have all grown much faster than the price of a Big Mac®, though that seems to be heading up now, too. College and medical costs have gone up as well, but that’s mainly because government gets involved and “helps out” with student loans and generally screws up medical care entirely.

Most of the other things needed for day-to-day living in the heartland haven’t gone up that much – cheaper energy has certainly helped the entire economy. And housing prices in Modern Mayberry have stayed as flat as your sister for the last decade, if not declining a bit.

But the stock market can’t outpace real growth in the economy forever, and the Fed™ has stopped injecting money into mortgage-backed securities, and investors seem to want to by Treasury notes, so the Fed© can stop buying those for a while.

I’m thinking she may do better at math than the Fed®.

To me it seems clear that our economy is in a bubble where investors are willing to spend a lot of money to buy a little bit of profit, or a little bit of interest return. We are in a bubble – a bubble where the assets are those things that can produce income, or at least a return on investment. In this particular bubble, capitalism itself is the commodity that is over inflated, aided and abetted by bankers that seem to want to keep the economic party going forever.

Hey, it’s still working for Zimbabwe, right?

Civil War II Weather Report, Issue 4 – Violence, Censorship, and Beach Volleyball

â€œNo, I quite approve of terror, arson, murder, any tool that serves theÂ revolution.â€ â€“ Nicholas and Alexandria

The clock hasnâ€™t moved this month.Â We remain at a 7 out of 10.Â The scale is from the first issue (LINK).Â And generally The Mrs. is ready to go before I am.

Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.Â Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures.Â Just in case.

In this issue:Â Front Matter â€“ Violence and Censorship Update â€“ Itâ€™s All About The Benjamins â€“ Updated Civil War II Index â€“ Who Benefits, Part III? â€“ Links

Front Matter

Welcome to Issue Four of the Civil War II Weather Report.Â These posts are a bit different than the other material at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War II, on the first Monday of every month.Â Issue One is here (Civil War II Weather Report: Spicy Time Coming), Issue Two is here (Civil War Weather Report #2, Censorship, Stalin, and a Bunch of Links), and Issue Three is here (Civil War Weather Report #3: Violence, China, and Lots of Links).

Violence and Censorship Update

Last month when I wrote the Weather Report, the El Paso and Dayton shootings had just happened.Â I believe I predicted in the comments that El Paso would have legs, while Dayton would quickly be forgotten.Â It didnâ€™t take Nostradamus to predict that â€“ El Paso was attributed to the Right.Â Dayton, where a confirmed Satanist Antifaâ„¢ member killed bunch of people?Â We can ignore Dayton.Â That was just random violence by a good boy who just went a little wrong.

Red Flag laws have been the focus of this monthâ€™s activity.Â I noted in this post (Red Flag Laws, or, How To Repeal The Second Amendment Soviet-Style Without A Pesky Vote) that they would be used inappropriately.Â Again, I didnâ€™t need to have psychic powers to predict this.Â I landed on a clickbait story from the Puffington Host (I wonâ€™t link to them) about 40 â€œpotential mass shootersâ€ having been arrested since El Paso.Â Not Dayton, but El Paso.Â Odessa happened this weekend.Â Assume if the killerâ€™s ideology doesnâ€™t match the required narrative, it will be forgotten.

Or ever read about it, either.

Most of the arrests have to do with typing things on the Internet or text messages â€“ 28 to be precise.Â Making a direct threat of violence is illegal.Â Threatening people is illegal.Â Making statements in anger is illegal.Â At this stage as violence escalates, everything that can be interpreted as a threat will be taken as a threat, so donâ€™t type silly things that you donâ€™t mean online.Â Donâ€™t make threats or anything that could be interpreted as one.Â Assume that the FBIâ„¢ is watching, well, everything.

And if the FBIÂ® isnâ€™t watching something, itâ€™s starting something.Â At least one of the arrests last month was an FBIÂ© sting.Â I must assume that some FBIâ„¢ sting operations are legitimate, but hereâ€™s an example of them doing everything but commit the crime (LINK).

From the story:

â€œThe FBI came and picked him up from our home, they gave him a vehicle, gave him a fake bomb, and every means to make this happen none of which he had access to on his own.â€

The FBI would never, ever . . . never EVER be anything less than filled with integrity, right?

Violence was, sadly, the theme of August.Â But a secondary theme was censorship.Â Several large YouTubeÂ® channels were deleted without any warning, without having violated any of YouTubeâ€™sÂ© rules.Â I had only heard of one of the deleted channels, and, although the others were reinstated, the one that stayed deleted was the one I watched:Â James Allsup.

I had listened to a few of his videos on YouTubeÂ® – heâ€™s a talented, engaging speaker, and he seemed to have no real controversial views.Â He had half a million subscribers.Â After doing some research, I found out he is about 23 years old â€“ I donâ€™t have a full background report on him but it looks like when he was between the ages of 19-21 he was more radical, because we know that 21 year-old kids are the most logical beings.Â He certainly didnâ€™t get banned for his current videos, which were far from extreme in every sense.

Okay, Iâ€™ll admit watching beach volleyball.Â But only for the articles.

Is a 23 year-old kid getting banned from YouTubeâ„¢ the end of the world?Â No, but I think thatâ€™s how he was paying the bills.Â But by staying within YouTubeâ€™sÂ® rules, he had to research the other side, had to understand the alternatives, and his continued participation in YouTubeÂ©, following their rules, no doubt moderated a more youthful radical message.Â Allsup will keep pushing a message out â€“ heâ€™s articulate and relatable, but now the message will untethered by rules.Â The message will cease to be moderated.

Censorship and alienation is a great way to manufacture radicals.Â Radicals are a great way to increase polarization.

Itâ€™s All About The Benjamins

Prosperity has been the real religion of the United States for at least five decades.Â As commenters have noted, as long as people have rivers of RufflesÂ®, prodigious PEZâ„¢ and never-ending NetflixÂ©, people wonâ€™t join the FaceBookÂ® â€œLetâ€™s Overthrow Americaâ€ page.Â There have been times and places where people have risen up because of principle (think:Â 1776) but the biggest drivers are empty bellies.Â Or being French.Â They appear to have a revolution because the Internet was out for two hours last Thursday.Â And donâ€™t ever try to keep the French away from cigarettes.

As Matt Bracken pointed out, EBT cards ceasing to function will bring conflict in short order.Â But thatâ€™s not the only path â€“ financial destitution of the middle class would manage in short order as well.

The current levels of debt in the country have increased significantly since 2008, and the types of debt have changed as well.Â Student loan debt and auto loan debt has now become three times larger than credit card debt.Â In a downturn, when people canâ€™t pay back for the $72,000 in student loans they took out for the B.Sc. degree in Backhair Management of StarbucksÂ© Customers?Â When the $68,340 MSRP 2019 4×4 RamÂ® pickup with Megacabâ„¢ and the CumminsÂ© diesel engine gets repossessed and they canâ€™t drive to the job they have making PowerPointsÂ® for Uberâ„¢?Â Yeah, thatâ€™s bad.Â Soon enough, they canâ€™t afford the apartment.Â Then?Â With bad credit there are tons of jobs they wonâ€™t ever qualify for.

They also have a medal for having to deal with bearded hipsters who want more soy and will send a wicked text with mean emojis if itâ€™s not PERFECT.Â

As long as there is physical food, the Federal government can distribute it, EBT cards or not.Â But once the middle class gets forced into destitution, and middle class mothers tell middle class fathers that they need to stock up on ammunition as well as canned soup?

People will put up with a lot as long as they have food.Â People will put up with a lot as long as they have hope.Â As Janis Joplin said in the second most insightful line in rock history:Â â€œFreedomâ€™s just another word for nothinâ€™ left to lose.â€Â I guess my version of â€œNo NetflixÂ® is just another word for nothinâ€™ left to loseâ€ sounds a bit silly by comparison.

Given our current polarization, and with violence springing up regularly when times are good, I tend to think that the younger generation doesnâ€™t see a way forward, doesnâ€™t see prosperity as an option.Â They feel that they have nothing left to lose.

Updated Civil War II Index

Economic:Â +1.78 last month, +4.43 this month.Â Plus is good.Â Unemployment is slightly up (my proxy number, since the official number isnâ€™t out yet) â€“ interest rates were significantly down, and the Dow was only slightly down.Â Despite my prediction that we had seen the market top three months ago, it keeps going up, and overall economic conditions keep improving.Â So, yay?Â We can have prosperity forever?

Political Instability:Â +10% last month, -13% this month.Â As we get closer to the election, I would anticipate that political instability will continue to decrease as focus goes on to the candidates and away from tearing down the systems.

Interest in Violence:Â +13% this month, compared to +8% last month.Â This is a smaller increase than I expected.Â A related metric showed a big peak after El Paso, dropping nearly immediately.

Illegal Aliens:Â Down 26% last month to 82,000.Â That sounds great, but two months ago was the highest ever at 144,000.Â Down is good.Â For perspective, last year it was 40,000.Â There is no good news in this category.

There is the possibility of graphs next month, since weâ€™ve gotten some data over time now.Â And with graphs come girls in bikinis, right?

Who cares whatâ€™s on the graph, right?

Who Benefits, Part III?

The far Left.Â Any situation that creates chaos is a benefit to the Left â€“ it did during the French Revolution.Â It did during the Russian Revolution.Â The Left thrives on chaos.Â In the words of The Mrs., no people has ever said, â€œPolitical repression, food lines, and random secret police raids at 3AM?Â Sign me up for that!â€Â Leftism can show up slowly, through corrosion of society, but for Leftism to stick?Â Nothing beats the chaos of a war.

Never let a crisis go to waste, right?

Links

This is a fairly video-heavy set of links, so make sure that your VCR is ready to go:

From Thinker:Â a multi-part video documentary on the Yugoslavian breakup.Â Iâ€™ve started, but not finished this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDADy9b2IBM

From Ricky:Â What have we learned about Dayton?Â Oh, yeah, Satanist Antifa Sanders supporter.Â (LINK) (LINK)

And also from Quora (LINK), and Forward Observer (LINK), and Prospect (LINK), and an unusually sober idea from Vox ().

From 173dVietVet:

The Hunt, a movie specifically about Leftists killing people on the Right â€“ 173 was the first place I heard this from â€“ and they have delayed the release of the movie, probably until November, 2020? (LINK)

From Average Joe, With Memes:

A batch about increasing violence, and how technology might be employed in novel ways for objectives.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qe4-7IgMbsg
https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/65tc12/sargons_this_week_in_stupid_16042017_with_main/
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z0MaGON-gQg
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=50UACEQOe4E
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vw9zyxm860Q
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3aZuj_SDqDo
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O_ldHq3NzC0
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=muoR8Td44UE

From readers over at The Burning Platform:

TC adds this from John Mark â€“ I have started listening to it.

Martelâ€™s Hammer suggests Radio Free Redoubt (LINK).

Shinmen Takezo is the person who first suggested John Mark back at Issue 1, adds this video to the list (LINK).

https://youtu.be/HofChFv_MKc

All You Will Ever Need To Read About How To Be Happy* (*Most of the Time)

“Happy premise number three: even though I feel like I might ignite, I probably won’t.” – Bowfinger

This is a common phrase when something goes wrong around Stately Wilder Mansion™. After the cussing is over, I mean.

I’m travelling for business again this week. The upside to business travel is that it allows me to break my normal routine. I almost feel guilty. Almost. The work this week is light, and my travel has been fun, the food has been great, and the work I am doing has given me a lot of new ideas to think about, and I like that. My toenails also seem to grow faster when I’m on the road but might be imagination. Or, maybe it’s my feet shrinking?

The other advantage being on the road is that it breaks routines. In this case, I found myself eating at the bar at Applechilies®. Eating at the bar makes sense when you’re travelling alone: it seems a bit less pathetic, and you can talk to the bartender if it’s not too busy on a Tuesday night by Interstate 3.14 in Upper Midwestia. This night, the bartender was a young lady of about 22, I’m guessing. We talked a bit. As often happens to me when I meet a stranger, (I have no idea why) pretty soon she was pouring out her entire life story. Seriously.

For the record, as far as you know I only had one drink.

I’ll skip the really wild parts, since the point relevant to this post is that she had dropped out of college.

“That’s fine, and you shouldn’t go to college just to go to college. What is it that you want to do, though?” That question seemed to be really tough for her. And it is a big question, but as I’ve noted again and again, people fail most often because they don’t act on their dreams, not because they can’t achieve them.

After some considerable thought, she answered. “I guess . . . I guess I just want to be happy.”

“Happy? Is that all? Happy is the easiest thing,” I replied.

And it is. Being happy is so easy to achieve it is almost trivial. Note: being happy every minute of every day is impossible. Bad things happen. Professors put your computer program up on the screen to show what not to do. Your pants split at the crotch during a presentation. You walk into a glass door going to a party with people you just met and you get McDonald’s® Hot Mustard© sauce all over the door in a big yellow blob about chest high. Oh, did I say you? Those were all me. And the computer program did do what I intended it to do, though I was surprised it did bring down a mainframe. I guess infinite loops are powerful things.

Remember, no matter what they say, failure is an option.

Warning: this advice probably won’t work for people who are clinically depressed because their brain chemistry is all messed up. That’s wiring that this advice probably won’t fix – they need to see a doctor.

But I learned to be happy when I was relatively young. It’s wickedly effective. As an example, one company I was working for was experiencing huge financial difficulties. Everyone was working to make sure the business stayed open. I was, too, but I wasn’t letting it get me down. I had a new son (The Boy) and was pretty happy at home even though the bank account wasn’t all that full.

Yes, this was on my performance review. “Employee is too optimistic and believes that the business will ultimately succeed if we work hard and solve our problems.”

In my performance review I was docked for being too happy. Apparently being angry and pissed off increases profitability? Spoiler, the company survived. Bonus points? It’s at least partially due to some changes I made – while I was in a good mood. I don’t know if they still have the “don’t be happy at work” policy.

But being happy is simple. In order (more or less) here’s what works for me.

Be close to someone – like physically close. Touching them close. Or get a pet. It’s hard for me to have a bad day when I know that someone loves me. People are herd animals (those that aren’t bears) and physical touch works wonders at making people happy. No sex with the pets, no matter how much they’re asking for it.
Have a friend you can call when something good happens to you. For bonus points, have a friend you can call when something awful happens to you – that’s rough, because only a good friend is willing to share in the bad things that happen. If you don’t have friends? Make some. I know that some people say that Jesus’ biggest miracle was having a dozen close friends after the age of 30, but it is possible. And these need to be friends in real life. FaceBook® friends are nice, but it helps to have physically known the friend for the friendship to be solid.
Exercise. Do something: Walk on the treadmill. Go for a run. Lift weights. Run through a cave being chased by a giant stone bowling ball. I’m fairly fanatical about working out every lunch hour to the point I’m a jerk about not skipping it for (nearly) anything – it really improves the quality of my day. There are times I come back from working out and feel awesome and happy for no reason at all. The harder I worked out, the better I feel.
Eat right. Avoid carbs – they screw with your emotions, especially in quantity. Don’t eat too much. Yes, I’m still fasting on a weekly basis, and some of my happiest days are while I’m fasting. Besides vegans, who is sad when they’re eating a steak? Eat steak. If you’re a vegan, pretend it’s a bacon, since bacon comes from plants, right? Meat may be murder, but it’s tasty murder that makes you feel good. But I have learned if The Mrs. is eating ice cream straight from the carton to NOT ask how she’s doing.
If you are sad, don’t drink alcohol. It’s a depressant. I refuse to drink on those rare days I’m sad. It helps. You can’t find happiness at the bottom of a beer bottle, because who’s happy when they run out of beer?
Get enough sleep. I advise people to sleep as consistently as possible, especially if they have problems getting to sleep. If you can’t sleep consistent hours, at least get enough sleep even if it’s not the same sleep every night. Since I blog after work, and often after everyone at home has gone to bed, this is the rule where I’m the biggest hypocrite.
As much as possible, avoid crappy people. Sure, everybody has a bad day and needs to share. That’s okay. But if you’re constantly complaining about bad news to your friends? Expect that they won’t pick up when you call, so try to give more than you take.
As much as possible, feel good for other people that have done well. I worked with a guy who put up a bulletin board with stories about how much the CEO of our company made. He called it the “Wall of Shame” since he didn’t think the CEO was worth that much. Me? I want the CEO to make a lot of money, that way my check looks smaller the rent for the place he rents for his mistress.
As much as possible, avoid envy. See above. If something good happens to someone, feel genuine joy for them, even if it didn’t happen to you. Envy is a wasted emotion.
As much as possible, when bad thoughts slip into your brain – sad ones, mean ones, anything Hillary Clinton would think – get them out. Think of something positive, like the fact that you don’t have to drink alone because your cats are alcoholics, or that you can be the person to put the “fun” back in funeral.
Keep things in perspective. Most things you do aren’t memorable to other people, and most mistakes you make will be forgotten in a week, unless you were the guy running the test at Chernobyl, then people just won’t shut up about it.

But you could claim that you were late to work because of a flock of wild teacup poodles.

Scott Adams, of Dilbert® fame has a very similar list – I know because after I talked to the bartender and decided to write this post, he did a video on . . . being happy. He’s in the video below discussing it. Adams is much more of the “people are sacks of chemicals” and he uses that model to make sure that he’s maximizing the brain chemicals that show up when you’re happy. It works for him and he does it without ever attempting to control his thoughts. But if you are someone who drains him of happy because you’re a complete tool? He’ll cut you out of his life. Since he’s a multi-millionaire and more-or-less self-employed, he can do it.

Me? If Ted is a tool at work and I need the job? I have to deal with Ted. Though, honestly I’ve only ever worked with one guy named Ted, and he was super to work with and one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Unlike Scott, I don’t go for the “sacks of chemicals” theory. They do make a difference, but mind matters, too, at least for me. The one time in my life I was profoundly unhappy, I learned to manage my mind first, while finding all the other little tips and tricks of “sacks of chemicals” management more or less independently of Mr. Adams.

I think this was from the pilot of that new series, Breaking Bras®. And you can’t make a mask like that without silicone . . . .

And that’s it. Those are the secrets. Nothing mystical, nothing difficult.

Again, I’m not happy every second of every day, but when I follow just over half the steps above, I’m happy 95% of the day. I have it good. There’s no reason to not enjoy being me.

For 80% of people reading this, happiness is easy. So, choose happiness if you want it, unless there’s a workplace policy at your office, too. In that case? Become a loner, drunk, vegan insomniac that spends your free time at Antifa® meetings. And have another doughnut.

Scholarships to Avoid, and . . . College Isn’t the Best Idea for Everyone

“Now if Eb needs a diploma, he should go to college so he can become a vegetarian.” – Green Acres

Please, calm down. Show me where Bernie tried to touch you.

The Mrs. and I were off to Midwestia State (Home of the Fighting Red-Crested Yaks©) on Saturday to move The Boy into the dorms. The reality is that he had left hours before us and was unpacked by the time we got there and had already managed to flirt with the girl working the dorm desk and lock himself out of his own room for the first time. I saw the look in the eyes of dorm desk girl – “cute, but still a dorky freshman who locks himself out of his room two hours after getting a key.”

I was actually shocked they still had keys – I was expecting that they’d be subjected to retinal checks to get back in their rooms. Until I heard that the floor had a shared bathroom. A co-ed shared bathroom. Imagine being in the midst of a growler when the girl of your dreams drops on by to leave the kids off at the pool? I’ve been married forever, and I like to pretend that’s not something The Mrs. does – at all.

I was surprised. I was unaware that the diet of Deadpool® was entirely comprised of burning tires.

The Mrs. and I were there, really, for The Mrs. and not The Boy at all.

When The Mrs. had talked about The Boy moving away, it had started off with a matter-of-fact statement about “. . . when we drop him off at college.”

I had responded with, “Why would we need to go up there to drop him off? He seems to be perfectly capable of carrying a few boxes to an elevator. It’s not like we’re dropping off Stephen Hawking.” This was, apparently, not the thing to say to a mother getting mentally ready to cope with her eldest son going off to college. It doesn’t help that The Mrs. is also staring down the added mathematical certainty that her youngest child, Pugsley, will likewise be moving out within a handful of years.

She responded with: “Of course we’re going.”

If you can put “icy” into a tone, this one was nearly at absolute zero. I saw the molecules in her exhaled breath stop vibrating as they fell to the carpet and form a nice Ice-9 frost (look it up). I could see that we’d be driving the hours required to get to Midwestia State (Home of the Whimsical Crotch Goblins®) the day the dorms opened.

When I met Stephen Hawking, he told me that there are an infinite number of universes out there, and maybe even one where I was funny. I responded, “Here’s a great joke: Stephen Hawking walked into a bar.” That one really made him mad. Now I have to live in this Universe, where Kardashians aren’t fast food workers.

I can understand how The Mrs. felt. It’s almost always a melancholy time when a child moves out, unless that child is Johnny Depp, in which case his parents were happy to be able to announce to their friends that their house was now aerobics-free as Johnny was now doing Pilates of the Caribbean. I’m sorry. I’ll admit that there were uneasy questions floating through my mind. I thought the questions were about him, but in reality after reflecting, I realized the questions were really about me:

I thought the questions were: “Is he ready? Does he have the tools to go out into the world? Will he make the right judgements?”

It sounds like those questions were about him, but they’re not. Those questions are really about me. A more truthful way to write them is: “Did I prepare him? Did I teach him enough so that he’ll be competent and safe? Is he a good man?”

The only thing I’m sad about is that he thinks steak tastes like chicken.

I think college is a good idea for The Boy, and I’ll get back to his specifics a bit later after Morpheus is done with him.

But I don’t think college is for everyone, and I think it’s really a horrible idea for some people. I learned this from my association with a youth group. I was discussing the future with one young, bright kid – he was a junior at the time, I think. I asked him what his plans were.

“I’m going to become an electrical lineman.” An electrical lineman is the guy who fixes the big wires on the electrical poles so you can charge your iPad© and watch Netflix® – it’s like a superhero who can chew Copenhagen®. It’s technical work – you have to be smart. It’s physical. And most line failures happen during big storms. So when your power goes out for an hour? It’s a lineman who’s out fixing it in the rain or snow or ice or thunderstorm or temporal rift.

I stopped. I was getting ready to give him my “you need to go to college” speech, but hesitated. This young man had thought about it. He loved being outside. He hated paperwork. He was very smart. The average hourly wage for an electrical lineman is $30 an hour for a journeyman. With overtime, he could be making $100,000+ a year in just a few years and live in an area near Modern Mayberry where most of the nicest houses are available for $200,000 or less.

It was a shockingly (intended) good choice.

Being an electrical lineman also offered some other benefits: it’s not a career that you can do online. You have to physically be there. This is nice, so you don’t have to compete with a two billion or so people in China and India like you might if you were being a computer programmer.

This job has another advantage – it requires just enough certification that it shuts down people who would randomly try it, mainly because no matter how crispy the body is electrical companies hate to pay to have them removed. But the young man in question wouldn’t have to compete with illegal aliens, either.

Being a lineman has a third advantage: it is a basic service that you can’t outsource. You can ship a factory nearly completely overseas – I’ve heard of just this happening – but the electrical infrastructure required to run the United States has to be in, well, the United States.

One final advantage: you can start your own company, buy your own truck, and work the hours you want as a contractor to bigger electrical companies. It’s a business where if you want to be a contractor or an entrepreneur, you can be without too much difficulty investment.

The nice thing about working with kids is they often teach you things, too. The standard advice you give a bright kid with good values is go to college. This is clearly the wrong advice for many kids.

A kid growing up today will face more challenges in employment than any generation in history. Competition will take place in ways that I never had to consider during my career. And this is after automation removed thousands of jobs from factories as machines replaced skilled workers. In this new revolution, expertise from “knowledge workers” will be replaced by algorithms and databases that allow, for instance, computers to diagnose skin cancer at a 95% correct rate, versus an 87% success rate by actual human dermatologists. I know it sounds bad for the human dermatologists, but I got a 0% correct rate since all I would do is look at the picture and say, “ewww, gross.” Let’s see a machine beat that.

Okay, maybe I shouldn’t be a doctor.

I’m not sure that there is, in the future, a truly safe job or career to go into, unless we experience Lord Bison’s Deep Fried Econopocalypse® (and if you’re not reading The Bison Prepper, you really should be (LINK)) and then the guy who makes costumes out of leather and football shoulder pads has probably got a good career ahead of him. Owning a scrapbooking store? Maybe not so much.

Okay, I was going for Mad Max Mel, but this works. I hear they worked out their differences and went to Hooters® afterwards. Man, Jesus can put down the wings and Coors Light©.

What are the attributes of a safe job? I mean, assuming Mel Gibson doesn’t show up at your house tomorrow?

Local – If you can’t do it over the Internet, that cuts out billions of people from getting that job.
Certifications Required – A job, like the lineman example, isn’t something that should be done by just anyone – it requires a minimum intellect as well as training and experience. Many medical jobs are similar. I hate the way that we have, in my opinion, over-certified our world. But you can use that to your advantage.
Other Bars to Entry – It used to be that you could give applicants for jobs an IQ test, weed out those that weren’t smart enough, and be fairly sure that you were getting someone who was at least smart enough (or not too smart) for the job. Now? You have to use something that works like an IQ test, like a college degree.
Hard to For A Machine to Do – Blogging. That’s hard for machines, right fellow humans? I have been told that 93.2% of you like to hear that.

But there are ways that even “safe” jobs might be at risk:

Carpenter: Carpentry, in many cases, requires no certification – any illegal aliens have taken many of these jobs in certain areas.
Teacher: Why do we need all of these teachers? We can get a YouTube® lecture up, and have a teaching assistant give the standardized test.
Store Associate: Check out the product features on the Internet – seriously stop. You’re not my supervisor. Leave me alone!
Checkout Clerk: Self-service checkouts are pretty common now. I refuse to use them, period, but I can see that I’m rapidly becoming a minority.
Johnny Depp’s Sinus Cavity Cleaner: Okay, this one is really a safe job.

Okay, I’ll admit, she’d be perfectly acceptable working picking strawberries or in some sort of insect control responsibility.

But there are other problems. I maintain that too many people go to college. In 1959, only about 45% of high school graduates went to college, and only 70% of students graduated from high school. That’s a little less than a third of the US population.

In 2016, 84% graduated from high school, and 70% of those went to college. That’s nearly 60%. If you break down the math, almost twice as many people are going to college as a percentage of people in the United States. There are only two possible conclusions: either people have gotten smarter, or college has gotten easier.

Me? I’m betting that college has gotten easier, since if you poke around a bit you can find that the average grade given to students at Harvard© is an A-. It might just be my opinion, but the only thing competitive about Harvard® might be how much a parent has to pay to get a student accepted.

See, if you build a new building on campus – not a bribe – call it Skank Hoe Hall. But having your skank daughters get in because you’ve bribed a coach? Yeah, that’s a bribe. Allegedly.

I’m pretty sure that the economy has no need of many of these college graduates in any role other than cashiers at Billy Bob’s Wiggle Striptease Hootenanny©. Many of the degrees granted are not really economically valuable – 5% of degrees, for instance, are in “fine or performing arts.” Last time I checked, we here in Modern Mayberry had our quota of mimes filled at our historical demand of zero mimes and there was a bounty on any mime caught within 5000 yards (3 meters) of the county courthouse. There just aren’t very many jobs available in “fine or performing arts” to justify 5% of college students getting a degree in that field. Thankfully, many of them have experience in their true field, food service. I hear that Florida will have a degree in Pre-Barista© next year, so there’s hope yet.

One thing I did note in the hour I spent sifting through the data is that many degrees are more helpful, and, potentially more stable. Health and medical sciences accounted for 10% of graduates, and those jobs are hard to replace with a machine. You have to have people helping people. Robots can diagnose, but at least for now, a doctor has to do the cutting, and a nurse the nursing, until Arnold Schwarzendoctor 2000™ arrives.

That’s a realllllllly long thumb.

I would speculate that we have twice as many people going to college as necessary, and we could replace the expense and time wasted at college for many people simply by allowing employers to give IQ tests. Yes, doctors and nurses need school. But we have approximately 1,000,000% more anthropology degrees than required to maintain our civilization, and an infinite amount of Women’s Gender Studies degree recipients than required.

I advised The Boy on how he could take what he enjoys doing, and turn it into something useful. Don’t compete with billions of people – find ways that you can provide higher value services to people in ways that have to be local and are hard to reproduce. I think he has a pretty good plan.

Given the accelerating pace of change we’ve seen in the last two decades, I imagine that anyone starting a career in 2020 may have to make multiple changes during their life. From what I’ve seen so far, I think The Boy is well prepared for school and the changes that he’ll see in life. I think he’ll do fine. It’s time to let that eagle fly.

Unless it’s Putin’s Eagle.

American Civil War: Four Fates, From Freedom to Soviet Tyranny

“Did we give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? No!” – Animal House

On this blog recently someone commented, “When I was a kid, people used to say that ‘It’s a free country,’ but they don’t say that anymore.” I tried it out the other day. The response? “It hasn’t been a free country in a while.” I turned him into the FBI for that kind of hate think.

I was driving in the middle of Midwestia in the middle of a quest that you’ll probably hear about on Wednesday. One of the videos that was in my suggested list was about “America’s Cold Civil War.” This isn’t a review of the video, but it brought up some interesting points. The one I want to make clear to every single person that loves freedom in the United States is: if you’ve ever seen a movie about that rag-tag elements of a group fighting a foe that has nearly utterly defeated them, it’s us. We are the Wolverines.

I get to be Charlie Sheen, mainly because he’s still alive. I think.

I don’t mean to say that to create a feeling of defeat – far from it. But the first step in dealing with a situation is understanding reality. And reality is very simple today. At a minimum, the Left has coopted the following elements of culture in the United States – they have been, over time, “converged” into Leftism:

The K-12 educational system.
Colleges and Universities.
Most Protestant religious organizations.
Most Catholic organizations.
The psychological establishment.
The American Medical Association.
All mainstream news media.
All mainstream entertainment media.
Most departments of the Federal government, absent the armed services.
The general officer corps of the armed services.
The courts.
Silicon Valley tech companies.
Many (but not all) Fortune® 500™ companies.

This isn’t an accident, it’s entirely by plan. And not only by plan, it’s by a plan that was entirely shared. From Verified Communist Traitor® Herbert Marcuse, in his book Counterrevolution and Revolt (bold added):

To extend the base of the student movement, Rudi Dutschke has proposed the strategy of the long march through the institutions: working against the established institutions while working within them, but not simply by ‘boring from within’, rather by ‘doing the job’, learning (how to program and read computers, how to teach at all levels of education, how to use the mass media, how to organize production, how to recognize and eschew planned obsolescence, how to design, et cetera), and at the same time preserving one’s own consciousness in working with others.

I could prove all of the above Institutions have been converged through the Long March Through the Institutions and will probably discuss a few of these in the future, because I could do a post on each one. Heck, maybe it would be a great book, but only if I could figure out how to pair hot chicks and communist propaganda.

East German girl swimmers bench pressing 300 pounds in 1976 is completely normal.

But if you doubt me, you have Google® (itself converged) and you can easily verify list above even through the Leftist-bias that’s now on that search engine. I’ll leave you with one more question: why else would Fortune© 500® corporations sign a manifesto saying profits were less important than social goals if Leftists weren’t in control? Because there were extra doughnuts in the breakroom and they were feeling generous?

In almost any context, these organizations reflect the values of the Left, not of the Right. I specifically don’t use the label conservative here – the conservative movement has utterly failed in the United States (to quote absolutely everyone) to conserve anything. We live a country where adults telling four year old boys that being a girl is okie-dokie (and vice-versa) aren’t thrown directly in prison for a decade or more (after a trial, of course) for child abuse. The goals of the above organizations would be cause for mass revolt if they had been publicized in 1990, but now, despite no vote, no public acceptance, each point of the Left has been accepted as the new normal.

And telling a boy that he’s a girl? Oh, wait, that’s brave. Sorry.

Despite all of that, this is not a post about giving up. Screw that. Each day makes me more independent, not less, more wanting to tell the truth.

And if you’re reading this, no one is done here. Freedom is always the underdog. I really wish we’d just stop waiting until 2:00 in the fourth quarter to start playing.

I remember seeing a film in Social Studies in High School about the Korean War. In the black and white film, almost all of Korea had been lost. The film ended right at what is known as the Pusan Perimeter, right where the North Korean Army was about to kick freedom off of the Korean peninsula, forever. It was tough watching that film.

But then we learned what happened next: MacArthur led the naval invasion of Inchon and turned the tide of battle, leading a combined United Nations® force that cut off the North Koreans. This turned the course of the war, and in the process helped to create the free country of South Korea that is a world leader in technology, bad music videos, and wealth creation today.

Spoiler alert: we tied.

Our Pusan Perimeter is now. I had a great boss once upon a time, he would continually remind me, “John, start with the end in mind,” which is #2 of Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. As I look at the state of the Right back in 2016, we were at the Pusan Perimeter. As we as a nation blindly stumble toward Civil War II, I can’t predict the outcome, but I can see the full range of outcomes.

We’ll go from best case to worst case for people who love freedom. Although there are variations, I think I’ve captured all of the big picture end games below.

I named operation Aesop after the Raconteur Report’s Aesop. You can read him here (LINK).

Operation Aesop: Total victory.

What it is: The Right wins. Traditional society is restored. Mothers and fathers in committed relationships are again honored. A Constitutional republic of limited government replaces the democracy of unlimited power. The United States is unified. Think of it as a return to the 1950’s, but with color TV and microwaves.

What it takes: Oh, not much more than the bloodiest war in the history of the country. The only way this results in victory is as Von Clausewitz wrote about in On War: [Accomplishing . . . ] “three broad objectives, which between them cover everything: destroying the enemy’s armed forces; occupying his country; and breaking his will to continue the struggle.”

That’s what happened in the first Civil War. That’s what happened to the Germans and Japanese in World War II. The concept of continuing was even more horrific than the concept of trying to continue to fight. It’s total capitulation. This is actual war until the enemy is not capable of continuing. Not talking heads on a television show. Not voting. Not discussion. Not a “mission accomplished” after five weeks moving across Iraq where the “will to continue the struggle” is still clearly intact.

Outcomes: Some freedoms we see now would be curtailed. Political discourse would be constrained. But teenagers would be pretty polite, again. And you wouldn’t really have to worry about the border.

I’m related to Patrick Henry, or so my aunt told me. I like to imagine Patrick getting a bit tipsy and writing mean letters to Madison about how short Madison was and how Dolly might want to give up on the chew.

Operation Founding Fathers: 50 Independent States.

What it is: A return to base principles. Originally, the United States was conceived as just that, independent free States. The majority of decisions to be made were to be made at the state, and not the Federal level. Each state was to be free to make decisions. Texas could be Texas. California could be Venezuela. Vermont could be stoned. The free decisions of free States was allowed. The free movement of free peoples was likewise allowed. This is returning to that state.

What it takes: Leftist thought is built around the universal adoption of their principles. Individuals in society cannot be left to make decisions, so this is a hateful outcome to the Left. I recall discussing politics with a Leftist when I was younger. The Leftist thought I was on the Right. That, at least they could deal with. When I identified as a Libertarian®? The look of disgust was clear – the Left hated Libertarians™ more than they hated the Right. The Right was merely amused and not threatened by Libertarians©. Maybe it was the Star Wars® shirts and poorly trimmed beards?

That taught me one thing: the thing the Left hates the most is . . . freedom. Liberty. In many ways the Left would rather lose a shooting war and be subjugated to the views of the Right than to be allowed to turn Seattle into the Siberia of the PacNorthwest.

The only way this can take place outside of warfare is a Second Constitutional Convention. I think that alone would lead to a shooting war from the Left and a complete revolt from all of the Leftist institutions shown above. But we can dream that the Second Constitutional Convention would turn out well. If we did it, oh, in the next year. The clock is ticking on this being a viable outcome. It’s probably time to do it now. As in, well, now. Conservatives (not the Right) seem to feel that everything is going to come out fine, so until the wolf is at the door, I don’t think they’ll move an inch.

The problem is that Conservatives (again, not the Right) seem to think that the Left likes the Constitution. Since the Left gained the institutions I’ve listed above, the Left doesn’t care about the Constitution – the Left cares about power. Pure, unadulterated, 18 year old with a 12 pack of Coors Light™ behind the wheel of a 1969 Camero® power.

Outcomes: In many ways this is the best outcome, but in my opinion the most unlikely. This is the only outcome where we can still have the full freedom of political discourse and the full Bill of Rights. I’d love to turn over freedom to choose to a California that can choke itself to death on Leftist feelgoodism while a Rightist Arizona can deny admission to every illegal and return them via a trebuchet if they want to.

I was expecting more girls in bikinis from Bruckheimer, but this is a good start.

Operation Fort Sumter: Going our separate ways.

What it is: Secession. Splitting up. It’s not you, it’s me Oregon. The problem is that unlike in 1860, the dividing lines aren’t so clear. Then there was a line which, if everyone agreed, would have been fine for a split. The North could be the North, the South could be the South. Oops. Now it would be a county by county fight.

What it takes: Just like a psycho ex-girlfriend, if the Right tried to succeed in Texas, the Left wouldn’t accept it, and would demand tanks on the banks Red River by morning, which would be hilarious because tanks don’t float. Unless the secession were overwhelming in number of states, numbers of the armed forces, and nearly immediate, I see only a small path to a peaceful secession. For secession to stick, the Left and Right would have to feel that conquering the other side was more costly than trying to forge a peace.

Outcomes: If secession happened and was maintained, the United States would be irrevocably broken, unless it was re-stitched by a Caesar sequentially conquering the Balkanized United States. Maybe Caesar Pugsley Wilder the First?

Think they need a reason to send you to the Gulag? Sure they do! It’s Monday – that’s good enough.

Operation Gulag in The Dakotas:

What it is: This is the darkest timeline not only for our nation but for our world. And, amazingly, the only timeline (outside of a Second Constitutional Convention) that we can vote ourselves into. It is the Leftist takeover of everything. Although it is sold as a Denmark, in reality Denmark is capitalist with stronger social institutions because Denmark is, well, Danish and I think they put mayo on their fries. In the United States it will look much more like the U.S.S.R. – but not the basketcase 1988 U.S.S.R., but more like the 1932 “starve to death millions of citizens that Stalin doesn’t like” (In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!) U.S.S.R.

What it takes: Nothing. We keep going as it is. In less than 20 years, we will be in complete tyranny. The erosion of rights we have seen won’t continue in a linear fashion. It will accelerate.

Outcomes: 1984.

Now we know the stakes.

Big Brother is our friend! And we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.

Only 3% of Your Decisions Matter, or, Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There!

“We’re very lucky in the band in that we have two visionaries, David and Nigel. They’re like poets, like Shelley and Byron. They’re two distinct types of visionaries, it’s like fire and ice, basically. I feel my role in the band is to be somewhere in the middle of that, kind of like lukewarm water.” – This is Spinal Tap

Oh, I don’t need alcohol to make bad decisions. But it doesn’t hurt. Just ask Tiger Woods.

Life is filled with events. Some of them are predictable, some not. But I generally break the events that will influence the course of my life into three categories because I’m sitting in a meeting and it kind of looks like I’m actually working when I take blog notes:

Certainties

Certainties are just as shown on the label – things that are certain to happen. These are one extreme of the spectrum, for instance unless a race of aliens is intent on destroying humanity so that Bono™ doesn’t escape the Earth and infect the galaxy and drops a Moon-size batch of anti-matter into the Sun causing a solar flare that extinguishes life, the Sun will come up tomorrow. Notice I didn’t say that the race of aliens was evil, in fact it seems entirely logical and rational and a good choice – Bono© as a trade for the rest of humanity. Other examples of certainty:

Death.
Taxes.
Someone saying “Death and Taxes” when they write about certainties (at least every year since Christopher Bullock first wrote the phrase in 1716 in Ye Olde Bloge Poste on the Worlde Wilde Web).
Gravity. Like Bono®, it also sucks.
Celebrities flying in private jets to protest global warming.

Impossibilities

Impossibilities are things that cannot happen in this Universe. Okay, it’s not a creative title, like calling your dog “dog” and your cat “cat” – and we both know people who have done just that.

The number of things that I thought were impossible were nearly zero when I was under age five or so. Starships were only 20 years in the future. I would own a tank. And I’d marry Miss Roberts, my first grade teacher. About the time I went to high school, the number of Impossible things started to climb. I think this happens when you start experiencing disappointments in life, like the Space Shuttle. I mean, why did humanity spend so much time trying to get to space with a ship that had the glide ratio of a brick?

I think my Impossibles peaked in my thirties. After a divorce and NOT winning a MacArthur© Grant for my incredible ability to sleep on the couch while the kids watched Saturday morning cartoons, my view of what was possible shrank. But as I grew older, I kept seeing the same pattern – if people tried things, they often achieved them. There are, however, things that are really Impossible. What are some Impossible things?

A Beatles® reunion. A living Beatles™ reunion.
The molecules of Leonardo Dicaprio spontaneously rearranging themselves to form something useful, like a ham sandwich or a beer.
A good, new Star Wars® movie will be made during my lifetime.

Is it me, or have John and George lost weight?

I think one of the really neat things about being human is the curiosity and creativity that allows us to think of things that could never, ever happen, like Johnny Depp learning to read. It’s a great day to be alive!

Things That Might Happen

Most things in life are neither Certain nor Impossible. They fall into that grey area of possibility that makes life interesting. I find it fascinating that so much of life consists of these contrasts – in between the chaos of fire Venus and the stasis of icy Mars lies, well, us. The other day I heard an astronomer state if you take average star weight and the weight of an atom, you end up at about 50 kilograms©, whatever that is. But the average human weighs . . . 62 kilograms®. It’s almost like this place was made for us.

Hmmm.

Anyway, while not everything interesting happens in the middle, most interesting things happen in the middle. But, in the interest of continuing to subcategorize, I see two types of events in that sweet middle region:

A. Events You Can’t Influence

Sometimes, whatever’s going to happen is beyond your control. Despite what you want or any action you might take, the outcome will be the same. You can’t change a thing. Call it fate. It’s not certain that the event will happen, mind you, it’s just that you can’t control it. Some examples are:

How much Oprah will weigh tomorrow morning.
Collapse of the global financial system.
Whether Ilhan Omar will join the Hair Club for Men.

Baldness – I hear it’s more common if your family interbreeds too often . . . oh. Sorry. H/T WRSA (LINK).

So, this is a record – my first back-to-back meme. Is that not MacArthur Grant® worthy?

B. Things you can influence or control

Here is where it gets interesting. In my option (and in my experience) most people can control more about their lives than they want to admit. Personally, it’s scary how many things that I’ve tried to do in my life that I’ve accomplished, which makes me wonder if I haven’t aimed too low. I’ve recently changed one of my goals to be horribly unrealistic (learn how to make a tasty pizza, or at least buy a tasty pizza) so I’ll keep you updated on the progress on that stretch goal.

But what sorts of things can you control?

Your weight.
If you shower.
If you smoke.
Your psychic power to make Taylor Swift love you using only your mind.
If you go broke.

Now, I didn’t say you have total control of your life, but some actions you take (not decisions you make, mind you, but actions that you take) can influence most things about your life, including how you die and when you die.

But even as beautifully written as the preceding was, it’s not the where the post is going to end up. The point I’m getting to is, how many events that occur in your life, choices that you make, should you really worry about.

I’m thinking about 3% or less.

From my vantage point, most things don’t matter. Examples?

Yellow or blue Post-It™ notes?
Romaine or iceberg lettuce?
Tom Brady’s 2015 clone or Tom Brady’s 2018 clone.

Most decisions that you make simply do not matter at all. My personal difficulty is that I sometimes don’t process a decision like that. I want to make the right decision so I’ll spend time researching and learning online about a purchase I’m going to make . . . of something I’ll use exactly once and then toss into a closet. Heck, as an example tonight I’ve spent about half an hour trying to decide between one type of laptop and another. Does it matter?

Probably not.

What I did with the flowchart was just start with a random decision or event. Does it matter? I pulled out Pareto’s rule, and off the bat, 80% of decisions in your life . . . don’t matter at all. Paper or plastic. .556 or .762. Drilling a hole in your head or spending time with five year old children.

That means that 20% of the events matter. Cool. How many can your actions influence? I’m betting 80% of that 20%. That’s a huge number and from my experience it seems about right. You’re rarely a complete victim. That’s 16% left.

Is it the effort worth it. I came up with . . . 80% of the time, no. The time and effort to manage every event, even just 16% of them, is a lot. You have to let some things go, since even if it matters, it’s not worth your time to influence everything around you.

The math is simple. 97% of decisions in life you should make with either no care or minor care. They just don’t matter. The good news is that means if you manage and select the decision you make, you can live, more or less, the life you want by only dealing with 3%.

Why? I find that things we think are important, that society tells us are important decisions or important actions are not. Here’s what I’ve found:

We bought Stately Wilder Manor© about a decade ago. The Mrs. was living in Houston, and the house that we’d fallen in love with had cheated on us and was purchased by two doctors. I was working outside of Houston, but we still needed a place to live, because we were going to move. I kept looking. I found a house. Given that (then) the market was hot, I put in an offer. The Mrs. had never even seen the house until the day we moved in.

How do you get the dead hooker smell out of carpet? Asking for a friend.

The last care I bought was a replacement for The Mrs.’ MUV (Mrs. Utility Vehicle). I was passing through a large city in Midwestia, stopped off at a car lot, and bought a car. They delivered it to Modern Mayberry the next day. Again, The Mrs. hadn’t driven or seen the new car.

Okay, it’s not that bad. But while The Boy was driving it some woodland critter ran straight into the side of it. The dent does not look hooker related.

Within relatively broad parameters, most decisions, even decisions that society says are “big” decisions, don’t matter. Which house we got didn’t matter all that much, we just needed a house. Admittedly we are horrible neighbors, so it’s best if there are no pesky homeowner associations.

And I wasn’t like that on the first house I bought. We must have seen dozens of houses over months until we found . . . the one. The first car I bought, I agonized over the decision. Until I found . . . the one.

Strangely, I didn’t spend nearly enough time selecting my first wife she who will not be named and that had a much larger impact than any house or car ever could to my life. There’s a joke in here about test driving and rentals, but I’m just gonna skip it.

It’s all the aftermarket add-ons that get you.

The point is not that I was young and stupid, although I really was young and stupid.

The point is: Don’t worry. Plan? Sure. Prepare? Absolutely. But like Pop Wilder always said, “Don’t pay interest on money you haven’t borrowed yet, son.”

97% of actions you take . . . don’t matter. Don’t sweat them. And don’t spend a second worrying about things you can’t change or influence.

But on those things you can? Strike hard, like the fist of an angry god. Never give up. You can move mountains that way. Feel motivated? Good!

Now go out and get it done! Oh, it’s Friday?

Kick back and get it done Monday.

Okay, I did once upon a time pretend my toy Thompson submachine gun was a phaser®. Once.