Bison Prepper

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

palace coup

PALACE COUP

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note: free book on crosscut saws from the Forest Service click here
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note: I don't know how long it will last but Sportsman's Guide click here has been having free shipping for some time ( the "coupon code" for free shipping is near the top of the main page ). I got six cents rimfire click here twice and then since I didn't have to pay $9 shipping on an $8 item, I got a pair of Enfield rifle slings click here. Tres Cool, eh? They were great to start, shipping makes it better.
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I think one of the universal delusions amongst survivalists is that they are going to be Large And In Charge. They will become the Big Cheese both because they are smart enough to prepare and because it is after all Their Stuff. This might not be so delusional as to assume leadership of a large group such as a war band or the entire village, but probably it is. I’m not sure what a group of Prepper Top Monkey’s joining together would do to assert leadership status. Perhaps they just splinter and decentralize and are vulnerable to being picked off one by one ( like small kingdoms that didn‘t get the memo about the nation state ).

This isn’t even all that ridiculous. One of the characteristics most likely shared is a distrust of the government. They lie to us and they hump us. By our very nature we mistrust and then must figure things out for ourselves, leading us to the conclusion that We Know Better. Which is probably true. We could do a better job. When you don’t have a sack full of leeches being enriched off short term thinking if not downright sabotage, you could indeed run things more efficiently and with more intelligence. Not that you would succeed, because if you think you could runs things better, in reality you have no idea the problems that need to be managed.

Just a short jaunt into Militia Porn fiction, inevitably the author talks about the infamous “if they don’t work, they don’t eat” dictate. It is nearly universal in these stories. Anti-communist is all-American, after all. So the solution is, evidently, fascism. Hitler had full employment, and he was regarded as a hero because of it. He took a country with recent memories of literal starvation and freezing in the winter, hyperinflation and embargos, and presented a functioning economy and a strong military. Remember how that one worked out for him? Anti-communism is usually not automatically pro-freedom.

I’m not denying the necessity of everyone working. I’m saying we are usually so indoctrinated in anti-Communism that we think acting fascist is in fact freedom when it is just another form of control. Just trying to make a point here. Benevolent dictatorships usually work out pretty darn good. What is your family, after all, if not a matriarchy ruled by a charming little gal called honey/mom? Everybody loves her and does as she says, not because they agree with her but because of the fear of her wraith. That is your workplace, minus the love part. And I’m sure your work reinforces your anti-communistic blindly pure hated since most corporations are solidly built along Soviet lines.

The Party Faithful get the supervisors jobs and the high salaries and vacation cabin on the Black Sea, overseeing production numbers on the factory floor and adhering to a Five Year Plan. The Politically Correct hires, worthless and incompetent, are the Potemkin Village false face fronts, their sweet little brown female faces beaming their glee at surfing a desk which never sees any real work cross its surface. Nothing of substance is ever accomplished, but theirs is a beehive of activity as everyone rushes to prove their brand of supervision will be the one to ensure results. Paper is shuffled and meetings are vibrant and full of jargon. And Jesus weeps.

So, by enduring painful life lessons reinforcing our hatred for Communism at work for the corporation, a young lifetime full of imperial propaganda, and being in an echo chamber of like minded folks, we are all ready to form our fascist family, our benevolent dictatorship. Seeing all the idiots out there with their PC and dictates by committee, we are sure we can do a much better job ( it worked for Hitler! ).

The Soviet Union ultimately failed not because it was communist. Mercantilism, capitalism, fascism, democracy, communism and all the hybrids are pretty close to the same thing as they are all needed to perform the same function. Which is to feed everybody, keep everyone docile, and enrich those at the top. Only the management styles are different. The Soviets were no more gangsters than any others, but they didn’t pretend they weren’t. Yes, they abolished the excesses of wealth and poverty by redistribution. The common peoples lives still improved. But eventually, once equality was better spread out, the lack of consent to living under terror became an issue.

All governments must rule by the consent of the masses. Like mom in her happy little family. The Soviets were mom, who never stopped berating and beating. People want mom to be pleasant, say please, and only whip out her Bitch Face as a last resort. They don’t mind being told what to do, as society is usually a bonus for them and it is easier to submit than try to manage all the separate parts. That is what I mean by aspiring leaders having no understanding of how to rule. If they understood what it takes to actually manage any size group, they would know they don’t want the thankless impossible task.

Capitalism only works better than communism because through greed, all the component parts act reliably. There is less to manage than in central planning. Neither is more efficient per se ( although I would argue the Soviet model, even with insane levels of military spending, did not waste near the amount of resources as the consumerist capitalists ). Neither respects the rights of the poor any better. Again, the communists are probably one up on that aspect also, restricting unaltered greed at the top to lift the bottom a bit higher. Neither system is fairer than the other ( and what exactly is the difference between a high ranking Party members son going to the better school and a rich bitch’s son going to Yale? ).

The difference in the systems is that the Soviets allowed the iron fist under the velvet glove to be all too often glimpsed and even gloried. They didn’t hide their beaten’ stick. The US, home of the free and brave and stuff, is no less violent to its non-conformists. Threaten the system and if you are lucky you lose everything to the attack lawyers. If you are unlucky, you end up one lone White Boy in a prison full of Black bucks who wish you every harm. You don’t even need to use drugs-the helpful career cop will be happy to plant the drugs in your possession ( all it takes is the intelligence community agent to whisper in the ear of the Chief how the target is a pedophile and all involved would be more than cooperative in the frame-up ).

This is a long way around the subject matter. It will make more sense as we continue tomorrow.

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Tuesday, December 5, 2017

cottage industry 2

COTTAGE INDUSTRY 2

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note: an article on the economic considerations behind Lincoln's War Of Aggression and why he is one of America's biggest douchebags click here
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So, the avoidance of retail where all your profits go to the banking whores is a no-brainer. And you don’t necessarily want to have a business that is reliant on a middle class demographic that is shrinking all the time ( if the numbers aren’t exactly shrinking, you can be sure other monopoly businesses have already got their sticky paws on those peoples wallets and are extracting more all the time, so no matter what you are seeing that customer base with shrinking disposable income ). You want a business that sells something that makes people money or saves people money.

Not vanity items, luxury items, and certainly I would be leery of entertainment items ( stupid levels of saturated market. Try writing an e-book novel and see if it makes you any money. The market is already sequel heavy relying on a small residual income base. Perhaps being an author was never meant to earn much of a living, the blockbuster novel being a historic aberration, but it is still a tough row to hoe under the best of times, which these ain’t ). Good gravy, I’m surprised I’m making money here. I mean, I’m good. But it certainly is a mystery to me J

If you already have a business that violates the above guidelines, at least always move forward with the thought that your customers will be able to spend less as time goes on. Make their indulgent spending as near necessary as you can. They say that in the last Depression folks wanted escapism, and that is certainly true. But escapism was still strictly budgeted and the entertainers had to keep costs down to get even the limited sales available. I would argue that Kindle Unlimited and Netflix are the equivalent of pulp fiction or Saturday matinee films back then, but the issue on the provider end is that their low cost is artificial. Net Neutrality is keeping the streaming channels artificially cheap and just like YouTube, you have to wonder how many content providers will stop contributing if the payday remains illusive.

But, enough about what to offer. You know better than I, having an intimate grasp on your market I’ve probably not even heard of. Let’s talk about competition. You are competing against Chinese factories. Which is no competition. You are economically defeated before the race ever starts. And all this hoopla over Fabricators. What is that about that I’m missing? How can plastic doodads ever take over the economy? At most, on the design side, sure. But on the manufacturing side? I’m not seeing it. It seems like a pipedream for lost American factories coming home. The reality will most likely be business as usual with China offering economics of scale you can’t come close to.

So you need to go back to the quality side of things. China offers quality, and you can easily get it from the Big Box industry ( for instance, they offer very decent computers at decent prices. Then we shove an American made POS operating system in there and completely gay it up. I’m talking to you Bill Gates, you asswhore ). So, your niche product is safe. The Chinese won’t offer quality in small quantities as their entire infrastructure is economics of scale. It won’t be hard to beat American sellers of Chinese crap. You can’t beat Japanese sellers of quality, but you also don’t have to worry about them in most markets.

Plus, they are overseas. That WAS a good business model but it cannot last long. When the global oil production of conventional oil ( as opposed to Fake Fuel-fracking oil and tar sands and ultra deep wells under the ocean ) is dropping six to eight percent a year, it is inevitable overseas manufacturing eventually becomes non-viable. To say nothing of the coming petro-dollar collapse which almost kills the import market due to lack of a viable currency. You just need to survive until then. I think we are already at a point where quality in mass produced items is so poor, overall, due to constricting resource supplies and the banker/debt model collapsing, that customer demand for quality is assured, regardless of decreasing income.

A sixty five dollar shirt is a hideously expensive investment. But it will literally last a lifetime whereas the $15 shirt at Wal-Mart will literally fall apart being washed once a week after about six months, if that. In two years, the expensive shirt pays for itself. And there are already plenty of name brands you know you can count on to sell these types of quality ( shoes seem to be a little different. Outside a $300 pair, you don’t know which brand is okay and which WAS okay but is now cheapening quality. I’m mostly just wearing shoes for a bike ride and going shopping [ which is once or twice a month-the freezer is so full I can’t buy $10 worth of meat all that often ] and wearing wool socks and soccer slides the rest of the time. For me, the shoe industry priced me out of their market for all other footwear ).

Not to say you can compete with quality clothing companies. Just the sizes and colors inventory is quite capital intensive. And there are alternatives, such as a lot of military surplus over at Sportsman’s Guide. But everywhere you look, there seems to be craftsmen offering quality. There is a market for it, and that won’t change. If anything, it will grow larger as people can no longer afford disposable items ( a minion reports dwindling quality for the Bic lighter, another reports high end German manufactures cutting quality on expensive industry grade items, a bellweather to me as now debt and economics of scale are backfiring.

You obviously can’t charge “prototype” prices. You must be ballpark competitive ( going back to the crossbow company, his $300 bow compared to a Chinese $100 seems to not compete. Except that the Ornamental bow has a fiberglass prod. NOT a quality item by its nature. If I would consider the more expensive bow a bargain, the world’s cheapest bastard, you can bet most other people see the value in the quality item ). The difference is that to buy quality, you need to accept the lack of quantity ( cough, cough, bolt actions verses semi-auto’s ). We have been living with the expectation of quantity for too long. At least thirty-five years. Both customers and especially manufactures and merchants. And that paradigm is changing.

You should be able to profit from this change. Most advice on starting a second business to weather the economic contraction is off in that is assumes plenty of income flush customers. Focus on quality that is must have ( makes or saves money ) and you’ll be fine until the bitter end. Then, you’ll still have inventory for post-apocalypse.

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Monday, December 4, 2017

cottage industry

COTTAGE INDUSTRY

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note: many thanks J.W. for the PayPal donation. You da bombdiggity!
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note: have you heard of the Trunk Monkey commercials? Friggin hilarious! click here
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When will cottage industry goods become viable again? It is clear that retailers all across the land are in trouble, and most corporations are stupid high in debt. Most Internet companies make no actual profit, relying on increasing stock valuations to cash out for a big payday. Wal-Mart hasn’t been The Low Cost Leader for many years, after its uber-growth strategy hit the shoals of the 2008 Greater Depression. They stay in business by cutting hours, cutting quality, charging more than most other places but disguising it well and by lobbying DC to pick up their medical insurance costs and by adding to the Food Stamp rolls ( to goose grocery sales ).

I’m not assuming that small mom and pops will once again fill the void left by big box stores as they go tits up. Almost all Big Box’ers were little more than excess capacity ( especially clothing ). And all that excess capacity, which started in the last cheap oil years of the 90’s, was initially about economics of scale. Pile in deep and sell it cheap. Now, who does that? The inventory has shrunk dramatically and the prices have gone to nose bleed levels. Which should be all the incentive that Mom & Pop businesses need to move back in. Alas, that won’t happen due to real estate.

The bankers cleaned up on real estate during the bubble. Granted, they made more in derivatives ( the draining of the entire Greek economy was due to the singular attentions from the vampire squid Goldman Sachs ) than interest on mortgages, and then there were the bail-outs which might have been completely engineered or in fact could have been entirely necessary to “keep this sucker from going down”, but who the heck knows and really who cares as the bankers control the government and they’ll do as they please. But SINCE then they are even crazier on that profit squeeze. They have TWICE if not more exposure to derivatives now and insane levels of leverage with real estate.

It is possible that this is the only profit center left and it doesn’t matter if it is risky or not. Regardless if that is the case or the whole thing is just a Long Con, the banks took all those foreclosed homes and either allowed them to rot or they sold the management rights to others to rent them out. Home rentals are scary high prices as well as apartments ( less homeowners mean more renters mean apartments jack up their rents. In most cases it is cheaper to leave units vacant and keep the others at higher rents than it is to drop rents for everything ).

You would think that failing retailers mean that rents decrease, but evidently the retail sector is mirroring the artificial shortage price increases of residential units. Rents are simply too damn high. Mom and pop cannot stay in business with those prices. They can’t buy at the same price level, since the Big Box Boys buy by the container ship rather by the carton, and they can’t sell high enough to pay the rent. Unemployment increases all the time, as do mandatory medical insurance costs ( the banking sector is also the insurance sector, and no amount of taxpayer money is enough for these whores ), and customers are always having less and less to buy with.

But people always need tools and even if toys and trinkets aren’t selling well any more, you can always find a market for tools as long as you avoid commodities or retail. This has been true for twenty-five years, except retail is recent. It used to be, you left the cheap bikes ( commodities ) to Wal-Mart and sold quality bikes and brand name bikes and bike repairs and bike accessories at a small store. You weren’t competing with the Big Box. You were safe, offering quality rather than quantity. But since the ‘08 crash ( well, even before that to some extent ), real estate prices are far too insane. Retail is a suckers game now.

So rather than concentrate on being a merchant, you need to concentrate on being an inventor or a craftsman. Not pretty foo-foo crafts crap like hand woven pillow coverings or tapestries or crafted beer steins. There could be a market for that, although I’d avoid anything that smacked on middle class extra disposable income status seeking displays. In other words, does it have a market during a depression? I’m thinking more along the lines of tools that either make people money or save people money. That is your sweet spot. Like the guys that offer made in America cross-cut saws ( the Japanese saws that compete with crosscut types are great, perhaps better, but rely on overseas trade and the dollar primacy, so I would place my wager on long term survival with the domestic folks ).

It isn’t just crazy ass survivalist dudes who want old timey saws. We hate relying on gasoline and spare parts due to logistics. Others just want a manual tool that is much cheaper to run in the long term. Some crazy bastards that hug Gaia by relying on bicycles for transportation might be going back to all manual tools on principle. Off-Gridders just want something they don’t need to have to worry about going into town for parts or fuel, if they are socked in during the winter. But regardless, manual saws are a quality tool rather than a quantity tool. And even if they suck compared to a power tool, you can’t argue with the cost savings.

Cost Savings? What a concept! It kind of fits right in there with Saving and Lack Of Debt during an economic contraction. I would guess that this small little mail order/Internet company should be a safely steady business for many years to come ( here we discount the long term death of shipping due to energy contraction, concentrating on a limping but functioning economy phase ). You would think that the guy selling individually crafted crossbows would be a disposable income reliant business, but I would wager that even if sales to Society Of Creative Anachronism members dried up there would still be plenty of gun free zone sales ( at least enough to keep him in business ). Weapons are tools after all.

Continued tomorrow.

END ( today's related link http://amzn.to/2k9wNqc )

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Sunday, December 3, 2017

tripwire

TRIPWIRE

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note: an insanely generous PayPal donation from C.D. Thank you so much. You guys blow me away, all of you. Then someone like C.D. ups that and surprises me anew.
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note: a pretty darn good YouTube channel, Black Pigeon Speaks. Geopolitics and etc. Merkel is not his favorite politician, to give you a flavor.
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Will there be a tripwire event? For the longest time I’ve been skeptical of this idea. Why? Because far too many preppers are awaiting the “tripwire event” that let’s them know when to bug out. When to empty their bank account and buy supplies. When to finally worry about everything they should have concentrated on years ago, like the danger of crowds. Or the vulnerability of our currency ( who gives a crap about the stock market?! You know, I know and Ross Perot knows that the bitch is rigged and has no bearing on the economy other than an inflation sponge. Worry about the PetroDollar-there is a much more dangerous trend ).

The reading of post-apocalypse fiction is particularly rank with the smell of this concept. We all read PA fiction “to give us ideas on how different scenarios could unfold”. Most people mean how the collapse occurs. I mean it as a tactical tool. As in, I didn’t think about that trick the enemy will use. But all of us should beware that even if only subconsciously we are having the tripwire concept reinforced. Because book plots don’t exactly encourage long term subtle multifaceted cause and effect system wide disintegration. It is all tripwires. One day the character is dealing with a ball busting wife and a craphole licking boss and the next the zombies are shuffling around and moaning.

My basic understanding is, hey, signs of collapse are all around us. Why are we waiting for a tripwire event? What will we do differently then? Not go to work, eat from the pantry rather than the store and finally be able to shoot the loud obnoxious neighbor. Okay, great. You need to know when all that is allowed and encouraged. But you can’t know what events are going to flip us over the waterfall lip. It won’t be as easy of a read as the obvious power being shut off. Oh, but I am a prepper!, you explain as if to a small retarded child. I’ll KNOW!

Why? Because your digital watch and cell phone will show no screen? So you know that it was an EMP rather than the standard regular black out caused by deferred maintenance? All we can be sure of with a flare or device is that wires intensify the effect. There are too many contradicting claims and studies out there to know for sure if cars will still run or if anything without a wire will work or not. We can guess and plan but we don’t know for sure. It isn’t even probabilities but suppositions. We all Faraday Cage small electrics just in case because it costs almost nothing and is a better safe than sorry. But our knowledge is so incomplete it isn’t even funny.

( you’ll recall that Carrington was telegraph wires, the Pacific nuke was only streetlights and the Canadian solar effect only hit the electric grid rather than cars or electronic devices. You can argue the pulse wasn’t strong enough. I’m only arguing that this is incomplete information regardless ).

So in the case of economic collapse, we are looking at an indicator that no longer applies ( the stock market, controlled and managed since 1987 ). In the case of an EMP we don’t even know if we’ll know. Not for sure. What other tripwires are false indicators? Folks keep looking for the event that will tripwire the federal government into a police state or dictatorship. Why? There is already one in place. We have “indefinite detention without trial”, just like in the worst South American dictatorship. We already had concentration camps and asset forfeiture in 1942. The NSA gathers far more intelligence on its citizens than the Stasi ever did. We already torture prisoners and prisoners of war. Calling them enhanced interrogation techniques doesn’t stop making it torture.

Why are folks waiting for the police state tripwire if it is already a reality? Because they fear for their tacticool plastic poodle shooting carbines? The police don’t have to go door to door to confiscate guns. They never needed proof that Al Capone killed people ( they also didn’t need proof that Charles Manson killed anyone. Nor does all the proof in the world a pharmaceutical company CEO is killing thousands mean he’ll end up in prison ), they just got him in jail through tax fraud. Just like the 60’s radicals were jailed on marijuana possession rather than on any terrorist or treason acts. You don’t need gun control when you have food control.

Your tripwire observation skills are wasted on the wrong targets and this both makes you vulnerable and wastes your time and increases your stress ( like when your blood pressure spikes every time there is a mass shooting and you think gun control is right around the corner. You mean, like it was in the 1930’s, the ‘60’s and the ‘80’s? All that did was make guns far more expensive. It was Po Boy gun control, not rich bitch gun control. Class warfare is not gun control ). No one is saying you should ignore the news and avoid situational awareness. But you should be aware that there are few tripwire events you can rely on. You aren’t going to be thrown in the pot of boiling water which you can jump out of. Rather you are already in the pot and you can’t tell when the temperature is going up.

More than likely, the power goes out and even with your Vast Important One Of A Kind Knowledge, you’ll just think it is a regular power outage. You’ll stay in place like all the rest of the sheeple because you ain’t as aware as you think. If you were, you’d be living off grid anyway, far from the crowds. I would wager at least a jelly filled donut that every single swinging dingus minion out there has a higher level of skills than I do and could escape the Rat Race far easier than I did. Your only excuse is very important to yourself, but that won’t change the consequences. You are using tripwires as an excuse and a crutch. Not that I’m saying I’m much better. I still use the Better Than Nothing “even if I’m not living far enough away I’m still able to get away”. It’s okay to do BTN. Just don’t ignore the risks in that.

END ( today's related link http://amzn.to/2j3507B )

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Saturday, December 2, 2017

short term retard

SHORT TERM RETARD

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note: Green Mountain Dude has a new post! click here
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note: To both SF and WP, you guys rock! Many thanks for the PayPal donations.
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We briefly touched in the comments section on the idiotic movie that was supposed to be a spoof on the making of Apocalypse Now. A spoof of a documentary of a movie. Okay. Hollywood has been out of ideas before ( or at least the slime creatures that okay the funding for movies ). They still are. I knew not to waste my money on it as, number one, it is a film from Hollywood ( better ones are coming from Canada for Christ sake ) and much more importantly, it had Ben Stiller in it. There is no better indicator that the movie will blow nearly completely undigested bloody chunks.

Ah, newsflash Tech Porn idiots, the “new business model” of Kindle Unlimited and Netflix isn’t working because it is the next new bright and shiny digital masterpiece ( Amazon and Netflix are all about stock inflation and buy-outs from the founders, not operating at a profit, which they don’t. If you can’t say “this time it’s different at Pets.com”, you are a moron. These are bubbles, people ). They are working because the quality of books and movies are such complete feted fowl feces that only by paying pennies per viewing are you getting any eyeballs on the product. It is quantity due to lack of quality. I’m getting more enjoyment out of Family Feud 1980 on Amazon Prime than most of their new shows ( one exception would be the well done “Tin Star” ).

I think the reason all this super hero crap is doing so well is that the Chinese audiences of the demographic that loves comics, age 16-25 or whatever it is ( probably the same age group that can’t afford a bride due to the old One Child Policy and has plenty of disposable income as a result ), is probably bigger than the entire US domestic audience. That is the only reason Hollywood is still in business ( are the sexual assault “revelations” the final act of an imploding business? The Enron equivalent of some suits going to jail? ).

I’m actually happy that the spoof ( “Tropic Thunder”? ) was such a piece of crap. Serves them right for trying to gay up one of the best cinematic masterpieces of all time ( the era might have brought us “Heaven’s Gate” which I loved but which showcased the financial aspect of creator control getting out of control, mores the pity, but it also gave us Godfather 1 &2 and Apocalypse Now, amongst others ). So, what did they accomplish spending $80 million? They encouraged more of this slop ( I do believe it still made a profit ), and it gave us the phrase “full retard”. That is about its sole pop culture contribution.

Granted, that was private money ( unless the DOD threw in a bunch of free toys for filming ). But it highlights the Way Beyond Point Of Diminishing Returns in our economy. Millions and billions get thrown around, for almost no effect. I know, Hollywood is a rather poor example. Their business model has been poor for a very long time. There was always a turncoat screwing everybody else for an immediate profit, completely endangering the current model, going back to the Great Depression and television. You could call it creative destruction. I call it cutting off your nose to spite your face.

You could say the same about the airline industry. It starts with taking away one olive from the salad on the in flight meal to save a couple of million a year. It ends up with cuts in the maintenance schedule. Or baggage and other fees closing in on doubling the ticket price. Or forcibly removing passengers due to overbooking. Or how about that retail industry? Start by screwing over the local town by moving in with bank credit for undercutting small businesses profits. End up by screwing your customers with empty shelves, shoddy products and minimum wage workers who have zero product knowledge ( Radio Shack ).

Everybody is cutting off their nose to spite their face. Short term profiteering. Going Full Retard. The bankers might not have known that Peak Oil would kill the economy rather than just give us a recession, but then they only learned to embrace Too Big To Fail afterwards. Right back to short term thinking. The educational industry is great for short term thinking. Teach to the test. No long term learning, retention or problem solving. Which was the whole point of public education to begin with. More knowledgeable citizens make better workers and the whole of society advances ( it makes sense this started with the Prussian state, lacking in resources other than human capital. Or why Japan emulated their behavior, also surrounded by enemies and without resources ).

What is the educational system churning out? Total retards. Of COURSE political correctness appeals to these idiots. They have zero capacity for critical thinking. But the point is, only profit short term is a criteria. Look at the energy industry. They sought out business users to sell excess capacity, lowering industrial rates. Which still makes sense because you need to generate extra electric around the clock. But that lowers profit, so you defer maintenance. Which lowers profits when you replace rather than repair. Or, you lower your generation numbers and cause blackouts and brownouts. Next thing you know, you are subsidizing energy efficient appliances so your residential homes use less electric. But they pay the higher rates!

This all might seem insane. Full Retard! Yet, what do you do personally? If you don’t have money since taxes are up, mandatory medical is up and hours are down, what do you do? You defer maintenance on your car, wait for something to break, then put the repair on a credit card. Then, to make that payment, you begin deferring home maintenance. Something breaks and you watch a YouTube video on how to fix it yourself, which you do using very low quality materials which postpone another costly repair for a short while. Are you any different that American Airlines or the electric company?

The only difference is that their decisions immediately impact future income, whereas you have a waiting period before the next yearly medical insurance costs increases or the next cut in your hours. They get income reduction in months whereas you can wait up to a whole year. And the only way you can avoid this entirely is to sacrifice to the point you insulate yourself from their short term profit model. Downsize your home to the point it doesn’t need to be financed. Get out of the medical insurance game by earning under ten grand a year. Which means you ride a bicycle or moped to enable you to drop vehicle insurance. You’ll be exercising more being off grid, much more manual tasks such as hauling water, to help offset the lack of medical insurance.

With lower income you don’t eat out, fixing all your own food from scratch. Saving money and getting healthier. Home school rather than having a vehicle to take the spawn to the county bus stop. No one wants to hear about doing all that, not even preppers or survivalists ( which, hello!, is pretty embarrassing ). Yet otherwise you are on the same treadmill as all of the rest of the short term profiteers. There is no more growth. Ask Paladin Press or half the freeze dried food sellers. Growth, which almost every business model needs, is gone. Adopt to the contraction.

END ( today's related link http://amzn.to/2k7TR8T )

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Friday, December 1, 2017

rand survives

RAND SURVIVES

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note: As usual, all my loving minions who donated and bought through my Amazon links have been extra generous. Novembers numbers were $170 donations, $175 Amazon commissions and $10 in Kindle book sales, a total of $355!! :)
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note: ran across this as a recommendation. A bit low power and a bit low life span, but perhaps for the price? http://amzn.to/2i9ZXB3 ( a index card size PV panel charging a 100 lumen LED. About four hours of light. $8 AFTER shipping )
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We just talked about Ayn Rand. Libertarian superwoman and one of the original ball busting husband testicle pickling conflicted princesses. While philosophically questionable her trilogy of fiction, written with the conviction of a religious fanatic and fueled by truckloads of cigarettes chain smoked to fuel her fire, will never be equaled or even approached. Like Nietzche or Kafka, greatness dwelled alongside pathologies. So, now that I’ve plied her memory with sweet gifts, time for the bad news. She WAS bat crap crazy. Alongside freedom from any outside help was a big heaping serving of pure raw selfishness.

But that is part of the discussion today. As much as her rugged individualism concept was highly flawed ( we evolved from chimp groups and besides learning to wipe our asses haven‘t progressed much past that ), I’m not sure she was so far off with her defense of selfishness. I mean, sure, hearing her and her prodigy Gordon Gecko wax eloquently on being a total dingusbag is a bit disconcerting as raw truth is rarely very palatable. As scampering chattering chimps we listen far closer to the tribe dialog than our own internal one, meaning the truth is not our truth but the group truth. True dat, homey.

We are selfish pigs. We wallow in that reality. We just don’t like hearing about it, as usually that wallowing pig has a large amount of lipstick applied to its snout so as to look at itself admiringly in the mirror. Truth, as in the cold reality rather than the Group Think, is unpalatable and harsh. Rand made a virtue of selfishness, as her book of that theme reflects, but at its core she didn’t understand the whole point of the thing other than to validate her heroic individuals aspiring to new levels of individualism and self serving acts ( as I said, if nothing else is agreeable to you about Rand, at least she philosophically pried us away from our developing Hive Mind. Heinlein was another one that helped, and in a far less high brow way ).

Selfishness is a survival mechanism. Not because we are JUST individually selfish but because in times of danger by outsiders we pull together as a group and act selfish en masse. THAT is the difference between Rand’s bizarre-world Every Worthy Man Is An Island anti-communism and the reality of our tribe-centric social order. I look at individual selfishness as I do individual violence. It is our default mode ( okay, the males default mode, that the most butch FemiNazi armpit hair weaving carpet licker cannot duplicate because of a little thing called hormones and genetics ).

Most males, not castrated in the current Matriarchy, are little more than violent chimps waiting for the time to go all Clint Eastwood on some poor bastard. Which is why bars are a rather dangerous place to hang your hat. The gals are waiting for the king stud and the guys are waiting for an excuse to kick anyone’s ass on any pretext. Hey, why not? He’s got enough alcohol in him to dull most of the pain ( to say nothing of diminishing any rationality filters ). Default mode is violence, and being genetically predisposed towards joining groups for violence, the individual mode of operation is practice and perfection.

Sports and hunting and hobbies and similar activities bond the group to maximize combat effectiveness. Simmering violence ( even avoiding violence is useful, as its suppression boosts the effect when the rage is finally released ) is the mode allowing instant aggressiveness at any time. You never know when the tribe next door decides to 4 am ambush your sleeping ass. Selfishness is similar. Practice it non-stop all day long until suddenly you need to direct it to a potential enemy, as a group.

So, with violence or selfishness, everyone is our enemy. Until another group of outsiders threatens your group and you all rally together ( selfishness in females comes in handily in directing the violence of the men ) to vanquish the threat ( or seize the prize ). You can plainly see this in families with multiple boys. They fight incessantly with one another, until it is time to turn on someone threatening one of themselves. Then they go back to pummeling each other ). There is no doubt about the virtue of selfishness. You just need to tie it in with group dynamics.

Writing about Rand the other day didn’t bring this to mind, though. It was a e-book by Keith Taylor ( not great, but good. And good is pretty darn rare in the Post-Apocalypse writers stable ), the one with North Korea attacking us. Which just festered in my mind and sat in my gut nauseatingly. The guy had his fathers secluded cabin to go to and almost did, yet turned around to go back to his small town and help those there. You really were rooting for him to disappear and leave all those losers behind, and when he had an attack of conscience and returned, it seemed off.

Returning to the town wasn’t weird. Who the hell wants to be a hermit, even if you do pick up a hottie on way who you saved ( you never want to be stuck with a gal if she doesn’t have a support hen network to lean on. Her infighting and drama will turn on you )? All but the most introverted need some kind of social interaction for optimum mental stability. Then it hit me. The reason the plot was so unrealistic was that the town packed up and headed to the nearby deep water port where friendly nations were sending a flotilla to pick up refugees. WHAT?!

We have nations standing by to assist us if we are down and helpless? Bull spit. Everyone would be dog piling on us trying to get their pound of flesh. Remember that little thing called selfishness? You only help your ally if it might help you, and you sucker punch the bastard if it benefits yourself. And in the case of the US, global bully ( now that we can’t afford to bribe compliance and favorable trade arrangements, we just rely on force ) now helpless, how many folks would give enough of a crap to render aid? A few ships of food to pretend to care, I can see. Perhaps they are afraid we recover and seek vengeance. But taking a butt metric ton of refugees? I’d assume most would rather cooperate to vanquish us. We are certainly only “indispensable” as far as we can police the sea lanes. And it is getting hard to do that while busy hitting the ships we are supposed to be protecting.

Being selfish is a survival mechanism. For everyone. Charity is self serving. Aid outside the context of selfishness is fantasy.

END ( today's related link http://amzn.to/2hRfl5r )

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