Feeling Uninspired

I have been writing last minute posts a lot lately.  I want to say that the problem is lack of inspiration is behind the problem, but the truth of the matter is that I want to present a decent set of proposals to go along with the problems that I outline.  It appears that the problems that I am seeing do not really lend themselves to a palatable solution.

So right now I am just writing a  way to take a break in place.  Sometimes a short bit of writing clears out the pipes.  Solutions can come out of framing the problem properly and then thinking about it for a while.  I think that if Marx would have done this and waited around to come up with a better solution set than his written plan, we might have had a better chance at coming up with a mature solution

The superlative framing of the problems proffered by capitalism is Marx and Engles brilliant contribution to human culture.  The precise and cogent description of capitalisms failings and end points are the long-lasting draw of this political philosophy.  It is just such a pity that their solutions are so damn lame.

Mostly I can’t trust either of the candidates.  Not that I have anything resembling trust for any of the politicians that serve themselves here in my native land, but the two major party candidates are even less worthy of trust than the usual crop that grows up every four years.  I have been noticing a remarkable decline in quality of late.  The democrats have become even more pathetic than republicans of late.  But the difference in lameness and sneakiness is miniscule, measured in picograms and femtomoles

 

But Romney creeps me out.  He is every sleazy glad-handing, piece of mormon trash that I grew up with in Utah.  I like and respect Mormons as a general rule, half of my family has converted and I love them dearly, but that religion produces the creepiest, slimiest, greediest and most immoral “businessmen” that you can possibly imagine.   

 

I don’t know why this is. 

Why is it?

The VA just began providing WiFi in the waiting rooms.  Now when it is down, people come in and yell bloody murder.

 

Where is it written that provision of Internet is a responsibility of an organization?

 

Churn (Partie Deux)

So, Nohype sent this little nugget the other day in another post.

I'm not sure you're going far enough down your decision tree. GDP is a macro measurement of churn -- that is, how fast we can turn over our capital base. This measurement system rewards those who can figure out how to create the shortest possible product lifecycles with the lowest input costs (i.e.: maximum externalization of costs).  

If we measured actual standing wealth, the entire paradigm might shift. Durable goods might actually become durable. As such, the economy would be based on servicing and maintaining existing capital, rather than churning it as fast as possible in to landfills.

So that got me really thinking about how the way we tax, spend and value in this country has become completely ass-backward in the past thirty years.

The core of the problem is the idea of the income tax itself.  By it's very nature, this kind of tax is regressive.  The Romney's and the Bushes sure as hell don't pay a significant amount of their wealth to the state.  Nope, it is the same as the gabelle of the ancien regime.  A simple way for tax collector to make sure that the little folks are thoroughly sheared while the big folk guard their wealth.

We look at the churn of the GDP and the income taxes.  These are measures of "churn" as Russell so eloquently phrases it.  It is not a measure of productivity of capital, it is a measure of money moving through the system.  This country has significantly less productive capacity than it did in my youth, yet our moving our factories overseas, outsourcing our work, and going in debt up to our eyeballs has led us to have a higher GDP than when I was in my salad days

I think that a much more fair way to deal with the tax issue is to tax wealth.  There are folks out there who pay a no taxes or minimal percentage of their net worth every year because they have huge amounts of investments, savings, and land.  But you mention taxing wealth and making the wealthy shoulder their share of the load and then you have a huge roar of outrage.

You see, taxing income is just a way of saying that we are going to stick it to the little folks.

Now this is going to ruffle a few feathers

http://defensedistributed.com/

Hmmm   I can't really say what I think just yet.

This posted has been lying around in my blogger lumber yard for quite some time now.  So this gives you some insight into my thought process.  The quote and post is from Russell over at Reflexiones Finales. 

People, in general, lie a lot. When they are placed in a situation of where there is an inequality or asymmetry of information or knowledge, you tend to see a lot of lying.   For example, in construction specialists often have unique knowledge about pricing and methods.  They have an incentive, and the system tends to work toward reinforcing that incentive, to use that information to their advantage.

Since the world is a big and complicated place, and most people would rather not take the time to learn much about it, there is an advantage to feeding them dross.

I was originally going to dress up this quote with a blast against the banks and the banking industry.  Fertile ground there.  But after a while, the bile just wasn't flowing....I left it in the "drafts" folder and thought about it some more.

Then I was going to take it to Obama and the way that information trickles out of the government.  But then I got to thinking about the nature of the presidency, the structure of the separation of power, and the need to parse syllogisms a la Alcibiades in order to maintain some kind of power in a structure deliberately designed to cripple the participants.   Getting colder there.

So, a couple of cups of tea later, I lit upon the actual professional government "barony" that controls the individual departments of the government.  These aren't the political place-man that occupy the Office of the Secretary, but rather the "Senior Executive Service" of the FedGuv Ranch.  

These are the folks with their hands on the physical levers.  They fight viciously for budget, and their pay and power derive from the incremental growth of their fiefdoms.  This is where the revolving door in and out of industry lies.  This is where the bloated budget numbers and mission creep begin.  This is the area that will be last to be shown the door.

The truth about the murky nature of government is that it will always end up being a desperate clutching at power by people who are trying to rise to the top.  The ones at the top are pretty easy to monitor.  Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, etc are in their place to draw the eyes away from the men playing with the levers.

Do you really think that Obama chooses the drone kill targets?  No, there is a person out there with a knowledge of secrets and access to power that allows him to slide the names across the desk for signature.  

Those are the folks that do the bulk of the lying and dissimulation.  It is their one and only hold on power.

If I had one book to recommend right now, it would have to be Simon Schama's chronicle of the French Revlution “Citizens”. It really is an important read because of the way that the US has come to closely resemble to idiosyncracies of Ancien Regime France.  When you read this book around the same time as you reread "A Tale of Two Cities", you really begin to get an idea of what a complete nutbag turn a revolution can take.  

The aristocracy that was so blatant in 17th and 18 century France has as its analogue here in the US a hidden upper class of wealth and prestige which has spent the thirty years since the “Reagan Revolution” solidifying it's perquisites and power. Reagen told them theat Gordon Gecko was right. Milton Friedman created an ersatz intellectual basis . Bill Clinton, Larry Summers and Robert Rubin drove a stake in the heart of the American middle class and set up the looting of the country by a class swollen with wealth and self-importance.

Now, I am not saying that the working class in the US has anything like the misery and the grinding poverty of the French peasantry, but I think that what we have to deal with here is the loss of percieved prerogatives, relative loss of wealth and status, and the blatant disregard for their complaints by a disaffected majority.  

  

The Common Clay

So, I'm driving home yesterday at rush hour on I-5 out of Portland.  We have a vanpool, five of us pitch in and rent a subsidized van from the local bus company so that we can save some coin and get to work (The VAspa in Portland is notorious for it's parking problems).  There is no bus available as all of us have to get to work before 05:30

On the way home, stuck in a slowdown by the I-5 bridge, a singleton SUV (one of the huge Fords from the mid-90's) pulled up next to us and gave us an earful about the tax dollars we were wasting and how parasites like us were the problem with the country.  Guy was probably fatter than I was, the bumper of his SUV was covered with bumper stickers excoriating liberal causes.

Sometimes I just wonder.

Long time coming, long time gone

I think that we have made some decidedly good choices here in the land of the free.  They just have long term digestion cycles.  And we are having some unintended consequences and a bit of indigestion in the process.

Most of these choices are of recent origin.  I think that the sixties are when we began to make the changes which caused the whole series of conundrums that we are now facing.

It was an odd decade for certain.  Folks my age like to point out the freedoms that we gained.  I will even grant them that point.  The end of the Jim Crow laws and the entry of women into the greater world was a big plus.  The opposition to the Vietnam war brought the close to a poorly thought-out and poorly managed piece of stupidity.

But what came with these "wins" was a series of changes that temporarily crippled our society and will take generations to repair, but that repair is possible.   The changes were the right thing to do, but the execution and the downstream effects still hang on.

Banishment of the Jim Crow laws were morally correct.  But the desire to disenfranchise the recipients of this change will take another fifty or so years to fully implement with all the concomitant pushback we continue to see.  The folks that were granted political equality will continue to struggle for social equality.

Women's rights were necessary and just, but we will have to take some time to debone the changes to the industrial workforce and come to grips with the undershoot and overshoot of the differing aspects of this change (eg sexual and reproductive issues, fully implemented equality etc.).  A lot of the employment issue that we see today wouldn't exist  under the old system of male at work/female at home.   But I would like a smart woman working next to me rather than a stupid male.

Ending the war in Vietnam was the first cracks in the empire.  We keep trying, but having seen the problems in Vietnam and the long-term uselessness of the war allows us now to better address the continuing attempts at empire by the elite.  We have learned much about how to challenge our government, they have learned much on how to defuse that challenge.

We haven't failed at any of these things.  We just haven't succeeded yet.  The doing will take another couple of generations.  The rich and powerful will fight back bitterly at any challenge to the perquisites, privileges, and prerogatives.  The poor and unequal will try to take what is rightfully theirs.

Keeping the lid on while we come to a working solution will be a lot of work.

churn

So, Nohype sent this little nugget the other day in another post.

I'm not sure you're going far enough down your decision tree. GDP is a macro measurement of churn -- that is, how fast we can turn over our capital base. This measurement system rewards those who can figure out how to create the shortest possible product lifecycles with the lowest input costs (i.e.: maximum externalization of costs). 
If we measured actual standing wealth, the entire paradigm might shift. Durable goods might actually become durable. As such, the economy would be based on servicing and maintaining existing capital, rather than churning it as fast as possible in to landfills.

Mish and other such

Mike Shedlock has always been a sort of bete noir for your humble correspondent.  I read his blog every day and use it to simultaneously increase my knowledge of the world around me and to replenish my overstock of bile.

Recently, the lovely and talented Russell**, reviewed an article written by Mr. Shedlock, and the article got me to thinking about the way that things are looked at in this country.

Mish in the article bemoans the lack of manufacturing jobs and the surfeit of government jobs.  First and foremost, this country is absolutely awash in manufactured shit.  A trip to the dump lets one see firsthand the amount of shit that we throw away.   A trip to the store lets us see all of the manufactured shit we have available to buy. 

My feeling is that adding more manufacturing jobs will just add to the pile of unnecessary that currently defines our lives.  Yes, we can bring back the manufacturing jobs of iPads and salad shooters from China.  We can bring back the call center jobs from India.  But what precisely will this do?

All of the jobs that we want to bring back are the jobs that no one here really wanted in the first place.  I have worked in factories in China and those folks put up with crap like you haven't seen.  They are aid squat wages and are treated like crap.  Assembling your iPad or iPhone is not a job that anyone in America will do for the pay required to adequately pad Apple’s bottom line.  The pollution and environmental damage that China willingly imported from us would have to come back here to your hometown.

So, really what we have here is a decision tree.  If we want full employment in the manufacturing sector, we have to bring back with the manufacturing a whole plethora of environmental and societal issues brought about by environmental degradation and low wages.  If we keep the current structure, we will have to keep a high ratio of government employment to fend off unacceptable rates of overall unemployment.

Really, what Mr. Shedlock, and his market-based panacea offers us is a return to the age of the robber barons.  Low wages, small government services, grinding poverty and the rise of the new plutocrats.
What the current model offers us is a steady decline into a banana republic, with crippled manufacturing, overweening government controls, and steady erosion of living standards among the general populace.

I am hoping that we will manage to come up with another alternative, but the political setting seems to be headed to a showdown between these two equally distasteful alternatives.  I wish that it wasn't so, but it sure looks like that is the way that it is going to roll.

It is important to remember that Mr. Shedlock writes to a defined market segment.  He speaks openly of returns on investment, stock purchasing strategies, and the nature of the current economic structure.   His blog is written for the rentier class and those who aspire to it.  The needs and desires of the people for whom the blog is written for are not coincident with those of the greater majority of people who inhabit this country.

** the picture is a tribute to one of Russell’s endearing habits

Lid

(The voice of Galadriel)

The world is changed, I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air (Elvish translation)

It’s quiet, too quiet.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining.  It is just that is seems that the zeitgeist that I feel doesn’t seem to match my reading of the world around me.  Clinically, this may be put down as paranoia, but I can’t say as I am exhibiting any untoward manifestations.  

I can’t even say that this time it is causing me to go in to prepper paroxysms.  No, I don’t think that it is going to be a big blow up, but there is a sea change coming, what we are feeling are the fronts starting to line up.  It would help if I knew which direction they are coming. 

I am sitting down now at the table in the kitchen.  The door is open in from of me, letting the cool air in after the past two days 100+ temps.  The boys are upstairs sleeping.

We preppers tend to be pretty stuck in our ways of thought and our beliefs.  Store beans and band-aids in the basement, take out the trusty guns and practice your marksmanship for the coming zombie hordes. 

Pretty static defense there.  I have my cans and vacuum sealed stuff in the basement.  I have my pieces in the case, but all these imply that the stand will be here and I will be able to counteract what comes with a defense in place.  Hmmm I’ve seen that movie.

So, do I set up a bug-out bag, replete with stocks of what-the-hell I think critical and keep the van filled with gas and haul ass as soon as things start going south?   I have seen refugees in Southeast Asia hauling ass to get out of the way.   I know for a fact that they started out prepared, but in the process the stuff that they brought with them falls away and they ended up scrambling gratefully into a camp with just the ragged clothes on their back and equipped with a belly with nothing in it.

What do we do?  Being paralyzed with indecision does nothing.  Being prepared for the wrong thing does nothing.  Our world is changing and there is little in the way of evidence to support the idea that we are not on the top of a long descending slope.  The ideas and the preparations made in another phase of the cycle might or might not be useful for the next phase.

Good luck.  Keep your eyes open and your wits about you.

I’m going to pick some blackberries for blackberry jam.

Life’s Rich Pageant

So, a kid (approx 25) came in today and said that he wanted to set up a surgery date for his war wound.  I said I would be happy to help him get to the right place.  When I asked him for his VA Card, he said that he didn’t need one, that he was a decorated veteran.

When I told him he needed to get signed up for VA benefits, he said that he would make me pay.  He knew Chester Pulley, a very famous Marine and that my act of non-compliance would cost me my job.

I am quivering

I Haven’t Forgotten

Just got home from a seriously weird day at the VASpa.

Don’t feel like talking, jst want to forget it.  Gonna go for a walk

Another Thought

Since we were talking about books in a recent post, I thought that I would add another to the list for SciFi.

The Mote in Gods Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.  Now this is a SciFi doomer's treat.  Starflight, aliens, exotic weapons and societal collapse, what more is needed?

I like it because, like all Niven and Pournelle (N&P) books, it is pretty well researched and has some depth to it.  If it isn't a cautionary tale, I don't know what is.  But at the same time, it is a great ripping yarn.  You turn the pages pretty quickly.

Anyway, nothing in particular happening today, the youngest heads off to football this week, so nothing but eating and sleeping are in his future for the next couple of weeks.  The eldest is just hanging out.

I haven't been as diligent as normal as reading the news in search of stupidity in the chattering classes.  I have given up on the idea that I can predict what is coming by watching closely.  The data is corrupted, maskirovka is used extensively, and the aims and tactics being used are probably alien to my way of thought.

Collapse is becoming less and less of an issue to me lately.  The obsession will probably pick up again in the future, but right now it just isn't all that important.  Mostly because I am coming to the point of view that it is something to be lived, not really prepared for.  Oh, for certain, you can take precautions and do some simple tasks that will allow for some "grease" to your post-collapse machine, but in truth, the collapse will control the situation, not you.  

Dog Days

Summer is getting hot, we are looking at 100+ this week up here in the PNW,  so now the basement gets cleared and the sleeping pads head downstairs.  We open up the house in the morning when it is cool and try to cool the place down as low an it can go and then button up tight to keep the cool in and the hot outside.

We sure as hell don't cook inside.  Today the beans are soaking and they will be cooked outside with a fifty year old Coleman white gas campstove.  Heat stays outside, we will assemble the burritos inside and microwave them at need.

I am just too damn cheap to run my heat pump unless it is roasting.  Plus the fact a little heat should just change how you hunker down, it isn't all that life threatening.  Folks have been dealing with heat for all of human history, there are some tried and true methods to do this kind of thing.

Cold water goes in the fridge and you drink a lot of it.  You move slow.  Shade is your friend.  Sleeping in the heat of the day is a great idea.

I won't insult you by telling you to stay cool, but I really think that you should learn to deal with it rather than just switching on the air conditioner.  Might be a skill set that comes in valuable in the not too distant future.

Laundry Days and Scribblin'

I'm sitting in the WashWorld, got two big loads in the washer and Wayne and Herb are here so the old guys currently rule the place.  Talking to old guys is about politics and the world usually is much more relaxing than talking to the youngers.  Old guys know that there is a lot of slippage between the way that they feel that the world should be and the way that the world actually runs.  The really rational even realize that they might not have all the answers and just watch the mime show.

So, Mistah Charlie asked me about Science Fiction in a comment on an earlier post about my suggestions for science fiction.  So, this here post will run down a couple of reads that I tend to re-read and I feel have real value.  Realize here that my tastes aren't quite normal and some of these are probably "speculative fiction" rather than pure science fiction.  I will try to load disclaimers into the text here.

1. (SpecFic) The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson;  In my mind this is a huge, rambling, epic about the beginning of the Scientific age.  Three big books with the main characters being Isaac Newton's college roommate, the king of the Vagabonds, and a rescued odalesque from the Topkapi palace.  
2. (SciFic) Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained;  by Peter Hamilton.  Has to be one of my favorite space operas.  Fast paced with references to the big issues of classic science fiction, longevity, spaceflight, and hyperspace.
3. (FantasyFic) The Recluse stories by Modesitt.  One of the huge, multi-volume epics of an alternate universe where magic exists in the form of order and chaos and an extremely subtle cautionary tale about the use and abuse of natural resources.

Ro-Ry

I really am amazed by just how bad a candidate for public office Mitt Romney appears to be.  But then, looking at the Republican party, I guess that this was only to be expected.  He was the best of breed in that odd assortment.  Kinda like being winner of this years Humane Society dog show for the poochies in the pound.

Lord would you look at the chain of fools (yes I realize the video above does't exactly fit the bill), that display the Republican's transient infactuations during the last year or so and you will see that they run their party like a spoiled high school boy runs his love life.  A series of infatuations with the current cool/pretty girls and then "settles down" with the less than sexy girl who will be a good mother.

Now the spoiled high school kid who never really grew up is choosing as his sidekick the other spoiled high school kid who never grew up.  Ryan and Romney.  We are better than you.  Elect us.

We have problems inthis country.  Pretty damn big ones.  We aren't going to solve them by giving the reins to the rich and letting them loot the country.  Ryan's budget is a mess.  He realizes that we are spending too much, so he tries to solve the problem by making sure that none of his friends are hurt.  Romney is an elitist who feels that the only people who matter are the wealthy and the rest of us can go suck eggs.

Obama is a barely mediocre President.  He is in the pockets of Goldman Sachs and the financial community and he was raised on the mother's milk of Chicago Politics.  But he is just barely adequate.  Romney alone would be a lousy president.  Add the raw hatred of the poor and non-white that is Paul Ryan and you have a truly poisonous choice.

I will have to hold my nose this election.  The race is close enough that I might have to forego my usual third-party vote to vote for the current president, who gives Warren G. Harding a serious run at the title of "Bad".

I may turn to drink.

HT to the Archdruid

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.

OT

Ten hours of OT this week.  My co-workers are schizzy and are taking sick leave and annual.  No real bother, the greater bulk of the work can get done without them and I need the money.  But boy, it is hard to gather energy toward the end of the week.  When I was a younger, 50-60 hour weeks were no problem.  Hell, in the past I even threw out some 80-100 hour weeks without even missing partying after work.  Those days are gone.

So, I'm awake and sucking down a coffee and writing in the journal.  The reason that the co-workers are pissy is because the agency that writes the paychecks has figured out (years too late) that the folks in my position are overpaid.  During the go-go days of the 90's and early 00's, the folks within the VA padded up the job descriptions of a group of folks to build little empires and pay them more.  Considering what this group of folks does, the pay scale is wayyyyy generous for a fairly substantial group of the folks who are getting downgraded.

 So the guvmint is doing the right thing and downgrading all of the positions.  Even at the downgraded scale, the folks will be paid as well as similar positions in the private sector (hell, I even argue that the downgraded position is fairly generous).  But the federal workers have some kind of consensual mass hallucination that they are underpaid and work really hard.  I can't say as either of these thoughts have any particular merit.

We do some pretty good things where I work.  There are a lot of folks who work hard and we provide good service.  I think that fixing the government system to provide fair pay to and ensure hard work from it's employees is paramount.  The current process I am personally participating in is a decent first step.

Now if we can just figure out how to get the lazy bastard tenured employees off their ass and contributing, we will be on to something

Cottage Industry

Been listening to the crap coming out of the TV in the wake of the Olympics.

What sickens me is the "coaching" industry of personal trainers and personal coaches that have attached themselves, lamprey-like to the gullible in order to extract money from the fatuous desire to be on the Olympic stage here in the non-olympic world. These are usually directed at the rich kids with parents having disposable income. Now, you will think that I am degrading the Olympics. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I strongly feel that the spirit of the Olympics are one of the true good things in the world culture.

But the moneychangers are in the temple.

Curiosity

I read science fiction incessantly as a child.  For that matter, I still do. 

But as I grow older, I find that the idea of mankind becoming a spacefaring race less and less plausible and less and less satisfying.  Oh we might be able to pull it off, but the chances decrease with every excess birth and the way that we will proceed becomes more and more constrained by a damaged and resource-limited world.

The Mars missions have been a highlight lately.  Adventurous and almost glamorous, they represent an excellence and technical virtuosity which leaves old men like me deeply moved.

My favorite shot is the parachute landing.

Bravo.

Tax money well spent

Home Again, Back Again, Jiggedy Jog

OK, I am over another of my hissy-fits and bouts of combined self-pity/self-importance.  Sorry about these, but sometimes the mood takes me and off I go.

I don’t think that I will bother announcing my return.  If you are reading this, you have either stumbled upon it or you are and old friend coming back by mistake.  Both of those are good enough for me, thank you very much.

Looking back on my fits of pique concerning Google and its business habits, I sadly shake my head and wonder about my ability to think things through.  Bitching the way that I do is little better than a child complaining about no having her cake and eating it too.  There is a price for the extraordinary communications ability offered by the internet, and a minimal loss of “privacy” is not an exceptional cost. 

The technical underpinnings of the internet are such that any expectation of privacy is sorely misplaced.  The TCP/IP protocol itself ensures that your mail can be read any number of places.  Hell, it almost begs for your mail to be read.

And consider the act with which I am now involved.  Blogging.  You are almost begging folks to come and read you.  If you are stupid enough to try and start a revolution in such a setting, you are sadly mistaken and don’t come whining to me when some nice gentlemen in suits come and visit you in your home.

So, it is back here again in bloggerland.  Maybe I will have another long stretch.  Maybe I won’t.

Feel free to stop by