Extra Bacon, If You Please

Drove down to see Mom in Ogden,  800 miles in the Town and Country (circa 1999) and listening to albums from my youth.  Didn't spend much time  on the freeway.  Got off about sixty miles into the trip and went on back roads to sooth my soul.

Eastern Oregon is currently a smokey mess.  But the drive was still beautiful, didn't get past fifty-five much and stopped at orchards and ate some of the best apples and plums that I have had for quite some time.

The roads out west are in great shape, lots of fed funding going into projects.  The only bad area was when I got down into Utah, where, due to the miracle of low taxes and small government, the roads and the schools suck.

I'm sitting in a Einsteins bagel store in Ogden, just had a garlic bagel with a schmeer for breakfast and now I am watching the archetypical Utah princess order her breakfast, her iPhone held in at breast level front of her, in the properly worshipful pose that has so recently become enshrined.

Mom is declining, I just came down to visit and had the good/bad fortune to arrive at the same time as a particularly bad spell.  When I walked through the door, she was grey and looked like hell, the nurses didn't hold out much in the way of hope.  I got hold of my Uncle and made arrangements for Extreme Unction.  But, thankfully, she rallied and pinked up nicely.  I was feeling a lot better when I left.

I'll head over soon and sit with her for a while.  She is completely out of it, I won't linger too long.

Been Busy

It is strange that I feel guilty when I don’t write something up here in Ephemeraland.  I do enjoy the process, but feeling like it is a responsibility is a little show of solipsism that causes a relatively greater amount of embarrassment than guilt.

Finishing up the week, shlepping kids, working and going into the autumn doldrums have eaten up all of my hours of the day of late.  For all the time spent, I still have not managed to accomplish anything of worth.  Just one of those times. 

Now I am packing up to go check on my Mom.  Pack the car drive to Utah, and see how the folks in the euphemistically-named “memory care facility” are doing.  Hell, what this has taught me more than anything is that I really don’t care if I die (we all will), but Alzheimer's scares the living bejesus out of me.

I am bringing along my computer, so maybe I can get some posting done while I am out and about.

Man...I hate this

I have been going hammer and tongs at an idea lately, and it just isn't panning out well.  I keep tripping over the "what-ifs" and they keep it from being ready to post.

More and more, I am getting jealous of folks like John Michael Greer, Jim Kunstler, or Dmitri Orlov,  who seem to be able to deliver thoughtful and internally consistent posts on a routine basis.  At best, I do OK, but their stuff always seem to shine.

While having this soapbox is a great thing, it also reminds me what hard work sitting down and writing well is.  I think that it would have to be exhausting.  Best I can do is hope for a batting average that would better fit a journeyman utility infielder.

Much of blogoland is some pretty low quality stuff, myself included.  I think that we should applaud the good ones more than what we do currently.

Thinking

I have been beating an idea about for a couple of days now.  Adam Smith won't be please about my latest thoughts.  Be patient, I'm working on it.  I am spending time picking holes in the central thesis and patching leaks.

Which Path to Choose?

What we here in the world calls sanity has led us into the present planetary crises.  That is a paradox worth some kind of consideration.

Share of Men in Labor Force at All-Time Low - So What?

Share of Men in Labor Force at All-Time Low - NYTimes.com:

Now, this little article is there as proof that things are moving along reasonably smartly in the women's equality front.  But it comes back to one of my ongoing questions that no one seems to want to answer: What do we do to provide jobs for dumb people.  There are a lot of them out there.

Men, when they took up the lions share of the workforce had to make due with a lot of dumb men in the workforce.  Luckily, the workforce of those times had a nice compliment of unskilled labor jobs to provide for dumb people.  Nowadays, not so much so.  Women make just dandy office workers, doctors, and other work not having physical strength and a mule-like outlook as it's principal requirements.

I am thinking that one of these days we are going to have to deal with this little problem.  We have been creating a workplace where smart workers are a requirement.  Not educated workers, smart workers.  What the hell do we do to provide the dumb people a decent life and a place in our society.

Nothing is going to happen just yet

Not that things aren't getting weird, I just think that a whole bunch of time and energy are being expended making sure that the lid stays on the pot.  Things are burbling along merrily, but in truth, the strategy of kicking the can down the road has worked reasonably well and things aren't as bad as they could have been.

Oh, now I know that some of you are squawking about me saying this, but Bennie and Barry have ran up the credit card to keep the system afloat, and they have pretty much succeeded to this point.  Whether or not they can keep the party going is another thing altogether.  I am just waiting to see how the whole thing shakes out.

There is a school of thought out there that holds tight to the thought that the longer it takes, the more volatile the outcome.   That is parroted around the internet in Doomerville as an undeniable truth, but I can't really say that I can find any concrete proof that it will work out that way this time.

I remember reading somewhere that if a woman was born on the day that Louis the fourteenth died, she would have been a elderly grandmother when the tumbrils rolled to the Place de la Revolution.  I would argue that if you use the Eisenhower administration as a reference point as the pinnicle of American power, we are only 2/3's of the way to the party.  If you use the Roosevelt administration as your reference point, we are only just getting ready to enter the home stretch.

Being a prepper and a doomer is an odd sport.  I think that it important to hope that you are wrong and things will get through adequately.  Your preparations and your fears are there as a gauge, not as an auto-pilot.  I think that way that the world is being run will have to change.  We will all end up poorer and living in a more fragile system.  We will have to adapt to new realities and change our behaviors significantly.   This simple fact doesn't mean the revolution will come tomorrow.

I certainly hope it doesn't and I sincerely hope that the can will be kicked down the road further.  Times are hard enough now that making the adjustment to an even lower standard of living will not improve my temper.

Worth Listening

Note:  This was originally published over at WordPress during my most recent pouting-fest. The picture above is a detail from a vase from  Exekias CA 540-530 BCE Greek- Archaic Vase of Ajax and Achilles playing dice

Josephus is one of my friends and he still out there, trying to nail down his first billion.  I support him completely in this endeavor and wish him the best.  Mostly is this is because he has put him money where his mouth is and went out, started a company, worked his butt off, and stands to lose if the deal doesn’t go down.  He is in the first stage of clinical trials after stellar performances in animal and toxicology studies, I have my fingers crossed and keep him in my prayers.

He had some fine news about his business recently, and after I had called him to congratulate him, I got to thinking about what it is we call “Investment” here in the good old USA.  Ponzi scheme keeps coming to mind.  But it is a diffuse sort of Ponzi, not run like the good Mr. Madoff ran his, nope it is a Ponzi scheme where the early-adopters cream the benefits and the firm just is there to provide the press releases essential to the pump and dump operation that we call Wall Street.

In this pump and dump scheme, the actual company gets a very limited amount of the money involved.  They get the share price off of the initial IPO to build the firm and to make the ideas happen in the real world.  Once a share has passed the IPO stage, the stock price increases accrue solely to the person(s) who bought the shares in the IPO.  The firm gets nothing.  This is good and fair and the way that it should be.  It is what happens after that is what is wrong.

Now that the share has been sold post IPO, it is a piece of paper that accrues nothing to the firm.  Now I realize that the firm will retain additional shares and sell them at need, so the rise in stock price will provide value to the firm, but really, the money made after the IPO from the passing back and forth of these initial shares is gambling by others.  The current state of the American economy reflects this penchant  for gambling.  Nothing is really built, the wealth of the past is traded back and forth between people trying to make a little money selling to greater and lesser fools.  No productivity is enhanced, no new ideas are built.  Just a big casino where people live and die at the roll of the die.

The management of the firm is playing another game entirely.  The give themselves compensation in shares for the job that they are being paid to do.  The shares that they are given are a time honored way of looting a company that you work for.  The management gets coin that doesn’t show directly in the W2 and they don’t pay taxes at the “Income” rate, they pay taxes at the “capital gains” rate, which is a pretty big savings.

So what say we just get rid of the capital gains tax on this no capital gain capital gain.  Now, I can imagine you all squealing out there….read on.  Lets start looking at capital gains as only applying  on the money that accrues directly to the firm in the case of an IPO or sale of the stock from the firm to the public or any subsequent money made by the firm selling retained shares .  If the money from the sale is from the first iteration of stock sales, that it, the money that allows the firm the capital base to expand it operations, the profit from the sale of these shares should be tax-free.  Once the shares have been sold by the initial purchaser of the shares from the IPO, all proceeds would be taxed at full income tax rates. 

The profits made by any compensation to an individual in terms of shares would be taxed at income taxes.   All stock issued as compensation would be entered as income at the share price of the day of award and taxes paid upon the the value of the shares.  All profits made from the sale of the stock in subsequent years would be subject to income tax.

Now there are going to be a bunch of people who will give any number of good reasons why this shouldn’t be done.  One of the big ones is that the share prices themselves will come crashing down.   I will even allow this as a truth.  The prices of shares, if they are treated as a means for firms to accrue money for the development of capital would be significantly less than the amount of money that they fetch as casino chips.  So the IPO share price would decrease and the amount of money available for capital projects would be decreased.  As a response to this I merely smirk and point to the recent IPO of facebook to make my point.

The other reason people will throw out is that people will be effected by the loss of their savings in the stock market if this plan is put into place.  Well, it is the stock market, people lose their shorts all the time.   The loss would be hellish at first, but it looks like we are heading that way anyway, maybe some folks smarter than me could create a system to cushion an inevitable fall.

Arbitrage

From WikiPedia

In economics and finance, arbitrage ( /ˈɑrbɨtrɑːʒ/) is the practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets: striking a combination of matching deals that capitalize upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices. When used by academics, an arbitrage is a transaction that involves no negative cash flow at any probabilistic or temporal state and a positive cash flow in at least one state; in simple terms, it is the possibility of a risk-free profit at zero cost. 

In principle and in academic use, an arbitrage is risk-free; in common use, as in statistical arbitrage, it may refer to expected profit, though losses may occur, and in practice, there are always risks in arbitrage, some minor (such as fluctuation of prices decreasing profit margins), some major (such as devaluation of a currency or derivative). In academic use, an arbitrage involves taking advantage of differences in price of a single asset or identical cash-flows; in common use, it is also used to refer to differences between similar assets (relative value or convergence trades), as in merger arbitrage. 

People who engage in arbitrage are called arbitrageurs (IPA /ˌɑrbɨtrɑːˈʒɜr/)—such as a bank or brokerage firm. The term is mainly applied to trading in financial instruments, such as bonds, stocks, derivatives, commodities and currencies.

It is the heart and soul of what we have become.  Money for nothing.  Chicks for Free.

But, while I want to say that the the description really only applies to the political class, or even the financial class, I am afraid that it just ain't so.  From the chump (and I include myself) buying a lottery ticket to the purveyors of CDO's and other such chicanery, we are all complicit in rebelling against getting up and going to work everyday.

There is a Buddhist saying;  “Before enlightenment chop wood – carry water, after enlightenment chop wood carry water."   It would appear that we have twisted a simple truth to read, “before enlightenment Chop Wood – Carry Water, after enlightenment get someone else to do it for you!!!”

Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?

Eccleiastes 3-22

A Discussion of the Coming Irrelevance of `Desktops and OS

I have been using Linux on my personal computer as the OS for years now.  I Started with SUSE 6.2 back at the turn of the millennium and waffle back and forth between distros.  I used Macs when I owned my own business, I used Windows when other people paid my bills.  Hell, for that matter, I remember back to the VAX-VMS days with RSTS as the OS or HP3000's with HPUX.

They all do the same thing in different ways.  They all have their strong points and weak points. But in general they are pretty much the same tool, as envisaged by different manufacturers.  I really think that you should all take the time to read "In the Beginning was the Command Line" by Neal Stephenson to get an excellent analysis of the different flavors and as well as some old discontinued flavors.

Everything that I have spoken of is centered around the idea of the computer as a general purpose tool, a do-it-all, Swiss Army Knife kind of logic engine that could get down and solve any problem that you care to feed to it.  This is passé except to an oddball aficionado such as your humble correspondent.

The use of a general purpose tool is not for the greater bulk of the populace.  What most folks want is an appliance to perform specific tasks for them, when and where they want those specific tasks done.  They also seem to have a particular desire for the simplistic and the vacuous (e.g. Facefook).   So when you couple the massive overkill of a general purpose operating system with the huge indifference of the great mass of users and you have a system of irrelevant power applied to trivial wants.

Apple was the first company to recognize this trend.  Their OS is still marginal with only maybe seven percent of the install base, so it isn't the Macintosh that is driving the increase in value of that company. No, the Mac is just a tarted up rendition of BSD that works just dandy but is no great shakes.

What Apple discovered is the vacuous needs of the general population and exploited them ruthlessly.  Pop music a la iPod, Facefook a la iPhone, fifty shades of smut on your iPad.

Google Android is trying to break into the exploitation of the masses, but the Apple lawyers have been guarding the gates, trying to keep the others from doing to their appliances what Microsoft did to their Macintosh.   This is where the money is, this is where the main attention will be paid.

So that leaves us with the trusty computer upon which I am writing this screed.  The damn thing is grossly overpowered for the tasks that I give it, and it important to remember that the damn thing is five years old, runs dual pentium chips, has two gig of RAM, cost me $399.00 and is still too much for what I have it do.

The truth of the matter is we are moving past general purpose computing.  Oh they will always be there for folks who need them. But the masses will want simple and fashionable, hence the iPads, the Surface, Kindle Fire, Nexus, and other such scaled down and simplified systems.  They aren't there for people to create content. they are there for people to consume the content.

The general purpose operating system world will gradually become more and more self-referential and specialist in nature.  It will gradually devolve into a set of specific tools designed to facilitate the provision of content.

The mothership is dying.

Not Quite a Plug, a Fainthearted, Lukewarm Endorsement

Keynes is always ready to contradict not only his colleagues but also himself whenever circumstances make this seem appropriate. So far from feeling guilty about such reversals of position, he utilizes them as pretexts for rebukes to the less nimble-minded. Legend says that while conferring with Roosevelt at Quebec, Churchill sent Keynes a cable reading, “Am coming around to your point of view.” His Lordship replied, “Sorry to hear it. Have started to change my mind.”

Reference:  See Link Here

Google is an odd intermediary.  The system of server farms and fairly good applications serve the overall internet fairly well.

That being said, we now dive into one of my ramblings.  First things first, don't kid yourself, the "freedom" of the internet is no such thing.  Nor can it be any such thing as long as the capital expenditures and human input required to keep such a mass moving is as extraordinary as it is.  That amount of investment does not lend itself to freedom.  It has to be a pretty controlled and be there for a purpose.

Some of the folks are going to go into gibbering shit-fits when they read this, but I really find that Google provides enough valuable service that I may have to consider my objections into their incursions into the zone of "privacy" as a necessary evil required by the convenience of the set of tools that they can provide.

So, I am back here at Blogger, dealing with a fairly robust interface that lets me do what I want to do (more or less) for free.  I can ramble on for a bit, save, read what I have written, change and delete it.  They track the people who visit my humble site, let me know when other folks disagree (or occasionally agree) with me, all for the small cost of their reasonably subtle attempts to sell me shit.

My opinion is a fickle thing, an ongoing piece of work being molded around a subtle and multifaceted world.   Always remember, a conclusion is just a marker for the point where you stopped thinking about a subject.

100,000

Over at StatCounter I have been keeping track of the unique visitors to this site for the past couple of years.

100,000 unique visits since I started counting. Wow.  Not at all bad bad when you count in the fits of pique, surly pouts, and bouts of boredom.

It is always surprising and somewhat humbling when I realize that people actually read this stuff.

This blog started when I was staring out over the skyline of Bangkok, bored out of my skull and sick of watching westerners come in to go-a-whoring in the land of smiles.  Slow and boring start.

I started writing in a serious way when the company I was working for went under in '08 and I couldn't find a job for around 56 weeks of trying.  Actually got my most hits and did my best stuff.  I had the time to think about it.  I kept at it as a hobby for all these years, Got pissy with Google, realized that I was being useless, came back, repeated the process later.

I have taken long vacations from this avocation and written some astonishingly lame stuff during the tenure.

My most popular post was back in '09.  Got grundles of unique visitors. (347 on a single day).

My favorites are:

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Mostly I want to thank you all for allowing me this soapbox and giving of your time to read my thoughts.  I wish they were all gems, but that isn't in the realm of my meager abilities.