Saturday, February 19, 2022

Time Is Here

 Fifty thousand trucks have settled themselves in Ottawa... Canada, that is, of all places.  Unlikely as that may seem to some, this is where the nexus of humanity and its innate, natural, and rightful freedom has broken the surface in a way I was unsure I'd ever see.

I have read that there are now half a million people connected to this protest in Ottawa, against the tyrannies of the endlessly corrupt Canadian "government", which makes this event non-trivial in the global context, so much more that of Canada.

Justin Trudeau has thus far acquitted himself in the poorest imaginable fashion, which should endlessly please everyone of good character.  Faced with the choice between hearing what the truckers have to say, and reacting like a wholesale despot, Trudeau chose the latter as he finally emerged from the sad little bunker to which he'd fled at the outset.  His reaction was to offer naught but threats and promises of criminal violence against those who dared question his unilateral edicts.  Having invoked "emergency powers", Trudeau has effectively declared martial law in Canada, himself emperor, and has by his lone hand criminalized all activities related to advancing the protest cause.  Trudeau has single-handedly declared the truckers as "terrorists" and has pronounced all aid to them as crimes, regardless of source.  

As if all that were not enough tyranty stuff to fill Trudeau's sottish, gas-inflated ego, he has further qualified himself as a foot-stamping little corporal by authorizing Canadian banks to seize the accounts of anyone or any entity so much as suspected of aiding the protesters.  The significance of this move would be difficult to overstate, as it is overt, bald-faced despotism that cannot in any way be credibly justified or otherwise explained away as not being old world styled repression.  In a way I find this very surprising, as the tyrannies of the "west" have been very soft in character since the end of World War II.  This is surprising because soft tyranny has proven so thoroughly successful over the past six or seven decades, leading one to wonder why this sudden stab backwards into so obviously totalitarian a move.  On the surface, it makes little sense, save that Trudeau is a true political imbecile.

Many will deplore Trudeau's admittedly rueful reaction to valid protest, but in point of fact we should all be beering it up in righteous and joyful celebration.   The cause here is that wittingly or otherwise,   Trudeau has painted himself into a very tight corner by acting as an amateurishly transparent oppressor.  In responding as he has, Trudeau has cut himself off from all other options apart from either his violent promises made manifest, or a crushing defeat in having to step off because he has thrown down the gauntlet, effectively declaring war on the protesters, and could not make good as dictator.  He could not have responded better than this, from the standpoint of pushing the central issue that has needed to come to the fore now for many long years.  He has narrowed his options to two: escalate into violence, or capitulate and look more the fool than he does now.  Either way, he loses.

The question of basic human freedom has now come under attack in the ostensibly "free" world in a way so blatant that nobody can credibly dress this third world tactic in a way that will make it appear as anything other than what it is.  And so with this development, which at first may have seemed not quite significant, an opportunity that may never again present itself has arisen in a most prominent manner.

Between the large-scale refusal of common men to be further abused by the cookie-cutter globalist runts, and the uncharacteristically foolish response of a third-rate, low-rent autocrat, a door of opportunity has swung wide for not only the Canadians, but a vast swath of humanity that could conceivably encompass even the Chinese.  We must force Theire hand.  Force it and keep forcing it until THEYE make the choice that WE impose on THEM.  We can do this.  We could stop Themme dead in their tracks, one way or the other, but we have to get a sense of what is needed, which really not much more than an utter and intransigent refusal to cooperate, and the will to stick with it to the better end, no matter what.

The question of liberty and the rights that follow most naturally, logically, and undeniably therefrom has come to the fore with unexpected clarity and force.  That question has been further put into type, italicized, bolded, and underscored by the wonderfully careless and myopically fumbled response of a true political nitwit, Justin Trudeau.  Perhaps most significantly, this wild blunder has come off not in some third-world backwater where the people of the "west" have come to expect such rank evil, but in their own house, where it has been blatantly turned on them in a way many have foolishly believed not possible.

I cannot overemphasize the significance of this turn of events, come what may.  If we allow this opportunity to pass, humanity stands to remain indefinitely in the New Dark Age in which it finds itself.  But if we see this development as a once in a thousand generations chance to set tyranny back on its heels and we decide to seize the opportunity and see it to its logical end, the quality of our lives could change immeasurably for the better.  That choice is the nexus to which I refer.  A gift of choice that I never thought to see in my lifetime has fallen into humanity's lap, as if by some dint of the Miraculous.  

A CHOICE.  When was the last time we saw a choice presented to us that rested beyond which laundry detergent, beer, pornographic production, or feminine hygiene product we might select for ourselves?

Time is here, and it is now.  If we fritter this away, our posterity will rue our decision.  WE will ultimately rue it because so far as I can see, the global Despot has shown his true face, whether by intention, or the feckless blundering of a nincompoop.  It has happened, it is fact, and I am not nearly convinced that Theye can now go back to things as they were, pre-covid.  Neither am I nearly certain that Theye wish to go back.  The gloves seem to be coming off and that puts the ball in our court: accede to the whim and caprice of the Tyrant, or stand firm, no matter what.

Be aware that in this endeavor, half-measures will avail us nothing, save the same end we would find if we  were to capitulate upfront.  We are at the doorstep of an all-or-nothing struggle where Theye are playing for keeps.  The only unanswered question is whether we, too, are playing in the same earnest devotion to our liberties as Theye are to our effective destruction.  Do not step up unless you intend on going all the way because there are no waypoints between here and there.

Finally, loathe as I am to give advice, I will do so this time by stating that the only correct answer in all this is to sign on against tyranny and give to the cause of freedom more and better than everything you've got.  The chances are that nobody alive today will ever again see such an opportunity.  Please don't allow this to simply fade into nothing.  Grab the chance to put the Tyrant down like the rabid beast that he is.  We don't have to become violent.  We just need enough of us to refuse cooperation.  If violence is to come, make Themme fire the first shots.  Never before has civil disobedience been more important.  Stand up and tell Themme "NO!"  I promise that it will make your life better than it is now, no matter how things work out.

Be well, and until next time, please accept my best wishes.


I wanted to use "cheap suit", but could not in all good conscience do so because dopey and despotic trash that he may be, Trudeau's suits are simply impeccably tailored, almost as good as my own.  Credit where due, even for cheap scoundrels.

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

There's Inflation And Then There's Inflation.

 Today we will address "inflation", the great. nemesis of economist and politician alike, not to mention the great wallet-rapist.

Before we can speak intelligently on the matter, it would seem fair to consult the dictionary in order that we may understand the meaning of "inflation".  To wit:


dictionary.com:  

 

inflation, noun

1. Economics. a persistent, substantial rise in the general level of prices related to an increase in the volume of money and resulting in the loss of value of currency (opposed to deflation).



Mirriam-Webster:

2: a continuing rise in the general price level usually attributed to an increase in the volume of money and credit relative to available goods and services.

 

wikipedia:

In economics, inflation refers to a general progressive increase in prices of goods and services in an economy.  When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, inflation corresponds to a reduction in the purchasing power of money.


As we can see, these definitions are neither very technical, nor are they rigorous.  They do, however, offer enough for the purposes of this discussion.  Almost.

The problem with most definitions of "inflation" is that they address only the most broad sense of its effect: the loss of purchasing power as made manifest by rising prices.  What they do not explain are the reasons for it, a problem we shall remedy forthwith.

To begin with, you should be made aware that in general there exist two basic sorts of inflation, each stemming from different causes and usually manifesting slightly differently in ways that are important to understand.

The two broadest categories of inflation are monetary and push-pull.

Monetary Inflation

So-called "monetary" inflation is more accurately termed "currency inflation" because the nations of the earth no longer use money, but only mere currency, the differences being fundamental, very significant, and constituting a discussion for another time.  The cause of currency inflation is the generation of ever higher volumes of currency.  But what does that actually mean?  Glad you asked.

Imagine a simple economy which has 100 units of commodities in its market, and 1000 units of currency in the hands of the people who constitute that market.  A simplistic statistical view of this arrangement might say that on average, for each item available for sale, there exists ten units of currency with which to purchase those commodities.  The imporant idea here is to realize that there is some notion of a ratio between what is available for purchase and the currency available for making a purchase.

If my some magical means we suddenly find our economy "blessed" with 2000 units of currency (yay, we're rich!), the ratio of commodities to currency has now halved from 1:10, to 1:20.  While this may superficially seem a good thing, there is a <AHEM...> price to pay for this turn of fortune, both literally and figuratively.  Now that people have twice the amount of cash in their wallets, what will they do with it all?  Save it, or spend?  Once again, keeping things simplistic, the tendency is to spend and in our little economy that is precisely what people do.  The deterrent to spending, which was the 1000 unit cap on available money, economy-wide, has been raised to twice its value, meaning a lowered deterrent.  People now feel freer to spend, and that tends to be precisely what they do.

As spending rises, the supply of available commodities falls and in classical economic fashion due to what must inevitably become competition between buyers for that which is available, prices rise.  This phenomenon is as predictable as the sunrise.  

Now, we all know that all else equal, when demand rises, producers will increase output, which tends to minimize inflationary increases, but we often still experience momentary increases in pricing until supply can catch up with demand, which leads us to the other type of inflation.

Push-Pull Inflation

The other type of inflation to which economies may be subjected is what I call "push-pull".  There are other names for it, but let us stick with this to keep things once again simple.  Push-pull inflation refers to the causes and consequences of supply and demand. 

Imagine once again a simple market within our economy, that for widgets of which there are 10 units available per unit of time and a consumption rate of 10 units per unit of time.  In other words, the push (supply) side and the pull (demand) side are in equilibrium. Let us further say that the current going price of a widget is 2 units of currency.  

A change in the push-side circumstance leading to a decrease in the number of available widgets will cause stresses in the pull-side of the economy.  The same number of people will be competing for a decreased number of widgets.  The same result is realized when the demand for widgets rises, once again illustrating how the ratio of demand-to-supply is the key factor in determining price in this type of inflation.  

A fine real-world example can be seen in the precious metals markets from a few decades ago when several of the largest platinum mines in South Africa were taken offline for necessary upgrading.  When the mines announced the projected five-year shut downs, Japanese car manufacturers immediately begain buying up ever scrap of rhodium on which they could get their hands on in anticipation of shortages.  Rhodium is a byproduct of platinum mining and is essential to the production of catalytic converters as the actual catalyst.  No catalyst, no converter.  No converter, no can sell cars in first-world markets.  No sell cars, no eat supper or pay mortgage.  This was a very big deal.

Because of this precipitous rise in demand, the price of rhodium shot up from $900/ozt to over $27K/ozt!

To make this example even more perfectly illustrative, when the mines announced their reopening two years earlier than predicted, the price of rhodium fell through the floor even more quickly than it had risen, and many people lost their shirts in the deal, which further teaches us that it is unwise to speculate in precious metals markets, especially under such conditions.

As the supply-to-demand ratio lowers, prices rise (inflation).  If the ratio rises (increased supply-to-demand), prices tend to fall (deflation).

So What's The Difference?

If the net effect of inflation is increased prices regardless of cause, then why should we be concerned with the differences in those causes?  Precisely this: the tendency with push-pull inflation is to be momentary with eventual correction to normal, all else equal.  Free markets by their nature tend to adjust to the vicissitudes of supply and demand.  Any sudden and sharp changes in either supply, demand, or both tends to lead to changes in prices, but these changes tend to be narrow in effect, though that is not always the case.  

For example, if there is a sudden drop in the availability of Unobtainium, the raw material from which widgets are made, the price of widgets will rise, but the price of milk and bread are likely to remain unmoved.  If, on the other hand, the economy finds itself suddenly short of crude oil, the effects may be far more widespread because petroleum is a far more basic commodity than is Unobtainum. While the one effects only the production of widgets, the other makes itself felt in plastics, energy, lubricants, transportation, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, and a host of other areas.

But on the whole, push-pull inflations do tend to be far less deeply and widely felt, and tend to correct themselves over time.

Currency inflation, on the other hand, tends to be very long term at best, and is most often permanent with far broader and deeper effects because the currency touches quite literally every corner of the economy.  One thing that should be understood here is that currency is also a commodity.  It is, in fact, the universal commodity.  In this respect, its effects are very much like that of physical market commodities such as Ubobtainium and petroleum, and we can now clearly see then that the ratio of the universal commodity to the demand side is crucial to the state of prices in the economy.  As that ratio rises (supply goes up), it's price (effective value) falls in perfect harmony with the theory of supply and demand.  The value of a unit of currency is directly tied to its ability to purchase, say, a widget.  The more units required per widget, the lower the value per unit currency.

The reason currency inflation tends toward the permanent is because money supplies rarely contract.  Once generated and released into the wild, a unit of currency becomes somewhat difficult to retrieve, mainly because people generally do not much cotton to giving up their cash for nothing in return, which is the very definition of theft, and which is why people are typically unhappy about taxation.  Imagine that.


It ain't rocket surgery.

And So Summing It All Up...

We now understand the two basic categories of inflation and how they tend to effect prices.  We have learned that it's really all about relative values as expressed in the ratios of things like units of currency available for spending in the context of given amounts of available commodities for purchase.  We have noted that with push-pull inflation the rises in price tend to be momentary and narrowly applied, whereas with currency inflation the rise in prices tends toward the very long term or permanency and hits the economy universally, leaving no market untouched.

And so we can now readily see that when the great intellects of "government" begin churning out currency in the ways we have been witnessing with the central banks like the Federal Reserve, it is no wonder that the currency inflation has been so high over the past century, especially after nations abandoned the so-called "gold standard" where a unit of paper currency actually represented a corresponding unit of physical gold, which for example was the original definition of a "dollar".

I will finish by stating without the least trace of equivocation that currency inflation serves you no whit of good, especially if you have cash savings.  Currency inflation is always induced and has, along with outright taxation, been a primary means of stealing away the accumulated wealth of presumably hard-working and honest people.  This is a topic all its own and has been covered extensively by others far better qualified to expound on the matter than am I.

It is my wish that you will come away from this little discussion a little more smartly aware than you were prior and that this knowledge with serve to motivate you to make better educated choices based on improved views on the matter at hand and that you will realize the import of these issues.  Discuss them with your families, friends, and anyone else who will listen, for this is the brand of information of which Theye are well pleased to have you remain ignorant.

Don't let Themme win.  We still retain the ability to throw the vampires from out necks, but it isn't going to happen by itself and you can be damned certain that there is no cavalry on its way to save the day.  We either save ourselves by coming together as Freemen watching each others' backs as effective covers of our own, or we sit idly, perhaps wringing our hands as the Tyrant closes the noose we have allowed him to place around our necks.

Give it all some good thought, and here's to hoping you come to the good conclusions and decisions.

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.


Sunday, February 13, 2022

The Chinese Labor Trap

The flight of American manufacturing to China represents a colossal failure of creative thought and, perhaps more significantly, effort... not to mention basic intelligence.

When the cheap slave labor of China was dangled before stupid American businessmen as so much obvious bait, it was snapped up rapidly with no apparent thought to the strategic implications of acceptance.

Like a horde of cow-eyed idiot-children, boards of directors flashed to accept the shiny objects held out to them, failing to consider that those false jewels were resting in the maw of the largest economic trap of all human history. Those people CHOSE to naively accept the Chinese promise of increased profits, etc., with no regard to the broader economic and political implications of placing one's own testes into the hands of a smiling, reassuring, yet bitterly covetous enemy.

The failure of intellect, care, regard, and moral sense must rank in the top three since the days of Sumer. We have not only abandoned our own better interests by investing so much as a penny into the Chinese economy, we have aided and abetted the raving evil that is the Chinese government in the industrialized enslavement of their own people.

It may now be too late to repair to better circumstances. The economics of our foolishness having shifted so fundamentally in a direction that superficially appears an improvement, it has in fact proven the handing over of our own economy to a dangerous adversary. The CCP is keen on seeing America neutralized and perhaps even eventually conquered in some manner and degree, That seemingly unlikely reality can be well argued as already having occurred.

I contend that it lies in America's interests to abandon China, if it is in any way economically feasible, and return to a more vertically integrated economy. The lie of global interdependence, replete with its concomitant sub-lies such as just-in-time inventory, are all very appealing on their surfaces, but they operate on the grand assumption of everything remaining hunky dory between potential enemies. This is not commonly paid due attention in the business schools, this single underlying assumption that ignores the very real politics that underpins most economic reality. This grand lie of global economic harmony between happy workers waving their little red books and their foreign counterparts and consumers is so glaringly flawed as to defy belief that anyone with a shred of sense would forward such an absurdity. Add to that the failure of American businesses to stockpile strategically vital resources in anticipation of hard times due to the beguiling lie of "just in time" inventory, and you have basically chosen to play Russian roulette with all six chambers loaded.

Neutralizing the labor cost advantage of Chinese slave workers is key to the extrication of America's head from China's ravening and rabies-contaminated jaws. Tariffing Chinese imports would seem the only viable way toward repatriation of American businesses. The economic forces are just too powerful to do it any other way, barring some quantum advance in manufacturing technology that would itself serve to render China economically irrelevant to broader global economic interests. THAT is the creative American genius that appears to have vanished in the wake of foolishly misguided visions of unprecedented profit, as if such extreme transformations occur without commensurate cost in some other form. There are no free lunches, a maxim the great tycoons of the 1980s willfully abandoned for the sake of a necessarily temporary competitive advantage.

China must be thrown off, or we will be inevitably consumed by their soulless regime, which I suspect is the Chinese objective for America and much of the rest of the world.

Finally, as China cannot maintain the same slave labor rates indefinitely, Chinese wages have risen and will almost certainly continue to rise. This spells eventual doom for American manufacturers who relied so heavily on what was essentially free labor for their competitive advantage and the ability of offer those low low KMart prices. So what then, once the labor cost advantage is wiped out to the degree that it is no longer even worthy of the mention? The prices everyone sought so frenetically will be history and we will all be paying the same old high prices regardless of country of origin. The trap will have been sprung and we stand to be stuck in it. I suppose we might be able to extricate ourselves, but consider the waste it all represents, not to mention the dangers.

It will be interesting to observe how this evolves over, say, the coming decade or so. One cannot predict what the future will hold, save to say that things will change as they always do.

Good luck and keep your chins up, for all is not yet lost

Until next time please accept my best wishes.

The Curse Of Mediocrity



Today it is my intention to wax a mite stridently opinionated on matters that may not seem to have much to do with freedom, but actually do. Proper human freedom requires much of men, including intelligence, smarts, generosity, honor, courage, and a whole host of other characteristics that many neither possess nor have any interest in acquiring.

I must beg your patience and indulgence for my little vent. Thank you in advance.





Planned obsolescence strikes me as a colossal failure of creative thinking. It reminds me of the Patent Office official who resigned because he had decided there was no point in continuing because everything that could be invented, had been.


I saw this brand of failure daily and for forty years had to deal with it in my profession (software/business R&D) and the fact that it is so interminably widespread leaves my brain numb. Far too many people are far too willing to simply give up.


On the one hand is the vulgar man whose dullardly lack of creative imagination and drive befouls the earth. On the other, we see his diametric opposite: those who press on regardless, working each problem as it arises, perceiving them as challenges and puzzles to me met and solved, rather than causes to quit.

The engineers at Chrysler in the 1960s were such men. When the Hemi came on to the NASCAR scene, ca 1964, they crushed the competition. NASCAR, being an example of the dullard, imposed restrictor plates on the hemis to reduce mass flow into the cylinders.


Undeterred, the Chrysler engineers worked the problem to the point that the engines produced more power with the restrictor plates, than without, leading said dullards at NASCAR to ban the Hemi outright. This is the way of the common-as-dirt human world, where the mean man - the inarticulate mob of mediocrity - hates the superior man because of the shame to which their betters put them. And so the excellent, if they become too excellent, must be shouted down. A fine example of this is a passage in the novel "Shibumi" by Trevanian, ca. page 108 where the General speaks to Nikolai on this very point. The one paragraph alone makes the entire book worth the reading.  To wit:

“Your scorn for mediocrity blinds you to its vast primitive power. You stand in the glare of your own brilliance, unable to see into the dim corners of the room, to dilate your eyes and see the potential dangers of the mass, the wad of humanity. Even as I tell you this, dear student, you cannot quite believe that lesser men, in whatever numbers, can really defeat you. But we are in the age of the mediocre man. He is dull, colorless, boring — but inevitably victorious. The amoeba outlives the tiger because it divides and continues in its immortal monotony. The masses are the final tyrants. See how, in the arts, Kabuki wanes and withers while popular novels of violence and mindless action swamp the mind of the mass reader. And even in that timid genre, no author dares to produce a genuinely superior man as his hero, for in his rage of shame the mass man will send his yojimbo, the critic, to defend him. The roar of the plodders is inarticulate, but deafening. They have no brain, but they have a thousand arms to grasp and clutch at you, drag you down.” 


True excellence is hated by lesser men stemming from the shame of the mediocre man who understands his willful insufficiency, even if only unconsciously.

In his book "Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance", Robert Pirsig makes valid and eminently worthwhile arguments concerning not only the nature of quality, but its lasting and forward-looking value.  His other truly significant point lies in the emphasis on the development of rhetorical skill in the individual, the single most important capability any human being has ever acquired, or ever will.  The stronger the rhetorical skill of a man, the more powerfully is he able to reason.  The significance of this cannot be overstated.  The tome is very much worth the reading and I recommend it to anyone seeking deeper truth.

Obsolescence in many areas comes naturally as new technologies emerge. There is nothing wrong with this, and it has in fact brought many good things into our lives. But the mindset that intentionally designs and builds junk, either in the morbidly mis-proportioned  pursuit of profit or the anticipation of new technologies to come is a cancer that should, and indeed one day may, be excised. Looking back to the days when General Motors started down the path of this rotten and ultimately myopic world view of quality, the consumer was very naive, and understandably so. The result was unspeakable waste, but today we can no longer afford to be so spendthrift in our habits, and because of all this the consumer is beginning to push back, which is a good thing.

Consumers are tired of the junk coming to them from places like China.  And yet, they remain reticent to pay more for articles of higher quality.  This is a very big problem, but perhaps with sufficient disappointment may come a change in those attitudes.

Old habits die hard and that of our miserable paucity in creative problem solving remains stubbornly ensconced in the minds of those whose very livelihoods are centered on finding better solutions to the challenges of providing for a growing world, the process of which places ever greater stresses upon resources. We can no longer afford such failshort habits. Time to find our love of true excellence, rather than the low-standards that have hitherto been mislabeled as such. Time to grow up.

Be well, pardon my rant, and until next time please accept my best wishes.