Friday, June 17, 2022
Wednesday, June 15, 2022
Be careful what you wish for......
I am radically opposed to technology (it goes without saying), but also against politics and social reform. These oppressive disciplines have been invented by do-gooders, seeking the perfection of the world. They are, characteristically, in league with devils.
-David Warren, from "The beauty of a world in confusion"
Monday, June 13, 2022
Humility is always a good idea..............
"I was very puzzled when a year ago so many people were so confident that inflation was transitory," he said. "There was so much we didn’t understand about the post-COVID inflation that humility would have been a good idea."
Sunday, June 12, 2022
Quest...........................
What makes this country great, I think, is not what it gives us (which is considerable), but what it allows us to give to others.
When we talk about American enterprise, this is what we mean. When we talk about “building something”, that is what we’re really after. The opportunity to be a net positive on this Earth. A producer of something meaningful and lasting, not just a passive consumer of bread and circuses.
That is the real American Dream. Lest we forget.
-Gaping Void, from here
Miracles happen, or fun with numbers........
There are about eight billion people on this planet. So if an event has a 1-in-a-million chance of occurring every day, it should happen to 8,000 people a day, or 2.9 million times a year, and maybe a quarter of a billion times during your lifetime. Even a 1-in-a-billion event will become the fate of hundreds of thousands of people during your lifetime. And given the media’s desire to promote shocking headlines, you will hear their names and see their faces.
-Morgan Housel, from here
It would have certainly been interesting.........
Interesting thought experiment - ask yourself how the country would have been different if the Democrats had chose Marianne Williamson instead of Joe Biden in the last election. Kind of a fun exercise. Things couldn't have been worse under Williamson than under Biden. Maybe not even more goofy under Williamson.
-Chris Lynch, from here
Saturday, June 11, 2022
Opening paragraphs............
The blackest nighttime sky was suddenly shot through with powerful bolts of lightning that brightened the heavens and thundered like a lion making its presence known. While the violent electrical thunderstorm raged on, displaying the undisputed power and mystery of nature, a young mother labored in a small, one-window room with wood-planked flooring to birth a child who would be called Nikola. As she shook the bed, writhing in pain and joy, gale-force winds mercilessly battered manmade structures outside, while the midwife beside her was so frightened by the moment that she nervously said, "He'll be the child of the storm." His mother responded insistently, "No, of light." (History suggests they were both correct, as the life of Nikola Tesla would prove to ride the storm of bipolar disorder while lighting the world both literally and figuratively with his genius.)
-Marko Perko and Stephen M. Stahl, Tesla: His Tremendous and Troubled Life
Thursday, June 9, 2022
Believe it or not........................
..................I've never read a book written by James Patterson. That may change soon:
He insists that parents adopt an iron law: “We read in our house.”
The risk of undercharging................
At a time when everyone is wondering about the "cost" of things, it may help to remind yourself that what you get paid is a reflection of what you've done to be WORTH IT! This doesn't mean pulling a price randomly out of thin air. Nor does it mean only charging what "others" charge, either. That's because what YOU DID and what YOU DO to be worth it is YOURS ALONE.
-Matthew Ferrara, the story of how he learned not to undercharge for his services may be found here
expectations.............................
But this breathtaking increase in the money supply did not, at least immediately, set off inflation. For while inflation is a monetary phenomenon, it is also a psychological one: when the expectation of inflation becomes widespread, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
That prophecy was fulfilled in 2021. With the Biden administration continuing pandemic relief, which discouraged many for seeking work, and restricting oil and gas production, inflation set in. Supply chain issues also contributed.
By December 2021, consumer prices were up seven percent on an annual basis, the highest in 40 years, while producer prices were up 9.6 percent, the highest since that statistic has been compiled. And the expectation of further inflation is now deeply embedded in the economy.
Regardless of this, the Biden administration is still pushing hard for its "Build Back Better" plan, which would add at least another $5 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. And President Biden has airily said that "Milton Friedman is no longer in charge."
But unfortunately for the Biden presidency—and for the American people—Milton Friedman was right. Create too much money and you get inflation. We are witnessing the proof of that right now.
-John Steele Gordon, as he concludes this essay
Crashing...................
......in slow motion. In a billion years or so, our quiet little galaxy might be involved in a major collision. Is it too soon to worry? What do the computer models say? Back story and enlargeable photo are here:
Us folk involved...................
..........in the business of building things will take our blessings wherever we can find them.
Wednesday, June 8, 2022
Pirate stories.................
.................are worth reading. Read, and thoroughly enjoyed, the last two of these. The first one is on-order. Might suggest adding this one to the list:
Wisdom.................
The most critical component of your retirement plan is how you feel about yourself, not the size of your portfolio.
-Tony Isola, from here
surprise and mystery....................
So much beauty has grown from what at times seemed like impossibly stony ground.
The hopeful birth.........................
................of a subdivision: Episode 23:
We have had a rainy spring. Hard to put pipe in the ground when it is soaking wet. Having said that, progress is being made. The sanitary sewer main lines have been installed and we are about halfway through the installation of the storm sewer system. Nothing wrong here that a few dry weeks won't cure.
 |
| Preparing the ground for a storm structure |
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| Work completed about an hour ago |
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| Lifting the storm structure |
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| Attention to detail: cleaning mud off the bottom of the structure |
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| Put it right about there |
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| Right where it belongs |
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| D. R. Horton building out the 49 first phase lots |
customers.................
The reach and power of Giannini's branch banking empire in California was extraordinary, beyond the comprehension of people living outside the state. "I still can't realize that in forty years a man has built something out here that compels the awe—that's the right word, awe—of all New York," said an East Coast financial writer on his first trip to San Francisco in the late 1940s. With 504 branches and four million individual customers, Bank of America held the savings deposits of one out of every three Californians, or 40 percent of the state's total bank deposits. . . .
Giannini always remained the bank's most energetic booster. He would go to extremes to attract new depositors and to keep them as customers. He did this partly to reaffirm Bank of America's relentlessly promoted images as a "people's bank" and partly out of his own fierce competitive urge; there was no such thing as an unimportant customer. "When you sell people," he was fond of saying, "keep them sold."
As successful as Giannini was, nothing generated more public comment than his disregard for his own wealth. He saw no point in accumulating money or in surrounding himself with the signs of material success. The home in which he lived until the end of his life was the one he had purchased when he was selling fruits and vegetables on the San Francisco waterfront. The wardrobe of the man whom Fortune would include in its Hall of Fame of America's ten greatest businessmen consisted of four off-the-racks suits, three pairs of shoes, and a handful of shirts and ties. "My hardest job," he said on one occasion, "was to keep from becoming a millionaire."
Felice A. Bonadio, A. P. Giannini: Banker of America
a common effort....................
The socialist Robert Nisbet once lamented that no great state can really long endure without a common effort to create unity and a collective belief that it is exceptional or at least better than the alternative: "No government can hope to achieve anything of a political, social, and economic character that rises much above the level of a written statute unless there is present a sense of veneration for that government that is but another way of expressing patriotism." In other words, a state that does not exalt common citizenship itself loses credibility. Cynical citizens see no need to heed its rules.
-Victor Davis Hanson, The Dying Citizen
Tuesday, June 7, 2022
Steady as she goes...............
Hard money in the long run is more sustainable than easy money in the short run.
-Ben Carlson, as he looks to John Candy as an investing role model
mind-body learning..............
Tightly constrained by risk-averse, health-and-safety-obsessed society, many children are unable to light fires, paddle canoes, make shelters, use knives or cope with darkness. Further, children are discouraged from acts of physical courage and this is more serious than it appears, for we learn with our bodies as well as our minds—or rather we learn with the mind-body—and when we see our physical selves modelling bravery, our sense of moral courage, political courage, emotional courage or intellectual courage is heightened.
-Jay Griffiths, A Country Called Childhood
The adventure-monitor creeps up .......
The risk-averse society denies the very idea of freedom's role, it stops chance throwing a wild card, it kills the free play of luck. The adventure-monitor creeps up. pouring cold water on every fire-pit, banning people from bringing home-made cakes to school fetes. In the otherwise important UNICEF report into childhood well-being in 2007, the authors comment that health and safety "did not feature highly in children's priorities". Who knew?
-Jay Griffiths, A Country Called Childhood
heart...........................
When your heart is filled with gratitude for what you do have, your head isn't nearly so worried about what you don't.
fund-raising...............
War is, by far, the most expensive of all government operations. And both the Confederate and United States governments faced unprecedented financial stresses in funding the Civil War. How each of them met the challenge helped determine, in no small way, the outcome of the war.
Governments have only three ways to fund operations. They can tax, they can borrow, and they can print. Both governments did all three, but the particular mix was very different. The northern states had a much more advanced economy and a well-established financial system in place. As a result, the U. S. was able to throw much of the cost of the war onto the future. In 1860, the national debt had stood at $64 million. By 1866, it was at $2.7 billion, and about five percent of the North's population has invested in federal bonds. So the North was able to raise two-thirds of its revenues by borrowing. . . .
The South had to meet fully 50 percent of its revenue by printing money. State and City governments also printed money. And because the South lacked good paper mills and state-of-the-art printing facilities, counterfeiting flourished. Altogether, the South printed about $1.5 billion in that money, three times as much as the North, despite having only twelve percent of the circulating currency before the war and 21 percent of banking assets.
The result was catastrophic inflation. Prices rose 700 percent in the South in just the first two years of the war. As the war continued, the inflationary spiral deepened and the southern economy began to spin out of control. Living standards fell sharply while hoarding, shortages, and black markets spread, eroding popular support for the war.
-John Steele Gordon, from his essay Inflation in the United States
Monday, June 6, 2022
a special term.................
Money is just another commodity, no different from petroleum, pork bellies, or pig iron. So money, like all commodities, can rise and fall in price, depending on supply and demand. But because money is, by definition, the one commodity that is universally accepted in exchange for every other commodity, we have a special term for a fall in the price of money: we call it inflation. As the price of money falls, the price of every other commodity must go up.
And what causes the price of money to fall? The answer is very simple: an increase in the supply of money relative to other goods and services.
-John Steele Gordon, from his essay, Inflation in the United States
a work-in-progress............
Happiness comes from solving problems. The keyword here is "solving." If you're avoiding your problems or feel like you don't have any problems, then you're going to make yourself miserable. If you feel like you have problems that you can't solve, you will likewise make yourself miserable. The secret sauce is in the solving of the problems, not in not having problems in the first place.
To be happy we need something to solve. Happiness is therefore a form of action; it's an activity, not something that is passively bestowed upon you, not something that you magically discover in a top-ten article on the Huffington Post or from any specific guru or teacher. It doesn't magically appear when you finally make enough money to add on that extra room to the house. You don't find it waiting for you in a place, an idea, a job—or even a book, for that matter.
Happiness is a constant work-in-progress, because solving problems is a constant work-in-progress—the solutions to today's problems will lay the foundations for tomorrow's problems, and so on. True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.
-Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*uck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
melting-pot ethos......
America, which survived a gory civil war among political and geographical factions, has become so far one of history's few exceptions. The ultimate rationale of America's unique Constitution led Americans eventually to define themselves by their shared values, not by their inconsequential appearances. Eventually, most who were willing to give up their prior identities and assume a new American persona were accepted as Americans. The United States has always cherished its universally applicable melting-pot ethos of e pluribus unum—of blending diverse peoples into one through assimilation, integration, and inter-marriage in the manner that diverse colonies united to become one nation.
-Victor Davis Hanson, The Dying Citizen
On finding out........................
We are by now so accustomed to the cult of expertise that the very notion of honoring and paying heed to our directly felt experience of things—of insects and wooden floors, of broken-down cars and bird-pecked apples and the scents rising from the soil—seems odd and somewhat misguided as a way to find out what's worth knowing.
-David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology
conceptually malevolent................
This is why the risk-averse attitude of modernity is not only annoying but conceptually malevolent. It works against the correct instinct children have that they must find a working relationship with chance and risk . . .
-Jay Griffiths, A Country Called Childhood
Sunday, June 5, 2022
Traits for successful investing............
In fact, most of Buffett’s pithy aphorisms boil down to the same basic message: “Just be sensible.”
This may be easier said than done.
-from this HumbleDollar post
Unfortunately.............................
Mark Twain said kids provide the most interesting information, “for they tell all they know and then they stop.” Adults tend to lose this skill.
-Morgan Housel, from this post
Saturday, June 4, 2022
Fifty years ago................................
Checking in...............................
..........................with Matt Ridley:
Market failure is a favourite phrase; government failure is not.
To put my explanation in its boldest and most surprising form: bad news is manmade, top–down, purposed stuff, imposed on history. Good news is accidental, unplanned, emergent stuff that gradually evolves. The things that go well are largely unintended; the things that go badly are largely intended.
Life is a Sisyphean race, run ever faster toward a finish line that is merely the start of the next race.
Random violence makes the news precisely because it is so rare, routine kindness does not make the news precisely because it is so commonplace.
At some point, human intelligence became collective and cumulative in a way that happened to no other animal.
. . .simplicity piled upon simplicity creates complexity.
. . .time always erodes advantage
But if there is one dominant myth about the world, one huge mistake we all make, one blind spot, it is that we all go around assuming the world is much more of a planned place than it is. As a result, again and again we mistake cause for effect; we blame the sailing boat for the wind, or credit the bystander with causing the event.
American presidential politics is entirely based on the myth that a perfect, omniscient, virtuous and incorruptible saviour will emerge from the New Hampshire primary every four years, and proceed to lead his people to the promised land.
"Social media is induced insanity.".....................
...............Checking in with Martin Gurri:
On average, Americans spend 24 hours a week online—but a sizeable minority, 31%, exist almost entirely as virtual replicas of themselves. As with most addictions, the experience is at once compulsory and unbearable. The young internet was an adventure: users roamed the open spaces, surprised and delighted by what could be found there. Now, the flow of content resembles the ramblings of a disordered mind—except these are actual formulas, algorithms imposed by the inscrutable oligarchs of Silicon Valley.
Saturday, May 28, 2022
Day trading...........................
Going to the protest of the day, performing acts of slacktivism, hopping from urgency to emergency–this is how people who day trade in our culture are whipsawed. But the people who are consistently and actively changing the culture are not easily distracted. One more small action, one more conversation, one more standard established.
-Seth Godin, from here
Civilization.....................
The highest form a civilization can reach is a seamless web of deserved trust.
-Charlie Munger, as quoted here
melting......................
America, which survived a gory civil war among political and geographical factions, has become so far one of history's few exceptions. The ultimate rationale of America's unique Constitution led Americans eventually to define themselves by their shared values, not by their inconsequential appearances. Eventually, most who were willing to give up their prior identities and assume a new American persona were accepted as Americans. The United States has always cherished its universally applicable melting-pot ethos of e pluribus unum—of blending diverse peoples into one through assimilation, integration, and inter-marriage in the manner that diverse colonies united to become one nation.
-Victor Davis Hanson: The Dying Citizen
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Yep............................
To live through the last two years and still rebel at uncertainty is ridiculous, isn’t it?
-Morgan Housel, from this "Endless Uncertainty" post
Monday, May 23, 2022
Prerogatives..................
Fred Siegel pointed out how the longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer some seventy years ago could see the future contours of a working class regulated, controlled, and yet ridiculed by a new intellectual and bureaucratic elite.
"The masses are on the way out," he wrote. "The [elites] are finally catching up with us. We can hear the swish of leather as the saddles are heaved on our backs. The intellectuals, and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us." Hoffer foresaw the New Class that would try to govern the working people much as the colonial officials governed the natives. "They are," he wrote, "an army of scribes clamoring for a society in which planning, regulation, and supervision are paramount and the prerogative of the educated.
-Victor Davis Hanson, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America
Checking in............................
..................................Eric Hoffer:
It's disconcerting to realize that businessmen, generals, soldiers, men of action are less corrupted by power than intellectuals... You take a conventional man of action, and he's satisfied if you obey. But not the intellectual. He doesn't want you just to obey. He wants you to get down on your knees and praise the one who makes you love what you hate and hate what you love. In other words, whenever the intellectuals are in power, there's soul-raping going on.
We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.
Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.
In a world of change, the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned shall find themselves perfectly suited for a world that no longer exists.
Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.
Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.
We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength.
The uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an inner uncertainty than of deep conviction. The implacable stand is directed more against the doubt within than the assailant without.
Please...........................
So let’s stop the hyperventilation and get back to democracy. Persuade people, if you can. Get them out to vote. Stop demonizing those you disagree with and compromise with them in office, however difficult that may be. What Roe did was kickstart the extreme cultural polarization that has defined and blighted the last few decades of American politics. Maybe the end of Roe can mark the beginning of a return to living together, and negotiating a way to make that bearable.
The center, in other words, is now wide open. Will anyone — anyone — occupy it?
-Andrew Sullivan, from here
Sunday, May 22, 2022
Still true seventy years later.........
To frame a philosophy capable of coping with men intoxicated with the prospect of almost unlimited power and also with the apathy of the powerless is the most pressing task of our time.
Fifty years ago....................................
Wars.......................
So wars: what does it mean to win, what does it mean to lose? And the wars, of course, against yourself. I certainly am always at war one way or another with myself, and some of them are wars I must fight to try to slay the demons, to kill the dragon, to lay the ghost to rest. But there are other wars you fight with yourself to be more, to do more that you have it in you really to do or to be. I think of that wonderful line from one of the poems of my beloved Gerard Manley Hopkins whare he says, "My own heart let me more have pity on." My own heart let me more have pity on. That's a lovely phrase. Be merciful to yourself, stop fighting yourself quite so much. Maybe what you are asking of yourself, what you're driving yourself to do or to be, what you put a gun to your own back to make yourself do, is something at this point you needn't have to think about doing. So, think back at the end of the day to the wars you're involved in. How are they going?
Frederick Buechner, The Remarkable Ordinary
hereafter kind...................
My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather — as skies
Betweenpie mountains — lights a lovely mile.
An early disbelief in democracy..........
The word "aristocracy" tends to be used rather loosely. In the modern world, it is calculated by multiplying wealth by snobbery. During the early republic, on the other hand, it reflected the division of society into distinct ranks. Until the Revolution, wrote historian Bernard Bailyn, Americans had assumed "that a healthy society was a hierarchical society in which it was natural for some to be rich and some poor, some honored and some obscure, some powerful and some weak." Perhaps most important, "it was believed that superiority was unitary, that the attributes of the favored—wealth, wisdom, power—had a natural affinity to each other, and hence that political leadership would naturally rest in the hands of social leaders." In New York in particular, these natural leaders came from a closed set of families distinguished by an inherited prestige. . . .
Property requirements for suffrage under New York's constitution of 1777 hardened the culture of rank into law. Two distinct levels of wealth were required to vote: one for the state assembly, and a second and higher level for the state senators and governor—establishing a "three-tiered scaffolding of society," as Bruegel writes. In 1790, four of ten adult white men could not cast a ballot of any kind, in some places only one out of four could vote for the assembly, and one out of five for governor.
-T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
Friday, May 20, 2022
Pretty sure this applies........................
..................to more than investing:
It’s uncomfortable to say “I don’t know” but sometimes when it comes to investing that’s the safest place to be.
-Ben Carlson, from here
Opening paragraphs
Marriage was once represented as a field of battle rather than a bed of roses, and perhaps there are many who may still support this view; but just as Dr Maturin had made a far more unsuitable match than most, so he set about dealing with the situation in a far more compendious, peaceable and efficacious way than the great majority of husbands.
-Patrick O'Brian, The Ionian Mission
One trait Reagan and Trump..................
.................................shared: they understood the power of positive psychology and unleashed it.
If you thought that the economic news was crazy during the first half of 2022, just wait until we get to the second half. So many of the problems that we are experiencing now are going to continue to intensify, and Americans are becoming more pessimistic about economic conditions with each passing day. In fact, as you will see below, a whopping 85 percent of us believe that it is “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that the economy will go through a recession at some point during the next year. Of course the truth is that if all we have to suffer through is a “recession”, we would be extremely fortunate. Our leaders have lost control of the economy, and many of us are extremely concerned about what is coming next.
-from this Zero Hedge post
Thursday, May 19, 2022
Rising........................
Think about that for a minute. The worst decade [the 70's] since the Great Depression, one defined by high prices, poor equity and bond returns, and an overall malaise led to the creation of four of the strongest businesses this country has ever seen and the dynamic industry that shaped the American economy over the past four decades.
It’s likely still too early to even be asking this question, but are we going to endure a repeat of the 1970’s? I don’t believe so, but even if we do, there will be opportunities to rise from the fall. There always are.
-Ted Lamade, from this post
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
the inward detachment............
“To-day we live so cowed under the bombardment of this intellectual artillery (the media) that hardly anyone can attain to the inward detachment that is required for a clear view of the monstrous drama. The will-to-power operating under a pure democratic disguise has finished off its masterpiece so well that the object's sense of freedom is actually flattered by the most thorough-going enslavement that has ever existed”
The Decline of the West, Vol 2: Perspectives of World History (1928)In the background................................
The hopeful birth..........................
...................of a subdivision: Episode 22
Faithful readers will recall that we completed developed the 49 lots in Phase 1 of Conor's Pass sub-division late last fall. This past April we sold all of the lots to D. R. Horton, who is busily constructing houses on those lots. Horton asked us to start the 64 lot Phase 2 as soon as possible. While the weather could have been more cooperative, we are making progress. In a perfect world, we will be done laying the sanitary sewer mains next week.
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| The top of the photo shows the houses coming out of the ground in Phase 1. Phase 2 work is at the bottom of the photo |
On our active imaginations...........
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
Checking in ................
........................................Louis L'Amour
Do not let yourself be bothered by the inconsequential. One has only so much time in this world, so devote it to the work and the people most important to you, to those you love and things that matter. One can waste half a lifetime with people one doesn't really like or doing things when one would be better off somewhere else.
A book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.
“Up to a point a person’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and changes in the world about them. Then there comes a time when it lies within their grasp to shape the clay of their life into the sort of thing they wish it to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune or the quirks of fate. Everyone has the power to say, "This I am today. That I shall be tomorrow.
The more one learns, the more he understands his ignorance.
Actually, all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you an education. What you receive is like the outlines in a child's coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself.
The sunset was spectacular. The sky streaked itself with rose and the region of the sun became an indescribable glory. All my life I have used words, and yet I find times when they are totally inadequate.
Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.
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