Glibertarians.com 2018 Archive

Category: Musings

  • You Looking at Me?

    It’s a pity that, “Why don’t you take a picture? It’ll last longer” doesn’t translate into anything but gibberish in Japanese. The old fart at the coffee shop is staring at me. Normal people here look away once you bust them ogling you like Steven Gawking, but not these old guys. They’re bored and going to the coffee shop and people watching is their low cost entertainment. My initial reaction is to tell Mr. Miyagi that I don’t want to learn the crane technique and I’m glad his wife died. That is just an evil first thought, so I default to what I usually do in these situations; give the guy the benefit of the doubt.

    So what possible reason could Miyagi have for this atrocious behavior? Maybe his wife really did die and his only connection to humanity is these brief moments with strangers. Maybe his eyes are shot and, while I made eye contact, he simply saw a blob of whiteness sitting across from him. Maybe he’s been fucked by a system that promised him respect after decades of busting his ass at work, but, once he retired, they changed the rules and everyone makes jokes at his expense. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t give a shit about the rules.

    I just fucking hate being stared at. Let me think about that. Why? Maybe it’s because I’m a middle child with five siblings. In our family it was prison rules; if you’re staring, you wanna fight. Damn. That’s more an indictment of my faulty interpretation of the situation than it is a critique of Miyagi’s lack of social grace. Would I have gleefully accepted the gaze of a geezer 40 years later if I hadn’t been raised with psychos?

    To me, the benefit of the doubt doesn’t mean giving the other person a generous interpretation of their behavior. It’s about questioning the little story I’ve concocted to justify why I feel the way I do. FFS, I love the look of pretty young things when I’m the object of a crisp glance. If I was having a cup of coffee and a 7 foot 5 inch guy sat across from me, I’d probably stare, too.

    I can’t say why they do it, but Japanese people tend to give you the benefit of the doubt through their reactions, if not their thoughts. Maybe they do want to kick your ass when you bump into them on the sidewalk, but a “sumimasen” flies from their lips instead. Different culture and it seems to work because they have much fewer problems in the social sphere than we do.

    My brother and I were having a jolly conversation on the train a few years back. We got to his station and he got off so I made some stupid faces at him through the window as the train chugged past him on the platform. This pissed off some tiny old man on the train, and he extended his arm so his palm was an inch from my face and held it there.

    Somewhat crowded train, so I couldn’t squeeze out of the way. I told him in polite Japanese to move his hand. Nope. Second warning. Nope. Finally, I snapped, grabbed his wrist and forced his arm down by his side. “Raise it again and I’m going to fucking kill you.” (No, I’m not teaching you how to say that in Japanese). He stood there quaking because my face was filled with rage.

    Fuck. What am I doing? “I’m sorry. It’s dangerous to have your hand there. The train sometimes stops suddenly.” That wasn’t enough, evidently, because he was still trembling. “We were drinking and may have been talking too loudly. Sorry about that.” At that he apologized to me. By the time we arrived at my station twenty minutes later, I had seen pictures he pulled from his wallet of his wife and kids. In my hand I had his business card with the location of the izakaya he ran. We shook hands as I got off the train.

    When I was walking to the escalator a 20 something kid I tapped me on the forearm. “That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. Good job.” He’d seen the whole the interaction on the train. I wasn’t proud of yanking the old fart’s wrist and maybe I had been acting obnoxiously on the train earlier. I was proud that I gave the old fart the benefit of the doubt and, at least in this case, that caused him to reciprocate with giving me the benefit of the doubt. I never went to his izakaya, though. He was an asshole, but even assholes deserve the benefit of the doubt from time to time.

  • The Problem with Aggregation, Part 2 of an… Aggregation

    TW: No funny pictures, and you may well think I’m somewhere between naive and insulting by the end of this.

    You are what you eat.  Obviously true for actual food for our physical body, but I contend that it is even more true for our mental and spiritual bodies as well.  Probably even more so. If you deny yourself carbs, your body undergoes a process called gluconeogenesis where it turns protein into glucose.  If you deny important inputs to your mind or your spirit, I don’t think there is a similar process to turn garbage in into anything but garbage out.

    In the previous post in this series, I promised that I would put forward a way to use the insight of that post (that aggregation and transitivity isn’t universal,) to make yourself a better person.  Here is the long, round-about way of getting to that suggestion.

    There is a saying that is the answer to the nature / nurture question.  That saying is “Nature loads the gun, the environment pulls the trigger.”  What that means is that ‘nature’ aka your genetics, your inborn instincts, and your physical limitations, they have created you as this machine that reacts to certain things in certain ways.  In one environment, you will act in one way, and in another environment, you will likely act in a very different way to produce a different end result. Take, for example, a big burly man with limited abstract intellect, a distrust of machinery, but with great willpower.  Put him in the workforce in a coal-mining town decades ago, and he will be remembered for generations as an American Hero. Put him in the workforce in a modern metropolis, and he is going to have a hard time holding down a steady job. Same traits, different environment, different outcomes.

    Alla yall nerds, did you read Jim Butcher’s Brief Cases?  Before the story about Marcone, Jim says that in another world, Marcone would be an ideal and humane landlord.  But in wizard-and-magic Chicago, he’s a ruthless crime boss. Same traits, different environment, different outcomes.

    Another example.  Take the world’s most literate, religious, and educated population on the planet.  Put them in a small town with no electronic communication facilities and a low enough level of wealth that many take for granted can only be made as communal property.  A town usually has one oven, and all the ladies get together for bake days. The town has one mill, and all the men get together to for milling days. The town gets one newspaper and everyone gathers together when the mail comes so someone can read it out loud.  Do you know the origin of the title Professor? He was the guy at the university who made up for the fact that there were more students than books. You couldn’t study in the library because there weren’t enough books to go around. They had a job called the reader where a bunch of people sit in a classroom and listen to someone read the books aloud.

    This is a time of very cosmopolitan mixing.  Anabaptists and Lutherans share dinner instead of the sword and the flame.  Brewers sold yeast to Puritans. This happens because of the social environment.  When two ladies are standing around waiting for the oven temperature to drop from “pie” to “bread,” it’s not likely that they’ll debate the scriptural validity of Calvin’s teachings.  They’ll gossip about what sort of social disease the town strumpet gave to the preacher. Men around the millstone, slowly pouring in grain, don’t usually debate the value of the teachings of the Physiocrats vs that of the Scottish philosophers in developing the wealth of a nation.  They talk about how preacher should apply a tincture of lead and witch-hazel to pants and stop riding the town bike.

    Face to face, they’ve got a life to lead with more pressing and immediate concerns than abstract political economy.  Or politics. Or whatever -ism you can think of. And having just seen what a circular firing squad it is when people of different faiths choose to go oppressing others, they opt to find a way to make friendly relations instead.

    This has a drastic impact on what happens when a political disagreement comes up.  I’m of course talking about the Colonies. Former-Loyalist or former-Patriot, early Americans knew that once the war was over they still had to live with each other and they had to work together to overcome the problems of slow communication and honest differences of interest.  First time around, it worked pretty well.

    The second time around…  Well, it didn’t work so well.  The economy and the social fabric of the nation had changed.  Industrialization started in the north. The south became more stratified.  People had less face to face time with each other. Rounded human beings became names, and names became labels.

    Take the same humans out of the colonial environment and put them in Reconstruction.  You have Yankees and Carpetbaggers, not Hank and Cynthia. Instead of a memory of the futility of warring over differences, you have a memory of a war where brother went to war against brother and shit got done because of it (either emancipating the slaves or perpetrating northern aggression and control, depending on which side of the Mason Dixon you haled from.)

    Same traits, different environment, different outcomes.

    The difference in the environment is a social difference.  People knew more people but not as deeply, they cataloged others with labels, and they operated in an environment of labels.

    The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was making you think you can only have tacos on tuesday.  The second greatest trick was to get you to replace people with labels.

    Because the human mind is lazy.  Once you understand something, you won’t go any further to define that thing if we don’t have to.  It has to be beaten into our heads. You have to stand next to someone working a millstone or loading bread into an oven day-in and day-out to see them as a human being instead of a label.

    In short, labels are a way to aggregate people into types.  It happened less in the Colonies, more in Reconstructions and…

    And now, its out of control.  Our social environment is becoming mediated by platforms and trends that reduces the standing-around-next-to-people time and increase the labeling tools at your disposal.  Social media is making us evil, because remember, aggregation of humans is the root of evil these days. Your ability to spend more and more time plugged into your phone means you are spending less and less time being bored next to people you don’t have much in common with.  Fewer and fewer kids are spending time running around the neighborhood with whoever happens to liveby, and more and more time being shuttled around to activities full of like-minded families.

    And it’s making us worse off.  On this website, lots of you call it derp.  Posting links to show just how out of touch some idiot progressive or statist is.  Progressive. Statist. These are labels and they do their damage even when, especially when, they are right.  

    Using labels like this makes someone a foot soldier in the culture war.  “SJW” is used as a knowing insult. It’s a poke at people who are warriors when there’s no war to be waged.  Its an assertion that these people are Mad Online in the real world. They can’t meme because they take everything to serious.

    And in a lot of cases, it’s a rhetorical blow that strikes true.  But it’s a blow in the culture war. It’s a fight in the war fueled with labels.  It’s a blow in a battle that doesn’t need to be fought. Not by the SJWs. And not by us.

    There’s names for people who fight battles even when it’s not appropriate.  Different names in different times and places, but it’s an old idea. In one time, in one place, they were called ber-serkir.  They were so useful in their society that they were treated like divine gifts. But that’s not what we call them now in modern culture.  Now, if you go and you fight a battle without provocation, it just makes you a maniac.

  • Not Just Self-Evident

    Suthenboy is not a credentialed philosopher. Consult a credentialed professional before deciding.
    “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” -Declaration of Independence of the United States, 1776

    The notion of natural rights, that a person’s rights are inseparable from that person under any circumstances, is a relatively new concept and one that is and has been from the outset of its declaration controversial. It’s detractors say that it is an abstract concept existing only in the minds of its proponents. They claim that there is no objective evidence that such a thing exists in nature and thus that morality and ethics are arbitrary. I disagree.

    Whatever our founders believed the source of natural rights they made and appeal to the divine to justify belief in them. Perhaps it was a somewhat cynical, utilitarian approach to appeal to a nation that was strongly religious.

    “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?” -Thomas Jefferson

    Certainly the founders were not monolithic in their belief in the origin of rights, but they were in agreement that they existed. I propose that whether a gift from God or simply existing by virtue of our nature objective evidence can be found for their existence. It does not matter where they come from, their existence is evident.

    Few rational people would argue that our world does not function on naturally existing laws. The sciences operate on this premise. Science is a method for discovering what those laws are and how they affect ourselves and the world around us. The veracity of scientific discoveries is measured by the ability of those discoveries to make accurate predictions about how we and the world around us will behave. By this measure science is a far superior system than, say, astrology. Simply put, superior systems yield superior results.

    An engineer that can produce a functioning spacecraft certainly has a superior grasp of the laws of physics and chemistry than one whose most sophisticated accomplishment is a dugout canoe. The production of a computer requires a far greater depth of knowledge about nature’s law than the production of an abacus.

    Geologists have a deeper understanding of the earth’s structure than the guy who believes in turtles all the way down and so can produce petroleum or predict earthquakes and volcanoes whereas the latter cannot. The success of this system of knowledge is evidence of its correlation with natural law.

    Those disciplines are based on an understanding of the naturally existing laws of physics and chemistry. Systems of morality and ethics are the products of ideas. Their success depends on how closely those ideas conform to the natural laws of human nature and economics.

    To whatever degree societies have allowed individual liberty – that is the belief in and respect for natural rights – success by any measure has been exponentially greater than those societies that have not. The United States is the premier example of such a society.

    The US has produced more wealth than all other nations through the history of mankind combined. The US contributed to increased worldwide health, wealth and longevity more than any other nation. The US has more social mobility than any other nation. The US produced air conditioning, flight, electricity, refrigeration, hamburgers, hotdogs, telephones, mass produced automobiles, atomic energy, chocolate for the masses, heart surgery, vulcanized rubber, computers and the internet. The list is nearly endless. As the joke goes “There are two kinds of nations: nations that do X, and nations that have put men on the moon.” Nearly everything that makes the modern world what it is is a product of the United States.

    This wild success is the product of a belief in and respect for natural rights. Innovative individuals have been free to innovate and profit from their efforts. Individuals have been able to think, speak and act as they willed more than in any other society. By respecting the concept of self-ownership – that every individual naturally owns their mind, body and conscience exclusively and thus the product of their intellectual and physical labor – a powerful incentive for those individuals to strive for success is created. As a result the United States has flourished more than any nation in history and contributed mightily to the welfare of all mankind.

    Simply put, superior systems produce superior results because they adhere more closely to the existing laws of nature. A belief in and respect for natural rights has unquestionably produced superior results.
    * Fun story: During World War II my grandfather owned a pulpwood business and had a contract with the federal government to use German POW labor. One of the jobs he secured was in south Louisiana. He transported the POWs to the job site on a route that went through Baton Rouge. The first time the POWs saw the Wilkinson bridge they were awestruck. If you have occasion to cross that bridge pay attention to it. Most people that cross the bridge take it for granted but if you really look at the scale of it it is awe inspiring. It is easy to see how the POWs were barely able to believe their own eyes. What they said to my grandfather about it really stuck with me. “If we had known what America is like we never would have gone to war against you. No one can defeat a country that can build something like this.”

  • Bob Boberson Ruminates on Voting


    Recently I got into an interesting OT discussion here at Glibs regarding voting. The subject in question was, as best I can capture it, what is the best demographic criteria for voting to assure libertarian outcomes? This is a subject that could easily turn into a treatise which I am neither qualified or inclined to write (I’m lazy). Instead I’d rather quote some other people and allow you fine people to weigh in and/or get on with your OT links.

    According to Wikipedia:

    “Voting is a method for a group, such as, a meeting or an electorate to make a collective decision or express an opinion, usually following discussions, debates or election campaigns. Democracies elect holders of high office by voting. Residents of a place represented by an elected official are called “constituents”, and those constituents who cast a ballot for their chosen candidate are called “voters”. There are different systems for collecting votes.”

    If you accept the proposed definition one must concede that voting by its very nature is a collectivist pursuit. Lysander Spooner, as most of you well know, makes a pretty solid argument that voting is bullshit.

    “As we can have no legal knowledge as to who votes from choice, and who from the necessity thus forced upon him, we can have no legal knowledge, as to any particular individual, that he voted from choice; or, consequently, that by voting, he consented, or pledged himself, to support the government. Legally speaking, therefore, the act of voting utterly fails to pledge any one to support the government. It utterly fails to prove that the government rests upon the voluntary support of anybody. On general principles of law and reason, it cannot be said that the government has any voluntary supporters at all, until it can be distinctly shown who its voluntary supporters are.”

    He later concludes:

    “The ostensible supporters of the Constitution, like the ostensible supporters of most other governments, are made up of three classes, viz.: 1. Knaves, a numerous and active class, who see in
    the government an instrument which they can use for their own aggrandizement or wealth. 2. Dupes – a large class, no doubt – each of whom, because he is allowed one voice out of millions in deciding what he may do with his own person and his own property, and because he is permitted to have the same voice in robbing, enslaving, and murdering others, that others have in robbing, enslaving, and murdering himself, is stupid enough to imagine that he is a “free man,” a “sovereign”; that this is “a free government”; “a government of equal rights,” “the best government on earth,”2 and such like absurdities. 3. A class who have some appreciation of the evils of government, but either do not see how to get rid of them, or do not choose to so far sacrifice their private interests as to give themselves seriously and earnestly to the work of making a change.”

    I am reasonably confident that I (and probably the lion’s share of you fine people) fall into the third category. I’d love to do the work of “making a change” but lack the imagination to put forward a better system and cannot in good faith promote an alternative that is much more than wild speculation.

    So, for lack of a better system than a constitutional republic, I believe we for the foreseeable future stuck with electing slimy sociopaths to ostensibly represent our interests in the body politic. Most, I dare say, if not all of us agree with Alexander de tocqueville’s prophetic observation:

    “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”

    We see this play out year after year, election after election. I’ll go out on another limb and dare suppose that many of us agree that the appeal of “free shit” will be popular in any race and among all demographics. That being said if Bernie and She Guevera of have shown us anything it’s that young people and recent immigrants are, at least at present, very susceptible to the politics envy and the appeal of hand-outs. Eager to capitalize on this phenomena, the political left seems to be eager to expand voting rights to non-citizens and 16 year olds. I’ll again speculate that if they got their way it would only be a few years until they were making appeals that it is a great injustice non-resident/non-citizens and 14 year- olds are being denied their right to vote. The question I’d like to have answered is; is there a just rationale for limiting voting to certain demographics? Many of our founding fathers favored restricting the vote to not only property owners but specifically white property owners. While my intent is not to disparage our founding fathers one doesn’t have to think very hard as to why this criteria is ‘problematic,’ if I may borrow a common phrase from our left-leaning friends. Setting aside the racial overtones it still was a less than perfect protection against the appeal of legal plunder. In the discussion Suthenboy astutely pointed out:

    “With that rule the wealthier property owners jack up taxes to price everyone out of ownership, then buy up everything. As I said, around the last turn of the century only timber companies, railroads and insurance companies would have been able to vote. It is a disaster.”

    So we see that limiting voting rights to property owners has it’s own pitfalls. Heroic Mulatto proposed:

    “The pre-frontal cortex doesn’t finish development until around 32 years of age. If we define adulthood as the completion of maturation, then it should start at 30 (to give it a nice round number). Likewise, voting and other adult rights and responsibilities should be delayed until then. I am serious.”

    While upping the age limit for voters would appear to have it’s merits, I think it would also have it’s unintended consequences. What of young property owners and their interests? What gives a middle-aged failure more right to a ballot box that a young and successful entrepreneur? If the issue of social security has shown us anything it is that the old are not immune to voting themselves plunder from the public treasury either.

    I have no proposed solutions and this article has already run on longer than I intended and touched on more freshmen-level civics topics than I meant to. I earnestly look forward to the lesson I’m about to receive from the Glibertariat.

  • Philosophy of Food

    I’m an animal lover.  I have two very spoiled dogs and a long history of pet ownership ranging from reptiles, rodents, cats and farm animals.  In high school I was a member of Future Farmers of America and showed poultry at the state fairs.  My parents owned a hobby farm populated with cows, goats, pigs, geese, ducks, chickens and one very fat turkey hen named Tiger.  I was showing Tiger at a fair and stopped for dinner at a sub shop.  I got a turkey sandwich.  As I ate my turkey sandwich looking at the turkey I had raised from an egg and had trained to follow me around, I heard a little voice say, “Isn’t that a little cruel to eat in front of your pet?”  Being 17 or 18 at the time, I wasn’t exactly a deep thinker and excused the thought due to the fact that I had no relationship with the turkey on my sandwich.

    The animals my family raised were never eaten by us.  Sure, we sold them knowing they would be butchered, but our hands were clean.  But as I grew older and started reflecting more on life, often while eating, I thought of the cows that I’d named and sold to market.  I could never have killed one of them.  I don’t think I could enjoy eating them even if someone else had butchered them, but here I am eating a hamburger.  I’d outsourced my killing. Did that make me morally superior or inferior?  I would never pay someone to do something I wasn’t willing to do myself, so how could I outsource my dirty work.  I decided around 27 years old to stop eating beef because of the time I’d spent close to cows, learning how curious and gentle they can be, each with their own unique personality.  Later I questioned what made cows special, other than the fact that I like them.  We had a pot belly pig that liked a good scratch and treat.  It is widely acknowledged pigs are intelligent animals, so pork fell off the menu.

    The little voice said: “Why only beef and pork?  Isn’t that an arbitrary line drawn by nothing but your feelings?”

    My hypocrisy was glaring and I decided I would eat no mammals.  An arbitrary line to be sure, but we are mammals ourselves and that seemed fair at the time.  So another year goes by eating fish, poultry and the occasional reptile when I thought back to Tiger the turkey and remembered eating that sandwich and the little voice reminding me that I wouldn’t have killed any turkey.  Well, I enjoy fishing and have no shellfish allergies so pescatarianism here I come.  Finally I could honestly say that although I was hiring someone else to catch and provide my food, I would be willing to do it myself.  I remained on that diet for several years and continued enjoying animals through zoos, aquariums, nature walks and television programs.  I love nature shows.  I find any animal fascinating.  The way they live, breed and hunt. Watching lions hunt on tv as a child I always rooted for the gazelle to get away.  As I got older I realized that the lion needs to eat too.

    Little Voice: “Is the lion an immoral creature because it hunts?”

    Only the most rabid PETA person would say yes.  So if the lion is not immoral for hunting, why did I myself consider it immoral?  Because I have agency?  I can choose not to kill.  I have empathy.  I can image what other people and animals feel.

    Little Voice: “What about the bass you love to catch?”

    That, I told myself was different; they aren’t a higher animal.

    Little Voice: “They fight for their lives.  They want to live.”

    Fine, fish off the menu.

    Little Voice: “What about shellfish?  They didn’t evolve those hard defensive shells for no reason.”

    Fine, all animals off the menu.  Are you happy now voice in my head?!?  I’ll go vegetarian!

    Little Voice: “Cows are slaves to dairy farmers.”

    Fine, vegan!  Good enough for you conscience?!?

    Once again,  I was watching a nature program, this time about wild tobacco plants.  Tobacco plants produce natural pesticides to protect themselves from insects and when exposed to a new pest that is resistant to their chemical warfare, they evolve a new pesticides in a never ending evolution of defense.  Not only do tobacco plants fight to live, they send a message to other tobacco plants with the design for the new pesticide.  The plants have empathy, they shared their hard work so the species could survive.

    Little Voice: “Seems like plants want to live as much as bass.”

    Fruit?  How about that brain? You got anything against fruit?  I’ll go full Jainism!  Not to offend any Jainist reading, but if you look into evolutionary history, that fruit isn’t meant for humans.  The reason that ripe fruit changes color is to signal birds that it is ready for them, not some local primate.  Prior to color vision development in primates, only birds could see the color change and the plants were offering a tasty snack to the birds in exchange for spreading seeds far and wide.  If a monkey ate the fruit, the distribution would be limited, so plants, specifically peppers, developed capsaicin in an effort to discourage mammals from eating their precious seeds.  Birds, fish and reptiles don’t have capsaicin receptors.  This was a limited chemical attack aimed at mammals, including us.

    Little Voice: “So animals don’t want us to eat them and plants don’t want us to eat them, what are you going to eat smart guy?”

    I thought about it.  Single cell organisms that use photosynthesis and have no defensive mechanism?  They aren’t even harmless!  I’m sure, little voice in my head you are familiar with the great oxygen event.  You must, you know what I know! Those little light consuming bastards wiped all other life off the planet with poisonous oxygen!  As I gained control of my addled mind, I began to think about how a small organism changed an entire planet and took my attention from the very small to the very large; our universe.

    The universe is big place and the vast majority is empty and yet filled with danger; vacuums, extreme cold, radiation, black holes and burning balls of gas.  The universe is racing to reach it lowest form of energy through constant expansion and organisms are fighting the flow of energy seeking its lowest state as the heat death of the universe approaches. Microbes to man are engaged in a Sisyphean challenge of rolling a rock up an energy hill, forever.  In that context, living is fighting. It is the ultimate fight club with no holds barred.  Our ancestors came down from the trees and developed efficient locomotion to pursue game; a unique shoulder design that allows for projectile weapons such as slings and arrows.  We learned to use fire to make meat more digestible and with that calorie boost our brains grew to develop even more complex hunting schemes and weapons.

    Little Voice:  “Does that mean YOU can do whatever you please with no consideration for life?”

    No.  Humans are still cursed/gifted with sentience.  We are not bound strictly by evolution.  We can make choices about what and how we eat.

    Little Voice: “Are animals nothing more than property?”

    That is a debatable question for another post, but let us assume yes, animals are property AND in need of special consideration.  Just because animals are a food source doesn’t mean we can’t still show empathy.  With these revelations my diet expanded to include animals once again, but with a wider consciousness.  I thought, what is the most ethical way to procure food?  A shallow thinker may conclude a vegan diet hurts no animals.  I already posited that plants may not want to be food, but conceding that point, growing vegetables isn’t harmless.   The land where soybeans and kale are grown had to be cleared and the native animals displaced.  After the animals and non-commercial plants are eradicated, the land needs constant protections from animals trying to eat the crops and plants invading the inviting soil.  A clear battle line is marked at the edge of the farm and pesticides must be applied which kill not only pest but other harmless insects.

    The veggie farm is just another arena in the fight club of life.  Cattle ranches and poultry farms have the same issues but with added ethical considerations of living conditions for the animals.  Buying cage free and free range is an option but still the animals aren’t wild and the land still managed.  Commercial fishing has it own set of issues such as long net vessels catch the target fish for market, but also thousands of fish with no food value.

    Little Voice: “There ought to be a law!”

    There oughtn’t, I counter.  Everything comes with a price, including ethical farming, fishing and ranching.  I choose to pay extra for what I consider to be the more ethical methods, but not everyone has room in the budget to make those same choices or has the same set of values as I do.

    Little Voice: “Clearly hunting is the most cruel.  Everyone knows that.”

    Not so fast my imaginary friend.  Recreational hunting is limited to only certain times of the year and subject to bag limits for native animals; on private land you can target invasive species year round.  In both cases, the land is left in a natural state so all non-game animals and plants can live without molestation.  Only a few of the game species are harvested so the majority is left to thrive and the sacrificed few aren’t wasted by responsible hunters, since the meat is eaten and the hides turned into trophies. Sport fishing is the cousin of hunting, where limits are set and only a sustainable number of animals taken during certain seasons.  Hunting and fishing are the most honest ways to procure meat in my opinion.  The hunted have a chance for escape and ethical hunters give fair chase to the animal.  The cow has no chance for life beyond the ranch and may even see the rancher as a friend who provides food, until led to the abattoir.

    After years of self reflection and deep though, I have made peace with the little voice in my head.  I try to eat sustainable fish, free range/cruelty free animals and this year I plan to buy a lifetime hunting/fishing license for the state of Florida, so I can supplement my diet with what I consider the most ethical meat source.  I would grow my own vegetables too, but it turns out I don’t have much of a green thumb or patience for weeding.  How is any of this of interest to libertarians?  Libertarianism is a governing philosophy, not a moral code.  Where the debate comes into play is how government regulates use of public lands for hunting, seas for fishing, animal cruelty laws for ranching and regulation of herbicides/pesticides/GMO for farming.

    As libertarians, we can debate how heavy the regulatory hand should be.  No FDA?  I’m listening.  No FWC?  I think they provide a valuable service of ensuring native species aren’t over hunted on public lands.  A better solution would be selling public lands to private conservation groups and have private regulation.  Mandate cruelty free food?  This is where my standards for myself and the law come into conflict.  I chose a diet that I believe to be ethical, but as a libertarian I would never force others to make that same choice.  If enough people would choose to pay the price difference the market will provide cruelty free alternatives.  As the market grows, prices should come down.  In the end, it is up to each individual to make peace with that little voice in their head.

  • Green Chilies, Life and Rolling Stone References

    The world of green chilies is a vast one.  Everyone knows about New Mexico green chilies and their highly marketed name plate Hatch.  I love green chilies, and the chili that is its namesake, and grew up eating it.  I often use Hatch chilies in a pinch, but have always preferred locally grown when available, which is always if one plans right and has them in the freezer.  I was unaware of the chili rivalry between Colorado and New Mexico that I uncovered during the 15 minutes I spent researching this article.

    Being a semi-loyal Glib reader and a thin crust pepperoni clad warrior in the food wars, I am not afraid of voicing an opinion when it comes to food, but always just knew western Colorado chilies were far superior to anything grown in New Mexico–or anywhere else for that matter–and never gave it a second thought.  I never made a big deal about it because what is the point of harping on facts to people lacking all the information since they probably never had a chili grown here.

    I also never even considered anything grown on the front range, such as in Pueblo, was worth anything because the front range, anything east of the mountains, is considered by western slope folk to be pretty much western Kansas, and Pueblo has only ever been famous for being the location of the CO loony bin back in the day.  In short, the only good thing about the front range is the Broncos.

    This summer I have been far less enthused about fresh produce season than previous years due to a case of the mehs which I get from time to time, but I recently stopped and grabbed a handful of chilies (Big Jims) from a stand and brought them home for roasting.  The best way to buy chilies is to buy big and have the seller roast them for you, but they wanted $35 for a box and I was not willing to part with $35 at the moment and it is no problem roasting small quantities ones self.

    I did these on the Weber on a small pile of coals and the method consists of drinking beer and turning them until they char a bit on all sides and then put them in a paper bag to steam.

    The day I roasted those chilies if I looked only through my left eye, they looked like this:

    You see, there are certain factors that may cause cataracts and I checked most of the boxes.

    Aging: Check (sort of, I am only early fifties)

    Over exposure to UV rays:  Check

    I started skiing in 1972 when I was seven and back then we used the finest sunglasses one could buy at the gas station.  Preferably red white and blue layered plastic frames with reflective plastic lenses, and that is what we wore during sunny days on the slopes which was most weekends when I was a kid.  I have spent most of my life working outdoors in very sunny locations, and I have also done a fair amount of welding in some of the world’s finest shitholes with the finest welding masks available in said shitholes.  UV protection is not a known hazard in most shitholes and you will see welders arcing beads wearing nothing but plastic sunglasses.

    Diabetes:  Maybe a possible Check

    There is a good chance I have spent much of my life pre-diabetic due to diet and lifestyle.  I was diagnosed as such in my mid 30’s but never felt bad so what was the point of following up on that right?

    Drinking too much:  Ya, ok, maybe, sometimes, occasionally, a time or two.

    Smoking:  Check.  Off and on for thirty years.

    It seems I most likely did this to myself in one way or another.  That is something I have to come to terms with as I age.  I never thought I would live long enough to ponder life’s questions of self reflection on what I have done to myself.  Whether it was career choices and the hazards that come with using one’s body as a tool, recreation choices where the body is just another piece of equipment to be abused, and what is most damaging of all, what is ingested for fun or to silence the inner voice rambling on about what horrible choices you made in your life.

    To go with my green chilies I dug some Italian sausage out of the fridge that I had cooked earlier for pizza, as well as a pizza dough that was made, surprisingly, for the same purpose.

    Being someone who has only had one surgery when I was five when my tonsils were removed, and having a serious phobia about anything touching my eyeballs to the point I struggle to put in eye drops and even fainted during a glaucoma test once when I was in my late teens, I arrived for my surgery pretty much freaked the fuck out.  But by god I could do it, “don’t be a pussy,” I kept telling myself.  My blood pressure was jacked when they first hooked me up to all the monitoring devices but I eventually settled down.  The doctor and the anesthetist, who introduced himself as the guy who would make me feel good, dropped by to check on me and soon they wheeled me away to the operating room.

    I peeled my green chilies and laid them on the pizza dough as best they would fit, leaving enough dough on the outside edge to later fold.  I placed a sliced-lengthwise piece of sausage on each green chili and covered it with cheese.  I then cut around each chili leaving enough dough to fold kind of like a pinched top taco, sideways calzone or big dumpling.

     

    They don’t put you under for cataract surgery and only mildly sedate you because you have to listen to the doctor and move your eye when he needs.  During the surgery I only really freaked once and had to be told to hold still.  It felt like the doc was pushing my eyeball into my brain as he wrestled the cataract infused lens out of my head and I found that a bit unnerving.

    I did my green chili calzone things on my gas grill on my fire brick platform until golden brown.

    They could be stuffed with anything you want, and they were good.  I found they were better the next day.  I ate one that night in some marinara which overtook the green chili and I was not that impressed with my creation. The next day I muckled down the rest one at a time as I reheated them one by one and ate them poolside, and the green chili really came through. They were delicious.

    As to my whole cataract ordeal, it took something like 30-45 minutes in the operating room and I was at the hospital for little more than two hours.  It is truly amazing the day after and I see with clarity I have not seen with in 20 years.  It can only be described as how you are amazed at the clarity and drastic focus things appear after eating a small handful of mushrooms.  Not the, “holy shit that chick put her makeup on with a spatula” clarity but just vivid focus that seems drastic compared to what I have been living with for the past few years when the cataract really got bad.

    As they wheeled me to recovery with a patch over my eye the anesthetist asked how I felt.  I said, “Disappointed, I am not near as high as I hoped I would be”.  He said, “Here, we don’t give you what you want, we give you what you need.”  I caught the Stones reference, but was not sharp enough to come back with a wiseass retort, but sure plan to when they do my right eye some months down the road.  I am going to tell him to hell with this what you need stuff, give me what Keith would have.

    It wasn’t that long ago in medical history when the procedure done to me was not possible and I indeed feel lucky I am alive when it is.  It sure is better than previous techniques like poking a stick in the eye.

    A stick would work to roast a green chili over a fire though.

  • You’re Doing it Wrong – #2

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    Find out what you were doing wrong previously

    A while back there was a post where someone referenced the Digital Time that was proposed by the French Revolution. Well, arguments about our calendar are really useless.

    Or are they.

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    Your calendar: Year One is the Year of Our Lord and all years previous are Before the Year of Our Lord

    Status: WRONG

    This has bugged me since I can remember. BC? AD? BCE? WTF? Herod1 died before he was born?

    It was one thing that really interferred with my understanding of history. “Third Centruy BC”. Was that the 300’s? The 200’s?

    Then I stumbled upon the Holocene Calendar. And the whole thing started to make much more sense.

    The Holocene marks the latest inter-glacial after the Pleistocene and is dated at starting roughly 11,700 years ago. After the african migration of 60, 000 years ago it marks the dividing point of the Neo-Litic (New Stone Age) and the Paleo-Litic (Old Stone Age). Human agriculture which lead to permanent cities and “civilization” is usually dated to this period. Why not start the calendar at this time?

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    All of human civilization has occurred in the past 12,000 years, much of it in half that time. Outside of astronomical events, every single human historical event that can be traced to a specific date2 falls into that period. As a user of the Gregorian Calendar I am a bit prejudiced but it seems that we could eliminate all of this BC-negative year stuff by starting the date accounting of Mankind at the beginning of the Holocene, call it 12,018 years ago. Simply add 10,000 to the current year.

    Suddenly, there is no more BC/AD adjustment. There is theoretically a Year Zero but it doesn’t matter since nothing is dated before. According to modern research, no one dates the first birthday of Jesus to 1AD; consensus seems to be that He was born around 4BC or born before He was born. So, born in 9997 and died in 10030. Does that take away from the basic message?

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    The Copper Age begins around 4000HE. Things start to come into position. Four thousand years from cultivated crops to refined metals, marking the end of the Neo-Lithic, the end of the Stone Age.

    The Bronze Age begins around 6700HE

    The first pyramid was finished in 7390HE

    The Iron Age began about 9200HE

    The Roman Empire was from 9974 until 10476. I think my four year-old granddaughter could even subtract those numbers.

    All of history can be represented by a continous number line. Later events are represented by a larger number. Years between dates are a simple arithmetic operation. We’re living in the CXXIst Century (121st). How cool is that?

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    Other calendar systems could be adjusted because the date of the start of the Holocene is rather arbitrary. This year is 5778 in the Jewish calendar. Adding 10,000 years pushes the start date of the calendar back another 3760 years. Or the date in the Arabic calendar is 1439 so, again, adding 10k years pushes Year Zero up 579 years. Same for other calendars.

    The one monkey wrench in this is astronomical dates. There are known dates of some events such as eclipses that would have to me mapped to the new calendar but -5,000HE is not that much different from 15,000BC/BCE. The addition of a Year Zero helps in calculations.

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    I can’t help but to be an engineer whose job is to “fix things.” Here’s a fix for something that you never knew was broken.

    Now get off my lawn.

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    1. Nothing special about him. Pick any other person born BC died AD.
    2. Like April 2, 2842 BC or something.

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  • The Problem with Aggregation, Part 1 of an.. Aggregation

    “I am not a number!  I am a free man!” So begins one of the filler songs on one of the top 5 metal albums of all time.  But I come here today not to extol the virtues Bruce Dickinson or to ruminate on the fact that galloping bass-lines are best bass lines.

    No, today I’m here for something much more interesting – Math!

    Let’s take a look at second grade arithmetic.  Here’s a refresher on the equivalence properties of equality:

    • The Reflexive Property tells us that an A is (equal to) an A.  Oh, now I’m sad again.
    • The Symmetric Property tells us that if A is equal to B, then B is equal to A.
    • The Transitive Property tells us that if A equals B, and B equals C, then A equals C.

    Pretty straight forward, and if you want to do arithmetic or algebra, these are the rules that let you do it.  But there are a lot of assumptions built into. For example, you can expand the Transitive Property of Equality to generate the Transitive Property of Inequalities, such that if A is less than B and B is less than C, A is less than C.

    And that is useful and intuitive too.  You can do some nice arithmetic and algebra with that too.  But like both my graduate-level math classes and my collected works of HP Lovecraft reminded us, there is more to this universe than nice reasonable Euclidean space.

    Take football.  If Directional State beat Poly A&M last week, and Poly A&M beats Costal U this week, stands to reason Costal U has no hope against Directional State next week, right?  After all, if DS > P A&M and P A&M > CU, so we know DS > CU. Just stands to reason, Transitive Property and wot not. All us learned gentlemen can see this.

    And a any sports fan knows… That’s not the way it works.  CU beats DS in, what, 35% of the games under this scenario?

    It’s almost like you can’t apply the Transitive Property to a model when in reality it doesn’t apply. You can’t just apply theoretical rules, you have to look at the real universe and see if they apply before you can incorporate them into your model.

    So let’s move to another domain and see if all the rules of basic arithmetic apply.  A man, a woman, and their kid are going backpacking. Weight is the limiting factor, they can walk until any one of them is worn out.  In a universe that is perfectly fair, but stupid, they all would carry the same load. In the real world, the kid would carry a day of food, a day of water, and emergency supplies.  The woman would carry a bit more, and the man would carry the most. They then hike farther than in the stupid and fair world. Thus, the transitive property holds true in this model.

    Here’s my first assertion for this series of articles: Assuming arithmetical property where they don’t actually exist in humanity is the root of most evil these days.

    One place that it shows up* is in macroeconomics.  Specifically, I’m thinking of the study of optimal tax policy.  This is the study of how to structure taxes to maximize utility.  Assuming arguendo that taxes will be a thing, how do you structure them so that the most good / least bad is done by them.  There’s a lot of math, behavior economics, etc that goes into these analysis.  And there are some beautiful curves telling you how to structure a tax policy.

    And they are always wrong.

    No galloping bass-lines here. Move along.

    They all boil down to how much can I rob Peter to pay Paul.  If a tax structure results in Peter having -3 happy points and Paul getting +5 happy points, that’s a net of +2 happy points.  So that’s a winner right? (I’m going to call “happy points” by their common made up name, utils.)

    No.  There is no +2 utils floating around as the product of aggregation.  There isn’t Peter+0 and Paul+2.  There is only Peter-3 and Paul+5. This leaves a pissed off Peter and a Paul who is going to get trained in the fine art of rent seeking.  Take it too far, and the Peters revolt. Take it too far the other way, and Paul becomes a parasite on society. Keep it right in the middle, and you can divide and conquer Peter and Paul for their votes.

    Why does aggregation work for the backpackers and not for the taxpayers?  Distance. Emotional distance, to be precise.

    The backpackers are a family, but that was just an excuse to use a kid in the example.  They could be a group of friends out for vacation, or a firm out to find gold in them thar hills.  Human nature says that those we care about are those closest to us. Its

    Adam Smith was probably into galloping bass-lines too, but we’ll never know.

    normal for you to care about yourself.  Adam Smith has a great example about a man in Europe facing the loss of his finger and hearing about an earthquake in China.  Which one does he care about more?  The finger, even though he would know that that’s nothing compared to hundreds of deaths.  It sounds cruel and heartless, but that’s just utopian thinking. In the real world, we all can identify with this idea. The closer you are to someone else, the more you care about them.

    You might even care enough to take on their burden to make their life easier.  In the real world, a parent would pay -3 utils to see their kid get +5 utils. The transitive property works because there is an emotional bond there.

    But there are 300 million people in America.  Any random American can only have a personal relationship with maybe a few dozen of them.  Any system that assumes the aggregation utils among all Americans is going to be a cock up.

    So ok, there’s one mathematical model with this flaw.  Hardly the root of all evil. Well, step out of the math and into the real world.  Race. Class. Religion. Political Party. These are all aggregation techniques. On rare occasions they are useful mental shortcuts.  In most cases, they just erase the individual in your mind and replace them with a cardboard cutout called up from your own mental Hollywood. All cops are violent. All Southerners are racists.  All progressives are stupid. All intellectuals are out of touch and dangerous.

    These are common errors in thinking.  And they are the root of all major humanitarian disasters of the last century.  Except it was all blacks being violent, let’s roll out the drug war. All reactionaries are racists, let’s roll them off to the gulag.  All low-income female workers are stupid, let’s sterilize them. All intellectuals are a danger, let’s hunt them down.  The pattern repeats itself, and as we’ve seen, this pattern is dangerous.  Any pattern that could lead to genocide, mass sterilization, or the drug war should be cut off before it can get anywhere near this scale of disaster.

    So I hope here to have laid out a case that aggregation doesn’t apply on the large scale.  But for individuals, they can have it apply to themselves and their small circle.  This error is complex, but it reaches into some of the worst events in living memory. In the next article, I’ll discuss how a person could harness this insight to make themselves a better person.  And in a twist that I’m sure would make all of you Jordan Peterson fans with clean rooms interested, this technique doesn’t require any change from anyone but yourself.

  • Money is a Bitch

     

    Author’s note: This isn’t an essay. It’s an excerpt from one of my books. I don’t say much here on Glibs that is particularly thoughtful because I’ve already said it either in a book or on my blog. I work out what I think while I’m writing. I try not to be didactic in my storytelling, but I probably am.

    This is a post-argument conversation between our (tidge naïve) bond trader math professor hero Jack and (street savvy) concert pianist music professor heroine Daisy while they are cooped up in a tiny dark room and tiny bed together. They’re both irritated over sex and why they aren’t having it right that moment.

    • • •

    “Talk to me about something.”

    “What,” he snapped.

    “Money.”

    His eyes popped open. “What about her?”

    “That. You called money ‘her.’ You did it yesterday, too. You talk about money like it’s a person.”

    Shit, the second he thought she couldn’t surprise him, she turned around and did. He swung his foot up into bed again and laid on his back. She turned on her side and rested her hand on his chest.

    “Money,” he began slowly, thinking. He hadn’t given this lecture in years because the people he taught were too analytical for anything but the math. They wanted skills, not philosophy. “Isn’t a person. She’s an entity. One who’s quiet and restful when she’s being kept in balance, well tended, appreciated. One who’ll rip you to shreds if you do something that upsets her equilibrium, not because she’s pissed off, but because that’s just her nature. She must be in balance. Like a ship. She’s fine when the weather’s good, but she’ll still sink if you’re not tending her, making little repairs so they don’t become big problems. When a storm comes along, she has a hard time getting back into balance.”

    “What’s the ocean?” she asked softly.

    “People. The ocean, the weather cannot be controlled but you’re forced out into it. The ship can be controlled to a certain extent, but you have to pay attention. No ship comes out of a storm without damage, without loss, but someone is going to pay for the repairs or the loss.”

    “But what about rich people?”

    “‘People’ is the operative word,” he said, winding up with the promise of a decent conversation with somebody who might understand after all. “That money is carefully tended, yes, but anything can happen. There are few things that can bankrupt the superwealthy. But economies can collapse. More and more worthless pieces of paper can be printed. A government can come in and take it all away from you. A revolution could happen and then you become Marie Antoinette. Those are things people do, though we talk about them in the collective. Economies. Currency. Governments. Revolutions. People make up those things.”

    “What about Mother Nature?”

    “She’s the supreme bitch and I don’t fuck with her, either. Coffee. Grain. Cocoa. Oranges. Hell, no, I’m not touching anything Mother Nature can get her hands on, but she’s not part of this discussion.”

    “Okay. But if the ocean is people and not Mother Nature, then the metaphor still isn’t complete,” she returned, shocking him again. Even if people did humor him or even understand him to this point, they dropped out of the conversation, thinking it was complete. “Ships sink and then disintegrate.”

    “But then,” he said throatily, suddenly very turned on and running a fingertip softly down her naked, lush body, “what you have left is wealth.”

    “Huh?”

    “Wealth is knowledge. The knowledge that she was there, the knowledge of how to build another ship. Wealth isn’t paper money or gold or anything else you can barter. Wealth is being able to live a fairly decent life without having to worry about any of that. Wealth is having what you need and being happy with what you have and the knowledge to replenish.”

    Silence. For a long time. While her thumb stroked his belly. It wasn’t his nipple, wasn’t his dick, wasn’t his lips, but fuck a duck, it felt good. “By that definition,” she finally said. Slowly. “Diogenes was wealthy.”

    He wanted to kiss her. Right now.

    “No,” he said, feeling her body twitch a little in surprise. “Diogenes was the ballast in the ship of money.”

    “Um … but strangers gave Diogenes whatever he had and he was happy with it.”

    God, he wanted to kiss and lick her from her chipped-neon-green-painted toes to the end of the longest strand of her hair. They were naked now. He could do that.

    Maybe not. Because now he had things to say to someone who got him.

    “Diogenes wasn’t happy with what he had because he wasn’t happy with what everybody else had. Diogenes made a virtue of poverty, which was stupid, because if nobody has anything, everybody dies. For real. That’s it. But strangers gave to him for whatever reason. Maybe giving made them happy. Maybe seeing him sitting there made them feel guilty for what they had that he didn’t. Maybe they believed in what he taught and wanted to support him in that. Doesn’t matter why. Diogenes’s philosophy was shit. His father was a banker, did you know that?”

    “No.”

    Jack laughed. “Yeah. So money stayed in balance because people gave. When you have too much ballast or too much cargo on the deck, money is out of balance.”

    For once in his meager acquaintance with Daisy, she was the one who was stumped. Unprepared. Unlearned. He liked this feeling, the feeling of meeting her on an intellectual field and having the edge. “Where do you fit into that?”

    “I’m the guy up in the ropes walking on the beams and taking up the sails or dropping them or whatever they do up there. Trying to keep her moving when the wind’s against her. Trying to keep her steady when the storms are coming.”

    “You love her.”

    And now he wanted to make love to Daisy all fucking night long, which he couldn’t do because she was still pissy about the clothes.

    “I do,” he answered, “but not like most people mean it. ‘I love money.’ No, I love her as an entity, as a philosophy, a concept of balance. Like a ledger.”

    “Mmm, okay. Then I have a question for you.”

    “Shoot.”

    “Where do underground economies and black markets fit on the ship of money? They exist. They have to serve some purpose or, by your description, the ship wouldn’t be balanced at all.”

    His mind went blank. Totally and completely blank. He was speechless. A fucking piano teacher had blindsided him with his own philosophical musings. “Daisy,” he said throatily. “Either you stop being so fucking brilliant or I’m going to jack off right here.”

    She chuckled softly. “Answer the question.”

    “I dunno,” he admitted easily. “Econ isn’t my specialty, so I never thought about it. I’ve never seen it. Until I got here.”

    “The way I look at it is Diogenes isn’t the ballast. The black market is the ballast. Hidden, but important. Rocks, sand, ordinary things that do as much to keep the ship sailing as the sails do. The stuff that keeps the ship steady when the storm really starts rolling. Diogenes is on some deck inside the ship, being taken care of from the top and the bottom. And when the ship breaks up and sinks, the ballast floats to the bottom of the ocean, under all the people. But they’re still doing what they do. Sitting there, minding their own business, which is business. Pure business. Providing shelter to the deep sea creatures. Hiding them from predators. Feeding them when the ocean—people—makes moss grow on them.”

    He said nothing. His chest was too tight and his dick too hard and his body too tense. She couldn’t talk and have sex at the same time. The stuff that dried her up got him hard and ready to whisper sweet economic philosophies in her ear while stroking in and out, slow and steady.

    “People still come to power,” he finally said. “Even in the underground. Organized crime. Gangs. Using fear and intimidation.”

    “The same thing the IRS uses.”

    “What?”

    “You do understand the IRS is holding a gun to your head, right? Why do you comply? Because if you don’t, you’ll get thrown in jail. If you do anything somebody in power doesn’t like, they can use the IRS to somehow get to you. You don’t pay taxes because you’re ethical. You pay them because you have no choice. You believe it’s immoral not to follow the law, yes?”

    “More or less, yes.”

    “Have you ever considered that the law and regulations are immoral?”

    “Stealing is immoral,” he said, irritated that she was diverting from the interesting part of the conversation.

    “That is a natural law,” she replied. “The IRS is a manmade institution designed to control the populace. And by providing receipts, filing 1099s, W-2s, you are complicit in that control. You don’t have to report all that. You do it because you want the write-off and that’s where your thinking ends, but it’s not about you. The black markets, the underground, would rather take its chances with an enemy they can see and fight if they have to, to get ahead, to climb the economic ladder. No, I misspoke. They’re building their own ladder.

    “Topside, with small businesses, they’re regulated to death. Margins are slim to none. One bad month can make them homeless. In a storm, you can hang on to whatever’s up there. Diogenes can cower somewhere inside the ship before it goes down. I, the black market, the ballast, can function anywhere under any circumstances. The mom’n’pops, the ones paying taxes and licenses like they’re supposed to because they’re ethical, the ones who really take care of Diogenes, but might also be paying protection money, they’re the ones who get washed overboard first. Almost nothing to hang on to. No walls to keep them safer until the storm passes.”

    He was silent for a long, long time, turning all those concepts over in his head, so many of them packed into a few sentences, things he’d never thought about. But she was wrong about one thing. “I have to report wages. It is about me.”

    “I won’t dispute that for you or any company like yours, you’d have to give the appearance of it. But it’d be easy to pay people from an offshore account—”

    “That’s illegal.”

    “But is immoral?”

    He almost said yes automatically but stopped. Was it?

    “Do you eat the cost of your employees’ withholding? Pay their share of the social security as well as yours? You could. If you have independent contractors, you can just not send them a 1099 and nobody would ever know because they aren’t going to report it and if they did, they do it from their internal bookkeeping. Likely they wouldn’t notice you didn’t send them a 1099 at all. You do it because it’s a write-off that feels like an obligation.”

    “I’d go bankrupt inside six months if I did that,” he protested.

    “And that’s how the IRS makes sure you’re complicit. Think about it. Your bottom line would improve if you could just pay people what they earned.”

    She was fucking with his mind.

    “That’s how the underground economy works. Do you know how many of your colleagues use illegal aliens to clean their houses and watch their kids? No, you don’t, because your domestics are on the record and you make sure all the T’s are crossed and the I’s are dotted. It wouldn’t occur to you to do anything else or that eighty percent of your peers hire under the table.”

    “Okay, but exploiting those people is immoral.”

    “Then you have to ask yourself if employing those people under the table is more or less immoral than letting them starve.”

    “They choose to come here.”

    “In hopes of a better future. Jack, look. I’m not trying to defend something you think is immoral or convert you. I want you to think about what the ballast really is.”

    The only thing he could really think about at the moment was how Daisy was so much more than someone who listened to him even if she didn’t understand some things, but asked questions until she did, which meant she was listening. And then could give him something entirely new.

    Not new information. Information was cheap and easy once one knew where to find it. New concepts. New principles. New philosophies. She made him think and thinking was his most favorite thing to do.

    But when she didn’t say anything more, his thinking gradually turned to feeling—feeling her hand on his chest, caressing more, massaging, looking for the knots, going deeper into his muscles. It felt so good, he didn’t know whether he wanted her to keep doing that or give him the handjob his dick was begging for.

    “There are more things involved in the balance you’re looking for,” she whispered, pressing her lips to his cheek. “It’s not just the money. Ethics don’t start with laws and stop with accurate numbers in a ledger. Morality and ethics involve people, and at your core, you just don’t like people.”

  • Thoughts on Getting Old

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    By Fourscore (plus one now)

    All of us are getting old(er) but when does it happen? How does it happen? Do we know we are getting old?

    Most of us have had grandparents or parents that we saw growing older and older. We really never thought much about it on a personal level since it wasn’t happening to us. As kids we believed our parents were super people that could do anything, solve any adversity that was thrown at them and always be there for us. We knew Grandpa walked a little slower but still could play golf and catch fish and always seemed to have ice cream money for us.

    We grew up, went off to conquer the world (’til we got married) and then had kids of our own. Suddenly our own parents were grandparents! What the hell is up with that? They must be getting old!

    If they are getting old what does that say about us? When do we or did we get old? Well, I’m gonna relate those things that I experienced, indicators that tell me I’m old on a daily basis.

    The physical changes are subtle but are happening to all of us as I speak. Yeah, you and me. When I was 40 I was playing driveway basketball with my kids, I was still taller and could out rebound them.

    When their friends came over I got to play if the sides were uneven and would sometimes get chosen first (unlike high school). A couple years later my son was taller than I, had better skills and the boys relegated me to my daughter’s team. By my mid 40s it was like, “Hope your Dad isn’t going to play, he screws up too much.”

    Then one day I went to Seattle to work for a few weeks, I found I couldn’t tell the difference from an 1/8 to a 1/4 on a tape measure, what was up with that? In the evenings at the motel I couldn’t read, my arms had gotten too short. A few weeks later I checked into the local optometrist and got my first pair of glasses, it was a miracle! I could see again, I was 47 years old. Along life’s journey my boss made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, if I would stay ’til I was 55 I could retire and enjoy some benefits that we had worked out.

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    My wife and I had bought some rural property earlier and remodeled a rundown cabin. We started building a retirement home two years before retirement, working every weekend, every vacation and every day I could sneak off from work. When the big day came we moved into our home and finished it out, hell, I was a young guy, right, 12 hour days were something I’d grown accustomed to and was no big deal.

    The days went by, growing a big garden, cutting fire wood, the fishing and hunting, traveling. My daughter got married, started making babies and now my wife and I were grandparents, what the hell is up with that? Where did the time go? Then my son got married and divorced before the ink was dry on the marriage license.

    Life was good, until I got a phone call, a classmate had died and the funeral was…. Then another and another. Every few months. I began to look at my friends and classmates more critically, I’m guessing they were looking at me the same way. I was thinking I was still the same person, but the testosterone was telling me different. Some things were NOT the same! Mrs Fourscore started staying up late, TV was more interesting than me. The side effects of the purple pills were as bad as the hangovers I’d had before I quit drinking.

    If one has 2-3 good friends consider yourself lucky. I have my bestie from 3rd grade and two from 9th grade. These are guys that you would loan all the money in your billfold without worrying about getting it back or ever getting it back, and vice versa. I consider myself very lucky and we’re all the same age. A year or two ago I found myself sort of shuffling my feet as I walked outside. I started paying attention and I was dragging at least one foot, not serious but still…. Then I saw one of the boys with the same problem. Another has osteoporosis. I have been falling down a couple times a year, always looking around to see if anyone has seen me ’cause I would be embarrassed.

    My work days are shortened to a couple hours in the morning, couple hours in the afternoon. Bending over cutting firewood with a chainsaw is tougher, running a splitter is in 45 minute spurts. Dressing out a deer requires having a tree nearby to help me stand up. We’ve been doing flyin fishing trips to Ontario for the past 21 years, after this last one in June we had to admit we’re just not able to do it anymore. The drive is 9 hours, getting in and out of the boat is difficult and dangerous. It doesn’t hold the mystique that previous years have had.

    I only have one prescription pill, a beta blocker that regulates my heart. I run 44-48 BPM, even after exercise I can only make about 60 BPM and is quickly restored back to normal. I use an 81 mg aspirin, any slight scratch or cut bleeds profusely. A calcium and vitamin round out my pill popping.

    I’ve had a few surgeries, hernias, varicose veins, 25 years ago had a bone growth removed from my heel. A few years ago I developed a sticky trigger finger and had it repaired, two years later same problem other hand. BTW these would not have been done with single payer, while the fingers were painful and annoying it was not life threatening. Had cataract surgery, resulted in no improvement in vision. A couple years ago I was having deteriorating vision problems, many check ups, new glasses, consultations. The prognosis was not good. Then a few months ago I got my last prescription and suddenly I could see, read, drive safely, it was finally a usable prescription. I’ll be in my deer stand in November.

    The psychological part of aging is something that preys on my mind. There are no more surprises in life. I don’t worry about my kids (well, OK, I do) but there is nothing I can do. I can’t worry about my grandchildren, they have youth on their side. I’ve outgrown politics by becoming a libertarian many years ago. All politicians look the same to me. Like many others here I am an introvert, took a long time to learn to like myself. My wife and I have structured our assets in a trust, ’cause my family is mostly dysfunctional.

    My two older brothers died 7 years ago, making me the patriarch by default. It’s an easy task, since no one pays attention to me anyway. One older female cousin in bad health, a few younger ones but most with serious health problems. The greatest worry is the mental deterioration. So far, so good.

    We’re having our annual Honey Harvest on Sep 16th. I’m hoping the MN glibs and any local lurkers will attend. All glibs are invited, but unless you are in the area it’s not worth the effort. We will spin out the honey, eat lunch, tell lies and we’re family friendly.

    As someone who sees his sphere of friends dwindling and mobility increasingly becoming a problem, I am truly grateful to those running this site and all those who contribute to making my days a little brighter. I have a lot of new friends that I’ve never met.

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