Classes of Men

When I was a senior in high school back in the late 80's, one of my friends and I were filling up my car at the local gas station and we observed a man with a hunter green Ford Ranger filling up his truck. He was a solid representative of a type that's common in my county. I don't have any real memory of that incident from almost 40 years ago. Instead, the image I can conjure of that scene is of an archetypal character. Skinny, average build and height, work boots, jeans, flannel shirt, work jacket, trucker cap, mustache probably in his mid to late 40's.

We joked about him for a while after we drove off because a guy who drove a Ford Ranger back then was a specific type--no nonsense working man. The guy at the gas station was essentially an embodiment of a Ranger. Those 1980's through early 2000's Rangers are shockingly basic compared to any new car or truck today. They often had crank windows, a manual transmission, maybe no A/C. You bought one if you needed a truck for specific chores, but didn't have sufficient money, or the desire to go into debt on an F-150.

Mulling over that memory brings to mind the concept of "classes" from Dungeons and Dragons, or Biology. The D&D concept is a player character is a profession. There's even a ranger class modeled on the Aragorn character from The Lord of The Rings. So the character wakes up in the morning as a Ranger and is one all day long. In fact, there's penalties for deviating from type in the form of loss of experience points.

Is real life like that? I'd say not today. In fact, our system is setup so most people are artificially maintained in an undifferentiated state for decades and are dogged by the question of "what am I?" Often that leads to the "mid-life crisis" scenario.

I don't think the man-type maps well to a profession in most cases. There are some D&D class-like professions today, like a farmer, cop, fireman, where the man is his profession 24/7. However, I think most "professional jobs" like engineer, or lawyer or even a doctor really don't map directly to the man-type. The "professional" is just a "worker"--a cog in the pyramid machine.

I think that's one of the problems of life, since the professional types are indistinct and separate from a person's true calling, they are basically a distraction and a thing to be endured, as is school. It's like being in a prison for 40 years. It's a byproduct of the pyramid system. Anyway, I'll get back to that in a future post.

The true "man-type" is obscured by that problem. I think the vast majority of people only arrive at their "man-type" when they're fully established. For many men, that doesn't really happen until the age of 40 years. It's effectively arrived at via a sorting process, so while a 14 year old might "want to be" a thing as an adult, they don't really know all that entails, and probably only get there through trial and error. A 14 year old boy, in most cases, is just in a broad category, then over decades might end up in a more D&D class-like scenario.

Most of the males in my school days fell into two broad categories; basically urban people (or professional class parent families) and country people (working class, or farming families). 

There were only a handful of boys in my school that were conscious of the type they wanted to be and emulated it. One kid I knew named Eugene was a farmer's son and clearly wanted to be a farmer so he acted like a farmer as a kid. There were a handful of "rich kids" who were also a specific type at a young age. 

Most, though, like me and social circle, were only a type in potentia. Then we went through a process of differentiation by trial and error over subsequent decades. This dividing-in-categories process would winnow down the whole population of men into several classes. By the time a man is in his 40's or 50's, his type is reflected in his neighborhood and home and stuff he owns. I think many, probably most, remain an indistinct type, though.

My neighborhood is a freakish example of sorting into types, and in our case, types-by-location. The people who live here are like animals with specific habitat requirements that ended up in an ideal ecological niche. For example, one of my neighbors was a pro mountain biker in the 1990s. Back then I was road racing bicycles and mulling over the concept of pursuing it "full time" or being a road-cycling bum. His job title is basically the same as mine. The list goes on.

What are "the classes" to begin with, that is, the real world equivalents of the D&D classes? I think the starting point would be the subset of primitive jobs, which derive from the needs of life back in the earliest human settlements, or tribal life thousands of years ago. I'll try to break that down in the next post.

Electric Wheelbarrow

I've been building a mountain bike trail on my property for the past few months but it's been kind of slow going because late fall/early winter is the "mud season" here in Northeast Ohio. I won't take my tractor out into the yard or woods this time of year unless the ground is hard frozen because it will turn the ground into a mud pit. Heavy machinery like a tractor does the work of dozens of people, so without it, everything is much slower.

For the trail project, I frequently need to carry heavy or bulky stuff into the woods. Just a few 12"x18" sandstone pavers that can be used to get over a muddy spot, for example, weigh over 100 pounds. Since some parts of the trail are about 1000 feet from the driveway, it's not convenient or practical to make several trips back and forth to move a pile of rocks or whatever. I used a wheelbarrow as an intermediate solution between carting everything out by hand or by tractor. When the ground is very muddy, though, even the wheelbarrow makes a mess because the tire is too narrow and high pressure.

I thought a low pressure ATV type wheel with a hub motor could make a wheelbarrow into a very versatile tool--basically a poor man's Sherp. (see the sherp) It seems many people had the same idea since there are numerous electric wheelbarrows and kits available. The kits consist of a built up hub-motor wheel, a motor controller, and some simple hand controls. It's easy to use large power tool batteries to supply energy to these devices.

The electric wheelbarrow is an interesting category of device and tech development for me because the "typical" approach for projects is to adapt the landscape to the needs of machines, which devolves to a generic solution that meets the needs of the corporate and financial system. For example, since a tractor or skidsteer is useful for so many applications, they are mass produced. To move one to a remote job site requires a road, though. "Building roads" means cutting down trees, leveling grades, and the like, which of course is the opposite thing I'm trying to do with a mountain bike path.

The system generates so much stuff though that an individual can DIY a specific solution to their specific problem from bits and pieces that the system casts off. The niche is too small for the corporate system to bother with, like the electric wheelbarrow.

This scenario is sort of paradoxical. The capable individual needs the system less and less and can exploit weird niches, which generally means "lower cost" environments.

 

Corporate Executives "Believe" The Bullshit Their Fellow Scammers Sling

Over the past several years, there have been a sequence of PR driven hype bubbles. The gist of the narrative is X is the next big thing that will replace everything else. It will be the most important thing in the world and will "disrupt" everything else.

Some of the hype is industry specific and mom and pop people don't really hear about it in detail. Other hype bubbles, like the AI bubble are hyped to the max and everyone is involved in the bullshit storm.

For example, the MRNA based "vaccines" like the COVID shots were supposed to be able to cure cancer, and blah blah. It was hyped to the max. People were forced to take it, or they might lose their job or whatever. Then it didn't really work that well. In short order, everyone knew it wasn't that great and the hype was all forgotten in less than a year.

EVs were the panacea fix for everything. There would be a battery powered motor in every machine, big or small. It would solve all the world's problems. blah blah blah. It didn't really work out like that obviously. Tesla became quite successful in its niche. Lots of other forms of EVs also grew. There's EV dirtbikes, unicycles, skateboards, and on and on. Rather than a "disruptive" thing that would wipe out all other types of transportation, it's a new category of consumer products.

AI is the prime example though. It's been hyped to the moon, but it's sort of already fizzling, even before some of the AI startups manage to milk the gullible public with IPOs.

The interesting thing about these hype bubbles is many of the supposed insider, in the know people go along with it. Ford, for example, went all in on EVs, but that flopped for them. Companies like Honda and Toyota could see EVs weren't really ready.

So why did the Ford executives get suckered by the very typical hype of EVs so they'd effectively panic and waste billions of dollars?

Criminal Probe into Fed Chair

Lately, I've been paying attention to gold and silver spot prices. In recent days they've been moving higher really quickly. There's an element of FOMO price chasing going on, but there's also legitimate concern about the USD. This morning, gold and silver prices lurched upward. I wondered why. Usually a big move like 5-6% is associated with some news. In this case it's apparently driven by Donald Trump's administration launching a "criminal probe" into the Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. The narrative is that Trump wants an uber dovish (low interest rate loving) Fed Chair so this is some type of political maneuver to oust Powell.

I think it's pretty obvious the USD is going to get heavily devalued over the next handful of years. That's one reason why the "AI bubble" probably won't pop. Instead working people are going to get crushed... all through the spectrum of poor, middle class, and upper middle class people. It'll get pretty ugly.

Gold and Silver are easy ways to get money out of the USD system, but they're also easy to heavily tax and control. It's also expensive to buy and sell precious metals. Gold is probably a reasonable insurance policy against US dollar devaluation, though. Other precious metals are wildly volatile because of their odd supply constraints and industrial uses, for example Platinum prices shoot up and drop like a rock from time to time. Platinum is probably harder to liquidate as well.

It's anyone's guess what crazy shit is going to happen... who, for example, would have guessed 10 years ago that the US would seriously consider annexing Greenland?

The USD is the Achilles's heel of the "US" empire.

Tech Toolkit Evolution Versus the Bubble Economy

The civilization tech toolkit seems to advance in a slow, halting fashion with lots of missteps and failed experiments happening along the way. This is true even today in the tech industry.

From an outsider perspective, tech seems to advance in some planned, logical fashion. Like a laptop from 2005 is a total POS compared to a brand new one because the processor is faster, as are the memory, hard drives, etc... Tech necessarily "advances" in every way.

Like there's were 4G wireless networks then a 5G wireless network replaced that. EVs will also replace the ICE cars because they're new. The advances are necessary and all good: everything is cheaper with the new tech, everything is better, etc...

The financial hype bubble economy really mind fucked billions of people. I think they're really incapable of evaluating reality at all. It doesn't matter if they're Joe Public or CEO of a car company or a tech company. They all buy into the same narratives and live inside the narrative.

Believers are receivers for deceivers.

To me it's pretty weird. Ford, for example, went all in on green BS and EVs in just a handful of years, and lost $19B. I guess because progressive democrat retards were running the federal government then? Ford's leadership had no knowledge about cars, or the car market that superseded some corrupt ideologues in the government? WTF? It's wild, but apparently true.

New tech gets trialed in the real world. A lot of it goes into the fucket bucket because it really doesn't work as its tested over a wide range of operating and economic conditions.

I am currently tangentially associated with development 5G technology. Some segment of the wireless data industry got idee fixed on a couple of concepts that seem implausible because they're wildly expensive. One is "software defined radios". Then if you have SDRs, you should "run them in data centers", which is a concept that is ubiquitous in the tech industry. Somehow corporations decided it's cheaper to spend millions renting computers rather than owning computers.

Anyway, the software defined radios sound good in theory, especially if you're developing a new system, however, they're pretty expensive and energy intensive compared to dedicated hardware. From a tech person's perspective, the software defined radio approach in ORAN is "cool", but it also looks like a real world fail, because it's probably too expensive. Most of the use cases I heard for it so far sound like bullshit scenarios.

The financial bubble/hype economy morphed into central planning through the course of the 2000s. The taxpayers of the US are cast in the role of "investors" in various tech boondoggles, like AI datacenters, however the taxpayer gets no returns on their "investment" and lots of funny money goes into private accounts of CEO tech bros and finance people.

As an individual working in the bubble/central planning tech project economy, I don't see a bright future for the tech industry. Central planning and potemkin villages can only hide reality not eliminate it. Spending time and life energy putting a coat of paint on a facade building is a painful experience. I have been surfing from one hype bubble to the next throughout my "career". I am at the tail end of that waste of time.

Trump Administration Thug Makes Melian Dialog Speech

The Trump administration is claiming potential ownership of Greenland, basically via "might makes right". There's a famous dialog from Thucydides called the "Melian Dialog" which presents a similar scenario in ancient Athens (a few years prior to its destruction) with respect to a weaker neighbor.

Anyway, I think the capture of Venezuela is a pretty good indicator that the gangsters in DC are ready to do whatever they want for:

• Themselves,
• Their family,
• Israel and the zionist mafiosi and maybe jews in general.

probably in that order.

US citizens will be sacrificed by the gangsters if need be to accomplish whatever goal these mass murderer larpers are after.

It's kind of hard to imagine the knock-on effects of basically Nazi/Sabbatean Psycho Jews going to war versus the world with an Uncle Sam mask on. Good luck visiting Europe or Asia, except Japan maybe Thailand, any time soon with a US passport. Will the US military finally get kicked out of Germany other western european countries? Maybe the dummies in the EU would actually make peace with Russia if the US drops the mask and the whole world finally sees Schlomo Hitler runs the country?

China might stop exporting various parts, components, precursor chemicals to the US.

I'm not sure why the US would go completely crazy with "conquest", like snatching up Greenland, Cuba, why not Mexico while they're at it. None of these other countries really has a prayer defending itself versus the US military in a conventional war, but there's already so much trade and inter-relationship between a country like Mexico and the US that any gain from outright conquest would be minimal. The US financial system is already ubiquitous and dominant throughout the west. Why could US companies get contracts in Greenland today to do business? It seems insane.

The dumbest war the US government might engage in would be against Iran. There's very limited upside. That would be purely for Israel.

Anyway, I'm glad I'm at the waning end of my taxpaying working career. Some ancient grandpappy of mine was probably out there in German woods killing the Romans. Now, being born in today's Rome, I'm not eager to support conquest and subjewgation by the psychos in DC.

The MLM Economy and a "Non Business"

I saw a craigslist ad for a fast food franchise business in my hometown. I briefly pondered "buying" the place. It's listed at only $85,000 but based on the ad, you do not get much for that. Maybe the equipment in the leased building? The details in the ad were sparse.

You'd still have to pay a lease, franchise fees, buy slop food to resell, etc... to start to get some paltry monthly positive cash flow. I think it's a pretty good illustration of what so many "businesses" actually are in the United States. You're not an "owner" when you sign up for such a deal. The concept of "ownership" is all but gone in the US in general. Many things, like real estate, personal property like cars, and in some states business inventory, are collateral for a debt deal somebody else made and there are people with guns who will seize "your" property to make good on the debt if you "chose" not to pay your part of that burden. It's been like this since the US was founded and of course long before.

Were you to sign up for that franchise sandwich shop you're just a participant in a vast MLM scam called the US economy. I doubt anyone would take $85K out of their savings to buy a business like that, they'd use a line of credit from their own existing business or originate some loan to buy it. The same thing happens with larger businesses. When one corporation buys another one, some version of that happens.

At best you're a manager and just like the people up the pyramid, you skim the difference between the cost of the funny money debt to operate the business, and the funny money you manage to take from the public who are all doing the same thing. The money you skim from the MLM system into your personal accounts, your savings, is just collateral for the bank to make more debt.

That business exists almost entirely within the MLM economy system where nothing is really owned and all real things are just collateral for more debt agreements. This is the core problem with the MLM system: the overhead and parasitic costs of all the people skimming their MLM "lines" are enormous. "Owning" the sandwich shop isn't worth the trouble. Working for the proverbial sandwich shop is even less worth the trouble.

People were trained/brainwashed to accept this system as normal and desirable, but reality is starting to seep through the cracks in the brainwashing. For example, the student loan situation in the US is absurd and is disincentive for participating in the MLM. Inflation has a similar effect, if you're getting an annual loss of purchasing power of like 15% or more, there's no point in working harder. You'd have to be a retard to do it. The rational decision is to bail from the system. That causes an even faster decline in purchasing power.

This is why the US government smash and grabbed Venezuela's oil. It put it into the empire MLM pyramid. The overhead cost of the empire MLM system is mind boggling, though, so the net gain the average American will see is minute if anything, but it will probably keep the scheme going a while longer.

An individual can pull quite a bit of stuff out of the empire's MLM system for now. You probably won't ever get your real estate out of the system, but every one of your MLM dollars that you convert into gold or another hard asset is potentially a new system basis, meaning, it's stuff that's not part of the MLM system and isn't collateral for more debt.

It would be a boon to organize people outside the MLM scheme to do productive tasks and create wealth without a million scammers in the pyramid claiming their part.