Guest Post by NickelthroweR
As of the last census, 444,000 Americans owned a small business that was involved with manufacturing. These small businesses employ about 3% of the total workforce. Of course, you’d have a much greater chance of running into a doctor (985,000), lawyer (1,300,000), or real estate agent (1,300,000) than someone the produces things. That means that just 0.0013% of our current US population finds themselves in the same position that I find myself – the owner of a small business that manufactures real-world items.
Manufacturing real-world items require real-world inputs. As for myself, I need steel for the housings, epoxy and dyes for the knobs, aluminum for the face plate, copper for the circuit boards and wire, plastics, diodes, resistors, capacitors, LED’s, relays and on and on and on and on right up to and including various semi-conductors.
Luckily for me, I invested a decade and put in place a system where everything from hand-wound transformers to the cable harnesses materializes within a few days of each other and then the precision tools that I designed can be assembled, tested, and shipped. To make sure this system works, no one that supplies me anything gets paid until the finished product ships and I have the tracking numbers because, well, that is when I get paid.
When working, this just-in-time way of doing business is a wonder to behold. Watching how quickly it all fell apart is also a wonder to behold. 99.9% of what you need is zero.
There is no elasticity in a circuit. Either 100% of the necessary parts are present and in good working order or the circuit simply doesn’t work. People completely ignorant of such things may believe that substitutions exist but that is not how circuit design works. If your Intel chipset fails on your PC, you can’t substitute an AMD or Motorola chipset in its place. It has to be the chipset that the design was built around. A change in any semi-conductor usually means a complete redesign from the ground up.
At the end of the day, my business is not at all unique in the semi-conductors that it uses. After all, it would be foolish to use semi-conductors that are obsolete, out of production, or rare. Frankly, the more I see a semi-conductor in use, the more I find that it will be cheaper and readily available for me to use. That is why I use the same semi-conductors that are used in the automotive production, medical equipment, heavy machinery, etc.
As I sit here and write this, my supply chain is in absolute tatters. It is not possible to produce some of my products even though I have customers that wish to buy. In an attempt to keep my workforce, I’ve employed “sniffers” to go out and search for military surplus electronics and to visit places where electronics are sometimes misplaced and forgotten. By doing this, I’ve been able to continue producing analog products but even that can’t go on for much longer because 99.9% of what you need is zero.
As I write this, I’m now one item away from being completely out of business.
I do not say any of this because I want sympathy, an apology, or a handout. I am saying this because I want you to apply this lesson to everything around you. Pick anything. Pick an outpatient surgical center.
Suppose you run an outpatient surgical center that serves a rural county. Suppose you’ve worked hard and you have the top of the line equipment and tools. Suppose you’ve got everything in place – all the surgeons, nurses, PA’s, HR, administrators, coders, janitors, landscaping, cafeteria, etc. Let’s further suppose that there isn’t so much as a single squeaky door at your fantastic outpatient surgical center. You run a tight ship!
Suppose that the State where this surgical outpatient center resides just issued a mandate that all workers in your outpatient surgical center must be vaccinated against Covid or be fired as New York State has mandated. Now, suppose your Anesthesiologist isn’t vaccinated and you must fire her. Now what? Your outpatient center is now 100% shut down. It doesn’t matter how many HR Karen’s you hire.
It doesn’t matter if you fly a BLM flag from every window. You can teach CRT from sunup to sundown and it won’t make a bit of difference – you are closed for business and closed forever. After all, it takes 14 years to produce an Anesthesiologist and if half of them are fired statewide then your rural outpatient center isn’t going to have one.
Because our leadership class has never had to produce anything of value, they do not understand how any of this works. They believe 99.9% of what you need is the definition of success. They simply do not understand how quickly the $30,000,000 aircraft becomes a lawn ornament when you fire your fuel handlers. Printed money doesn’t fuel your aircraft – a trained specialist does.
They do not understand that the loss of our workhorse semi-conductors (semi-conductors that I’ve been told will be unavailable to me until at least 2023) means that there can not be a Green New Deal because the machinery needed to construct these projects can not be made nor can our current equipment even be serviced. 99.9% of what you need is zero.
Most Americans can’t quite put this together because most are end consumers and not producers. I suspect that they can’t understand the problem because they think of the world in the same way they think about a grocery store. A grocery store that has 99.9% of what is normally stocked looks perfectly fine. To the end consumer, 95% of what they want is nothing more than a transitory inconvenience. It is nothing to worry about.
They are wrong.
Dead wrong.
Useless Ken and Karen politicians flicked the economy on and off like a light switch, paid our workforce to stay home, and are now ordering us to fire people that can take a decade or more to replace. The only outcome that I can see from these disastrous decisions is a biblical famine. Get ready to witness the Four Horsemen.
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Amen.
Thank you, sir, and very well said.
Da P
great post by someone who makes stuff.
Perfessor, saw you give someone a verbal thrashing on Market Ticker….I think? Good job on that one. Would welcome any words of wisdom concerning the continuous beat down we are all getting with this Covid crap and your opinions concerning the so called variants that seem to be cropping up everywhere.
This has to be just about the most sensible piece of prose I’ve read all month! Please expect to be plagiarized excessively! And thank you.
Nice way to put our predicament, Nickel.
The SIL is a repair tech and tells me it is getting harder and harder to find the replacement parts for much of the equipment he services. At some point, machines will be taken out of service and when a critical piece goes down, the entire operation will be shuttered, never to be re-opened.
I work (currently) as a field service engineer on LC-MS systems. Our supply chain has been screwed up (more than usual) for 18 months.
And we are ready to force a bunch of trained specialists out the door when the vax mandate kicks in Nov15. I have 22 years with the company, and I will take 22 years of experience with me. It takes 2 years to train a novice to be functional, and about 4-6 years to be fully functioning. And that’s hard to do when the company has no in person training classes available, and when they do they will be backlogged 2 years now.
Glad I found another job.
Tony – Are you going to the other job even if your exemption is accepted?
GM, Ford Temporarily Stop Making Some Pickups as Chip Shortage Worsens
https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/national-international/gm-ford-temporarily-stop-making-some-pickups-as-chip-shortage-worsens/2733777/
One model that should be thrown in the garbage pile is the new electric F150 Lightning. Overpriced, underpowered, and oversized. They haven’t made a “real” F150 Lightning since the Gen 2 left production in 2004. and they dumped the Lightning II prototype.
It is amazing that our “rulers” are the least experienced among us but with absolute authority and self confidence they dictate the way things should happen that they don’t have the foggiest notion of.
Fauxchi hasn’t treated a patient in 40 years. Biden couldn’t successfully operate a lemonade stand. Kameltoe Harris I’m sure can suck a dick raw but anything else? Not so much…
Do we really need to ask how we got here?
It’s called a kakistocracy.
I try to tell my GF that when you hire for anything other than competency, you will get everything except competency.
Kameltoe is the definition of the Diversity Hire.
If a horse can be a Roman Senator, then Ms Harris can be the US President.
In either case, the lesson is the same: contempt.
It’s interesting that the “Just in Time” supply chain system is coming apart at the seams. That old-fashioned idea of keeping a parts supply inventory went out of the window about the time everyone said the Japanese and now the Chinese knew how to do it all. Now we’re paying for the excuse to out source everything sold in this country.
I repair sewing machines as a side hobby, and it will likely become a daily activity for I will probably soon retire. Most of the sewing machines made since the mid 1960’s have lots of nylon parts in them which decay and crack down over time. They don’t have to be used much to decay, for that’s simply the nature of nylon. There’s also electrical parts that are often model and year specific. It is now getting difficult if not impossible to get those parts anymore. I find it interesting that it’s easier to get parts for a machine made 90 years ago than one made 30 years ago. The Singer made 90 years ago may need at most 5 springs ( so far I’ve never had that many to be replaced at one time) which were pretty much shared across several models for many years. The wiring can pretty much be home-made using lamp cord wiring from the local hardware store and a good butane soldering gun. There are no plastic or electronic parts in those machines, so that’s never a supply problem. A thorough disassembly, cleaning and polish job, reassembly, lubrication, then adjustment at which point failed springs become evident is all that’s needed to bring those old workhorses back into service.
I suspect life is about to become very interesting very soon for the people acclimated to our Throw-Away mindset.
One of the biggest reasons for our just in time world is inventory taxes and the accounting nightmare that comes with holding inventory. The just in time world means that you always get what you want right when the end customer wants it. It is truly a modern marvel when it works.
My distributor tells me how many units he wants per quarter.
A notice then goes out to all of my suppliers with a request for updated lead times based upon the order from my distributor.
All of these lead times are calculated and orders are placed so that everything needed all arrives in the same week.
All of these vendors give me net 45 which means I have 45 days from the time receiving receives the materials to pay them.
I usually find myself with a window of 20 or so working days to get everything assembled, tested, packaged and shipped.
Again, when it works, it works beautifully. Any delay from anyone in this chain means that no one gets paid until the problem is sorted out.
Isn’t it odd how it’s the government and always the government that creates almost all of the problems. Taxes, regulations, fines, rules and interference in areas they know absolutely nothing about. Reminds me of childless phd’s who tell people how to raise kids or clueless bureaucrats who don’t know which end of a cow shits telling farmers how to farm.
Aye, but cultivates attendant cronies, favors, and “campaign” dollars it does because it makes the seat of capricious power the bureaucrat’s desk.
Good point. That rule gives we bit-slinging software concerns an unfair advantage because our inventory of downloadable software is infinity, but inventory taxes due are zero point zero.
Those perceived necessities were driven by financialization which is driven by fiat currency. There was nothing intrinsically good about those practices
The massive supply of parts and the cost to maintain it is supposedly what brought down Singer by 1988. Up to that time, they kept parts for about every model of machine they made going back to the early 1890’s. They had at least 3000 different models and variants. The ubiquitous Model 16, made from 1892 to 1988, had so many variants that the parts catalog for that model has about 800 pages.
Every family used to use a sewing machine.
Back in the day, they did not depend upon “new and improved” to get their sales. They filed a patent for some invention, and manufactured it. The parts rarely changed.
Today, since patents are barriers to entry that allow high prices, they depend upon “design” patents. The machines all work the same way, but the “Design” is patented, so one cannot copy a “design.”
There is not much in the way of innovation or new technology in most things, despite appearances. Pots cook the same, food cooks at the same temp, ovens use the same gas or electric, clothes can only be washed and dried at the same temp, your dishwasher, no matter how quite or efficient, is only squirting hot water at your dishes over and over and over. The internal combustion engine can only be made to be so efficient, and that is it. Trade-off include decapitation-by-airbag, when they made cars too light weight to withstand any sort of impact.
One of the reasons for poor quality today is that manufacturers shave off 0.5 mm of plastic to save a hundred grand over 5 million units, and the handle breaks.
I think we’ve stretched things too thin.
I suspect society would collapse even if TPTB were not gaming the economy, fomenting racial strife, encouraging perversions, or spreading bioweapons.
It is just coming sooner this way.
I too work with highly advanced electromechanical systems and have to deal with supply chain issues. I hate to state this direction but it is what it is. You may want to go to China and work directly with manufacturers who work with ‘gray market’ supply chains. Chinese manufacturers work very differently than the US in their supply chains. In China, gray market components and materials are supplies that are in pooled orders from many different customers so that all get better prices. Example, let’s say that HP is ordering 10 million of a particular IC, many many manufacturers of different products using the same IC will piggy back on the big corporate orders to get the low volume pricing which also helps ensure supply chain stability. This is just one reason pcb BOMs are more than an order of magnitude lower in cost. The best way to tap that is to actually travel to China, hire an interpreter and go directly to manufacturers to negotiate face to face and mod designs to piggy back the gray market components.
I hate to push to China but Americans are too greedy and too fucked up to get their shit together to compete in a cooperative smart manner where all can benefit from overlapping synergies.
I have 2 of the treadle type machines in working order.
I just brought a 1937 Singer #127 back to life. I didn’t have to replace anything except the leather belt that fell apart and give it a very thorough deep cleaning. It must have sat idle for at least 30 years. It will be working a lifetime from now, after our current era will go down as a dark time in history.
Yours is just about the most useful hobby out there! I wished I could send me son to apprentice with you, he would love that kind of stuff.
what you just said is scraring the shit out of me.
i spent some time scraping local ads to find an old (pre-war) foot-powered singer for this exact reason. i know how to sew by hand but it is very slow work.
With a little practice, you can sew fairly quickly with a treadle machine, and the ability to control the needle placement is unexcelled once you get the hang of it.
Sailrite. Heavy duty. Not inexpensive, but built for life on the sea—and equally so on land
Back in May I brought a Consew 226R1 back to life, an improved copy of a Singer 111w155; it was made by Seiko of Japan around 1970. It must have sat idle for nearly 20 years. It needed a new motor and wiring job. The thing looks nice and works beautifully, and is of much better quality than the new Seikos where all of the parts are made in China. I paid $250 for it, have under $450 in it, and it’s worth about $850. I think I’ll let it sit in the shop for awhile. It’s a sweet classic that was a one owner machine that did most of the automotive upholstery jobs in the little town it came from.
Right now the USA makes nothing of value, so we are getting back some of that wealth that was shipped out, by way of our funny money. That analysis will make more sense after the funny money fails.
We make fake money, fake Superheroes, and fake minority success-stories.
Actually my hat is off to all those who work hard and succeed, minority or not. It’s just that I’m fatigued by the seeming plethora of black astrophysicists and symphony conductors. They’re everywhere….
Inventory is an expense. Margins have been under pressure ever since the dollar became Jekyll Island Nylon (& attendant that frontal assault snipers & mines & artillery & explosives dropping from the sky: regulations, unions, direct/indirect/hidden{nylon} taxation, licensing/credentialing/cartelization…all the countless ways of skinning the cats). That’s what happened to inventories, not Asian (also laboring under dolorous dollarization) contagion.
Above feeds into “planned obsolescence,” too.
30 years ago, a trucking executive who was part of the JIT supply chain said the initials JIT stood for Just Isn’t True.
You can still find hand or foot operated Singer machines in places.
I can get points and a condenser for a model T easier than a coil pack for a 2008 explorer.
Let that sink in. Six sigma and the JIT model was a disaster in the making. I’m taking new job as a result.
taught son how to throw a net,fish,and how to grow food.they can close the grocery store tomorrow,we will be fine.
Nickel- I thought the “just in time” supply chain system was a train wreck looking for a place to happen from the get-go. I am not sure how we have let our leaders (cough) hand over the suppliers of our important components/products to the commies who are dedicated to ending our way of life. Never understood that (tongue in cheek). We are being busted from all directions, yet something in me says we will do as a people what we have to do to survive.
Hang in there, God helps those who try hard and help themselves.
Bea, I saw a delivery truck go by pulling a Tiny Home on a flatbed trailer this a.m.
I was on my porch with no camera.
Craziest delivery I have seen.
Ghost- Oh yeah….Well about 7:00am I had 10 or 12 buzzards on the driveway in front of my house just standing around. Were they delivering a message to me? Was this a dark prediction of my future?
I am at the doomstead in BFE, if that happened at my burb house, I would have purchased a box of DEPENDS.
Remember the old poster that used to be in head shops that had the buzzards with one saying “Patience Hell, I’m going to kill something”.
One of my all time favorites.
Turkey Buzzards have returned around where I live. All of a sudden they picked a roost, and it’s not uncommon to see hundreds flying around that part of town. There were many migrating South through here about 5 years ago, and many decided they had flown enough!
LOL at the vultures… we have lots of them and they truly are creepy as all get-out. It was around 7 a.m. when I was sitting having coffee, enjoying the serenity and along came a Tiny Home for delivery somewhere nearby.
Vultures are all over.
Passed three of them in NJ on my way back to NH. All headed northbound, out of state.
Seems to be a thing.
I think they are holding their annual convention at my house. Sure creeps you out, like the grim reaper showing up to escort you out of this lifetime. Old geezers get a little sensitive about these things.
Buzzards congregate and once the sun is warm enough they spread their wings and do a spot of sunbathing. Is your driveway shady? If it is then you may be having a portent.
Back when our beloved EC was alive I told him about a dream I had of crows…this was before the Covid ‘plandemic’ and he and I both felt it was a very bad omen. Sadly, we were right.
As to the traveling tiny home….methinks (I’m using said word to annoy a certain someone) the sudden interest in RV’s isn’t because folks have lots of free time and a desire to vacation. I believe lots of folks are thinking about a roof over their heads if the SHTF.
I see a LOT of boondocking RVs around the area.
Just parked beside the creek for a short time supposedly. I suspect there are a lot more coming.
Methinks I know where the tiny home ended up, by the way.
A family from St. Louis bought an acreage down the road a bit and I suspect they are moving their first home onto the land. They have put in several wells, so am thinking more tiny homes are coming soon.
This tiny home schtick amuses me no end. Little 250 sq. ft. homes? Please, if I wanted to live in a garden shed, I’d grab one and get a carpenter to finish it out. I’d rather have a decent travel trailer that I could move around than some itty bitty overpriced updated garden shed.
Vultures or tiny homes?
Vultures or tiny homes?
Yeah, my question too. Down here we have beacoup buzzards, black and redheaded and we also have Caracaras. Those are some serious birds, they hassle buzzards and get them to puke and then eat the buzzard puke. Buzzards poop on their legs, the uric acid kills bacteria.
Where I used to live was an old barn bldg. and I had a nesting pair raise their chicks in that bldg. for years. They got so bold they would wander on my front porch and poop. Lots of white, nasty buzzard poop. I screened off the porch to keep them away. The parents knew me, sometimes I’d feed them cat food from the can. They’d hang out on my clothesline and I’d lure them away from my clean laundry with the cat food.
They’re very smart and more like parrots than birds of prey. I once killed a rattlesnake and tossed its body over where the buzzards could eat it. They not only refused to eat it but, after a few weeks the complete reticulated skeleton was there, eaten into nothing by the ants. Nothing else disturbed that rattlesnake corpse. I tried to pick up the skeleton to save it but it was too frail.
I just returned from a trip to my hometown where I visited the home of my father and the graves of my ancestors.
There are no words for me to adequately express just how much has fallen and deteriorated in the 13 years since we moved away. They were still in the midst of recovery from the tornadoes and floodwaters that ripped through the region last week. Still it wasn’t the bloated carcasses of cattle wedged under the highway barriers along Route 202 a week later or the houses swept off their foundations that signified the much deeper, underlying damage caused not by Nature, but by those calling the shots. Everywhere there were enormous bodies waddling around in their cargo shorts and sneakers like so many toddlers, each of them masked up against an invisible specter of Death that haunts them as they made their way from one meal to the next. The restaurants- at least those that remained open- had no room for paying customers beyond the ones they could squeeze onto makeshift patios because there were no employees to prepare their meals or serve them once they were ready. Several people told me that even when they could get help there were often nights that featured limited menus because no deliveries had been made, sometimes for days. Everything had a look of sadness and distress. There were hastily made signs out of paper pizza plates duct taped to buildings advising customers to keep their distance, wear their masks, show your vax papers, as if a group of third-graders had been asked to re-enact a dystopian novel for their back to school project. In the eyes of the children- most of whom were half covered- I could see fear of both me and my children because we were not compliant to the new social dogma.
The old Princeton Shopping Center, once a vibrant little satellite town center, had fallen onto hard times, run by an absentee landlord with a Boston office who cared little about the deteriorating conditions, the empty storefronts, the detritus clustered around every fixed object and the crumbling blacktop that surrounded it all. It reminded me of that old Springsteen song where he sees his old girlfriend, emaciated in the shadows, hooking for her next fix.
How does one continue to pretend that there is any hope of returning to anything resembling normal in world that is spiraling the drain?
as if group of third-graders had been asked to re-enact a dystopian novel for their back to school project I wish I could put it into words as well as you. I am really having a difficult time getting people to understand where the trendline says we are going.
It’s over.
The economy- at least the one we knew- will never come back, not the just in time delivery systems, not the offices and commercial spaces, not employees composed of Americans.
We attempted to eat out three times. This was a holiday weekend, something in my memory that was always a big money weekend for businesses. One- the most popular place that our family has been going to for generations- was closed for the weekend. Okay, maybe things are different now. So we went to the next closest place, a boutique pizza joint, plenty of outdoor seating, lots of empty tables inside three parties waiting ahead of us. 6:30pm. We were turned away because they weren’t going to be seating anyone else because they didn’t have enough staff (hostess comment).
Third one was a small family restaurant (Indian) and they only had three outdoor tables and the indoor seating was chairs upended on tables like it was 2:15 am on a Saturday at the bar. They did prepare us a to-go order, so we were able to eat and it was actually quite good. However it was entirely run by one family.
I did not see a single White or Black employee at any place we patronized the entire time we were in NJ- not a restaurant, deli, gas station, shoe store, etc. until the day we were leaving and we stopped by a local farm to buy a couple of sacks of Jersey corn. Otherwise the entire employed population of the state appeared to be from south of the border or the sub-continent. I have no idea where heritage Americans work any longer, at least in my old state.
We are in the wind down period now and all you can do is find way to become more resilient, independent and build as many connections to like minded people as you possibly can before it grinds to a halt.
I’m just a guy trying to get by. I do not write as frequently or as eloquently as others I’ve seen here but when I do, it is out of frustration. I’m very frustrated.
See, I’m trying to build connections with like-minded people but I have the curse of Cassandra in that no one believes what I’m telling them. Frankly, I suspect that this is because what I’m saying has terrifying implications for all of us. The public has fear pushed on them 24/7. Fear followed by the sales pitch. Fear followed by the sales pitch. Fear followed by the sales pitch. Perhaps their fear tank is all topped off and the fact that little black insignificant square things that they know zero about are unavailable means nothing to them. A few people here and there being forced to quit their jobs means nothing to them.
I hesitate to say anything critical because I always enjoy your contributions and feel a kinship with your perspectives when you share them.
Having said that you have just described a business that is completely dependent upon others always coming through in very tight windows in order to have a product to sell, often if not entirely, from overseas vendors as you’ve described it. Clearly you understand the JIT system and have probably known all about the fragility of that system for some time now. Why weren’t you stockpiling components and/or sourcing them from either local or much closer producers? This conversation has been going on here for a very long time and the urgency has certainly ramped up considerably over the last 2 years but you seem to have continued operating as if it was never going to become an issue.
I got a lot out of this particular exposition, but one that describes your approach to this point would be far more helpful and greatly reduce the frustration others may yet begin to face as the system winds down.
Regardless, I wish you the best of luck in rebuilding your infrastructure going forward.
One of the things that JIT allows for is for me to produce in a world where that would not normally be possible. As strange as it sounds, it gives me tremendous flexibility to make changes to the product line which would be impossible if I stockpiled items. Next, I have a factory line in a facility that also produces other high end electronics. The ability to warehouse items for any length of time is simply not possible. Plus, how would I know what items to stockpile? We are not talking about a dozen components but hundreds.
Several of my competitors have already gone out of business because they are not as flexible as I am. I have almost no fixed costs or even upfront costs (at least not anymore) but none of that would be possible without just in time.
Then if JIT is severely impaired-let’s just say their a pandemic or something-does that mean the end of your business model? And if the competitors are gone, can you hit them up for components in a buyout?
I’ve already bought out the entire inventory of one of my competitors that I’m personally storing. As the grid collapses, I have the necessary parts to convert nearly everything in your home to run off of solar panels or 12v wind generation.
At the end of the day, it isn’t just the end of my business model but the entire system we currently live under. As odd as it sounds, my business problems are the least of my concerns. I’m ready to go but I’ve got to continue to prep for the neighbors because it will be easier to feed them and put them to work than to fight them.
Why treat subhumans like humans? What I should have done is count on subhumans being subhumans. You will virtually never be wrong that way. They are not worth saving. You don’t owe them. There is a time to be heartless and cunning. That fact has been ignored and ignored, and we have to pay animal truth its due.
Your are right Doug. No quarter and none expected.
“A leopard never changes its spots.”
You have enough parts to convert how many appliances to solar or wind? Is this a new business opportunity for you? If so, you will need a workforce through the country?
I look forward to your response.
I enjoyed your piece tremendously, Nickel, and it provided a perspective I did not previously had. I used to own a business in my former life, but I was the only employee and it was not about producing actual stuff, but was just consulting. In other words, I provided my expertise and was not dependent on supply chain issues, like you do.
And I am totally guilty of your description of someone who thinks that 95% of inventory at the grocery store is not that bad.
Your example of the surgery center is a good one. The loss of one anesthesiologist would be devastating and would lead to the closure of it. But remember, the loss of all of the cleaners would also lead to the closure. If you are a woman that has 2 jobs, speaks no English, and cleans hospitals at night to make ends meet would you get a vaccine against your wishes? Or would you just look for a different job, of which there are plenty out there at minimum pay? Exactly.
Regarding inventory/prepping for our family, I started maybe 3 years ago to buy children’s clothing and children’s shoes of all sizes from ages 4-18. So at least our kids will have clothes to wear for the next 10-15 years. The adults in our household wear all of their clothes until they have holes anyway. My grandmother owned a knitting machine during the war in Germany, and she bartered her socks and sweaters for milk, eggs and potatoes.
I was running a Pareto distribution on the vax firings. Lose 20%, lose it all. However, my gut says it is much lower.
You’re right. As low as .1
… I have the curse of Cassandra … Fear followed by the sales pitch. Perhaps their fear tank is all topped off …
Nick:
Some observations:
First, don’t try to sell to those that are not potential customers. You don’t spend money on marketing high end electronics to trailer park denizens; why try to show people what is ahead if they don’t want to see it?
Second, don’t sell fear. You reinforce your fear when you try to sell it to others.
Sell opportunity. Explain what is inevitable as a coming opportunity. Change always presents opportunity, unless you are unable to change. Then you go like the dinosaurs, the original “too big to fail” crowd. You speak of your flexibility in your business. That is a manifestation of you, and is a great strength.
Planning for next quarter is planning for next quarter, regardless of what you’re planning, business or personal.
If you sell the opportunity of the future, you reinforce that opportunity in your mindset. And there are plenty of buyers. Waste no time on those committed to their paradigm. The clueless require too much handholding. Those on the fence appeal to a more lazy nature; they just require a little push to set them off balance and tumbling down the hill to reality. They will often reach out and grab those closest to them and pull them along.
Like Johnny Appleseed, spread the ideas.
They will take hold in the right environments.
My husband just told me some nutjob billionaire intends to build America’s first WOKE city. Gonna name it Telosa.
Fortunately, it will be located right next to LaLa Land.
A drought resistant water system for 150,00 people in the desert, huh?
Totally plausible.
I hope this project is completed, though ultimately anything built will end up looking like Hill Valley, under a Biff Tannen administration.
Yet another great essay from Anglin.
https://dailystormer.su/this-economy-can-only-crash-now-no-survivors/
I.e. subhumans are domesticated animals. Australia is a prototype experiment. They will roll out a more efficient prison place where we are for it. I’m not convince he knew exactly what would happen with the stock market and economy, but you’d think the intentional and well-planned trend would be obvious. I love that going along to get along leads to easy slaughter. ‘Bout time.
If you start thinking like that, you are really no different than most of the Luciferians and you would be better off working that system for personal benefit, like they do.
It is true they are in an animal state, but that is not necessarily so. Until they die the first death, they can still avoid the second one, which is the spiritual death that makes people animals.
Your assessment of me and my assessment begins with the the assumption that the god of the ancient Jews is reality. That’s your bet. I bet the opposite. I don’t see myself as Luciferian in the least. If I can’t win without killing many, that’s the way it is. If you put everyone in the life boat of civilization, there is no civilization, and that is wholly unacceptable. If I must eliminate families to start my own, that’s the way it is. I assumed that civilized cooperation and exponential growth in knowledge, character, and affluence was a worthy fundamental goal. It still is. I just won’t see it. The litmus test of anyone who is my people is to want that and have an appreciation of related Western excellence.
Chase your god. I think it is ridiculous like always. There is no property book in the sky. Land and say are precious and worthy of war and elimination. Violence has never been out of style. Any scripture to the contrary is obviously lying. What’s worse is that your god is not only not Western but anti-Western.
Any god who is lord over this world is cool with ecology and natural selection and killing, and that’s not a god worthy of my worship, given my need for civilized cooperation.
I could go on, but you get the point. We are coming from difference starting points. You will see Lucifer everywhere if you take on the Jewish propaganda, and isn’t that how we got here? Muh racism. Muh sexism. Muh economic class.
Hurt me enough, and I will happily seethe with hate I wish to express with calculated efficiency and effectiveness. So-called emotional problems are a healthy response no different than physical inflammation. Christians can’t go to heaven soon enough for all of us. Why you folks struggle so hard on earth to have home and hearth is proof of the conceited thespian liars that Christians are, except maybe the occasional Mother Teresa.
At least the Muslims take Muhammad seriously as a role model. As you know, Christians can’t kill fast enough or heartlessly enough for spiritual glory sanctified through Caesar by muh lord! I only ask that men kill and fail to stop killing with individual accountability. Few men are human enough to want that. Fuck those men. The regularity of kill or be killed will never stop in this world, and those who refrain from it make the scale of its occurrence global and perverse. There is no individual accountability among emasculated men. Damn you fake Westerners.
“Press 1 to pretend you matter. Press 2 for Spanish.”
Holding up Mother Teresa as a paragon of virtue is an egregious error.
Do your homework.
I said maybe. All I’m saying, Stucky, is that she walked the walk of giving and being poor. If it was a charade, well, it was more real than what 99% of Christians do. I’ve calculated a million times that Christianity is false, and I don’t need any more homework. Enlighten if you care to. Really, we wait for a moment of truth that may or may not come. The test has come and we are all failing.
No. My God is just God. I haven’t given it a name, because God works and describes what God is.
I take wisdom and truth where I can find them, but I learned a lot from Yoga Nidra insights about my own nature and its connection to things.
And I am not really arguing against pragmatism and necessity, just remember that people are the end not the means.
Personally, I believe that God had to make us so that there was somebody to talk to (I don’t mean through words). Some things may require hands in the future. I think it is dangerous to interfere with the plan. I think the working definition of evil are those who are and you can know them by their fruit.
I had to lookup Yoga Nidra. It’s almost like your saying you’re spiritual not religious. I believe garbage humans are means or they should stay out of my way. I am their means, as they have painfully taught me. Pain is a personality changer. Hard men make good times. We have some disagreement. I go by the intellectual and philosophical and evidential, not the spiritual or religious. Just God is not a real concept from what I know. Just God sure has a lot of debilitating rules and demands on my time without direct contact. I not trying to convince you of anything except that I am convinced otherwise and you are not persuading me. I get the reverse is true. We are what we are.
I almost saw this band open for Megadeth at the Tower Theater in the 1980s. I won two tickets, went alone and without earplugs, and drove back two hours with ringing in my ears.
If you look at the Market Cap/GDP ratio a couple things stand out.
1) The middle class has already been strip mined and there is nothing left but debt
2) There can not be another market cycle after this. It would not be possible for numerous reasons.
So the only questions regarding the economic situation are
a) Does it collapse during the crash, the bottom, or sometime while trying to establish an impossible climb?
b) How quickly and smoothly are they prepared to implement their replacement system
Now I will go check out Anglin. I haven’t looked at DS frequently since before they got banned. Now it is almost daily reading. I don’t know if I should be following all of this. But it is too interesting now to give up a lifetime of following politics. It has been an interest since I was a teenager.
It is more productive than following sportsball, but it wasn’t until a few years back that I realized it is even more fake. I was sharpening my lawnmower blade in the garage when I kid hopped out of a car and asked if he could change out of his football pads in my driveway.
He talked about his grueling schedule and I mentioned when I was his age 2 seasons I played on 2 teams at the same time. It was exhausting and sucked, but I did also enjoy it. Then he asked if I watched the game and I said I never did watch the game. I just played it. He replied that he didn’t watch much either and preferred to be on the field. At that point I didn’t know if he is just going along, or if he was surprised and pleased at all my answers, but he headed home, having got his gear in order.
Living here in southern AZ, we’re not seeing any of this yet except a mild shortage of some new cars,,,and hardly anyone wearing masks…Weird.
What a bleak description. The bloated bodies of cattle that nobody has bothered to remove was the worst, I thought. I know the look of fear in the eyes of the half covered children well. How come nobody else seems to find the sight of masked 3 year old children deeply disturbing?
As you all know very well, that is ONE part of the America that we find ourselves in. Our family spent a wonderful weekend at a campground in Vermont. Nobody masked, beautiful weather, sitting around the campfire with a good bottle of wine with friends, no cell phone reception. Pure bliss. But I guess we cannot all go camping until this Fourth Turning burns itself out.
At least nobody made them set up a defensive position next to a dead cow for 3 days.
I find masked 3 year old children extremely disturbing. My neighbors have a 2&1/2 and a 5 year old. The kids have been masked through this whole thing. Even in their backyard playing with other little friends. The parents posted on FB back to school pictures with the kids in masks. It saddens and angers me at the same time. The 5 year old thinks he is a superhero wearing the mask – his parents doing! I fear for these children. They are being trained to fear the world and people. Not a good recipe for a healthy mental outlook for mankind.
Child abuse is extremely disturbing. It is not hyperbole to call it that and recognize it as such. I don’t think our culture has much of a way of handling this kind of thing, but people need to learn to speak up fast.
Had the same issue last week with the wife and granddaughter. I still had a $50 Outback gift card from the prior Christmas I wanted to use in case it had an annual expiration.
We got to the restaurant and had a 30 min wait–I was perplexed because at least 2/3rds of the tables were empty.
Once seated I asked the waitress if they were still “social distancing” because so many tables were kept empty. She informed me that the social distancing was indeed lifted but that they were so short on employees that they only gave 5-6 tables per waitress at a time to keep the service good and the remainder of the restaurant seating just stayed empty.
PS: always loved this haunting Springsteen song, also the title track from that album “The River”
HSF:
fujigm’s rule of thumb #7:
you can never go home.
Great article about a huge part of the US economy–the part that makes things (no, it hasn’t all been outsourced to China, you can look it up). Most Americans know nothing about this sector. Certainly the politicians have no or only a superficial understanding, but even a lot of intelligent people in the white collar business world haven’t a clue. Wall Street gives it short shrift. Warren Buffet understands. Read a Berkshire Hathaway report and the company has hundreds of companies that produce tangible goods. Buffet’s always on the hunt for more.
I hope your business survives, Nickelthrower, America needs it and its jobs.
Reality. Ain’t it a bitch.
Well said, very well said.
Out of curiosity; what do you manufacture? Do you mind if I look up your business, just because? Tech & manufacture always intrigues me, especially when it has to do with people I’m familiar with. If you’re identity-shy, email me. [email protected]
Wow.
I have not seen this perspective of supply chain problems.
I go to the local GenDol store once a month if I have to. Nick wanted cough syrup and orange juice Monday so I did the deed.
The store has obvious delivery shortfalls.
The place is also understaffed with one very young clerk hustling between unpacking boxes and working the register.
If it is that chaotic in mundane retail Just in Time delivery, I can imagine what it does to the production line.
This is tragic, Nickel.
Stories floated years ago of Japanese streets clogged with delivery trucks doing JIT. JIT is a miracle when it works but it is another layer of fragility in a system.
We are living atop the greatest pile of fragile complexity ever assembled on planet earth.
Fragile systems are very very easy to disrupt.
It is much easier to destroy than it is to build.
Virtually all of the systems 1st worlders rely on have been built to function in a society based on cooperation. NONE of them have been built to withstand deliberate destruction, malicious acts, lack of proper maintenance, or even simple operation outside of design parameters.
Simple acts of cooperation are abundant in a homogenous society. No one in such a society wants to destroy the society they themselves helped build. It is hard to build these systems and keep them running. Ask anyone, for example, who works at a power plant. The specialized labor and supply chain needed to keep a plant online is deeper than you can imagine. But disabling a power plant is unimaginably simple; there are myriad ways to do it, and preventing someone from doing it is impossible.
Complex systems are a statement of our faith in our society and in our collective future. The destroyers are the thing which must be destroyed if we wish to have a society.
True. If they think they can subject us to their rule with digital currency, then they better start investing in grid infrastructure and security now, so that they can have it ready in 20 years.
That is their Achilles heel. In order for their fascist dystopian state to work, they need a functioning grid and we no longer have the means to keep it functioning.
People that have never worked a day in their lives have no clue how any of this works. Frankly, it is the only advantage that we currently have.
I hate to say it but if they continue with their vaccine bs then we’ll have no option but to take out the grid ourselves however painful that will be. They are powerless to stop it.
Yup. I am going solar myself. While it is not financially sensible, it is independent of the ‘system’ and therefore worth the cost.
When people start putting holes in substation transformers, we will know it is really starting.
My buddy is pretty high up in the pipeline business and what he describes says they are extremely vulnerable too. I know Vancouver is out of gas after about three days if the pipeline stops running. And the pumping stations? They are powered by the grid.
This is the future…get ready for it. There’s now a fertilizer company in LA declaring force majeure due to the hurricane. No fertilizer, no food and don’t think that organic is going to feed millions. The factory farms run by CON AG aren’t geared for manure and cover crops. Spare parts are going to be harder to find and there’s already backlogs on appliances like refrigerators and the prices are going up and up and up some more.
I decided to stock up on hand sewing needles, not because I need them but because I needed small items to add to the bill to get free shipping. I’m now really glad that I did that.
I keep thinking of the parts of Atlas Shrugged where the folk are reduced to living like they did prior to electricity and fossil fuels.
Never thought that the long emergency (thx J.K.) would be a controlled demolition of civilization while we all stood around slack-jawed as sociopaths guaranteed deaths by starvation.
A Just-in-Time food production, transportation, and “health” regulatory compliance system is going to make for catastrophic failure.
Six Flags New England also routinely has many rides down recently. They say it’s for maintenance, but I think it is for staffing shortages. Does nobody work in the USA any more?
Asians and Latin Americans work. Americans all live off their investment portfolios… the ones who count, anyway.
The local owned chains to the north of you are not having that problem, but the nationally owned ones are falling apart in every way. Mostly due to staffing issues.
As far as I can tell 99% of it is massive diversity hiring. There are no long enough competent white people around to hold the shops together. Their managers are probably terrified of correcting the sacred brown person.
I, Pencil.
“I am taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril.”
https://mises.org/library/i-pencil-0
Nickel,
If this goes on long enough, I assume the internet itself may have issues staying up? Website hosting companies could start having problems even?
As i recall, Admin undertook extensive efforts to improve resilience and availability of TBP.
But we end clients must face that the open/real internet will return to being the difficult, expensive, time consuming hobby it was in the early 1990s. But this time around with wasteland packet-radio and recovered automotive batteries.
FidoNet for the win.
at this point the faster it all breaks down the better. this technological machine empire was never compatible with human life. that it’s going for the Final Solution now is no surprise. that the elites thinking theyre driving this monster dont understand how it works under the hood is also no surprise. that machine might have given us some conveniences and comforts, which in the end just made us soft and eroded our self-determination and love of liberty, but that machine is absolutely necessary to keep those elites in power. we can live without it , they cannot. the sooner it all crashes, the better.
I know one thing that no one is going to stop doing no matter where they are on the economic scale- eating food.
Better get your seeds on.
I located a source for cover crop seeds that sold by the pounds and even gallons. I neither need or want fifty lb. bags of seed, no place to store them and the vermin and mold would get to them.
I will survive on daikons and turnips…and the odd cowpea. I’m growing cow peas (black eyed peas ) instead of pole beans. Green they’re green beans and dry they’re black eyed peas. I’m also going to take some supermarket dried beans and see if they sprout so I can plant them.
I’m also going to the bait shop and see if they have red wigglers.
https://www.hunker.com/13428209/plants-you-can-grow-from-the-grocery-store
I shelled peas last month and threw the hulls and wormy peas into the garden to decompose and now have volunteer peas coming up all over the garden and around the patio where odd peas rolled and then sprouted.
Ha, I did that with cantalope seeds and avocado seeds. I have a rubber trough found on the road, 45 gallon, someone had drilled holes in it and was obviously using it as a planter. I assume it fell off a truck….So…I dragged it home and filled it with dirt and was using it as an impromptu compost bin with seeds and peels and what-not from the kitchen. I have a small avocado seed growing strong, ditto for potatoes. That’s why I want the worms, they eat the scraps and make dandy soil.
I grew some tomatoes under the grow lights in the living room this winter, and then the cats thought that the little plants were better than catnip. All nibbled up one morning. And THEN a raised bed outside that did not have any tomatoes in it for 3 years had all these tomato plants sprouting up unexpectedly. It was like God said: “I appreciate your efforts, girlfriend, but let me take care of that. I am better at it!”
I have two 5 month old kitties who are annoying assholes, a brother-sister duo who are both thieves at heart. I gave the black tiger male, who I call Festus, a nickname – Festus the Burglar. That stuck as soon as I saw him snatch toilet paper rolls from the bathroom and start opening floor level cabinets to explore.
They’re into everything but on a positive note, nothing that crawls, runs, or flies in the house gets by them which is as it should be.
Worried about my prize small lemon tree, though when I bring it inside for the winter. It produced two or three fine lemons last summer and can’t wait to see that again.
I have three big buck rabbits living wild, actually breeding wild. My efforts to alter the ecosystem around here with enormous rabbit progeny are beginning to pay off.
I’m not known as “the rabbit lady” around here for nothing.
I think I saw that as a kid. Maybe it traumatized me regarding rabbits.
It is time to close critters in…i will try to take pictures of my yardrabbits.
That movie rates in the C movie class, not good enough for a B. I remember seeing a movie as a kid where a giant radioactive caterpillar was spraying its poisons and squashing people. I do believe it gave me my very first nightmare.
Ah, found it….The Monster that Challenged the World…
Don’t forget to claymore your fence line. After 6 months of eating city people, the bad guys are going to want some fiber.
For those who survive the first winter, there will be lots of farm land needing people to work it.
HA!
Front Towards Zombies!
Fresh meat is readily available to those who could not prep outback. It’s just a matter of confidence and conviction.
You wouldn’t be talking about eating the sheep, would you?
Mutton chops?
lol I wonder if protein spikes are prions of mad human disease, then the vaccinated would be deadly fare. The onset of symptoms in cows is four or five years per wiki. I’m sorta terrified. One day at a time. I’ll be so damn old or gone by the time this shit resolves itself into anything livable.
It really wasn’t compatible. Technology took off way faster than anyone could process the wisdom of it. I think the Amish are extremists, but not as extreme as what this materialistic culture has become.
Nobody remembered to ask “How does this technology help me become a better person?”
Asking requires thinking.
Ted Kaczynski might’ve been right about some things.
Nice advice. I’m all set. I have a freezer full of giraffe dicks. 🤠
I have a freezer full of giraffe dicks. 🤠
So did you harvest them yourself or buy them online?
I did offer to can all of the bunny balls he might need.
Raided your toy bin. Better check.
Damn, and I was saving them for you…ah well.
Giraffe dick, better than some people’s vaginas.
I believe it.
You will die a virgin…and that’s a very, very good thing.
Stock up on food and beverage and enjoy the show. Some lessons have to be learned the hard way.
While it may be true that pols “don’t understand how any of this works” that ignorance is not the reason for the controlled demolition. Pols are frontwo/men. They merely take orders. And not from voters, either. Not that it would be a good thing, either, if voters ran my life. That line from The Patriot applies: “Why trade one tyrant 3000 miles away for 3000 tyrants one mile away?” (Citing, diagnosing “ignorance” gives way too much credit. These people are further left in the bell curve than that, left of the zombie line.)
Voters & votees, “leaders,” are just camo…& that’s all the figure/ground “dialectic” it takes to grind perception to dust. Thesis, antithesis, one – it’s a face! – then the other – it’s a vase! – uh-oh! those rhyme! – back/forth forever…no synthesis ever. It’s like corpus colostomy.
“Leaders” are followers that are closer to the front of the mob than the rear (unless there’s any risk – then well to the rear is where the “leaders” are).
Kuehnelt-Leddihn: “Paradoxically as it sounds, liberties are always more threatened by “leaders” than by “rulers.”
“The typical leader by no means influences the masses in one direction, he finds the undercurrent & is himself a possessed among the possessed. The typical mass-leader is not a ‘demagogue,’ he does not consciously & with a cool brain direct the masses in one way, he most of all is gripped by the ecstasy of mass-experience, he is himself among the most unconscious of all.” ~ Theodor Geiger
Congregation effect, I call it.
And you know that the little man behind the curtain did not build that (fooking obama…) whole Oz show. Even behind the curtain, he was just a frontman.
Most people live on the oily-iridescent surface of the bubbles unseen ubers blow for them, & slip-sliding away constitutes life. That slick is Shakespeare’s stage & most all the world is that bubble.
Here’s a thought about “the green new deal”:
(but what do you think about “loss of innocence” & “civilization” at the end? The usual Hallmark Card tar-traps, right? Maturation, & not into domesticity, or Benjamin Button infantilism, is the boiled Maple sap that margin pressured Frankensteins substituted high fructose corn syrup for.)
Transposition. Is that all it takes, figure-groundlings? The New Green (that you can’t see) Deal. Meet the new dealers, same as the old dealers.
On the road the last two days. Talked with a regional manager of a national, large bulk hazwaste hauler in a hotel bar last night. Real problems retaining and training hazwaste CDL drivers. You can’t have an 85-90 IQ to pass the exams. And must be 25+. But, pay is amzing. They just throw a high $$$$ quote on the wall. It gets accepted 95% of the time.
Also, he says that there’s a 4-5 biz day delay on pickups. The generator has to shut down, as their on site storage is full. Production stops.
Welcome to the “new normal”.
JIT was response to stimulus that became stimulus like controlled demolition charges are stimulus. When end run is the plan, quick about it is a must – no such thing as a slo-mo end run. Having fat inventories on hand, that take time to burn thru, would slow things down, & slow might allow for any number of derailments. Wheels rusting off vs flying off. Glaciation vs emaciation. Holodomor Blitzkreig Lightning:
JIT also feeds the damn tech-cycle “obsolescence” scam: upgrade$-upgrade$-upgrade$ (to do the same things you did 30 years ago, but “better”).
“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe, the horse was lost.
For want of a horse, the rider was lost.
For want of a rider, the battle was lost.
For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”
if the men in the radar tower above Pearl Harbor had been a little more on the ball—
Great field report, NickelthroweR. I know what it means to me. It seems likely that dollars will be useless in a year or so. The definition of currency is? I heard that ammo is becoming available, and the final reasonable opportunity to acquire it could be within the next month or two, i.e. late September-October ’21. Since discretion is the better part of valor, and since cucks cucking terminally serves my purposes, carry on, y’all.
I feel for you, NickelthroweR.
My beloved early 70’s stereo receiver needs some refurbishment and I am not pleased to go with transistor substitutes, since the original have not been made in years. I know my example is trivial.
I respectfully submit that the true operative forces running this civilization have known exactly what they were doing from day one. The political prats you fault are just installed there as scapegoats.
JIT was always predicated on an unsustainable complexity. The perfect becomes the enemy of the good. If an object or entity is that fragile then it will not survive crisis, which is always coming. We have seen a lifetime of prosperity unmatched through all known history. Why should we presume that it will continue forever? Crisis is here. We had best relinquish our expectations. 99% is plenty good enough then. Maybe not to make complex machines, but to survive.
If these alien robot creatures really can shut down the world, no matter the cost to humans — they will do it. And then humanity will have to rebuild from wherever they can. It’s not a question of belief, it’s simple reality: There are no arguments that can be made against the alien overlords, that will have any actual impact on the behavior of the alien overlords. Only the reality of what real pushback humans can manifest, will make a difference.
I have a brother and sister whom I grew up with, they were family, and for whatever reasons, they became alien robot creatures. They focused on their own survival over anything else. There was/is no reasoning with them, no discussion, no relationship, no point in trying to use words to deal with them. I would love if it were otherwise. It is not otherwise. No matter what I would like to believe, I had to face the reality that they will not stop at any reasonable point — I must be the one who puts the limits, and then enforces those limits, to keep them from me.
I don’t mind talking about these things, but talking about them means absolutely nothing.
See also: Voyage of the Damned.
Village of the Damned, maybe? “Leave us alone” in a British accent.
I always thought JIT was an accident waiting to happen. The opposite was was old Soviet system. Stalin & his successors was convinced the Americans were coming to get him, so the Soviets, esp the military, stored up massive inventories. Now these are really old, but there are still tons of em. You can look on ebay, or if you have Eastern European connections, see if they can help.
HTH
This is crucial. Not just for US manufacturers, but to even keep the lights on. Everything needs maintenance and repair, and the problems that Nickel describes cover every facet of life. Forget about the anesthesiologist, where you gonna get sterile disposables, if the JIT runs out?
I fix things for a living, so my business is relatively covid-proof, but it is not supply-problem proof. If I can’t get parts, you need a new unit. But you can’t get a new unit, if the supply chain is disrupted. And it is not just factories or producers, it is also logistics. Most famines were due to the fact that the food could not get to the mouths. That’ll happen here.
Hal Turner has an article that brings this home, if you’re paying attention:
Grid electrical equipment takes from 5 months to over two years to supply.
What happens when you have no power? What happens when the waste water company can’t keep going. What happens when things begin to break down. This all can cascade from one minor thing to the next medium thing, to the urgent thing, to the important thing, to the emergency thing. And it can do this in every aspect of your life.
I think that the preppers out there better start focusing on learning to live like its 1850 rather than trying to stock up their 2020 lifestyle.
“What happens when you have no power?……. learning to live like its 1850”
Connections : The Trigger Effect
Great series. I learned (and learned to question) more from this show than any ‘educator’ I ever had to endure.
My friends wife was in tears after this one. She had that moment of realization, that she did not know, that she did not know…… Came unhinged at the idea that it could all go away tomorrow and she would be totally incapable of surviving.
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Waste, the most conspicuous consumption, the original gluttony & obesity. Survivor guilt. Won the lotto but cogdis won the war. Who were those snl guys that did the “we’re so unworthy” bit? Causeless rebels, born to self-destructively lose, is a resonant archetype for a reason, or several reasons conspiring.
A wedding this way comes. Has me thinking about the passages that rites claim to be a shortcut to. Why sweat when you can just symbol? Why struggle with the to•me, deciphering that codex, reading that book o’ you, when so much easier to rite along with the Purple Sage teleprompter-script? Waste actual life for symbolic life, symbols handed down life, pass Go, collect the monopoly money. Next up, to solve, it is promised, “virtual life.” The pattern is pat, Sajak. Wheel…of…(mis)Fortunate Sons (& daughters). Cue CC(&)R’s swamp rock.
Waste is fundamental. Wastelands, plastic oceans, piles of bones & rivers of blood, all that, is that fundamentalist remaking the world in his own image.
I.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, thew cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
II.
…You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She’s had five already, & nearly died of young George.)
The chemist said it would be all right, but I’ve never been the same.
You *are* a proper fool, I said….
III.
The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch & sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of the Leman I sat down & wept…
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of bones, & chuckle spread from ear to ear.
IV.
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose & fell
He passed the stages of his age & youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel & look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome & tall as you.
V.
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once & turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms the prison
Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
~ bits of The Waste Land, TS Eliot
. . . a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces.
Naked and alone we came into exile. In her dark womb we did not know our mother’s face; from the prison of her flesh have we come into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth.
Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father’s heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?
O waste of lost, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this weary, unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?
O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.
~ Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel
Correspondingly, think of everything in modern society that requires a battery. What happens when the batteries degrade and discharge over time.
I think this is a good place to point out that a lot of lab equipment is simply not available right now. I am talking common stuff like plastic cuvettes. A lot of other stuff is a LOT more expensive right now, if you can get it. This is beginning to hit a lot of places, but they aren’t talking about the why.
I have also wondered if the semiconductor issue isn’t more of a geopolitical conflict than a commerce and manufacturing problem.
I am a self taught dummy but I always hire people smarter than myself. I had this conversation with my lead engineer and he explained to me that a semiconductor fabrication facility isn’t something that can be turned off and on like a light switch. Restarting a fab after it has been shut down is as difficult as starting up a refinery. It can be made even more difficult if any critical workers are lost during the process and the process can take years.
On-target duder. I cannot find caps to fix my old Adcom amp. Had to get a Soundstream car amp to afro-engineer into a working home amp in the meantime.
“Because our leadership class has never had to produce anything of value” One of the greatest line of words I ever read. My hat off to you, Sir.
Well, they had to fill out those Ivy League admissions applications.
Or maybe Mom or Dad handled that.
{sigh} Same here: I thought I’d done great, because in Dec2019, I saw — not the regression of the entire world, but merely the horrendous flooding in China. I don’t buy from China, buy McMaster-Carr et al. do… So I laid in 1-2 YEARS worth of parts for the units I that MFG. In March, I suddenly realized my lenses probably come from China… (the importer/suppliers had not heard of the flooding either!) and so I ordered ~2-yrs worth. HUGE outlay of money I didn’t entirely have, but managed it. I could NEVER have imagined this lockdown&mask SHITE, and am now carefully counting how many more I can make…
Over the past several years, I had already moved a number of the parts MFG to local shops: focusing screws; microscopes bodies, optic kits and eyepiece shells; retaining rings; etc.. Thankfully, the best reticle co is here in the States: hugely expensive but worth the outlay…. (Are THEY okay? They had alternating shifts to ‘protect’ from the not-very-dangerous virus… Beginning back-to-normal work, so SEEM okay, unless the @#$%^& govts force more lockdowns?)
So FAR, I’m okay; big reduction in demand, but thankfully not dead… (More repairs than new units.) But now I’m counting parts and available $$$: should I lay in another couple years of supplies and take the financial hit? The worry never ends!
The BOM (bill of materials) for any one of my products is pages long. It isn’t possible to stockpile everything I might need and the cost to do so would be enormous.
As I see it, if things are so horrific that common parts used in manufacturing go missing then I have a much bigger problem on my hands as that means that the entire system is under extreme duress.
I will manufacture for as long as I can but my primary focus now is on simple things like my bug-out bag, food storage, water purification, and personal protection. Frankly, I plan to employ my unprepared neighbors as farm hands while those around here that are prepared can deal with security. Rice, beans, Spam and Ramen are still cheap.
Governments ARE the problem! NOT the solution.