Debtquity

And I thought I was a doomer.

I drove my Indian co-worker up to Loon Lake powerhouse the other day, among 14-feet of snow on the first brilliantly clear day in weeks. The conversation, however, was quite dark.

We've differing perspectives on things, having spent the first 35 years of our lives 13,000 miles apart. He is much, much more socially conservative than I, but we share in interest in fiscal conservatism. I think it is this facet that has turned him to the dark side -- he's effectively bankrupt. He got caught up in the bubble/boom as did a few other million consumers Americans and now owes much more on two Elk Grovian housal units than they are worth. He didn't just stop at one; no, he decided that the two of them needed 3,000 square feet instead of that ridiculously cramped 2,300 unit, and "purchased" it two years ago. Today even that unit maintains a fair degree of debtquity, having also fallen in value since 2009.

Nonetheless, I was taken aback at how the world is going to fall apart over the next ten years, in a completely different way that I had envisioned, according to him.

I enjoy opposing viewpoints; not that I'm very good debating them, but man, this conversation led me to wonder how, exactly, is this blog viewed from the outside...I like to believe that I'm not really that far out in left field, more like shortstop. But I do know I take a position that doesn't fall within general consensus. Maybe because it doesn't feel good to read.

He's lost most of his wealth since immigrating, and most certainly that contributed to his jaded outlook. Perhaps that was the basis for such a position; he does so because he fuckered away ten years' output on bad investments. I wonder, then, how is it that I maintain a fairly similar prediction for this nation without having had such an experience.

My Garden Of Eden

Harvest time is near.

I took a few horticulture classes at the local Cosumnes college about fifteen years ago, trying to extend my interest in learning after I graduated.

I was terrible at it.

I did learn that I'd starve within weeks if I had to coax food out of the ground, so in some respects it was a valuable education. I realize how totally dependent I am on others who have carried on the culture of growing food, and I suppose this isn't a good thing for someone who thinks we're going to enter a long period of austerity in this nation, what with double digit health care increases and triple digit deficits. Nonetheless, I am able to grow weeds pretty well. Harvest time is indeed near.

With that in mind, I was thinking today about how our American culture chooses to invalidate nature. Why do we have these double digit health care increases? I'd argue in part due to our failures to see value in plants. We eat fewer and fewer of them as they come straight out of the earth, the tree, the bush or the vine. Wheat and sugar beets are taken by diesel machines and processed into Pop Tarts and sprayed with just the essence of strawberries. The strawberry is no longer the source of provision for most of us; the Pop Tart is.

Marijuana is a plant that can (or could) provide, too. I find the paradox interesting, how a conservative Republican can choose to declare war on a plant yet will swill several vodkas on the rocks each night -- and will make the rocks pills.

I've oft mentioned how I do not fear getting run down on my bicycle by a stoned driver but obviously worry about someone laden with prescription drugs or/and alcohol. In all cases, impaired driving is illegal, but it's a plant that gets outlawed outright. Interesting.

Interesting, indeed...but not without precedent. We have a long and glorious history of suppressing plants. The religious right ought to know all about this: not only do they enjoy taxation to suppress the possession of a dried flower, they know that Eve was busted out of the garden trying to extract knowledge from a plant. Were it not for plants (and talking snakes), there'd be no original sin.

Today we look to Big Pharma to provide the same knowledge an apple from a tree of knowledge may have provided....er, rather, to provide ignorance -- we want to ignore our high blood pressures, ignore our low blood sugars, ignore our pain. Pharma does this, and does this well, but with a steep price. Steep, both in dollars and in overall health. If Eve could just have been allowed to finish that apple...

If we could reconnect our health care system to a good plant-based diet, nutrition, and fitness, we'd perhaps not have to worry about it absorbing 16% of our GDP as it barrels towards 30%. I'd also argue that emotional well being and community would go a long way towards that as well...both of which are advanced through the use of plants. If we chose not to subdue them, as we have been told to do in Genesis, we might have an out.

But the odds of that happening are zero. Along with hundreds of Tomahawk cruise missiles at a million+ a pop, we're well on our way towards insolvency, financially and socially. I shall hope that I learn from my little garden of eden, where I can go to reflect on nature, my garden a place where I might find wisdom. I sure as shit won't find inside a box of Pop Tarts.

Disposable Razors, Disposable Income

I use Sensor razor blades and they're expensive. I noticed some time ago that the blades I use at work (following my bicycle commute) stay sharper longer than those I use at home, but I just accepted it for some reason.

I recently decided to investigate this phenomenon and discovered that blades will last much longer if you simply dry them off afterwards. The blades at home are in the shower and subjected to continuous moisture while those in my bike pannier get dried off, consistent with this dry-it-off theory. I now dry the blade off as best I can at home. I use a razor blade as an analogy with all my consumption. I have more than enough disposable income -- I could easily just buy more disposable razors with that disposable income. But I don't. Indeed, I'm willing to take efforts to extent the life on a razor simply to save a buck or two each year.

Yet, I counter these savings by throwing every penny I get in change into the garbage. I'll extent the life of a razor but I don't want pennies in the cruising kitty. I probably throw out 650 to 700 pennies a year, 'cause I hate 'em -- you can't buy a newspaper or a candy bar with them and you can't pay your Bay Bridge toll with them. They cost the government more than a cent to produce. They are inherently worthless because of that; this is the real reason I toss 'em. I earn 10,000,000 of them each year, so this represents a loss of about 0.007%.

My hope is that in forty seven million years, when the next generation of curious mammals decide to chip away at shale formations created by several thousand years of human waste looking for fossils, they'll no doubt think that historic man was a small, half-inch, single-eyed, bearded, bodiless creature. But getting back to the present, when a clerk decides to offer me a quarter instead of the $0.23 cents I'm due, when I see she also realizes the idiocy of pennies, I throw that quarter into her tip jar. Otherwise, the three pennies will find their way down the storm drain.

Today I smashed aluminum cans and carted off the plastics into a garbage bag. I save a few cents a day by doing this. I have enough disposable income -- I could just as easily dispose of them and get on with the NASCAR race. But no, I take the time to do this. I believe that these small acts, like maintaining my 16-year old lawn mower or reusing a bolt -- when aggregated, demonstrate a belief system in the slow, gradual accumulation of wealth through frugality, mindfulness, and thriftiness.

Mr. Fusion

Ask yourself -- how is it that the only country in the world that was on the receiving end of two intentional nuclear detonations would today derive a third of its electric energy from nuclear? Probably because Japan knows how utterly screwed they are without it, what with their feeble global energy allotment. Just like South Korea that imports 98% of their energy, nuclear is an increasingly growing segment of electric production in those two nations.

Japan's electric demand approaches 170,000 megawatts, or 170 gigawatts. To provide scale, California, last I recall, was ~60,000 MW. California derives 20% of its total electric energy from nuclear. It is wholly relevant to the discussion -- without it, this blog wouldn't exist...at least not in its present form. Without nuclear today, we'd never be able to power our iPhones or our high-definition colorized television sets to the extent we do. Sorry, but if we want these things we need to power them.

I mentioned this earlier, but the moment even the most stalwart anti-nuclear, anti-coal, anti-oil environmental activist has to endure one snowy New England evening without power for light, but more importantly to charge her batterized vehicle, nuclear and coal will cease to be such bete noirs. In my mind, for the foreseeable future nuclear is the only scalable base loaded electric energy resource for 1) a western pacific rim nation tethered to their personal electronica 24/7, and 2) an eastern pacific rim nation tethered to their personal electronica 24/7.

I argue that we as a species will crack every last hydrocarbon chain for its stored energy, regardless. Regardless. It's perhaps only an issue for how long. There is no doubt in my mind that we will extract every last shovelful of West Virginian coal over the next 400 years; every last drop of Angolan crude; every last wisp of Indonesian natural gas; every last grain of sand in Alberta.

I again got into a lively discussion about 400 years out with my co-workers. Each one felt that because 400 years ago, in 1600, as the same issues of energy weren't in play, it's ridiculous to suppose anything about 400 years from now. In their eyes, Mr. Fusion is on that horizon -- banana peels and coffee grounds will power Mr. Fusion and personal, mobile power will be at hand. Yes, perhaps. But what about the more immediate future, say, 30-60 years?

I asked them to consider the past 30 years, to look at the range of all of our technological achievements. Thirty years is forever. In 1981 you actually had to get off the couch to adjust the vertical hold on the back of that gargantuan tele-box. But then I asked them to realize that the same thing powering TVs then is the same thing powering iPods today -- coal, natural gas, hydro and nuclear. They are smart guys; they know this. The energy sources haven't changed, and over the next thirty years they still won't change...not appreciably. We'll perhaps have higher penetrations of wind and solar, yes, but no Mr. Fusion.

I want to forward the notion, again, that technology is not energy. In 2041 our technological advancements will still be powered off 74.2 million year old coal, just as they were thirty years ago. Coking coal will be needed to smelt the iron ore to build the wind turbine pedestals and solar array frames, and natural gas-powered generation stations will be needed to provide for the 75% reserve requirement for intermittent wind and solar, and diesel will be needed to power the large Bolivian vehicles needed to mine the earth's surface for lithium for car batteries or to dig the holes for hundreds of acres of diesel producing algae pools or nano-biologics.

The Japanese are on the leading edge of technology yet they still need 7 billion year old uranium to power it.

Tomorrow Is Here

Tomorrow has arrived.

I received an unexpected bonus at work, and by this time tomorrow I will have ended my lifelong quest to pay off my housal unit mortgage.

I chatted with a co-worker from Bangladesh over a cheese steak lunch today (yep, a poor dietary choice, I know), who is somewhat distraught regarding his purchase of his Natomas housal unit in 2007. He lived in Dhaka for most of his life and from 10:00AM to 10:PM every day, trucks were allowed to rumble down his street. Tens of millions of people. He hated the noise. Now, twenty years later, he cannot stand the sound of the silence of suburbia. He longs for the ability to walk his girls to the park, but the park is too far. He drives. If he does take them outside after work, they get mosquito bites, much to the consternation of his American wife. He knows that cable television, the Internet, and various other forms of personal electronica will consume his young family, alienating themselves intentionally in their own electronic silos, inside their own rooms, inside their own housal unit, inside a "community" where no one talks to one another, where no one visits because no one knows their neighbors' names, inside a nation that could care less about real social interactions outside of Twitter and Twatter.

I'm ten hours away from my final payment on a housal unit I have no real attachment to, because it's firmly planted inside Elk Grove, a city with no future. Suburbian housing provides a living arrangement that has no future. While I intend on continuing to make this housal unit my home, while I intend on taking the time and care to fix things that break and to make it presentable to the rest of the world, I know that many of my "neighbors" won't. Indeed, they already aren't. I enjoy their company, yes, when they make themselves available outside of just opening the garage remotely, driving in, and closing it behind them. But I also know that they are generally mobile, moving from one unit to the next, with absolutely nothing nothing! to pin them down to this community. If they want a better unit, they'll have to leave. If they want a smaller unit, they'll have to leave. If they change jobs, the new commute would be even more unbearable and they'll have to leave. When their unit ages, they'll leave to newer units afar. When maintenance calls, they'll have to leave because to perform maintenance on "maintenance-free" housal unit materials like seamless gutters or vinyl siding defeats the purpose of buying the stuff.

Truthfully, I cannot hope to live here for the rest of my days. I will be forced out someday. I think that as energy becomes scarce the true cost of building shit miles from everything else will be revealed. I think that as this neighborhood ages, people who have even less attachment to things will move in, to rent, to care even less for the place they inhabit. This is the endgame of suburbia.

My plan going forward is to finally save some money for a change, to allow for the future possibility to live in a desirable, human scaled, walkable, architecturally relevant neighborhood, but all those places around here are so fucking expensive because people know their value and people care about them. I'm forced to live in sterile, lifeless, stucco-clad suburbia until I can amass enough wealth to afford a real community.

Tomorrow marks the first day towards that new goal, now that my seventeen year goal has been reached.

Wa-hey.

Optimus

So. Have you sprung for that new dual-core cellularized phone, or will you hold out 'till 2012 when quad-core phones are released? What will you do?

Huh?

What will you do?

Looking at what the new LG dual-core phone offers, I wonder why I'm not out bidding up the price for such electronica. I mean, I've been anticipating 1080p HD video playback for forty one years and it's finally here. Wa-hey. Not only is the beautiful 4" screen in HD but I can view all my digital videos recorded in 1080p on my compatible HDTV at home via HDMI. I should thank our all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise God in heaven that this new LG Optimus 2X phone supports Android 2.3.

A phone that can support mobile gaming. A phone that can support multitasking, such as mobile gaming and browsing. A phone that can provide smoother web browsing with little to no screen lag to make mobile gaming even more enjoyable. Yes, this is what our "new" economy is based on; a coupla different high-end cell-phones so we can play Angry Birds in high-def.

This is our new economy.

Exit, Stage Left

I surmise that [the gains from increased productivity] are flowing to the multinational/political machinery.

This statement from my post To Get Rich Is Glorious led me thinking this morning on the bus about how pernicious money in politics has become.

For those of you living in California, I ask you, when have you last heard/read/thought about Meg Whitman, the most recent major party gubernatorial candidate to lose? For a woman who spent the most money in history on an election to gain her first elected seat, indeed, one of the most powerful seats in this nation, she's completely fallen off the radar.

It seems to me that only the financial elite, the top 1%, ever stands a chance to win against the backdrop of a nation far more interested in the affairs of the Kardashians than anything in reality. And by financial elite, I don't necessarily mean that the candidate falls into that category per se, but regardless, he/she still requires the financial backing of those in the top 1% to even enter the party.

This is a vicious cycle and it's amplifying; it's growing geometrically. The ever growing concentrations of wealth creates a feedback loop, and it's obvious to any casual observer who's eyes are not glued to Kim's ass that for every additional election cycle the cost of competing rises dramatically.

Meg Whitman enters, stage right, and drops a colossal deposit (money, by the way, earned not in a truly productive activity but earned by a digital vacuum sucking all those loose nickels from what would have been yard sales) just to enter the fray. She gains the support of a small cadre of other 1% Republicans organized in political action groups or other front groups. She also contributes mountains of her own wealth above and beyond her initial "investment" to chug forward.

Jerry Brown and company needs to raise a shitload of money to counter the $178,500,000 this single wealthy woman raised, and he himself is forced to draw on contributions from the wealthy elite on the other side. State-level groups such as teachers unions and other PACs form the other side of the power balance equation.

Jerry wins, due in part to Whitman's inability to appeal to non-financial elites like my co-worker, who as a registered Republican chose not to support the overt buying of an election. Nonetheless, he failed to realize how Brown only won based on the covert purchasing of the governorship by the California Corrections Union et al. Meg Whitman, a la Snagglepuss, exits, stage left, never to be seen or heard from again.

The real issue I have is that, if wealth wasn't so concentrated in that top razor-thin tranche of well-connected people, then all these political candidates couldn't amass such huge sums from such a small cadre of people. They would have to seek campaign contributions from a broader base, like people who read this Monologue. But more critically, any new candidate, trying to counter the war chest of an incumbent, is wholly reliant on an ever decreasing number of wealthy elitists on his/her political side to raise even more money to compete, much less win.

And more critically still, the influence of that small financially powerful group over the elected grows as well.

A teacher's union is only ever interested in maintaining the status quo. I'm simplifying things greatly, I know, but their focus is to ensure they remain in the debate. Witness the power these sorts of groups have had in Wisconsin recently. Here we have several immense, politically powerful groups competing for a dwindling resource base. If any candidate alienates any of these competing factions their millions will simply flow to others who won't.

The next level of Snagglepuss Politics now enters, stage right, when we have the Supreme Court ruling that unlimited sums of contribution cash can now flow from corporations who are "individuals" who are simply exercising "free speech." These are, obviously, boarded and CEO'ed by the very same top 1% (who own as much as the bottom 60%), and so the dependence of political candidates on these financial elites is only strengthened.

This is how, when someone like Chris Dodd gets a sweetheart deal from Countrywide as a Friend of Angelo, Congress overrides the will of the American consumers people who, by a 600-1 margin, did not want to bailout the financial industry in 2008 to the tune of seven hundred billion dollars. The American consumer exits, stage left.

I like to think about such things on my bus ride. I think about the coming energy constrained future, but it's clear to me that there is far, far too much inertia in the existing form of democratic repression representation for us to galvanize any rational energy policy. Thus, I plan things around a possible future of resource constraints, financial implosion, and subsequent social meltdown. I have conditioned myself to these Snagglepuss Politics, and I'm conditioned by riding the bus.