Monday, December 23, 2024

A Christmas Gift from Marcus Aurelius

"Whenever you want to cheer yourself up, consider the good qualities of your companions."

We turn to Marcus Aurelius for the realistic wisdom of stoicism, but he has another gift to offer us. What's striking--and rarely discussed--about his Meditations (free online text) is the nature of the first chapter of the book.

Book One is a lengthy and heartfelt expression of gratitude to those who taught and nurtured him. It begins with these lines:

"From my grandfather Verus I learned good morals and the government of my temper.

From the reputation and remembrance of my father, modesty and a manly character.

From my mother, piety and beneficence, and abstinence, not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts; and further, simplicity in my way of living, far removed from the habits of the rich."


Marcus then extends his gratitude to all those who helped and guided him.

"From Rusticus I received the impression that my character required improvement and discipline.

From Apollonius I learned freedom of will and undeviating steadiness of purpose; and to look to nothing else, not even for a moment, except to reason.

From Sextus, a benevolent disposition, and the example of a family governed in a fatherly manner, and the idea of living conformably to nature; and gravity without affectation, and to look carefully after the interests of friends, and to tolerate ignorant persons, and those who form opinions without consideration.

From Alexander the grammarian, to refrain from fault-finding, and not in a reproachful way to chide those who uttered any barbarous or strange-sounding expression.

From my brother Severus, to love my kin, and to love truth, and to love justice.

From Maximus I learned self-government, and not to be led aside by anything; and cheerfulness in all circumstances, as well as in illness; and a just admixture in the moral character of sweetness and dignity, and to do what was set before me without complaining.

In my father I observed mildness of temper, and unchangeable resolution in the things which he had determined after due deliberation; and no vainglory in those things which men call honours; and a love of labour and perseverance.

To the gods I am indebted for having good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly everything good. Further, I owe it to the gods that I was not hurried into any offence against any of them, though I had a disposition which, if opportunity had offered, might have led me to do something of this kind."


As with everything of value, gratitude has been commoditized into an empty, ersatz expression of virtue-signaling for public consumption, a canned commodity delivered like a product from a factory in every speech given by the winners of the game: I'm grateful for Coach, my teammates, and so on, punching the "gratitude" ticket for public approval.

Authentic gratitude is private, a meditation on the sacrifices made by others on our behalf, offerings of life experiences and understanding. This gratitude is a gift we can give ourselves, and others.

Consider the grace and gratitude in this advice from Marcus Aurelius:

"Whenever you want to cheer yourself up, consider the good qualities of your companions, for example, the energy of one, the modesty of another, the generosity of yet another, and some other quality of another; for nothing cheers the heart as much as the images of excellence reflected in the character of our companions, all brought before us as fully as possible. Therefore, keep these images ready at hand."



New podcast: Seeking a Culture of Honor and Integrity with Emerson Fersch and Amy LeNoble (59 min)



My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print)
Read the first section for free


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Thursday, December 19, 2024

The Core Skill Going Forward: Frugality

Speaking of lean years, it took the NASDAQ stock market index almost 17 years to recover its March 2000 high of 5,048.

The core skill going forward--frugality--is largely a forgotten skillset. So let's examine frugality.

Conspicuous waste is part and parcel of conspicuous consumption, which is a signifier of wealth and status. The more one wastes, the higher the status, as waste implies "I'm so rich, I can waste as much as I want."

This reach for status by consuming (and wasting) more is the engine of the waste is growth Landfill Economy.

In good times, when jobs, stock market/real estate gains and credit are all plentiful, even those with average income earn enough to waste money, food, etc. Even though we complain about the high cost of food now, there is little evidence that we're no longer wasting up to 40% of the food we buy / order out.

In a deep, prolonged recession, jobs, capital gains and credit become scarce, and so we have less to spend, and so frugality--eliminating waste and superfluous spending--is either incentivized or forced by necessity: forced frugality. TINA is the first source of frugality: there is no alternative.

(So you wanna be a writer? First take a vow of extreme poverty / frugality.)

Frugality has another source: the desire to save income to invest in long-term goals via careful planning. It's well established that the difference between "rich" and "poor" in middle income brackets is deferred gratification, the ability to defer consumption today (instant gratification) to serve long-range goals, such as buying a house or saving for a child's education.

A third source of frugality is genetics. Some of us are naturally frugal by nature, others naturally profligate. What others consider normal--throwing out the leftover rice in the pot because eating leftovers is for poor people--is absolute anathema to us.

Others mock those of us who save plastic bags and rubber bands, while for us it's second nature: why throw something away that can be re-used? We save random screws in a jar (a real treasure for handy people), smoothed out wrapping paper and scraps of wood. Composting kitchen waste is second nature. And so on. (You want to see my collections of stubby pencils, extra screws and plastic bags?)

Cultural values are another source of frugality. It's common for the third generation to remark on the extreme frugality of their grandparents from The Old Country, with the implication that poverty-induced frugality no longer makes sense in The Land of Plenty.

A fifth source of frugality is ideological / ethical: 1) waste is a sin, and 2) wasting one's income enslaves one to the grindstone of the debt-serf / wage slave status quo. From this perspective, frugality is necessary to be free.

As I've noted in previous essays, frugality and self-reliance were core tenets of the Counterculture of the 1960s and 70s. Yes, sex, drugs and rock-n-roll received the wide-eyed, sensationalist media coverage, but escaping servitude to The Establishment by learning how to do things for oneself and being frugal were core to the Counterculture. I discussed this in Access to Tools, Tools for Living: 50 Years of Forgetting https://charleshughsmith.substack.com/p/access-to-tools-tools-for-living

The book How To Live On Nothing by Joan Ranson Shortney sold thousands of copies in the 1960s and 70s. (You can find a used copy on eBay). It makes for interesting reading now because its entire point of view and value system is so alien to the present-day zeitgeist, which we can describe thusly: 100,000 smart, well-paid people are working feverishly every day to break down our deferred gratification and persuade us to impulse-buy something at full price.

Another 100,000 smart, well-paid people are working feverishly every day to trigger our innate desire to enhance our status with a costly signifier of consumption that we can brag about on social media: look at me!

An even larger army of smart, well-paid people are working feverishly every day to make us believe that "buying now" will "save us money" because "this deal won't last."

Frugality and consumption are relative, of course. If you've been living in a pup tent in a field without running water or electricity for weeks (as we did), then moving into a plywood shack (ahem, a micro-home) you built with hand tools is the acme of luxurious living: life is good, and looking up.

If you've been evicted from your foreclosed mansion on the golf course and are offered a plywood micro-home as your replacement living arrangement, your reaction will be considerably different.

In the old days, eating out was a luxury reserved for birthdays or the once-a-year family vacation. Fast food, snacks or a soda were luxuries enjoyed a few times a year. Now we consider eating out multiple times a week as a birthright, and giving that up a hardship that's beyond bearing.

What is frugality? We can start with a simple dictum: waste nothing. Food costs less when none is wasted.

We can then ask: what is the bare minimum we need to survive? Those struggling with everyday life in the wake of Hurricane Helene offer an object lesson to the rest of us. Frugality is both stripping life of non-essentials and also making sure we have the real essentials on hand. This takes planning and preparation.

Another useful question: what expenses can I eliminate as the means to meet larger goals?

A related question: what can I learn to do for myself so I don't have to pay someone else to do it for me?

What is the point of frugality? Is it all about saving money? Or is it really about freedom from the invisible shackles of conspicuous consumption and a burdensome sense of entitlement? Or is it about the confidence of knowing how to do a great many things, and knowing we can get by on much less?

Perhaps it's also about authenticity. There's something artificial about relying on conspicuous consumption for one's identity and sense of self. No longer caring makes one "poor" in appearance but rich in invisible ways.

I don't think frugality is about not spending money per se. It's about focusing on building a foundation we own, control and maintain of life's essentials, a sense of self disconnected from consumption and freedom from want, debt and servitude.

Frugality is a value system, a lens to view the world and a set of skills that become increasingly valuable should the good times fade and the seven lean years begin. I discuss this in my book Self-Reliance in the 21st Century.

Speaking of lean years, it took the NASDAQ stock market index almost 17 years to recover its March 2000 high of 5,048. That high wasn't reached until October 31, 2016. Adjusted for official inflation (i.e. lower than real-world inflation), the index needed to top 7,358, a level not reached until January 2018--18 long years after its euphoric bubble peak in the dot-com era (AI! Oops, sorry, that's today's euphoric bubble.)



Bubble symmetry suggests a retrace of the current NASDAQ might finally hit bottom around 2032, seven long years ahead. Yes, yes, this is "impossible," as the Federal Reserve will never let it happen, but the Fed was very active in 2000 to 2003, and the NASDAQ still lost 80% of its value.



Perhaps we should add a sixth source of frugality: the evaporation of all the phantom wealth inflated in speculative credit-asset bubbles.


New podcast: Seeking a Culture of Honor and Integrity with Emerson Fersch and Amy LeNoble (59 min)



My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print)
Read the first section for free


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Wednesday, December 18, 2024

The Economy Has Failed the American People, But It's Taboo To Say Why

Addiction, illness and derangement are all immensely profitable, along with monopoly, cartels and collapsing quality.

The economy has failed the American people, but it's taboo to say why because that would undermine the entire power structure that so richly benefits the few at the expense of the many. The few have an extremely compelling motivation to obscure the "why" and to enforce the taboo on saying it aloud.

The economy has failed the American people because it's a two-tiered power structure that's essentially neofeudal, meaning it's an updated version of traditional feudal social orders. To understand this, we must start by understanding traditional feudalism.

In feudal societies, life is pretty good for the nobility in the castle on the hill. For the powerless peasants working the fields below to fund the nobility, life is less good, and so the peasantry is open to changing this asymmetric power structure to a fairer balance.

To maintain its grip on power, the nobility must promote a social zeitgeist in which the peasantry's powerlessness is the natural order of things and therefore resisting this structure is not only a sin, it's futile.

One key feature of feudal social orders is the impermeability of the line between nobility and peasantry, what we call social mobility. Nobility and serfdom were established at birth, never to change. Serfs were bound to the land of their birth and could not leave; their servitude was for life.

This was a regression from the Roman Empire, which allowed ownership of land by free citizens, and relatively free movement of citizens throughout the vast empire.

Wedged between these hereditary classes were the merchants and craft workers whose services were essential to the nobility's maintenance of power. As Fernand Braudel documented in his massive three-volume series Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century (Vol. 1: The Structure of Everyday Life, Vol. 2: The Wheels of Commerce, Vol. 3: The Perspective of the World), the story of capitalism is the steady expansion of commerce and production eventually generated a class with sufficient power to unseat the feudal power structure and replace it with various flavors of capitalism.

Another key feature of feudalism is the union of state and ownership of capital: there is only one nobility. The nobility owned the productive capital--mostly land, but also toll roads and other assets--and they were also the government: each fiefdom ruled its peasantry and controlled whatever judiciary was available.

The Catholic Church provided a separate power structure that interacted with the secular feudal structure in complex ways, as it owned vast tracts of land and was powerful enough to impose some counterbalancing measures on the nobility--for example, imposing numerous religious holidays for the peasantry. The church held religious authority and wealth via its monasteries and papal hierarchy, and the remarkably complex history of the Holy Roman Empire illustrates the interweaving of these church-economic-political structures.

The church also provided cover for feudalism, by promising the peasantry just rewards in the afterlife for their faith and acceptance of the status quo in this life.

The key to understanding the current neofeudal structure of our economy is to recognize the taboos against describing this structure publicly. The present-day nobility--as in classical feudalism, one class that holds both economic and state power--exerts tremendous sway via its control of media and technology, i.e. the tools of propaganda / influence.

The present-day nobility glorify a staged play in which free-market entrepreneurs battle oppressive government. The purpose is to mask the reality that our nobility is one class: the controls of state and capital are in the same hands. Who did Hank Paulson--former CEO of Goldman Sachs, then Secretary of the Treasury -- call in the 2008 financial meltdown? Warren Buffett. And so on.

These tools are deployed to obscure the neofeudal realities with euphoric (and often delusional) claims of Technology-Driven Progress-- everything's getting better every day, in every way, we're all richer in every way, don't you see all the wonders dazzling us daily?

This is simply not true. As I documented in The Big Shining Lie: We're Better Off Now--No, We're Poorer, Much Poorer, the purchasing power of wages has declined for decades, forcing wage earners to borrow money or speculate in asset bubbles to fill the gap opened by the erosion in the value of labor.

The balance between labor and capital has shifted to favor capital over the past 50 years. The owners of capital have benefited mightily, reaping vast gains in unearned income and capital gains, while those "owning" hours of work have seen the purchasing power of an hour's wage collapse, a collapse masked by the easily gamed charade of "inflation."

As I explained in All Three Pillars Holding Up the Economy Have Cracked, the three mechanisms used to fill this gap--government subsidies, cheap credit and asset bubbles--are all self-liquidating systems due to their inner dynamics. Simply put, debt eventually consumes all the seed corn, and all asset bubbles pop.

As for Progress, the reality is the American people have experienced the opposite of Progress, what I term Anti-Progress across the entire spectrum of everyday life. Our life expectancy is plummeting, and not just from Covid. The rates of cancer in young Americans is skyrocketing, 53% of the adult populace is diabetic or pre-diabetic, with horrendous consequences, and the solution presented by the nobility isn't the source of this catastrophic collapse of public health--manufactured junk food and unhealthy lifestyles shaped by Addiction Capitalism--the more we addict you, the more you buy--but by pushing the government to pay tens of billions of dollars for weight-loss medications with numerous (generally under-reported) side effects.

In the upside-down world of Addiction Capitalism, every addictive device and product is glorified for its addictive nature. The little addiction stimulation device that we all carry and obsessively check 300 times a day is a wonderous "tool" for communicating--yeah, communicating derangement and addiction.

That our lives are consumed by shadow work imposed on us by corporations and the state is ignored in the frenzy of techno-hype. The fact that AI is reducing the quality of what little customer service is available--just another manifestation of the controlled demolition of quality and durability that Corporate America relies on to boost profits--never mind, AI is changing your life by, well, um, enabling the rapid expansion of malicious emails, SMS, worms, spam, etc.

The implicit message is that Progress is measured by two things--rising corporate profits and soaring stock valuations. AI is great because the companies are worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Sugary, fat-soaked snacks are great because "you can't just have one" and they're immensely profitable.

As for social mobility, it's also over-hyped to mask the reality. With the right combination of talent, drive, family assets and luck, it's possible to ascend from powerless peasant to well-to-do merchant or professional supporting the status quo with one's labor and taxes, and a handful of super-glorified go-getters reach the nobility, but these are Cinderella stories that promote the illusion of a porous border between classes.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, life is becoming more precarious, stressful, demanding and deranging even as we're pounded with hype glorifying profitable Progress that isn't actually progress. The inevitable result of this disconnect between the ceaseless hype of Technology-Driven Progress and our lived experience, and the widening gap between the value of labor and the value of capital, is the fabric of society starts unraveling, something that is obvious but also taboo to describe accurately, as a self-reinforcing feedback where each thread that unravels takes two adjoining threads with it.

Anyone breaking the taboos against describing the neofeudal nature of our economy, Anti-Progress, Addiction Capitalism and the profitable decline of quality and durability is instantly slammed as a secular sinner in the religion of Technological Progress. How dare you question the endless bounty of technology, how dare you declare our "god," technology, is a tool of control and addiction, a chimera of prosperity projected on billions of screens.

The indignation of the promoters is in direct proportion to their fear that we'll see through the artifice and awaken to neofeudalism's inevitable decay and collapse. Addiction, illness and derangement are all immensely profitable, along with monopoly, cartels and collapsing quality.

For goodness sakes, don't abandon junk food and fast food for home-cooked meals made with real food--demand the government give everyone hundreds of billions of dollars of weight-loss meds with horrific side effects:



We got your social mobility right here. The vast majority of the top-tier elites in both public and private sectors (remember, there's only one nobility) attended two universities, not for the education but for the opportunities offered by networking:



Nothing says "progress" quite like this chart of social-media dominance....




...and this chart of loneliness. Gosh, could these be related?



The nobility obfuscates its nature with a profusion of sub-classes: dukes, princes, earls and so on in the old days, as if anything matters but the stark division between the nobility and its well-paid class of enablers, and the powerless peasantry watching the pageantry with an unsettling mixture of admiration and alarm.

Tell me what's taboo and I'll tell you the truths that threaten the status quo. As in Kafka's novel The Castle, the nobility's power structure is obscured, and the castle is bustling with activity--but very little productive results of this 24/7 activity ever waft down to the impoverished residents of the village.


New podcast: Seeking a Culture of Honor and Integrity with Emerson Fersch and Amy LeNoble (59 min)



My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print)
Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free





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Thank you, Brass Mule ($7/month), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.


Thank you, Russell B. ($70), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

 

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Monday, December 16, 2024

All Three Pillars Holding Up the Economy Have Cracked

All three pillars propping up workforce spending are cracking. Plan accordingly.

Karl Marx and Henry Ford both understood the key pillar of an industrial economy: the workforce has to earn enough to buy the output of the economy. If the workforce doesn't earn enough to have surplus earnings to spend on the enormous output of an industrial economy, then the producers cannot sell their goods / services at a profit, except to the few at the top as luxury goods--and that's not an industrial economy, it's a feudal economy of very limited scope.

Marx recognized that capitalism is a self-liquidating system as capital has the power to squeeze wages even as the output of an industrial economy steadily increases due to automation, technology, etc.

Henry Ford understood that if his own workforce couldn't afford to buy the cars rolling off the assembly line, then his ambition to sell a car to every household was an unreachable chimera. (There were other factors, of course; the work was so brutal and mind-numbing that Ford had to pay more just to keep workers from quitting.)

If we say the three pillars holding up the economy, the conventional list is: 1) consumer spending (i.e. aggregate demand); 2) productivity and 3) corporate profits. These are not actually pillars, they are outcomes of the core pillar, wage earners making enough to buy the economy's output.

As the statistics often cited here show, the purchasing power of wages has been declining for almost 50 years, since the mid-1970s. This means the workforce's surplus earnings have bought less and less of the economy's output.

There are three ways to fill the widening gap that's opened between what the workforce has to spend as surplus earnings and the vast output of the economy:

1. Government distributed money. The government distributes "free money" to the workforce via subsidies, tax cuts and credits, or direct cash disbursements.

2. Cheap abundant credit. The cost of credit is lowered to near-zero and credit is made available to virtually the entire workforce so workers can borrow money to buy goods and services they cannot afford to buy from surplus earnings. If auto loans are 1.9%, the interest is a trivial sum annually.

3. Asset bubbles. Boost the value of assets via monetary policies to generate unearned "wealth" that can be spent (by either borrowing against the newfound wealth or by selling assets). This expansion of "free money" also generates the "wealth effect," the feel-good high of feeling richer, which increases the confidence and desire to spend more money.

There are intrinsic, unbreachable limits to each of these solutions.

1. The government either "prints" or borrows the money it distributes to the workforce. Over time, low interest rates are unsustainable, despite claims to the contrary, and the interest paid on the state's vast borrowing consumes so much of the state's revenues that it starts limiting how much the government can spend. Once state spending stagnates or declines, this pillar breaks and the economy crumbles into recession / depression.

In other words, depending on the government to fill the gap between wages and the economy's output is a self-liquidating system.

2. The expansion of credit leads to defaults and bankruptcies. Relying on the ceaseless expansion of credit based on the declining purchasing power of wages is also a self-liquidating system, as the number of marginal borrowers steadily increases, as does the volume of marginal loans issued by lenders. Marginal borrowers default, triggering losses that push lenders into bankruptcy. This is a self-reinforcing cycle, as the economy rolls over into recession as credit contracts. More workers lose their jobs and default, more loans become uncollectible, and so on.

3. Asset bubbles concentrate the newfound wealth in the top 10%, exacerbating wealth-income inequality and pushing those left behind to gamble in an increasingly speculative financial sector as the only available means of getting ahead. Speculation is also a self-liquidating system as risky bets eventually go bad and the losses trigger a self-reinforcing feedback of selling assets to raise cash which then pushes valuations lower, triggering more selling, and so on.

All three of these pillars propping up the economy are self-liquidating systems, and they're all buckling. Federal borrowing is pushing up against the limits posed by the interest payments on soaring debt. Credit costs are rising and cannot return to near-zero due to inflationary forces. All asset bubbles eventually pop, and the higher they ascend, the more devastating the collapse.

Wages' share of the economy have been in structural decline since 1975:



Federal debt: and no, we can't "grow our way out of debt" by inflating asset bubbles and subsidizing consumer spending with federal debt:



Total debt, public and private: the acme of a self-liquidating system:



The pillars of consumer credit and federal borrowing are reaching intrinsic breaking points, and so everything is now depending on the asset bubbles in housing and stocks to keep inflating phantom wealth at rates high enough to support more borrowing and spending.

The problem is all asset bubbles pop, despite claims that "this is a new era." That was widely held in March 2000, too, just before the dot-com bubble burst and the Nasdaq fell 80%.



All three pillars propping up workforce spending are cracking. Plan accordingly.


New podcast: Seeking a Culture of Honor and Integrity with Emerson Fersch and Amy LeNoble (59 min)



My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print)
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Friday, December 13, 2024

Truth, Beauty and the Unseen Craftsperson

I think of Bill whenever the breeze brings his chimes to life.

Today I want to honor Bill Murath, a friend and fellow craftsperson who recently passed away from AML. (Acute myeloid leukemia). Like the vast majority of those I have come to know through countless emails, Bill and I never met in the physical world, but we bonded in the realms of spirit and craft. Bill was a unique spirit and gifted craftsperson.

Bill was a father, husband, business owner and musician, and in his younger days, a surfer who lived on the North Shore of Oahu and worked in a pizza shop to fund his surfing. I know the North Shore well and when I see a photo of him on his board, in my mind's eye I am swimming beside him.

Bill and I go way back.

When he read my post When an Old Friend Takes Her Own Life (December 1, 2007), he responded by making two wind chimes of craft and beauty, which he mailed to me in remembrance of my dear friend.

That Bill understood my loss and responded by investing his time, skill and artistry in making a gift that continues to enrich my life every day--how can I express my gratitude?

I asked what I could do for him in return, he shrugged. It was a gift. When I asked him to explain how he designed the length of each chime to achieve the various tones, his explanation went over my head.

I've learned to avoid discussing beauty in my public posts because it inevitably draws the ire of those anxious to accuse me of elitism, as the mainstays of American culture are "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," i.e. entirely subjective; "only elites can afford beauty," i.e. fine art / costly objets d'art that serve as signifiers of wealth and status, and "aesthetic sensibility is snobbery," so to recognize beauty is verboten.

This is a misunderstanding of the meaning of craft, which is an expression of truth and beauty that is not subject to fads or opinion.

I too am a craftsperson, but of a different sort than artists like Bill. My craft is purposefully unseen, invisible, as my skill is in doing work that goes unnoticed because it blends in with what is already there.

Bill understood the Tao of craft. If you read Zhuang Zhou (Chuang Tzu in a previous era), you'll find stories of butchers whose blade never dulls because they never hit bone, and masters who catch birds with sticks. These stories reflect that the Tao flows as skills mastered by years of discipline and effort, as the result of experience with unique situations with uncertain solutions--precisely what is beyond the reach of machines and AI, despite overblown claims to the contrary.

Though our culture claims to glorify beauty, it actually glorifies ugliness. This is why it's so verboten to even discuss beauty, for that would inevitably lead to a recognition of the sea of ugliness.

To those imbued with the Tao of craft, there is immutable truth in the materials we work with. This truth is not subjective; we feel it as our second nature. The same holds for beauty: if the work is done right, it has beauty on multiple levels that is not a matter of opinion.

This immutability is offensive to those who claim equal rights to "decide what's true and beautiful." The craftsperson knows from long experience, in a way the opinionated non-master-craftsperson cannot.

A machine can mix pie crust dough, and the result is low quality because there is a craft mastery to a truly wonderful pie crust. The master baker knows just how much water to add by the feel of the dough, which is partly based on the humidity and temperature of the environment. The feeling of rightness cannot be measured by instruments or taught online; it must be acquired by long experience of trial and error in unique circumstances with uncertain solutions and outcomes, what author Donald Schon called "reflection in action."

This training is never complete, of course, but the practitioner reaches a point of natural confidence that the ignorant mistake for pride or superiority. The practitioners sense the truth of the materials and the path to beauty.

My own experiences this year illustrate the point. I replaced several delaminating interior doors in a 50-year old house. I had to trim the doors to fit the opening, drill a hole for the existing lockset, and so on. The tricky part wasn't the carpentry, it was the finish. The existing doors had been "blonded," a process of rubbing white paint over the veneer and quickly wiping it off. The same technique had been applied to the tongue-and-groove redwood wall boards.

The technique looks easy, and it is, unless you're seeking to match an existing set of doors that have aged with time. Then the trick is to know how long to let the paint soak in and when to wipe the excess off so it looks like the older doors. If you wait too long, the paint dries and the finish is uneven. If you wipe it off too soon, then it's visibly lighter than the older doors.

The goal is to replace the doors in such a way that casual observers don't see the new doors as replacements.

In the same house, an old pipe had been removed long ago in the bathroom and the hole had been filled with an ugly wood plug. There is no way anyone could claim this plug was anything but ugly. So I used a couple of tricks and mixed up several shades of paint to match the existing linoleum flooring. The casual observer won't see it.

A spot of dry rot on an exterior window frame turned out to be a fist-sized sponge of rotted wood that included some of the siding, frame, sill and trim. A robot would have opted for the "obvious" solution which was replacing the entire window frame, window and siding--a job that would cost a lot of money. I knew this was unnecessary and so I set the blade depth of our wormdrive Skilsaw and free-handed a surgery which I completed with a hammer and chisel.

Firing up a Skilsaw to free-hand cut away parts of the window sill, frame, trim and siding of a single-wall house demands a certain level of experience, as each such job is unique. It's not a factory environment. The saw weighs 13 pounds, it's threatening to rain so there's a pressing time element, the ground is uneven and the tool is inherently dangerous. A YouTube video isn't going to give you the skill that only experience provides. It boils down to the feel you have for the blade and the wood.

This is the craft. It becomes part of you, a second nature called up as needed, for your hands do the work "all by themselves," without conscious guidance. Your mind isn't wandering, it's observant, but no more than that. You let the work get done by staying out of its way.

Again, the truth is in the materials: you sense the density and soundness of the wood by the feel of the chisel. The beauty is in the invisibility of the repair, which required fashioning three small complex multi-cut pieces of new wood with a chisel and a hacksaw, as the blade is finer than our handsaw.

I think of Bill whenever the breeze brings his chimes to life. My craft is not up to his, but given my 50 years of experience, I can recognize and honor his achievement, and admire the truth and beauty of his craft and life.

I miss you, Bill.

Here are photos of his chimes, and a brief recording of one.

One holds court in a corner of our kitchen, where it catches the tradewind breezes from the dining nook windows. It is a musical "kitchen god" for those familiar with Chinese traditions.



The other holds court in our living room, where it comes to life in the tradewinds wafting through the windows overlooking our yard. That it shares the space with our very old embroidered dragon seems appropriate.



This book helps us understand Bill's level of craft. The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty (1972)


New podcast: Seeking a Culture of Honor and Integrity with Emerson Fersch and Amy LeNoble (59 min)



My recent books:

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The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

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The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print)
Read the first section for free


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