Will you accept the charges?
Posted On: Thursday - February 6th 2020 11:05PM MST
In Topics: Curmudgeonry Economics Scams
They still have those land-line phones and the associated wiring in hotel rooms. Once in a while you may need to call the desk to find out about the free breakfast, or find out when or whether the folks having the fight in the next room will be kicked out, at the seedier joints. Also, people can call you.
Why people would have any reason to call you is, say, if you were having major cell-phone problems, for instance, with some complete POS* that won't even make or receive calls. That was my situation recently. The junker temporary mobile phone did let me send messages, but about no other functions worked. That helped me send out the hotel phone # and room # to enable loved ones to call me, as I was away for a bit.
It's still a thing with hotels/motels and phones that you'd better watch out about calling out with them, even just to order a pizza. As far back as I can remember, calling from a hotel phone was a big no-no, as they've always had these wacky outrageous charges. Back in the day, they were always double or more than the quarter (or dime, for way back) that the pay phones charged you for local calls. There were long distance charges - does anyone remember long-distance charges?** It was just an additional money-maker, like luggage charges for the airlines, so you'd really try to avoid it.
For the long-distance charges, it wasn't just a decent 50% surcharge though. Often it would be outrageous. Anyone who's been burned by this would have walked out in the freezing cold to the gas station payphone before making the mistake of dialing out from his room again... before the wonderful cell phones came about, that is.
My question is simply "What the fuck?" Why would you set prices so high that only newbies or completely desperate people would ever dial out from a motel/hotel? Peak Stupidity has been over this "price point" business before, regarding minor league baseball, in The Price Point at the Field of Dreams. It seems you would find a price point that got you the most revenue from these phones, meaning way the hell lower than now. The costs have gone way down too, as, judging from a lot of the terrible signals I get calling them, they are likely internet-based voice-over-IP.
I can see more nowadays, these hotels reaming anyone who is so backwards or unfortunate to not have his cell phone. However, I really wonder why they've been doing this since I can remember. This rip-off has always been unacceptable.
* It's back at the store now, where it belongs. I was going to bring it back anyway, but after it let me down completely, it felt good, man.
** Sung in the same manner as Robert Plant in Stairway to Heaven in the concert-movie The Song Remains the Same - "Does anyone remember laughter?"
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Old Conservatarian America- a place where even squares could have a ball.
Posted On: Tuesday - February 4th 2020 7:02PM MST
In Topics: Music Liberty/Libertarianism alt-right/MAGA
In an on-line discussion about Libertarianism vs. Conservatism a coupla days back, I noted that lots of people don't seem to get that basic concept of government mandates vs. private agreements.
I believe it's mostly the younger alt-right crowd that have this opinion that Conservatism and Libertarianism are two ideologies that are somehow far apart. Have they been reading only the Reason magazine goofballs and their immigration stupidity? There's a lot more about Libertarianism than what you're gonna' get out of that publication (check out the guy above, went by the name Murray Rothbard, or Libertarian’s Libertarian - Hans-Herman Hoppe.
There are Libertarians that do lean hard left, but Peak Stupidity explained in What's the deal with Peak Stupidity - Libertarian or Conservative? it's the existential immigration issue that's the big schism. When you're on the right side of that issue, conservatism is not inherently at odds with Libertarianism at all.
You can get into City laws vs. Home Owners Associations, private vs. public roads and all that. The hard-core Libertarians will never realize all those dreams, especially with the current-era American population. However, the arguments from the alt-right that Libertarianism is against their ideas of forming more conservative communities and that the L's are for "atomized" people who must do their own thing is wrongheaded. In fact, L's believe in associations to replace lots of the monopolization of facets of life by government. Charities are the best example, but there are plenty.
One particular, otherwise seemingly-smart, commenter tried to tell me that close-knit communities are too stifling as people know each other's business, and norms of behavior are enforced via shunning. "You can't do whatever you want" because of that, was the idea. Sure, that's the case, and that's what Conservatives love about more community vs. the atomized lifestyle many live today. The culture, at least as handed to us as the Bread & Circuses is pretty sickening. It seems like a Libertarian now would have a hard time NOT being in a community, a community of like-minded Libertarians being the best.
My point is, though, the encouragement to stick to norms of behavior seen in close-knit communities is NOT MANDATORY. You may not have friends around if you "violate" the community standards, but you wont' get thrown in jail. Is that not a key point?
I know a place that was both Libertarian and Conservative, come to think of it, as a great example. That place was the U. S. of A. circa < 1965. That's when the Civil Rites laws and major increases in government welfare (Great Society) began, causing us to eventually lose most of our liberty. You may think, "wait a minute, the hippies started doing their thing right at that time and afterwards, and they did WHATEVER they wanted." Yes, they most certainly did, but even before that time you weren't going to jail just because you wore your hair long.* You might get nasty looks, hear nasty remarks, and not have a free-love-believing girlfriend like some years later.
Laws against dope and such would have been still local vs. Federal. Don't like 'em? Yeah, you'd have to get a big enough crowd to overturn them, not likely in lots of 50s American locales. However, the very important Freedom of Association, specified in Amendment I of the Law of the Land had not been eviscerated by the Civil Rites legislation yet. You could go form your Libertarian community without MANDATORY curtailment by the Feds.
Back in the 1960s there still were very conservative small towns that a large percentage of Americans lived in. No, they didn't like those hippies. Merle Haggard, back in the day, sang about how the "square" folks in Muskogee, Oklahoma, just an example, differed from said hippies, such as those enjoying the hell out of San Francisco during those years. The Okies did not like much about those hippy types, sure enough. Listen to the song, though, and tell me, did Merle Haggard sing that the hippies should be BANNED from , smoking marijuana, wearing Roman sandals, letting their hair get long and shaggy, and getting their kicks on LSD? There was no law in Muskogee MANDATING pitching woo nor any BANNING making a party out of lovin'.
Yeah, I know, Muskogee would not have been the place to set up housekeeping as a sandal-wearing, dope-smoking, long-haired hippy in 1969. The Conservatives weren't calling for Federal legislation on those matters either. That's how Conservatives and Libertarians can get along.
Note Mr. Haggard messing up on the last chorus there. Sure, Gerry Garcia of The Dead did this after playing songs for 2 or 3 decades, hell especially after playing songs for 2 or 3 decades, but he had an excuse: drugs. Perhaps, due to this show not being held in Muskogee, Oklahoma, USA, Merle was not being a hypocrite by toking a little bit himself. After all, the song goes "we don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee." It doesn't really specify whether residents of Muskogee partake in it elsewhere. I coulda' been a
Peak Stupidity has featured Merle Haggard before with Are the Good Times Really Over for Good?
* OK, it's not strictly true from peoples' experiences, but that wasn't the legal framework.
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[Updated 02/08/20: ]I just had to add a bit of humor below the Merle Haggard video. It was something I'd thought of before, left out, and would not have had another opportunity for.
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Scenes from a Fancy French Restaurant ...
Posted On: Tuesday - February 4th 2020 3:05PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Curmudgeonry Inflation Legal Stupidity
... we'd like to see.
The Peak Stupidity blog staff not being songwriters on par with your Bill Joels, we refer you to our VERY FIRST POST for the original Scenes from an Italian Restaurant. No, per that post, nobody can write songs like that anymore.
The type of menu shown above can be seen at lots of fancy and medium-fancy restaurants these days. It's particularly the pricing in dollars with neither a dollar symobol, nor decimal point nor cents "field" that I refer to. Maybe I don't get to NY City enough, but this is kind of a new thing to see, maybe a decade old for me?
It's simple, I grant you. I like that, as one doesn't have to round up prices in one's head as with the silly $19.95 or $12.89 that has been part of retail pricing schemes since long, long ago. that stuff goes at least as far back as 1960s gasoline prices, when that 0.9 ¢/G of gasoline mattered, and has its legacy to this day. From that post:
That 0.9 ¢ at the end of the price, say 29.9 ¢/gal was significant then, though I don't know when that started (the marketing MBAs were at it even back then!), but at that point we were talking about 3 -5 %, not an insignificant amount. Now it's still $2.659/gal, not $2.65/gal. Yep, I checked recently when I filled up to an even number. The stations don't even bother to put that 0.9¢ on the signs now.On the other hand, it seems pretentious to omit the $ sign. Is a dollar the new cent? I can see a good ambulance chasing lawyer* getting a free meal out of some of these fancy places.
"Hey, your menu says the flambeed escargot costs 33, with fries and the large coke, and that bottle of old wine said 67. I assumed this is in cents, and that's why I left a buck and a quarter - I'd have hoped you'd appreciate the large tip there too. Frankly, I'm offended at your insinuations that I'm trying to get away with something. How was I to know these prices are in dollars!? It's downright egregious ... to not have units with your numbers, my engineer friend told me!"
"Gotta problem with this, you can take it up on our handy javascript web-form @ scam.deweycheathamandhowe.com."
Unfortunately, for a slick lawyer like that, there is Facebook now, and he may only get a few meals out of this before the internet catches up with him. In the meantime, bon apetit, boys!
Seriously though, is the dollar the new penny? Seeing one of these menus recently had me wondering how long has it been for inflation to have taken us that far? Peak Stupidity embedded a graph of the Consumer Price Index since the founding of America in the post Evil of Inflation/interest-rate stupidity Summary-2. The problem is that that graph only goes up to about the year 2000. The reader of posts here with the Inflation topic key will know that I don't believe the official numbers. Compared to the index of 30 in 2000, I'd call it AT LEAST 50 today.
If you look back at that graph and post, you'll see that the CPI, hence, price inflation, basically FLAT-LINED in America from the founding until ~ 1913 (hmmmm, what gives?). That is with the exception of during war time, but it would bounce back down afterwards.
I'd have to guess that that menu shown could be in cents were this the late 1800's. In 1880 you may not have been able to get just everything and anything that the Foodies demand nowadays. I'm guessing you could have gotten a big hunk of grass-fed beef or buffalo, potatoes, and whatever vegetables they could grub up, with a bottle of whiskey, for that 67 and 33, with maybe a whore for dessert for 2 bits - that's 25, if you still aren't into units.
So, we're supposed to pay those unitless big numbers in dollars, just so's you know. That's a whole lot better than the places that don't bother with prices:
Don't ask how much. You'll eat it, you'll pay what we want, and you'll like it! That's their attitude, but if you don't like it, just get them to bring you back those melted cheese sandwich appetizers they talked you out of and a brand NEW bottle of wine. This just never gets old!
* I mean good at what he does, not likely a good person. It's those 99% of 'em that give the other 1% of lawyers a bad name, gosh-darn them!
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Washington Watcher II on a sick case of Anarcho-Tyranny
Posted On: Saturday - February 1st 2020 4:19PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Pundits Anarcho-tyranny
VDare has a whole bunch of good writers, and there are at least 3 other posts/articles from that site recently that I want to post about. Though the site is specifically about immigration, and the articles relate to that existential issue, they can cover a lot of interesting subjects that go along with it.
The writer "Washington Watcher II" writes quite often on the site. Yes, there is a "Washington Watcher" there too, which is, IMO, not the best way to pick a handle, for # II, if he wants to get credit in some way in the minds of the readers. I'd thought that maybe he was the same guy with just a different "account" of some sort, but it looks like there's overlap. Likely this guy, after a hand-off period, took over watching the immigration stupidity from the vantage point of Washington, FS. Anyway, they both have/had good factual articles like almost all the rest of the VDare writers.
4 days ago, Washington Watcher II wrote a general article about the madness with the Sanctuary City policies, in particular, this time regarding New York City. The article is ICE Fights Back Against New York’s Anarcho-Tyranny—Trump MUST Make Sanctuary Cities Key 2020 Issue. Although the article, (please read it) is a general description of the anarcho-tyranny and madness of NY City's policy and advice for President Trump to please talk about it, it describes a specific sick case of how thing have been going.
Sometimes, a very specific especially egregious case may wake up people, like the same women who helicopter-parent due to that 1:1,000,000 chance of their kids getting "trafficked". Getting the human and inhuman side of the immigration stupidity out in front of the public can compete with the usual sob stories that fill up the Lyin' Press. In this article, Washington Watcher II highlights a rape in NY City by a guy who should have been deported or at least in custody, but wasn't due to NY City's anarcho-tyrannical Sanctuary policy. He got the story off of this NY Post article, if you want the source.
Note, we have no "Humor" tag up top. It SOUNDS humorous, but the whole thing is sick. I will say that this guy, one of our potential immigrant valedictorians, has a lot to learn about lying. It's too bad the President broke another promise early on, that is, the one to put the Hildabeast away - perhaps she could have taught this Guyanan a thing or two about it during prison coed day or something. Yeah, maybe I don't read enough, but NOTHING GOOD seems to come from Guyana*, at least since the British left (hmmmm, wonder why?).
Mr. Watcher the 2nd starts off with the anarcho-tyranny aspect of NY City policy (this is why VDare is #2 on the blogroll):
The murder of a 92-year-old woman in New York City early this month shows again the mortal danger of Sanctuary City policies, and just what law-abiding Americans face in what Sam Francis rightly called anarcho-tyranny. Aside from loosing murderous illegal aliens upon the public, New York state hands out driver licenses to illegals, and New York City might soon allow non-citizens to vote. Immigration aside, the state has adopted dangerous criminal justice “reforms” that also jeopardize the public. That’s the anarchy. The tyranny? New Yorkers can’t even say “illegal alien,” for instance, without inviting a severe penalty. (See below.) But perhaps there’s hope: The Trump Administration has declared legal war against the Empire State over its brazen defiance of federal immigration law.As usual there are LOTS of links in the original if you want more info. VDare is link-crazy, but is that not the original purpose of the html? ("hyper text markup language - by George, I think she's got it!") More from the article:
Fuentes [the old lady raped and killed by Sanctuary Man] would be alive had the city honored a detainer from Immigration and Customs Enforcement instead of releasing Khan from custody in November. Khan was previously convicted of assault and weapons violations. ICE rightly pinned Fuentes’ death on the city. “Make no mistake, it is this city’s sanctuary policies that are the sole reason that this criminal was allowed to roam the streets freely and end an innocent woman’s life,” acting ICE Director Matthew Albence said last week [ICE issues subpoenas, saying New York prison officials won't cooperate with immigration enforcement, by Kristina Sgueglia, CNN, January 19, 2020].Next, hear Mayor De Blasio's press secretary Freddi Goldstein lay down the law in defiance of ICE:
Recently, ICE served the New York Department of Corrections with four subpoenas to get information not only about Khan but also three other dangerous illegal aliens, including a Mexican accused of attempted rape and a Salvadoran wanted for homicide in El Salvador [ICE issues subpoenas to obtain information refused under NY sanctuary policies, ICE.gov, January 18, 2020].Per the article, the Mayor himself "was more conciliatory", but then isn't the press secretary supposed to take orders from him?
It’s been met with defiance. “New York City will not change the policies that have made us the safest big city in America, and [the Trump] administration’s attempts to exploit this tragedy are absolutely shameful. We will review the subpoena once we receive it,” Freddi Goldstein [Tweet her], New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s press secretary, told CNN, above.
That's the mindset with these people. Old lady New Yorkers be damned, the immigration invasion must continue. The 2 million a year rate must not be lowered by those 4 criminals. Plus, deportations discourage the others.
If you're like this blogger and like to see the numbers rather than just the one sick story, well, the numbers will sicken you too [my bolding here and note the "more than"'s]:
And Khan is just one of thousands of criminal aliens protected by the city, which honored only about 10 of 7,526 detainers against illegals in the city’s custody last year. Those illegals, ICE’s Albence said, committed 17,873 crimes, including more than 200 homicides, more than 500 robberies, more than 1,000 sexual offenses and 1,000 weapons violations, and more than 3,500 assaults [ICE issues list of ‘fugitive’ illegal immigrants freed by New York City’s sanctuary city policies, by Adam Shaw, Fox News, January 18, 2020].There's a whole bunch more to this article though. If VDare isn't responsible for being one of the keys to an eventual stop to this madness, at least the great writers will have done yeoman's work documenting it for patriotic Americans to study with amazement in the future as they pass the time in their underground bunkers waiting for this shit-storm to dissipate. One of them could be the next Solzhenitsyn , writing about exactly what good Americans could have done to avoid most of them being sent to the "re-education" camps by Bernie Sanders'
* See also, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 of this fascination story from the late 1970s.
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The Mandibles - Book Review - Conclusion
Posted On: Saturday - February 1st 2020 12:19PM MST
In Topics: Preppers and Prepping Economics The Future Books
(This is the conclusion of this serial book review - see Introduction, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4, and Part 5.)
Here's a blurb about the author from the back inside of the book cover:
Does she really believe in this novel? If so, she might better fatten up for the SHTF! ;-}
Lionel Shriver's The Mandibles, a novel of near-future American in a long-term economic crisis, is definitely worth reading for anyone interested in economics alone. It is such a great illustration of the long term ill effects of the high-minded economic policies being carried out by many governments, but specifically as related to the American experiment in easy money. Yes, the FED is discussed by the characters, something I doubt happens often in any real American family save for during family reunions at Dr. Paul's house in Texas.
The parallels between the happenings in the Great Depression 1.0 at an even century before the timeline of this book to this story are interesting, as are the differences, the main one being that America was still a big wealth creator and net exporter last time. The divergence in aftermath and government policies from the 1930s economic crisis to the 2030s one is seen too. I imagine that was done purposefully by the author.
As a prepper book, this novel illustrates one scenario out of multiple possible ones that could go down when this debt shitshow of an economy goes tits up. I think it's one of the more likely ones of those that preppers envision. As I've gone over in this long review, the description of the increasing economic and other misery that occurs during the 1-2 decades of the original economic crisis are told from a female point-of-view. It misses a whole lot that would be important to civilization, the actual workings of society, that men invent and control.
One could contrast this female viewpoint (somewhat) with the William Forstchen prepper novel One Second After, reviewed here. The latter was written about a different scenario starting the crisis, an Elecro-Magnetic Pulse, with just as much misery, but with more of a keep-things-running, rebuild-the-civilization male point of view. (Being a history professor, unfortunately, that writer doesn't know too much about it all either.) One Second After doesn't have any of the economic discussion, as the worry is about fragile state of the technological world. It's an important worry, but I think the economic business will be the root cause or greatly-exacerbating cause of whatever may happen. As one last comparison, Miss Shriver's long-term extrapolation of events is more believable than the Statist point of view of William Forstchen, who, as I wrote in that review, has the US Navy coming to save everyone left at the end! Hahaaaa! Dude, please ..!
If you haven't already thought about it, you'll learn about what high inflation is like, how the American economy can go 3rd world slowly, then quickly, what the real worth of different kinds of assets are, how could they be defended, how one could survive, the importance of the family, all as told from a city-dweller's point-of-view. It's real illustration of almost all preppers' advice to get out of the city, either beforehand, or via your bug-out vehicle with your bug-out bag.
Being a futurist novel, there are quite a few other envisionings of future technology, lack thereof, demographic trends, and other things that may or may not come to pass. Some of it will be seen as prescient, other as silly. As the man said, "it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future."
The drawbacks of the book, that is, the woman's viewpoint, the unrealistic-reading use of conversations to make economic points, the ignorance of massive immigration's influence on America, and a few other fairly minor flaws, are not enough to stop this book from being very enjoyable and well worth reading. For you economist-thinkers (you don't have to be a professor - it'd probably help not to be) and you preppers, and especially those that are interested in both, this is the book for you! Peak Stupidity highly recommends The Mandibles.
PS: The next book review will be required to be contained in 2 or fewer posts, per editor request. Stupidity is stacked in 3-foot piles covering 90% of the office, and it ain't gonna post itself!
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Who will win?
Posted On: Friday - January 31st 2020 6:55PM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Humor Movies Race/Genetics Bread and Circuses
Who will win?! That was the question that flashed on and off up on the TV screen I glanced at as I waited in the lobby of a hotel. I am always thankful when the sound is off so I don't need to pay attention, which was the case. Then, after some shots of some women, the flashing words changed to tell me what the deal was:
I could not for the life of me dig up this commercial on youtube just now, which is surprising. This part of our Bread & Circuses, the worship of these movie stars, is pretty big. It helps when they are hot women, albeit a bit over their prime. [10 years is a bit?! Where you been? - Ed] [Not at the freakin' movies! - blogger]
OK, Charlize Theron, Scarlett Johannsson, some other white actress I'd heard of but can't recall now, and a black actress were shown, along with the movies that they've been starring in, with their names up. I haven't seen a one of the movies. I'm not planning on seeing them. A minute later I could leave that TV behind, but I had a thought about this:
Who will win? The Oscars? I don't care, have never watched the damn show but twice in the 1980s, but am a little sorry I missed one part of the Golden Globe awards this year I gotta admit, which is apparently not the same as the Oscars. No, I don't care who wins, mainly because I am not a betting man. Were I, I still wouldn't have to watch the movies or care about Hollywood, but gambling types just will bet on anything. Let's see, there are 3 white women and one black woman. Now, I'm not saying it's all racist and shit every time, but when you bet you go with the odds. "Who will win?" you ask me up on the small screen? I'm gonna go with the black lady. It's a lock, Jerry!
That was what I remember Kramer saying, but this next one is a lot better:
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The Mandibles - Book Review - Part 5
Posted On: Friday - January 31st 2020 5:01PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Preppers and Prepping Economics Liberty/Libertarianism The Future Books iEspionage
(This is the 2nd-to last of 5 parts of one book review - they may add up to a significant percentage of the number words that are IN the novel! Anyway, see Introduction, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.)
This is almost the last part of the review of The Mandibles, in which I want to discuss parts near the end to make additional points about this economic-what-if? novel by Lionel Shriver. Due to the necessity of my bringing up some details, and since I will highly recommend this book (oops, spoiled that too!), I ask the reader to PLEASE don't read this section coming - between the asterisks - if you plan on reading it! We all like some suspense, and this book has a good storyline that makes one wonder what unfortunate events will come next. I meant to put my overall conclusion afterwards, but this post got long, and that'll be the last one.
SPOILER ************************************************ SPOILER
As we left the Mandible family making a trek to upper-state New York, the China/Soviet-style collectivization of agriculture, the envy of Rotting-In Place Franklin Roosevelt, is going on. The family members that can work are just peasants now, and brother Jared's farm is no longer his to run. Peak Stupidity has discussed what happens when a country has nothing real to back up its "money" with, in "There's a lot of ruin in a nation." - Part 3*, and the author extrapolates this right on out, in what I think is a likely outcome. Foreigners, foreign companies, or foreign governments, especially Chinese, own the good ol' "means of production".
I've not written much of the author's exact timeline here, but that agriculture nationalization, and the family's time at Jared's farm ("the Citadel") was in the mid and late 30s (2030s), a century later than FDR's BS, and maybe even into the 40s. The section entitled "2047" starts with the youngest generation of the Mandible family, now mid-20's or so adults, living back in NY City in the 1st-generation real-Great-Grandmother's house (she had been murdered early on in the SHTF). Life has gotten less dangerous, but basically it's a 3rd world quality of life in the 1st world (i.e., probably brighter people!) The Lat husband Estaban has high-tailed it to Mexico, which has built a big beautiful wall to keep real Americans out (haha!). (I'm not really too harsh on the Estaban character here, as he lost the original-narrator wife Florence due to lack of simple medical care and his step-son Willing is one of the adult characters now.)
It's Willing, the hero, his girlfriend Fifa, his cousins Goog and Bing, and their sister Savannah - who, I forgot to tell you, became a whore during most of the worst economic times - and one of the 2nd generation, Nollie, who are present for the book's conclusion. Nollie is the sister of the Boomer Carter (remember Carter and mis-spelled Jayne?), who had been a writer in France most of her life but returned home before some of the worst of near-future America's times. It's her character that Miss Shriver obviously uses as a model, as the writing field surely is what she knows about. In fact, if you look up the author's bio, one of her book titles greatly resembles the title of character Nollie's most famous book.
There is a portion of the book devoted to Willing's initial refusal to get chipped. This chip is the true "Mark of the Beast" type, without which one can neither buy nor cell, but with plenty of other new features, for FREE. Yes, I know, the "Mark of the Beast" business is workable RIGHT NOW, with today's technology. Willing gets the chip, and there is plenty more to that story ... Peak Stupidity is pretty hip to this iEspionage business too, with more posts on it coming.
What's also a cool subject here is that the brother Goog has joined the dark side, the US Government's new version of the IRS, called SCAB as a play on the initials for Bureau for Social Contribution Assistance (with the "B" switched to the end). At this point, to keep the America show going on, this organization takes a majority of even the meager incomes of these young adults with 2 or 3 jobs. This is cool because we can see even this author's (did I mention she lives in Brooklyn and London) understanding of the brutality of high taxation. It also gives us a chance to hear more economic discussion and debate, as the young adult characters have what they can of a party. Goog has not been invited on purpose due to his being someone people in East Bloc during the Commie era would have been well familiar with - a government stooge who could get any one of his brother, sister, and cousin in trouble for any little thing. He arrived anyway. and I guess he was there for the economic debate, but he ends up staying quite a bit longer than he wanted to ... haha!
Let me insert here that Miss Shriver's extrapolation about the taxes, and the huge proportion of old "shrivs" who receive the lion's share of this taxpayer money may not be a good one. She's implies or has a character state that "they've got the votes". Really, will votes still matter? I'm of the opinion that, just as with all Commie governments, they will realize the bind they are in and make new policy, voting notwithstanding. Either way though, it's a good look at economic and social issues that exist already today among different generations.
Any good book ought to have a road trip, and Lionel Shriver does not let us down here either. It turns out there is no State of Nevada anymore - it is the "United States of Nevada", no utopia by any means, and cut off by all relations to any country but Eritrea (ha, she's funny too!), but a renegade land that unchipped brother Jared has gone off to. The people of this land live off the reach of the SCAB, and must survive completely without material imported or exported. The place has seen the endgame of the new economy and wants no part of it, so its economy is at square one. You need to have a place like this in any dystopic novel, if you're going to have something resembling a happy ending, and the same for real life.
The road trip is undertaken by Willing, an UNwilling cousin Goog, cousin Bing, and great-aunt Nollie, the writer and only one who enjoys actual driving of a car. There is just another beef I have here. Again, I don't expect this Bi-Coastal (E. coast of N. America and island off W. coast of Europe) lady to write correctly of what she doesn't know.
This mistake is that Nevada may have been the closest state to be a Libertarian paradise, or at least full of people who would want that, 30-50 years ago, but it's not now, and won't be in 2047, barring an expulsion. After many decades of illegal alien immigration, especially to Las Vegas, the state is not the same, with those old ornery codgers and cowboys no longer having a big influence. Miss Shriver is imagining a Nevada of 1970. It's not like Miss Shriver didn't do a good job describing the State of Nevada, as "a magnet for kooks, misfits, outcasts, miscreants, mavericks - the malcontents, the fantasists, the workers of short-cuts", with a really cool background picture from its history. Due to huge Hispanic immigration, it's just way off now, and would be even more off if this continues.
In general for this book you'd think this immigration aspect of all the changes in America would have some bearing on the writer's extrapolations, but all she's got is "Lats are OK". Is this a personal thing with her? Maybe, but, I still can't get over the Lat boyfriend helping do the dishes (see Part 1). Yeah, right!!
The group arrived at the supposed highly-defended USN border where the captive Goog was released on his own recognizance as someone too steeped in his Statist ways to want to live free. The border was a barbed-wire fence rather than the Great Wall that the US government claimed. Here's where I come to the lack of understanding of the gold standard. However, this may be my misinterpretation of the characters' wording, so you be the judge. It's an old codger who lives just inside the USN and Willing talking econ. again.
"Do Nevadans use money at all?" Wiling asked.Well, this is the old codger talking, but does the author get it? No, you don't need to carry gold coins around. That's not the gold standard. The gold standard is having this impossible-to-replicate element as the BACKING for whatever currency, continentals, dollars (before Nixon and the FED nixed all that), or anything else.
"What do you think, we use beads? We're not savages. Carson City issues continentals. First currency of the original thirteen colonies. But it went to hell pronto in the late 1770s. 'Cause it wasn't backed by nothin'. We fixed that."
"Don't tell me," Willing said. "You're on the gold standard."
"Ain't you quick! Before we cut loose, the Free State produced the majority of American gold anyways. But supply of continentals is real restricted. Learned out lesson from the thirties. Everybody round here pretty much agree that on the face of it the gold standard's dumb. Arbitrary, the governor calls it. Not much to do with the stuff but wear it around your neck. Can't eat it. But for currency it works. Even if we don't quite know why. One continental buy you a whiskbroom today? One continental buy you a whiskbroom tomorrow. So it's not that dumb."
OK, there is one more surprise in the ending. I will not tell the reader who has gone this far this, as, if you enjoy this blog full of economics talk, you'll enjoy this book too.
SPOILER ************************************************ SPOILER
Wheewww! The Conclusion is coming tomorrow.
* See also Part 1 and Part 2.
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Son of a Son of a Sailor
Posted On: Thursday - January 30th 2020 10:12PM MST
In Topics: Music
We haven't fed the Parrotheads in quite a while, so here is the title song from this late 1970s Jimmy Buffett album:
I'm just too tired to write much this evening. I want to finish that Mandibles book review, there's plenty more immigration stupidity, there may be another scam to write about, and then there's the blue squad on-going stupidity-on-parade. Oh, and I want to write a post on the American military.
In the meantime, enjoy Jimmy Buffett from that far-off time and pretty much another country.
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Alexander Solzhenitsyn on Gulags and avoidance thereof
Posted On: Wednesday - January 29th 2020 8:04PM MST
In Topics: Commies The Russians Books Socialism/Communism
Alexander Solzhenitsyn is known to be one of the great Russian writers, and there have been many. This blogger has not had the time to read any of them, I gotta admit. Ayn Rand kinda turned me off to the large tomes, but I probably should give Mr. Solzhenitsyn's most famous book a try.
The book in question is The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956, by the man shown above. The late Mr. Solzhenitsyn (died in '08) wrote of the despair and hopelessness of Stalin's Soviet Union with it's secret police, prison and work camps where many a Russian froze or worked himself to death. He wrote this book based on his own experience of 11 years spent in a Gulag, along with testimony of 200 or so survivors.
It's really something that should not be made light of, were one to know something about the innards of that Communist bastion, the Soviet Union, with it's 7 decades of Communism that ruined the lives of 4 generations of Russian people. I gotta say, the 2 guys spouting off in embedded youtube videos in yesterday's post were not making light of it. I'll give them that. They are envious that Gulags have not been implemented in America yet, and seem to be not happy with the number of Russians starved, worked to death, or just plain-old shot and pushed into a ditch.
Before I get too many words in about what should be done to the guys like those in yesterday's video, as in ANY words, let me quote this great man a bit:
About the people who implemented the system that produced the Gulags (note carefully, that Russia's Constitution has never had any kind of Amendment II language contained in it . You would never have seen a gun rally like that in Richmond, Virginia last week.)
You must understand, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. It cannot be overstated. Bolshevism committed the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant and uncaring about this enormous crime is proof that the global media is in the hands of the perpetrators.That may have been written a good while back, but it's quite apt today too, with a ctrl-R of American for Russia.
If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?Hmmmm ... I think here it cuts through census tracts, but it's becoming pretty clear which human beings are on which side. Next, on Socialism, this may sound somewhat familiar to the regular Peak Stupidity reader:
Modern society is hypnotized by socialism. It is prevented by socialism from seeing the mortal danger it is in. And one of the greatest dangers of all is that you have lost all sense of danger, you cannot even see where it's coming from as it moves swiftly towards you.I like these 3:
The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. "One word of truth outweighs the world.
You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.
If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible what was the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: 'Men had forgotten God; that is why all this has happened.'Hey, that's great stuff and all, but let me keep my promise to give Alexander Solzhenitsyn's reply to those young Commie fucks working for Bernie Sanders. Mr. Solzhenitsyn was THERE, guys. His abject misery caused him to think about how the evil could have been prevented:
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat.Preach it, brother, errr, Comrade! I wish I could have met this great man during the time he was alive and speaking in America about the causes of evil.
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Still think Communism is dead and buried, do ya?
Posted On: Tuesday - January 28th 2020 7:47PM MST
In Topics: Commies Elections '16 - '24 ctrl-left
James O'Keefe is one bad-ass yeoman. I've never really bothered to find out the etymology, or even actual meaning, for that matter of that word "yeoman", but, by God, this guy is doing yeoman's work:
Mr. O'Keefe been doing this undercover videoing of the kind ctrl-left radicals as they tell all behind the scenes for 5 years or so now. He's gotten better at it too, as cameras have gotten even smaller more concealable, he's learned to not film the scenes at a 60-degree angles, and he's been picking the cream de la scum.
James Kirkpatrick of VDare, who's been on a real tear lately. warns us "Sanders Hard Left Creeps Up On Complacent Trump GOP". I'm not really here to discuss the main point of his article, but to show one video from it, along with a 2nd one I found that really drive home how hard-core the left is now, right out in the open.
It's been 2 1/2 years over a century since the successful all-out push by the Commies in Russia, just over 7 decades since they won out in China, but also over 3 decades since the defeat of a large mass of that shit as the Cold War was won. As Peak Stupidity has written "People Forget" ... and pretty damn quickly too. The modern Commmies are coming out of the woodwork as predicted. Unlike the more benign 2" roaches affectionately called Palmetto Bugs, these pests are no longer afraid of the light.
This first clip features one Kyle Jurek, staff worker for Old Phart Bernie Sanders, whose flat-out threat is that "Fucking cities will burn" if Donald Trump gets re-elected. Sure, it's a bunch of bluster from a guy whose probably trying to impress a tatooed, nose-ringed, 250 lb fatty at the bar, but still ... Listen to this stuff:
Then, this next rising star of the Democrat strong-horse Bernie Sanders' organizational network is a real piece of work. Mr. Martin Weissgerber has apparently studied a little of the history of the Commies of old, at least of the European Theater*. Yes, this guy actually talks about the Soviet gulags as being small time compared to what he's got planned. I'll give him a teensy bit of credit for the idea of sending Miss Lindsey Graham - he even does the gay hand-gesture - out to the 'lag (see 0:45 seconds in). No, but that's not enough to make up for his evil Communist mindset.
Yes, the two guys were both probably drunk and tired, but drunk, tired, and stupid is no way to go through life, young people. Whatever they said on James O'Keefe's videos comes from somewhere inside anyway.
Well, I guess it's off to the Home Depot parking lot for these guys to pick up some drywall work, or something. They did get fired, right? No, see, this is the left, not the right. The establishment takes care of its own, as Mr. Kirkpatrick explains:
One would think this would be the perfect opportunity for the campaign to jettison a political liability–the Sanders campaign could simply cite Jurek’s alleged offenses to dismiss him. But instead, it’s Project Veritas that has been contemptuously brushed aside: the campaign refuses to say whether Jurek is still employed. The MSM has put no pressure on the campaign and the news cycle has already moved on.Now, out of the AOC campaign or the Hildabeast's of '16, well I could see that they are hard-core, so one would expect this. I'd thought Bernie and his bros were the good guys of the other side, maybe a tad Socialist, but just out for the workingman. Hahaaa, no, it's way past time for someone like that ... whaddya' think it's 1968 or something?
I'll go back to Kirkpatrick's VDare article one more time for an illustration of just how lopsided the political playing field is today. (This is not the main point of the article, again. He's telling Conservatives that they are being complacent.)
One almost admires the Sanders team. They certainly have more spine than the Conservatism Inc. hacks who invariably grovel before hostile journalists. While nationalists have been deplatformed by Corporate America and persecuted by the government, even the most radical Leftists can comfortably operate on every major platform and never worry about deplatforming, definancing, or getting legal representation. They can also assume favorable coverage from the corporate media.You saw it here first ... possibly - two Sanders-D-for President staff members are flat-out would-be mass-grave-digging, gulag-supporting, Communists. They are the type that even Vladimir Lenin or Leon Trotsky might well have told to "chill out a little".
In contrast, as VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow has reported, it is currently impossible for a group that supports the immigration platform that elected the current President of the United States to book a private conference venue anywhere in the country.
This isn’t even just an American phenomenon. Recently, Austrian Identitarian leader Martin Sellner had his personal bank account forcibly closed for the fourth time—in addition to being banned by both the American and British “conservative” governments [The Mark of the Beast, by Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, January 18, 2020]. Do Leftists have to deal with such problems?
[Go to the article for links. VDare loves links and there are 10 of them just in what's excerpted here.]
Communism, it's the evil that just keeps on giving. One of its adherents, a man named Nikita Khrushchev, told the West in 1956 "we will bury you". 33 years later, his political system was Kaput. Let's see who will bury whom this time.
Tomorrow, I will present advice from a guy who knows a whole lot about what gulags are about too.
* I heard nothing about having kids rat out their parents and sending them to have pig's blood poured on them, Carrie White-style, on a stage with large-character posters hung around their necks. Pshaaw! You think you know how to do Communism, Martin - you don't know the half of it!
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On our lack of concern about the death of Kobe Bryant
Posted On: Tuesday - January 28th 2020 11:48AM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Curmudgeonry Bread and Circuses
This is no joke here: I can honestly say that I did not know who Kobe Bryant was until he was killed with 8 other people in a helicopter crash 2 days back.
Don't believe this? Think about what happens when you stay off the Lyin' Press, especially the TV-branch and aren't into the spectator sportsball Bread & Circuses. Yes, I've heard or read the name dozens to hundreds of times, meaning overheard upon passing a TV, or on someone's car radio. I'm sure headlines involving his scandal of some sort were on the Yahoo main page that comes up upon my exiting from email and occasional other odd headlines on web pages that I've ended up viewing for a second or two. Guess what? I don't click on any of that infotainment shit.
I could not have told you until Sunday whether this guy was a basketball player, football player, or rapper. It's very easy to mistake the name for a Japanese cut of steak, for that matter.
Here's the
Let me say as a quick aside to any sports fan readers here. I hope this doesn't offend you, really. We all have hobbies or areas that we like to get sidelined with for relaxation and/or entertainment. Peak Stupidity memorialized Rush drummer Neil Peart upon his death a few weeks back. Yeah, I think Rush music is more important than the NBA, but that's a matter of opinion. Either way, none of this is as important as the stupidity levels rising in America today.
Yeah, it's sad that 9 people died in that crash. People are very interested in aviation (and as usual, the media screwed up that part of the story in all kinds of ways). If the crash investigation is helpful for the safety of flight, good on the NTSB. However, just a month ago, there was a crash of a Pilatus PC-12 single-engine turboprop as it was on initial climb off of the Chamberlain, South Dakota airport, with also 9 killed (3 others on-board injured). (It was likely a pilot mistake too.)
Stuff like this happens quite often, really more than once monthly, on average.That PC-12 crash killed most of a large family. Is Kobe Bryant worth more to society than that productive family killed last month? I'd guess not.
Oh, Mr. Bryant encouraged the black kids to "be somebody" with his words and (not sure about this part) lifestyle, you think? That doesn't really work. What are there, maybe 500 NBA players making this great money at any one time. Take football too and other sports and let's make it generously 5,000 black people making a good living at this sportsball. This is out of 5 million others, perhaps, of the same age. One in one thousand odds, sure, why don't you just
I'm sorry if I won't be taking in the week-long 24-hour infotainment about this Kobe Bryant to come. There are better and more interesting things to think about.
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The Mandibles - Book Review - Part 4
Posted On: Monday - January 27th 2020 11:22PM MST
In Topics: Global Financial Stupidity Preppers and Prepping Economics Liberty/Libertarianism The Future Books
(Book review continued from Intro, Part 2, and from Part 3)
This post will finally be on the money, so to speak, with regard to the great prepper novel The Mandibles. That is, we will concern ourselves with the money, the economics pondered in the book and the downfall of America due to it.
We left off with that storyline of the developing countrywide SHTF situation due to US President calling for a renunciation of all debts in US dollars. Now, this renunciation wasn't really the problem itself, as it was just a reaction to the dollar becoming worthless and countries trading in the "Bancor" and other currencies to avoid the dollar. As in real life, yes, that's bound to happen when the dollars are made up out of thin air and backed by nothing. The other way out for governments is to let the currency inflate (as in the value deflating) to nothing on its own.
As a quick aside, I can't help but figure the author Lionel Shriver had read her fair share of ZeroHedge.com before writing this novel, especially the '11-'15 version of the site, in my opinion their heyday of great Global Financial Stupidity reporting. The site had the best commenters back then too! Since this book was published in '16, that could indeed be the case. Good stuff!
Another cool thing about this book is that it seems to make a parallel of sorts between the economic turmoil of the story and the century-earlier turmoil of the Great Depression (1.0?). The years are pretty similar, with the initial profile of the family after the "Stonage" in '29 and the really bad stuff coming in this book in the early '30s. That's 2029 and 2030's for you old timers with the 20th century still fresh in your minds! The US Government itself starts behaving exactly like that of the Socialist Franklin Roosevelt administration. There's even a confiscation of gold, which I'll get to a bit later, that matches what was done, not very successfully, by FDR and his minions.
Capital controls to keep real money in the country are instituted, some of this before the renunciation. Here, the author, with her conversations among the family members, does a great job with the debate among their glee at those richies getting their due as they try to leave the airports with wads of cash, and the idea that "hey, maybe some of these people were productive thrifty people" like us. After all, that the wealth in the Mandible family, held by Douglas, the "Great-Grand-Man" has dissipated to nothing is quite a blow to the boomer couple and next-gen 2 sisters who had always had this inheritance in the backs of their minds as an out from the financial pain.
Yep, there are new policies made to deal with this new economy, with its disparity of wealth between the old Boomers and the younger people who are G.D. 1.0 levels of poverty. It's all seen from the vantage point of Brooklyn in New York City, again not the place to be (but the writer is writing of what she knows here). Things get Socialistic in a hurry (you thought they couldn't get more?) One difference between the 1930's depression and that in the book is that in those old times something around 1/3 of Americans lived on farmland, making their living at it. As it stands now, the country is majority urban, and only a percentage point or two of American work in agriculture directly.
The story goes on, and in these mid-2030s, those Brooklyn folks eventually start running out of everything, and the value of farmland and the farm life style that brother Jared (remember Jared?) decided to join years before. As far as the Mandible family goes, at this point all 4 generations, in various combinations have had to move in together. The extreme downgrade in lifestyle is described for many pages. As usual, we don't hear about any men who can actually do that hands-on work to fix things or make improvements. I guess Florence's Lat boyfriend is not much of a handyman even.
Things get worse and worse, as any kind of stored-up items for consumption or barter run out ... oh, then the whole crowd gets "evicted" from their house by one man with his family and a gun. I will have to say that the "Brooklyn and London based" author, as would be typical, doesn't know much about guns, as the teenage Willing obtains a revolver with some kind of high-tech name. Excuse me, but that doesn't sound right, or even that 15 years from now that is the easiest hand-gun to obtain. Would it not be an old Glock or Bersa?
That minor quibble over, the point about the SHFT and prepping that the author gets pretty well is that no matter how much is stored and perhaps protected with guys on a big rural compound, stuff will eventually run out, even if not for a long time. The real preppers will tell you that it's not just about Beans, Bullets, and Band-aids, but also about building Community (can't think of 2 more appropriate "C"s, but I'm sure they could.) As I've written, living in the city just does not work for a real prepper, unless part of the plan is to bug out when the economic crash starts - better have some good timing.
Speaking of bugging out, the family ends up making an epic trek something like 50 miles upstate to the farm "belonging" to the brother Jared. "Belonging" is in quotes because by this point the FDR-2.0 administration has done something they might have liked to have done in the 1930s, but could not due to, yes, an armed mostly rural population that could take care of themselves. They have done the Mao/Soviet thing, collectivizing the farms "for the good of the people", of course. Jared is even more pissed at the system than usual and the family members have to work like 1960s Chinamen.
Back to the parallels with FDR's Great Depression 100 years before the storyline, one more cool thing is the talk about the Gold Standard. This is in the form of conversations among this economics-aware family. The Mandibles are like a family of graduate econ. students in a seminar class, consisting of a Keynesian, a couple of All-But-Dissertation half-wits, and a teenage budding Ron Paul. It was good to hear about what real money is about in a novel like this.
In the story, the US Gov't requires all gold to be turned into the government. As mentioned above, a fairly unsuccessful attempt to do the same thing was implemented by FDR. The confiscation was fairly unsuccessful because people then knew the US Gov't was not able to have the local law come knocking on doors for the stuff. I don't think the government got but a small minority of the stuff, and sure enough, when it was over, FDR had screwed the people out of the value of their money by devaluing it from $20 per ounce of gold to $35. In the century-later story, the confiscation attempt was successful due to Police State tactics (pretty likely), yet not many people had gold to begin with, a pretty good extrapolation of today's mentality.
Unfortunately, based on some talk among the characters near the end of the book, not to spoil it too much, Miss Shriver still does not understand the gold standard! I'll have to explain that in a latter post.
The real problem with the 2030s American economy is never really mentioned either. It's simple. Wealth is not being created. I'm not sure if the author quite understands this, as much as she can foresee our American currency becoming worthless. That's the reason. The foreigners that buy up American assets on the cheap (like American big-wigs did in 1990s Russia) in this story would not be able to do so if the country still had wealth-creating industries that could bring it back to self-sufficiency.
One more post of this long dragged-out book review will come shortly.
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Babylon Bee at the Border
Posted On: Saturday - January 25th 2020 10:49PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Humor
Thanks go to commenter Dtbb for pointing out this funny Bablyon Bee article.
Disaster At Seesaw Art Installation As Obese American Children Catapult Mexicans Over The Border
Here's about 1/2 of it:
SUNLAND PARK, NM—Disaster occurred at the US-Mexico border earlier this week after the installation of seesaws on the border wall. Part of an art project by UC Berkeley faculty, the seesaws were intended to let kids on both sides of the border play with each other as a powerful statement about unity and love across borders.Haha. Read the whole (short) thing, as they say. It probably be good for me to read the Babylon Bee site daily.
Unfortunately, as obese American kids rushed to the seesaws to enjoy playing with their fellow humans on the Mexican side of the border, they accidentally launched hundreds of Mexican children over the wall.
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Coronavirus in China .. and beyond
Posted On: Saturday - January 25th 2020 5:52PM MST
In Topics: Cheap China-made Crap China Kung Flu Stupidity
After reading our post The Peoples' Pig, the reader may be wondering whether we consider this the biggest thing going on in China right now. As we've stated many times, this is not a news site. However, this Coronavirus thing could end up being a big deal. One never knows with these things, but old China-hand John Derbyshire is kind of down on all the hype about it.
You may have read about the quarantine of the city of Wuhan. Let me tell you, when they say city in China they mean millions - Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, has 11 million people, more than NY City (estimated at 8 1/2 million). What's called a village over there can easily mean a place with a bigger population than Tampa, Florida. There's a big market for the face masks, and that's what this post is about.
This is another China story gleaned from personal experience. A salesman of non-woven face masks, gowns, shoe coverings and that kind of thing filled me in on this: The factory there, a lean/mean non-government-run operation with about 10 office staff and 200 people who actually manufactured the items would sell within China and outside of China. Due to the boss’ unscrupulousness, when they made the masks for domestic sales, they would skip the material (and production step) of putting the layer of filter material in place among the material of the face masks. What that means is that the masks were pretty much worthless, except for compliance purposes.
Now, for foreign sales, the boss knows that the Germans, for example*, would send a container of defective items (purposefully, BTW) back across the oceans. Many Chinese customers, at the wholesale level, that is, might not care, what with the good price, and others might.
Unscrupulousness – it can result in death. As much as I detest Big-Biz all over the world, American small-businessmen, as compared to this small company in China, would not do something so evil.
So, that's just great - plenty of people who are trying to protect themselves and their families and maybe even do the right thing to protect others are being lulled into thinking their face masks are good for something. Here in America, lots of people still have enough room so that we would not have to interact with others outside our families if a deadly disease like this were getting seriously threatening. (Preps, bitchez!)
Wouldn't it be nice to keep our population density way down below the level of China? What would it take for open-borders nuts to understand this, a full out epidemic and Cheap China-made face masks that kill millions?
* Actual example. Then the container was held up for most of a year at the docks in Shenzhen, as the Chinese government does not encourage imports (see, they were under the impression that the shipment was imports rather than returned goods.)
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America - Don't Cross the River ...
Posted On: Friday - January 24th 2020 10:48PM MST
In Topics: Music
... if you can't swim the tide.
America in this post is the 3-man 1970s folk-rock band. Most of what I know from the band is from their excellent History: America's Greatest Hits album with not a bad song on it*. The band consisted of 3 "army brats", sons of Air Force members, and they met in London as their Dads were stationed there.
Don't Cross the River is not one of their multiple hit songs that are on that Greatest Hits album, but it is my favorite. I just learned it was originally off the band's 1972 Homecoming album. That was 48 years ago!!
America was:
Gerry Beckley – lead and backing vocals, keyboards, guitars, bass, harmonica
Dewey Bunnell – lead and backing vocals, guitars, percussion
Dan Peek – lead and backing vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards, harmonica
but, it's a guy named Henry Diltz who played the banjo in this song.
Dan Peek died in 2011.
* ... though, if you don't like sap, you kinda have to skip Muskrat Love, a few years later made popular by The Captain and Tennille.
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Richmond gun rally - a lesson about ignoring the narrative
Posted On: Friday - January 24th 2020 2:30PM MST
In Topics: Lefty MegaStupidity TV, aka Gov't Media Media Stupidity Liberty/Libertarianism alt-right/MAGA ctrl-left Guns
(Yeah, there could have been some antifa freaks scattered about the crowd. What good would that do them, though? They wouldn't have had a fighting chance.
This post could have been written before the gun-rights rally in Richmond, VA on Monday, but I'm trying to catch up with the mound of material in the "urgent stupidity" file that sits on top of the desk in
There was discouragement from both sides of the
Others on the alt-right were worried that the Lyin' Press would pick certain very specific things that might happen at the rally - some looneys spouting off this or that, or some actual violence. That could discredit those on the right. Well, you can't go sittin' home because of that, or you've already let them win. It's very much the case that the Lyin' Press will pick and choose what to show. In answer to that I say: First, there wasn't too much they had on this one. From a comparison to my view, pictures on the Lyin' Press sites did minimize the apparent crowd size. Secondly, that's why you should get off the Lyin' Press Infotainment, and find your own sources of information. Just as was described here about my obtaining information beforehand from a decent site, one can do that after the fact too. Try Peak Stupidity! We were there. True, lots of people are still paying attention to the Lyin' Press. Set some of them straight.
It was the ctrl-left, however, in government and in their Lyin' Press branch of the Establishment, that made a, if not concerted, widespread effort to discourage turn-out in Richmond. I don't follow the Lyin' Press directly, but even on Steve Sailer's blog, there was both writing about worries for those attending and writing on the one particular incident of the 3 "White Nationalists" (I put the quotes cause I don't know, and I don't care) arrested and made into a big story.
As the long-term reader will know, Peak Stupidity believes in very few long-term conspiracy theories. It's just that there are lots of people that think the same way and want the same thing, even if it's subconsciously. Support of the narrative that the armed Virginians and others were coming to start a shoot-out was widespread. It would have really helped the narrative, if the Lyin' Press had at least mentioned something about attendance by antifa, but I didn't read much about that. Why would there then be shooting battle, then, without them? All who have read some details of Charlottesville know that there'd have been no violence had the antifa froons (freakish goons?) left the Unite the Right statue defenders alone. Was the worry that these armed citizens were just going to up and pick a fight with the Virginia law present in Richmond? Everyone knows that's not the case, but that was part of the lying to support the narrative.
Back to the story of the 3-man "The base" organization, well that was just a hoot! I really think there is too much Affirmative Action in the FBI, if their organizers can't think of something more original that a name that's the translation of "Al Qaeda". Then, OMG, they were harboring an illegal alien! Nobody does that, right? (No, not really - you don't have to, as the other 30,000,000 illegal aliens live perfectly safe out of the shadows under that warm California sun.) If that story just wasn't so gosh-darned stupid, maybe it'd helped a little bit. Nobody wants to go to a rally and be associated with people who harbor illegal aliens, right, La Raza?
BTW, what was hilarious that in my search for pictures of those "The Base" group ("Richmond" "the base" "arrests" "images") came up with the collage of images below:
From the government side of the Establishment, we had the Virginia Governor (seen in quite a few signs at the rally sporting a Hitler mustache - photoshop... or, more like MS-Paint?) Northam. His office had gone as far as declaring a State of Emergency due to this rally. There's some hype to fit the narrative. Would he do the same thing for a La Raza rally? If it's an emergency every time free speech is being exercised, then I wish he'd been at the airport with me a few times as I was bombarded by a loud-ass TV spewing out CNN nonstop. It's an emergency to me when the A/C socket is up too high to unplug the thing.
Very near the time of the rally, I'd heard the news that people would be screened if going near the State House, inside a fence that was set up. This act discouraged a lot of armed people who planned on rallying close-in, as there was likely no safe place to store one's weapon (after all, the reports said there'd be opposition, meaning your car may not be safe).
Haha, yeah, my tight schedule had me way more stressed out than any worries about violence at the rally. You know what helped, though? As I searched for information on the rally, I had to go to the 2nd page of the search results in order to find a non-Lyin' Press blurb. The first page had results, coincidentally, that all spouted the narrative, while the 2nd had the page of the Virginia Civil Defense League, that organizes the damn thing each year. I went to that site and read nothing but a short description and lots of logistics info. It's funny how the search engine (Duckduckgo, no less) didn't give me a site with straight information about the rally on the 1st page. Yes, the Big-Biz F.A.G.S. were down with this supporting the narrative too.
We must all make an effort to get away from these narratives in our daily lives, or we will get pushed around by the ctrl-left, even if that is by convincing us to not show up.
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[Updated 01/29/20: ]Added what's now the 4th paragraph.
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NPR concurs with Peak Stupidity... we are officially worried now.
Posted On: Thursday - January 23rd 2020 3:33PM MST
In Topics: Treehuggers Media Stupidity
In our 2 y/o post Toward Sustainable Stupidity*, Peak Stupidity made a point about recycling. We noted that just because one may put almost all his waste in that bright green recycling can doesn't mean 1/2 that trash will end anywhere different than the stuff from the blue can does. The real reason to recycle is to keep costs down for the trucks hauling garbage to landfills further out of town (there is plenty of room for 100X more landfills, but you gotta pay for the transportation.)
Anyway, while listening to a blurb on NPR, yes that channel, a few days back, this time somewhat through fault of my own**, I heard them in the middle of a story about pretty much just what I wrote in that Toward Sustainable Stupidity post. Though the broadcaster was no eventually-dashed-fantasy Nina Totenberg, pondered in "All Things Considered", it's been a long road to Peak Stupidity, I listened for about 2 minutes before turning it off. This guy did not use the words "virtue signaling" or anything like that regarding the people that think they have recycled 90% of their trash-mass. However, he did go as far as to say it made people "feel better" about their concern for the planet. That's a start toward realizing what it's mostly about.
Here's NPR's concern below, from their website (yes, I had to hold my nose). It's somehow about the climate, you can see. WTF? It's trash, man, it doesn't affect the climate. I guess they are just so used to the words ...
Having ascertained that Peak Stupidity is 2 years ahead of NPR in our thinking was kind of worrying. What else do we agree with them on? Crap. Well, I turned that guy off quickly before there was another and before that soothing, soothing ... voice... lulled me to sleep ... on the Interstate ... oh, Nina, that feels nice, Nina ...
* Probably one of my favorite of our post titles. True, it should read the other way "Sustainability Stupidity" or something like that, but my way resembles the average modern $2,000/weekend (meals extra) seminar title and, either way, it LOLs me once in a while.
** It was not my car, and it was preset in the radio, which was left on.
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The Mandibles - Book Review - Part 3
Posted On: Thursday - January 23rd 2020 7:02AM MST
In Topics: Preppers and Prepping Economics The Future Books
(See this book review intro. and then Part 2.)
Where Peak Stupidity left off in our series of review posts of the 2016 Lionel Shriver book The Mandibles was a discussion of the poor economic situation in near-future (2029) America. For the situation at the beginning of the book, no real explanation is needed, such as that "Stoneage" that is mentioned, but never really explained. Things are deteriorating now, and, unless America starts creating wealth again, and the governments and people stop borrowing to keep up their lifestyles, I don't see why this won't continue.
To repeat, this novel really has its basis in economic theories. The importance and worth, then worthlessness, of the once-almighty US dollar is explained, with the Econ. Professor husband/father Lowell expounding his Keynesianism in both discussions with his nephew Willing and at the dinner party early in the book. Not to spoil the story for the reader too much at this point, but the author, it turns out, is no Keynesian but more like a Libertarian (from Brooklyn! Really?) Interest rates, inflation, and the FED are mentioned so much that I think Ron Paul should have written a foreword fo the book.
It's a pretty good extrapolation, at least in the early part of the book, to have the older people, the Boomers and older, be the only people in America with much money. Many do have real assets, but the younger, especially latest 30 y/o's don't have money to put down on anything. This is both in the book and my opinion, but a good share of the blame should go to the school loan scam, discussed here (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3*) but NOT discussed in the book.
The younger set in the beginning of this novel is struggling mightily to just keep decent food on the table and conserve water. This is seen from a female perspective, which I can't complain about, and she gets into lots of detail. It is also seen from the viewpoint of city dwellers only. That is something that preppers are going to have a problem with, as the first thing a real prepper would tell you is "get out of the city". He may mean having your bug-out bag and vehicle ready to escape at any time, or more generally, for what's coming, DO NOT LIVE IN THE CITY - you'll be toast. I agree, but this city perspective in the book is a nice change from the advice about how to hook up your generator to propane and how much diesel to store on the farm and that sort of thing. From what happens next, the preppers are right, of course.
What happens next - pretty early on in the book - is that President Alvarado announces a renunciation of debts owed in US Dollars. I should backtrack just a little and say that the Euro countries, Russia, S. America (I think?) have all created a new currency called the "Bancor" that is being used instead of dollars. I.e, the 90 years stint of the buck as the reserve currency is ovah! Well, you can hyper-inflate all the debt away or you can renunciate the debt and have the money become worthless the latter way, but, no matter which, assets in this currency will (and DID, in the book) become worthless.
The author gets into the real economic crisis at the family level (mainly both the 3rd/4th generation families - Florence/Estaban and kid and Avery/Lowell and 3 kids). Things get bad, and then worse yet, but again the perspective is from the woman homemaker Florence. It gets down to the shortage and eventual total lack of toilet paper, water usages, and all that stuff that one might really not want to think about - yes, the author drills down to the level of wiping one's ass. Hey, it's not like this isn't important. I respect her pushing the points home that preppers have been well aware of - buying lots and lots of TP is always recommended. Still, whatever amount of TP you buy, and beans you have in #10 cans, there'll never be enough room in the city to have that much, there are people close by (and a real lack of long guns in Brooklyn - thanks Bloombergs!) that will make it all hard to defend. I would say that the middle of this book, though maybe not written for this purpose, does a great job of telling the reader "get the hell out of the cities."
(Even way out in the country, of course, with a long-term decline, all the stored stuff is only to hold one over. If it were for natural disasters, that works great. For a long-term seemingly permanent massive economic decline, the preppers discuss all that's needed to rebuild and keep things going with food on the table.)
That brings me back to the real problem with this woman's perspective, as though, the author writes of what she knows, a good thing, it means that all the other aspects of exactly what won't work in civilization and why are completely left out. It's likely too far a reach from a single woman who lives in "Brooklyn and London" to discuss exactly who will be able to bring back civilization, even at a lower level. That means men. That means men that have skills too, whether hand skills, but also mechanical thinking by engineering types.** Uh-oh, that means white men (to do it right!) That would have been a real problem, discussing how the Lats were going to rebuild civilization to the level of, what, Bolivia? Did the massive immigration bring in people who can no longer rebuild what was America? The book doesn't answer this one.
This is where the story has some irony, as Americans are not let across the border into Mexico even, and only the rich can get out (but without their cash - I'll get into that juicy economic/political stuff in a later post). In fact, the Mexicans have built some kind of big, beautiful wall - no, not a wall really, but a border barrier that works. (They would have used American escapee's remittance money, but there are currency controls, haha!) The other irony is that it's the Oriental tourists and speculators that are now traveling around, buying buildings for cheap, and living off what is a pittance in their own currencies, having a blast and feeling sorry for the poor destitute Americans. It's not sorry enough to where they are sending any aid, though. I guess even a Brooklynite author knows how things really work.
I will keep going with this review. Stay tuned.
* That's just discussion of the "forgiveness" aspect, as there's plenty more with the University and Economics topic keys.
** This is kind of a funny aspect, as Lowell, the Econ. Prof. is looked down upon by his wife Avery due to this not being any kind of skill that helps the Mandible family survive the new American economy I, and any decent non-Statist, would suggest that being an Econ. Professor NEVER helps the economy, other than just the simple teaching of the real basic supply&demand stuff to people who may run a business - see The Non-Science of Economics.
Since the former professor (he got laid off early on) is a Keynesian, his economically-precocious (and important character) nephew Willing has no respect for him, nor does the author. Lowell remains a Keynesian until the long run, when we are all dead. (No, no, that was NOT a spoiler!)
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Blast from the past - Disgraced fake historian Michael Bellesiles
Posted On: Wednesday - January 22nd 2020 7:31PM MST
In Topics: Lefty MegaStupidity University History Liberty/Libertarianism ctrl-left Books Big-Biz Stupidity
A commenter on a Steve Sailer thread on guns, gun violence, and gun rights brought up a real blast from the past just now. The comment jogged my memory of reading Instapundit almost hourly back then, and he kept his readers updated on the story of the lying historian Michael Bellesiles and his book Arming America. Its been almost 20 years, and if I were to wait toward the end of this year, the publication date, to celebrate, I'm absolutely sure I'll forget about it. Yes, there was actually some pushback from real historians, even on the lefty side, back 20-16 years ago, against not just historical inaccuracy and slight exaggerations, but work that was supposed to be scholarly and well-sourced but was sourced only by the author's left-wing bias and flat-out lies.
In Arming America, Mr. Bellesiles supposedly "debunked the myths" of early America having had a big gun culture, going back to the patriots of the Revolutionary times. It was almost all a load of horsecrap, which would have been fine if it were just a book advertised to be of opinions, not rigorous history. The former Emory University history professor went way too far in pushing his narrative, as he did quote many sources, later "determined" to be lost afterwards due to flooding in library basements and that sort of thing.
On a site called Intellectual Takeout, a writer named Chris Calton wrote "What the Fake History of Guns Can Teach Us" just over a year back. It has a recap of the whole Bellesiles scandal. Wiki has as pretty fair summary of the whole sordid affair too. Just as the US Gov. Eric Holder-led DOJ scam was exposed by a couple of bloggers, as Peak Stupidity described a few weeks back, it was a historian, software developer, gun enthusiast blogger named Clayton Cramer who really exposed Michael Bellesiles as the lying sack-o-shit that he was. He would have gotten away with it all, too, if it hadn't been for those meddling history bloggers!
I looked back on Amazon today after I recalled this whole thing. The damn original Amazon editorial review is still up! Is it that the company, having been way more than a bookstore since pretty much the time of this controversy, didn't put in the money to have real reviewers anymore or anyone to go through with corrections? Maybe that's the case, but it could also be that this monster of Big-Biz, though not directly part of the F.A.G.S. "space", is on the usual ctrl-left side in this system of Crony-Capitalism we have now. Here's what amazon still has up on that page linked-to up top:
While gun supporters use the nation's gun-toting history in defense of their way of life, and revolutionary enthusiasts replay skirmishes on historic battlefields, it now turns out that America has not always had a gun culture, and wide-scale gun ownership is much newer than we think. After a 10-year search for "a world that isn't there," professor and scholar Michael Bellesiles discovered that Americans not only rarely owned guns prior to the Civil War, they wouldn't even take them for free from a government that wanted to arm its reluctant public. No sharpshooters, no gun in every home, no children learning to hunt beside their fathers. Bellesiles--whose research methods have generated a great deal of controversy and even a subsequent investigation by Emory University--searched legal, probate, military, and business records; fiction and personal letters; hunting magazines; and legislation in his quest for the legendary gun-wielding frontiersman, only to discover that he is a myth. There are other revelations: gun ownership and storage was strictly legislated in colonial days, and frivolous shooting of a musket was backed by the death penalty; men rarely died in duels because the guns were far too inaccurate (duels were about honor, not murder); pioneers didn't hunt (they trapped and farmed); frontier folk loved books, not guns; and the militia never won a war (it was too inept). In fact, prior to the Civil War, when mass production of higher quality guns became a reality, the republic's greatest problem was a dearth of guns, and a public that was too peaceable to care about civil defense. As Bellesiles writes, "Probably the major reason why the American Revolution lasted eight years, longer than any war in American history before Vietnam, was that when that brave patriot reached above the mantel, he pulled down a rusty, decaying, unusable musket (not a rifle), or found no gun there at all." Strangely, the eagle-eye frontiersman was created by East Coast fiction writers, while the idea of a gun as a household necessity was an advertising ploy of gun maker Samuel Colt (both just prior to the Civil War). The former group fabricated a historic and heroic past while Colt preyed on overblown fears of Indians and blacks.
Now, somewhere deep into the 135 comments, pretty early on, lies my favorite. It's not a review of the book, though. It's more an evisceration of the amazon review:
Amazon.com book reviewer debunked in academic skirmishThe early '00s were still a time before which the universities world had not been completely infiltrated by the ctrl-left. Though there were plenty of lefties, especially in the humanities, such as history, there was obviously still some integrity left. Michael Bellesiles was stripped of the coveted Columbia University Bancroft prize that he had been awarded for this very book. That had never happened before and hasn't since. He had to give back the 4 grand, which is more like 7 grand in today's money. He "resigned" from Emory University, and was later found teaching at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain. That university's History Department web site no longer lists him as a faculty member there. He may have retired, or else the other 18 professors don't want people to know he works there.
OK, here's what the impartial amazon book reviewer had to say. I quote:
"it now turns out that America has not always had a gun culture, and wide-scale gun ownership is much newer than we think."
Oops, after being checked by real history professors, it turns out that, yes, dangit, we did have a gun culture and wide-scale gun ownership is old just like we thought.
"No sharpshooters, no gun in every home, no children learning to hunt beside their fathers"
Oops, yeah there were sharpshooters, most homes had at least one long gun, and who in heck else did children learn to hunt from, the family cat (ha, ha!)
"Bellesiles--whose research methods have generated a great deal of controversy and even a subsequent investigation by Emory University- ..." (Oh, and subsequent firing and revocation of his 4-grand in cash.) "..."
"Strangely, the eagle-eye frontiersman was created by East Coast fiction writers,..."
Oops, predictably, the four-eyed anti-gun frontiersman was created by an East Coast fiction writer (name starts with B, rhymes with a female body part.)
"He [Bellesiles]is more interested in discovering the truth than in taking sides. "
Oops, no, uh, sorry, here's where I beg to differ with you, Mr. Reviewer.
"His work .... will be hard to refute". No problem - all in a day's work, my friend.
What would happen nowadays if the same bit of complete ctrl-left lying in a purported scholarly work were found out? My guess there would be nobody left on the right to investigate, but were there one, he would be called names and punished. What a great memory this deal was, though!
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The Peoples' Pig
Posted On: Wednesday - January 22nd 2020 9:52AM MST
In Topics: China Economics Socialism/Communism Inflation
The image above, just one of Zerohedge's humorous pictures, was used here on our recent article A Porcine Crisis in China. In that article we described the problem the Chinese people are having obtaining pork at decent prices, as there was a big swine flu epidemic. This one, unlike the newest viral deal coming, seems contained within the porcine community.
That's a problem, though, as pork is not just "the other white meat" for Chinamen (AND women), but the favorite meat there. The've been hog-wild about it for a long time. I assume it's due to not having the huge amounts of open, level (within reason, that is) land for cows to graze in, therefore resulting in a taste for pork over the hundreds or thousand of years, if the people are to have any meat AT ALL I wrote the last part, because, old China history that I don't know about aside, the 40 years of hard-core Communism made meat a condiment more than a serious part of a meal. That's changed since "we got better", but this latest crisis will bring back old memories to older Chinese men and women.
I wrote this post out of some first-hand knowledge about the very recent situation some south-central parts of China, but then looked up more. The Bloomberg article I found, Chinese City Goes Back to Rationing to Curb Rampant Pork Priced is specifically about the city of Nanning* in Yunnan province, just N. of Vietnam. My information was from a different province there. Bloomberg says:
Vendors in 10 selected wet markets in Nanning, capital of the southern region of Guangxi, are selling pork cuts capped at a maximum price over the first 10 days of September, according to a statement posted on the website of the local government’s planning body. The most expensive, ribs, won’t retail for more than 32.2 yuan ($4.50) per half a kilo.Well, sure, that's a good bit cheaper than the $7 a lb. (OK, about $6.50/ 1/2-kg - a Jin, the unit they use on the street) that I mentioned due to personal knowledge in that previous Peak Stupidity post. Even though $4/lb is a lot of money for even the middle class pork-eating family in China (making $1,000 to $2,000 monthly), that makes it sound like things are looking up, porcinically. What's the catch? Is it the virtues of State control again? [/sarcasm] (... just in case in needed that tag)
There's that headline with the word "rationing", as I've translated** from the personal news of mine. That's the catch. See, a free market may have some price gouging going on when things become hard to get ahold of at the normal prices, but price gouging is just peachy to me. As we wrote in Price Gouging - Peak Stupidity is FOR IT. (see?), if sales come at higher prices because the stuff is hard to get, then more power to the gougers for getting off their asses and being entrepreneurial. You'll soon see others get in that game, trying to find new sources, of, in this case, pork, to get in the game. Prices will come down eventually.
But NO, NO NO, China's governments and the people there can not get that pig-headed Statism out of their heads for the lives of them. Now, harkening back to those days in the early 1980's (yes, still!), government rationing is supposed to divvy up what they've got of the pork "fairly". Again, from the Bloomberg article:
For many, rationing evokes the hardships of wartime, but China’s so-called planned supply method of distributing groceries harks back to its communist heyday of the 1950s. It was gradually abolished in the 1980s as supplies became more ample following economic reforms.That's one kilo per week if it's anything close to the information from my source. Shame on you Bloomberg, for leaving out this part of the units.
Each customer is allowed only 1 kilo of pork, the Nanning Evening News, a local government newspaper, reported on Sunday. The steps are necessary to control surging prices given the time it’ll take for pork production to recover, the newspaper said.
On the recovering bit, it'd go a whole lot faster if you'd let the free market work and not limit sellers of pork to prices they may not now make money on. Oh, well, back to meat as a condiment for a while. Old Chinafolks can reminisce about that sweet old world of Chairman Mao. "We walked to our jobs breaking big rocks into little rocks for the glorious roads for 10 miles, through the snow, uphill both ways. We got home, wiped our feet, swept more dirt onto our floor, set a piece of The People's coal on fire, and we got our cards and all went to The People's store as a family to get The People's beans, the People's rice from Mao's Iron Rice Bowl, and occasionally just The People (some call it 'Long Pig'). AND! WE! LIKED! IT!"
Young Chinawomen may not agree with their elders on this fondness for those good old days. "We have 2 children since lecently-lescinded 1-child poricy. My husband make good money. Here is 200-yuan - 6 Jin pork chops, chee-ing." "No can do, doesn't matter how much money, you have one card." "But, kids need protein. I pay you." "So sorry, 1 kilo ... abadee, abadee, that's all, folks!"
PS: I just wanted to add this part as related to the preference for pork over beef in China. My sources tell me that people do like the beef too, but some unscrupulous sellers pass of pork as beef. I don't know how you do it, but these people are nothing if not ingenious. Right now, there'd be no point.
"Let them eat cow!"
- Mao Wei Ahn Tran Eat
* Don't even ask if it's a "big city". Anything called a "city" in China is BIG, believe me. If there are under 1/2 a million, you live in a village.
** No, I can't translate much from Chinese, but I translated from an English version of the story that didn't use the word rationing, but involved rationing.
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