Saturday, March 20, 2021

Thursday, March 18, 2021

Wednesday, March 17, 2021

The Great Deprogramming Economy

I simply do not have the time to write.  Thus, while I intended this concept to be written, it's better to get the message out than not at all:

QOTD

From the YouTube comments, and it gives me hope:

"Your book the black mans guide out of poverty changed my life. Went from making $24/hr to making $60+/hr. When I saw the numbers on the wealth gap I damn near wanted to murder someone. Turned that anger into intense focus and now I have my own business. But still work security at night 3x/ week to increase my wealth. I refuse to be 40+ and poor. I am in my late 20s. I will not have children because of how much they cost. I realized my mom could of been very well off if she didn’t have 5 kids by 4 different guys. Thanks for opening my eyes to the lies I’ve been told as a young black man. The next thing I have to do is stop giving my family money. They damn neat sucked me dry financially. This BS needs to stop."

Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Thursday, March 11, 2021

Sunday, March 07, 2021

Guest Post - "Overcoming Death: By Turd Flinging Monkey"

Turd Flinging Monkey, or "TFM," has been around the interwebz for at least a decade.  I thoroughly enjoy his podcast, even though I disagree with some of the key philosophical tenets of his podcast.  Nobody knows precisely what he does for a living, but he is ex military, served in Iraq, was abandoned by his mother, and after have a string of bad experienced with women, has taken the rare course of action to have a "sex doll" replace women in his life.  This background, combined with his dead-on economic analysis leads me to believe he is a real economist, though that is speculation.  

Regardless, TFM wanted to write a guest post which I said I'd gladly post because he is a great philosopher.  Below is the article "Overcoming Death" which I found interesting and undeniably true.  I will link to his philosophy book "The Way of Monkey Book" below, but it is a very good meditational book you may want to consider purchasing it.

Overcoming the Fear of Death by TFM

The fear of death comes from the fear of the loss of self. We understand that our bodies are not only finite but that they require constant regeneration. Our bodies are always in a state of perpetual decay and entropy. We must consume other life-forms, be they plant or animal, to keep our mortal vessel going as long as possible. However, no amount of physical fitness or nutrition will make us immortal, and one-day mortality will catch up with us, and our bodies will give out once and for all.

Upon that moment, when our heart stops beating, our brain activity ceases, and we slip into death, we have a gnawing fear that we will cease to be, and that acknowledging the finite nature of our being, robs life of its purpose. “If we simply die and cease to exist, why bother?” is a common attitude, and to beat-back nihilism, we have invented elaborate theories regarding an afterlife. However, these theories of an afterlife must always be taken on blind faith, for nobody has ever returned from death to tell us about what comes after.

Yes, some people have had “near-death experiences” where they saw a light or had some form of experience when their heart stopped briefly, but these experiences are self-canceling because these events correspond to the person’s cultural traditions, which are internally contradictory when taken as a whole, not to mention that these are easily explained as hallucinations caused by the brain losing oxygen after the heart stops beating. When someone is being choked, their vision turns white as their brain loses oxygen (like seeing an intense light), and oxygen deprivation can lead to hallucinations as well as feelings of intense bliss. An extreme and irreverent example of this is those who practice auto-erotic asphyxiation, wherein practitioners combine oxygen deprivation and masturbation.

If you believe in some form of an afterlife, and that gives you peace and stills your fear of death, I shall not rob you of that. I’m speaking to those who find such spotty evidence unconvincing and look upon their inevitable deaths with anxiety. Allow me to still your fears and convince you of what I believe to be good news.

“You” don’t exist.

But of course, You DO exist. You think! You think, therefore You are, as the philosopher said. But what are “You”? You cannot be your body, because your body is finite and mortal, so what are You? Where is the “soul” inside this biomechanical meat-suit we call the mortal body?

Many will immediately answer that the consciousness is the “You”. Consciousness is the “soul”. Consciousness is the “true self” that exists independent from and beyond the physical body. However, I want to ask you what being a disembodied consciousness would mean. Putting aside the entire issue of whether consciousness can exist by itself outside of a physical brain, let’s just assume that our consciousness is indeed our immortal soul, and put aside everything else, and consider what a disembodied immortal consciousness would even be.

For example, you would not be able to sense anything going on in the universe. Our bodies are the bridge between our consciousness and the universe around us. Without eyes to see, ears to hear, skin to feel, mouths to taste, and noses to smell, these senses as well as the universe which interacts with us through them, would be quite unknowable to our consciousness. It would be similar to the proverbial sound of one-hand clapping, or a tree falling in the woods with nobody around to hear it. Without our bodies and thus our sensory faculties, our consciousness would be wholly ignorant of anything going on outside of itself. Neither a paradise nor an inferno would make any difference to a disembodied consciousness. Even if one were reunited with the lost souls of their departed loved ones, they would have no ability to know they were there or to communicate with them. They would be as it were, like two people laying next to one another in separate comas. They would furthermore have no ability to communicate with one another even if they somehow were made aware of the outside universe.

An additional issue with the concept of the disembodied eternal consciousness is the fact that our memories are tied to our physical bodies. This can be readily seen with dementia and Alzheimer's patients who lose their memories as their brains degenerate with age. If our memories were part of our eternal consciousness, brain damage would not cause memory loss. A clever workaround to these issues is the belief that our consciousnesses are given new “spiritual bodies” upon death, which is why ghost stories contain human-like figures who roughly resemble their mortal appearance. However, while the concept of a spirit or ghost “body” seems to solve the problem of the disembodied consciousness, it just repackages the same problem and returns you to the beginning.

If you have a “spirit body” within your physical body that is capable of sensory input and memory, then what was the point of life to begin with? If we have spirit bodies capable of everything our physical bodies are capable of, then there is absolutely no point to life whatsoever. Ironically, many religions such as the early Christian Gnostics came to this conclusion and proclaimed that material existence was evil. This belief was also held by a Christian sect in the 1800s known as the Shakers, who abstained from sex, marriage, and childbirth because they believed that sex and physical existence were impure (they didn’t last very long for obvious reasons). However, even in today’s secular society, antinatalism is very popular and widespread, often with refrains to avoid children for environmental reasons rather than spiritual ones.

When you think about it, the concept of a spiritual body doesn’t make sense and doesn’t solve any of the problems I outlined above anyway. So where does that leave us? Merely accepting that once we die, we cease to be forever and that life has no point? That isn’t my intent, but before we talk about what I believe is the answer, it is important to talk about what isn’t. However, now that we’ve swept the trash aside as it were, we can now clearly see the path before us.

The plain truth is that there is no You, and You are better understood to be part of an interconnected system of life and consciousness that is in a constant state of change. Life and Death are merely part of one another and go together. Likewise, your sense of self, your “You” does not exist without everything else that isn’t You. There is no You, there is only Everything.

I know that was probably confusing and I can feel your eyes rolling through time and space as I’m writing this, but allow me to explain by starting with things that we can verifiably prove beyond the shadow of a doubt and then make highly educated inferences into that which we can only vaguely perceive.

Science estimates that there are about 30 trillion living cells within your body right now. Of those, most of them (about 25 trillion) are blood cells, with the other 5 trillion making up your tissues and organs. However, there are about three times more microbes (bacteria cells) living in your body than you even have human cells. These microbes not only affect your susceptibility to disease and general health, but also affect your mood, food cravings, and may even affect your personality. There are 500 million neurons (brain cells) in your gut, meaning that even if you believe your consciousness resides in your brain that that relationship isn’t restricted only to the area behind your eyes and between your ears.

Why is this significant? It’s significant because You are not a singular organism, but a biosystem of 10s of trillions of living things, most of which aren’t even human cells. A way to understand this easier is to consider the  Portuguese man-of-war, which is not a jellyfish (although it looks like one) but is instead a colony of organisms working together called a siphonophore. These jellyfish-like colony organisms are much more primitive and evolutionarily distant than human beings, but the point I’m trying to help you understand that there is no singular You, and there never was. You were always a complex array of living things, similar to the siphonophores.

“So what?” I hear you saying (again through time and space). To answer this, let us return to the paradox of consciousness and I will prove to you that your entire sense of self, of individual identity, is wholly dependent on the social biosphere of everyone else and everything else around you.

Imagine being the only thing in existence. You are floating within an endless void. You have no sensory experiences because there is nothing else to interact with. There is no light to bounce off of things and carry information into your eyes. There are no vibrations to carry sound into your ears or to vibrate the nerves in your skin to produce touch.  There is no space because there is nothing to compare yourself to. You could be motionless or you could be traveling at the speed of light, but with nothing to compare your current position to, space does not exist, and without space, there is no time. There is nothing … nothing … forever.

Who are you?

What are you thinking about?

Are you alive?

The answers to these questions demonstrate the profound truth that I disclosed earlier. There is no You. There is only Everything. It is only via our relationships with everything else that we are even capable of having a sense of self, a sense of identity. Our environment and our social connections with other people are the microbiomes that we exist in just as the 10s of trillions of living cells exist within our microbiome within our bodies.We are uniquely situated in the middle of all things that we can observe and appreciate this fact, and we can take serene comfort in understanding that as a part of everything, our illusory identity is no more significant than the food you ate.

Think of all the life you consume to stay alive. Even if you’re a vegan and only eat plants, the plants are still living things. Life requires death, and they go together like opposite sides of a magnet. Likewise self requires others. The organism requires the environment. Nothing does or can exist on its own in a vacuum any more than a valley can exist without mountains.

There is no You, there is only Everything. Call it God. Call it the Tao. Call it Azathoth. You are IT, or rather, you are an expression of IT in the same way that your physical characteristics are an expression of your DNA.

There is also a demonstrable pattern within this biosystem of life and death we call reality, and that is the constant state of change, of materials being used and recycled into new materials.

As we learned in the Lion King, while we eat the antelope, when we die our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass, and so we are all connected in the great circle of life.

Nothing lasts forever, yet nothing is wasted. Death feeds back into Life. Being is born from Non-Being. Death is merely changing, and change already happens every day. You’re not the same person you were 10 years ago, and you won’t be the same person in 10 years. One day the pattern known as You will dissolve and new patterns will emerge, and they will not be the same either.

There is nothing to fear because there is nothing to cling to.

Did you like this essay? Check out my book “The Way of Monkey Book” available on Amazon.



Cappy's Blog Update

Greetings Reading Agents in the Field,

As you know Cappy has been incredibly busy.  There were three books published in the last 12 months, went to Miami last week, tax season, building a house, and of course moving.  Combine this with the demand-pull that more content be put out via podcasting or YouTube, and further combine that with the demands of Asshole Consulting, I have had nowhere near the time to write like I did in the halcyon days of yore when bandwidth only allowed for blogging.


Thankfully, many of these long term projects have closed or are coming to a close and I will be able to return to writing more.  However, it will never be as much or as frequent as the golden years of 10 years ago when I was stuck in a bank office, where I had more or less 8 hours a day to research and write some high level economic/philosophy shit.

In the meantime, if you wanted you can read through my "best of" books which are compilations of my be blog posts.  This includes:

Love Letters to the Left
Top Shelf
Reserved
and
Captains' Quarterly which is a Playboy-esque magazine publication I made a shot at, but could not continue because there aren't enough pretty, reliable women to model successive issues.

Arcopix

This is just a link for a client.  Readers needn't worry about it.

Acropix.

Thursday, February 25, 2021

Why Genius Kids Hate School

Turd Flinging Monkey had a great segment on his latest show that I think would be of benefit to everyone.  It's starts at the 4 Hour 41 Minute mark and continues to the rest of the show.  Consider tuning in because it's more than just "normies stupid, and I hate school" but about value, how society is completely designed against smart people, and how your past is you.

Friday, February 19, 2021

Thursday, February 18, 2021

Why Ikea is the Future of the US Economy



My James Bond Villain Couch

Allow me to tell you how Ikea created $2,000 in "NOT-GDP."

I had worked hard.  And not only had I worked hard, but I had worked hard for 30 years.  I saved my pennies and dimes, lived in basements while renting out the upstairs of houses I owned, drove cars over 10 years old, and would bring flasks to bars so I could drink on the cheap.  And over those three decades I was able to pay off my humble house, be mortgage free, and be in the enviable position of retiring before 50.

Part of that early retirement dream was finally selling my investment properties and building my modest-but-dream home.  It would not be a luxurious home as my years of living cheaply had taught me the value of minimalism, but it would be a nice home, culminating my life's work and frugality into a home I would enjoy, not merely live in.

And so in anticipation, for one of the rare moments in my life, I afforded myself something nice.

What was that something?  Ikea's 5 piece "Morabo Sectional" replete with chaise lounge.


My house was designed to look like a Mission Impossible, late-50's, schwank bachelor pad, and I had found the James Bond Villain couch to be the centerpiece of my living room.  And so I permitted myself to drop the $3,200 on this sleek, sexy sectional.

Of course, though, with Ikea, you have to assemble your furniture. And of course, if you've ever been there, you have to use the code on the print out they give you to find all the components that go into creating the set in their warehouse.  And though I was eagerly looking forward to the day I could pour myself a small-fish bowl snifter of scotch, swirl it around in the palm of my hand, and luxuriate on Marabo 5 piece sectional as I made declarations to James Bond on how I would defeat him and achieve global domination...

that would have to wait as Ikea said half my couch was not in stock, and I would have to wait a month to get the remainder of it.

This was understandable.  Sometimes things aren't in stock.  Sometimes things are very popular and sell out quickly. Plus, COVID had people rushing to Ikea to redo their homes as they had nothing else to do.  But after a month passed, and I still had yet to receive a notification that the remaining half of my James Bond Villain couch was delivered, I checked online to see what was going on.

This then started what would inevitably become a 4 month process.

You, in theory, can check the status of your order online.  But there is such little information on Ikea's website that you are compelled to contact customer service.

Ikea is in the throes of a managerial/competency crisis, as people are losing their orders, having the wrong things delivered, etc., which makes contacting customer service about a 30 minute ordeal.

If you get to customer service, you are rolling the dice as to whether or not that person knows what they're doing.  I never received the information I needed nor the same/consistent information from each of the three reps I called to see if the remainder of my couch was ever going to be delivered.  Which compelled me to...

Revisit the physical store to see what was going on, which once again was fraught with its own problems of floor employees looking things up on databases that were not consistent with what was online.

The final straw was when I could no longer pull up my order #.  Ikea, like a heroin-addicted single mom loses her child, lost my order.  Just "poof" gone.  And thank god I saved my multi-thousand dollar receipt to prove that I had paid for it.

In the end I realized that I had wasted more time and labor dicking around with Ikea for a couch that was never going to be delivered.  And so I spent the better part of a cold Minnesota morning, loading up my truck, driving to Ikea, waiting in line, and getting a refund for my half-purchase.  And that experience was the ONLY time I dealt with a competent Ikea employee as the process, though long, went smoothly.

No doubt everybody has horror stories about buying things, delivery problems, an returning them.  But Ikea was different because of two things.  One, the inordinate amount of my time, energy, resources, and money that went into purchasing a couch that simply never existed.  And two, the incompetence at nearly every level and facet of the Ikea organization.  And though I am long over getting frustrated or angry at companies being inept in delivering what they promised, I do believe Ikea serves as foreboding omen of what the future US (and global economy) will look like.  And this is a lesson people with an IQ above 100 need to realize.

All Problems are Caused by Humans

First, you must understand where all problems in the world come from.  They come from other humans.

Yes, a tornado will destroy a house and present you a problem.
Yes, a hurricane will flood your city and damage some property.

But outside natural disasters and statistical chance, nearly ALL of the problems you will face, endure, suffer, and inevitably be-forced-to-overcome are caused by humans who are fucking up.  

Your boss gave you the wrong information to do the project and is now yelling at you for faulty results?
That problem is caused by your boss fucking up.

The waitress added shellfish to your salad when you expressly said NOT TO ADD SHELLFISH, and now you are being rushed to the hospital as you can't breathe?
That problem is caused by the waitress fucking up.

Perhaps you followed your heart and the money would follow when you chose your Philosophy degree, and now you're $75,000 in debt, living at home, and working the same job you did in high school?
That problem is caused by your parents and teachers fucking up.

All problems in your life, be it very important things like your career, marriage, or education to the smallest and pettiest of things like adding onions to your Sub sandwich, are caused by other humans.  And these mistakes not only create incalculable misery, but waste incredible amounts of human time and resources.

But the problem with humans does not end there.  Because in order for society to function and operate, we need to rely not on one mere human to do one mere thing, but a network of MILLIONS of humans to do their jobs correctly, all the time.  When I get gas I'm not only relying on the gas station attendant to do his job, but the pump manufacturer to do his, the credit card payment processor to do theirs, and the fuel truck driver to do his.  When you order food at a restaurant you are easily reliant upon a score of people to do their jobs the right way.  And a corporation is nothing more than thousands of little worker ants who need to do their job right, otherwise the whole thing falls apart.

And today's 2021 Ikea perfectly represents where an entire entity is decaying at this atomic level.

Understand that when I decided to buy my couch through Ikea, I did not engage in the physical buildings, materials, machinery, and inventory that physically makes up Ikea.  I decided to engage and rely upon the thousands of sentient people who control those physical assets to provide a product.  And whereas the Subway sandwich artist may goof up and give me the wrong bread or put mustard on my sandwich when I wanted none, it seems Ikea's people are incompetent at all levels.  And while it just takes one person along the chain line to screw up something, if your entire army of employees are incompetent, well then there's no helping you.

The saleswoman who ordered my couch for me (I think) didn't put the order in.  Just gave me the print out.

The three different customer service people I talked to all had different stories and resolutions to my problem, indicating to me they truly did not know what was going on.

Somebody somewhere either programmed the ordering system wrong or accidentally deleted my order.

And when I physically visited the store, the well-intended floor salesman tried to help, but wouldn't shut up long enough for me to tell him what the problem was or why I was there, which resulted in both him and I wasting about 10 minutes of our respective time.

And so though I am no financial analyst and truly couldn't care about the financial future of Ikea (I obviously never intend on shopping there again), no entity can survive this level of  widespread incompetence.  Ikea will either get it's act together, or fail.

The Ikea Economy

This then brings about a scary insight.  

There is nothing inherently wrong with Ikea's employees.  Ikea has to select from the same pool of incompetent dumbasses that currently populate the US labor market.  And Ikea is no doubt led and staffed by incompetent MBA's and "leaders" who all went to Buck Diddly's School of Business Management or some other such trash business college.  What Ikea does reflect, however, is a decrease in the overall quality and caliber of your average American worker.  The American worker of which went from a grizzled WWII vet who survived The Great Depression, to an adderall-xanax addicted Millennial or Gen Z'er who has not only been brought up under soft and undemanding conditions, but has a worthless liberal arts degree to boot.  Of course that is a very large brush to paint with, but with such weak, untested, and pampered adult children being dumped into the labor market by worthless schools and colleges, it should be no shock that with such decay at the cellular level of the economy (the individual human) companies and the overall economy should suffer, which is has.  

Labor force participation rates are going down.
Economic growth is only about 60% of what it used to be during the 40's-60's.
We have to borrow/print money to bail people/banks/students out of their stupid decisions.
Half the population is dependent on the taxpayer

And perhaps the biggest indication of Americans turning into Idiocracy,

It takes 25 years to grow, educate, and train your average person into becoming a self-supporting worker.

And here is where Idiocracy, the "Ikea Economy" becomes a reality.  Because we are no longer aiming to put men on Mars or develop hover-cars.  We're not even trying to get the nuclear family with a white picket fence.  We're just trying to keep it together.  And worse than that (and this is perhaps the ultimate form of "The Ikea Economy"), the majority of our resources are being spent cleaning up other people's mistakes.  And that does not produce real GDP.

An Economy of Broken Glass

It is unavoidable that a certain percent of an economy's labor has to be spent cleaning up other people's mistakes.  Humans are not perfect and everybody will err, and that err will require a commensurate (perhaps even exponential) amount of resources to clean up.  But if the cellular unit of the economy - humans - are decaying at a rate that they do nothing but fuck up, the percent of the economy that goes to cleaning up broken windows increases at the opportunity cost of genuine economic growth.  

A perfect example of this is social workers.  

Social workers don't produce anything of value.  They merely clean up the mess of broken homes, deadbeat dads, and single mom sluts.  And one can't even claim they do that as poverty, crime, and dysfunctional homes are not only still present, but on the increase.  But their salaries are still counted in GDP and GDP per capita, when there was nothing of value produced there.

But what if on every level, every human, in every institution of the economy, decayed to this level, not just the "social work industry?"

It cost me $2,000 in lost wages and time to order a FREAKING COUCH.

What if one person at the water sanitation department screwed up?  That cost the Michigan taxpayers $600 million with the Flint Michigan water crisis.

What if you major in a dumb subject and need to go back to college to get a degree that's employable?
That is potentially going to cost the US taxpayer $1 trillion.

And forget big ticket items.  What if every interaction you have to have with every human over the course of one day, involves 1 in 10 of these humans fucking up?  Forget water or a college degree, you will waste hours of time just buying a video game or getting gas.

And this is the ultimate cost of "The Ikea Economy."  Certainly, there will be great and many and costly boondoggles like higher education, the welfare state, or the banking crisis.  But when it comes to the normal day to day functioning of society, where we engage in hundreds of individual actions directly and indirectly with thousands of individual people, normal day to day functioning, be it your job, your home, or merely going out in public, will become increasingly less efficient, more costly, and more difficult.  You will have to order your burger three times before the waiter gets it right.  You will have to ask the Ikea rep DO YOU HAVE THIS IN STOCK, and then VERIFY IT IS IN STOCK, before you fork over your credit card.  You will have to check with UPS four times to find out where your package is.  And you will have to call up the electric company three times to get them to turn your power back on.

I may have had a bad experience with Ikea, but I fear it will now become the norm.

The New Normal

The new normal economy will represent what I've been predicting for quite sometime - a second world economy.  

With the average American being a complete idiot, not to mention incredibly spoiled and thinking real work is beneath them AND with enough government welfare/UBI to prevent them from ever having the fear of homelessness or starvation kick their ass into being a responsible adult, you can expect the US (and other nations) to become increasingly like second and third world economies.  Supply chains will become increasingly unreliable.  Bribery will be the most efficient means to get things done.  Underground, black market, or mafia economies will become the most efficient channels by which to get things done.  And the intelligent individual will simply limit the amount of interaction he/she needs to have with the rest of society.  Larger organizations will no longer be functional or feasible, often times being bailed out by a printing press. Entrepreneurs will simply say, "why bother?"  And the real costs of goods will go up.  

But the real problem, I predict, most people will face is the maddening psychological environment this will create.

Think about my desire to buy a couch from Ikea on a very basic, simple, and moral level.

Ikea claimed unto me they had my James Bond Villain couch.  Why else would they advertise it, let alone allow me to purchase it in advance?

But Ikea was not capable of delivering my couch, and I'm pretty sure somewhere in the chain of command of Ikea a man knew this.

This then behooves the question, why are you going through the facade of even offering the couch?  Why are you even in business?  What psychotic mentally ill reason do you have to waste my, and other people's, time?

And thus apply this flawed economic/business mentality to the overall economy:

What if that's every economic interaction and transaction in the economy?  That you're not sure you're going to be delivered what you asked?  That one party says they're going to do "X" and only 50% of the time does so?  To a certain extent this is already happening.  Ikea promising couches that never were.  Universities promises educations/career that would never pay.  Target promising fat women men will inevitably some day like them.  But aside from the obvious and INCREDIBLE economic costs, not to mention all the added costs it takes to clean up these messes, what about the psychological toll people will pay living in this incompetent, mad, Ikea world?

Thankfully, I am a minimalist.  Thankfully, I am old.  And thankfully, I no longer care about society or the economy.  I am going to spend the rest of my days laughing at stupid people making stupid mistakes and screaming at the sky for problems brought about by their own stupidity.  But if you are smarter than the average bear and wish to avoid the pain and agony of this Ikea Economy that cometh, may I strongly recommend you minimize the amount of stuff you need, the number of people you rely on, and prepare yourself psychology for the incompetence that is about to ensue?

______________

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Let Them Be Spinsters

The article is right.  But I don't know what's more annoying.  The whining about what is fated to happen, or the CONSTANT missing the source of the problem which is NOT more women in education, but that said "education" comes with a ton of anti-male, anti-marriage, anti-family spin that convinces women to put their careers ahead of love.

Monday, February 15, 2021

Dear Gen Z, Stop Faking Mental Illness

Or at least stop asking us to give you a government check for it.

Good Morning Coronachan #40 - The "Return of Coronachan" Episode

Good Morning Coronachan LIVE, this morning at 9AM CST!

Tune in ya bastids!

Somebody Nuke Westport, CT

Good Christ.  It's not that it's so bad you're paying teens to write essays about "diversity" in a competition.  Nor is it so bad that the topic that won is about BLM. 

It's that it's in its eighth fucking year.