Anyone who has rented a car, or an apartment knows it is a different relationship from owning a car or especially a house. Drive through a working class neighborhood and you can easily spot the owners from the renters. The houses with overgrown lawns will usually be the renters. Of course, everyone knows the jokes about rental cars. Even the most conscientious renter tends to be more reckless with a rental car. You just do not have the same connection with it as you own car.
Another thing goes along with this. People with old beat up used cars tend not to be as careful as people with new cars. This has been tested. Take that old clunker and fix it up or replace it with something nice and the driver gets more conscientious about his driving and how he treats the car. The same thing probably happens with houses or even neighborhoods. What is the point of having a great lawn if every lawn in your neighborhood is a trash strewn, overgrown mess?
The point here is that the relationship one has to the property at his disposal is controlled to some degree by the ownership and condition. For this reason, it has been an article of faith with conventional conservatives that the way to lift people out of poverty is to get them into a house they own. The theory is these people will invest in their community, because they own a house in it. They have skin in the game, while the renter can just pick up and leave if things get bad.
This is not something that gets much attention now. While homeownership rates are about where they have always been, few people really own their house. They have a mortgage that they may never pay off. Each generation of American is poorer and carries greater debt. The policy to inflate home prices means younger people will carry a mortgage much longer and carry a much larger debt load in general. America is a land of debtors falling deeper in debt with each generation.
Then there is the general erosion of property rights. You may own your home and your car, but some company is tracking your use of them. That information, which is your property, is bought and sold without your consent. If you have a smart TV, it is spying on you, maybe even listening to your conversations. Just as the landlord can come into your apartment at any time, corporate America can poke around in your life whenever it feels the need to harvest information about you.
It is not just in our private lives where we see the transactional arrangement supplanting the ownership society. Businesses are increasingly moving to technology platforms that are pure services. Instead of owning the accounting system and running it on your server, you sign up for a web-based option. You pay monthly and agree to their terms of service, like all the other services that now dominate our lives. Increasingly, a business is just a temporary set of rental agreements.
This is something that cannot be overstated. if you look at the firms behind the apps that pop up in our lives, there is nothing to them. They have assembled a collection of licensed products that they have given a clever name. They work out of temporary offices and rent server space from Amazon. The employees are contract labor from somewhere over the horizon. The traveling circuses of old had deeper roots than the typical tech startup. They at least owned the tents.
There is something else that relates to this change in our society. Drive around and the infrastructure is looking shabby. Streets are full of potholes. Utility lines are a cluttered mess, often looking like something from the third world. Schools are old and shabby, even in nice middle-class areas. People think about the tyranny part of anarcho-tyranny, but it is the anarchy part that has the greatest impact. There is a general shabbiness to our lives that erodes our civic pride and commitment to community.
Taken together, the engine for creating social capital has slowly fallen into disrepair, to the point where we have adopted the renter’s mentality. The only time politicians speak of community is when they are discussion artificial or imaginary communities like the “trans community” or the “Asian community.” Even more bizarre is that most people think about their on-line groups when they think of community. The typical millennial has a stronger relationship to other gamers than his neighbors.
The other thing about the renter’s mentality is the owner of the rental property does not invest more than necessary. The landlord does not install granite counter tops in a rental unit and the car rental place is not waxing the cars between rentals. The software as a service vendor is cutting costs on development, because that is his only way to increase his profit margins. Eventually, these savings have to be balanced out with a capital infusion, but often after the property is sold.
This cannot work in a society. There is no way to replace the social capital that is not being created due to the lack of community. We see this with the attempts by Washington to inject money into the economy. What is not stolen by the pirates that prey on the economy has no impact on the people. The $1,400 check is never going to be the same as a job at a local business, run by one of your neighbors. Once the money is spent, there will be a new cry for more checks.
America is a rentier economy populated by people with a renter’s mentality. Every relationship is transactional. Once the transaction is over, the parties go on their way until the next transaction. One result of this is the country now looks like a neighborhood full of rental properties. No one, not even the government, sees a reason to invest in anything other than their immediate needs. The last functioning institution is the military, and it is succumbing to the same mentality.
It is tempting to call this feudalism, but feudalism had a strong ownership component and a well-defined set of reciprocal responsibilities. Modern America is becoming something different. A tiny group of people own everything, either directly or through the financial system, with no relationship to anyone other than through the rental agreement, the terms of service or the short term contract. The vast majority are just passing through society like renters.
Whether or not this is sustainable is an open question. The only societies we have ever created without social capital are penal colonies. Even in those, the inmates build bonds with one another. A prison cellblock has more social capital than a gaming community or social media network. We are into uncharted territory. Can a society sustain itself in a crisis, even a society post scarcity, when none of the members feels any connection to the other members? It seems unlikely.
On the other hand, maybe one part of the post scarcity society is there is no longer a threat of a genuine crisis. The great crises of the last few decades have been imaginary or exaggerated. There is a strong sense that things like the Covid panic are due to the political class not having anything to do with their time. These fake crises give them a reason to demand our attention. Maybe the renter society is a natural response to the elimination of real threats to society.
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What is that saying from the resetters, in the future you will own nothing and be happy. Well, maybe not the happy part.
Infrastructure really does look worse than ever. Finally got around to fixing a bridge near me and looks like it will take a year and half of closure to repair. Not so if they addressed it earlier. Money probably went somewhere else. Until then paybridge $5 a pop.
Can’t even update my Quickbooks 2012 unless I go with subscription. I relented on Photoshop finally at ten dollars a month. No more I hope. Windows, games will all be subscription based soon. Changes are always for the worst it seems.
All change isn’t progress and all progress isn’t forward.
Oh yeah, I forgot, the country truly is screwed.
9
Software as a service is a huge scam, there is no benefit to the end user. Plus you are giving all of your data to the software company. It amazes me that people didn’t do more to resist the implementation of it.
6
I have my Office 2010 suite on disc and it gets recylced every time a family member gets a new computer. At work we’ve recently switched to Office 365. I don’t see how it’s any better than the product from a decade ago, and the printed page looks the same, no matter what version you used to create it.
4
what’s the difference between these two except for the hardware size and screen color?
https://s3.amazonaws.com/buildercloud/6bdbf9898ea11cf47b3c625d3dbd6eb3.jpg
https://www.vyopta.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/picturephone.jpg
“Bah, technology: why, a fax machine is just a toaster with a phone hooked up to it.” Grandpa Abraham Simpson
The free office suites have gotten really good over the years.
NeoOffice and LibreOffice are the two most similar to MS Office.
Yes, you are simply sending your data to different folks, but at least you’re not actively paying for that privilege every year.
As a rich guy once told me, “If it flies, floats or fucks, rent it.”
13
that would explain rental sheep in New Zealand…
3
I definitely have a renters mentality about this country. I have no interest in watching it prosper, thrive and grow. I only care about what I can take out of it. And look forward to the day when the global world is fully realized it will only take one match to set it aflame.
10
Sadly I have to admit that I am pretty much of the same mind.What would “prospering” actually look like anyway other than providing for even more degradation, corruption, stupidity, incompetence and general failure?The “America” that I grew up in is now long ago and far away. My awakening began about 1970 and has been a continuing process ever since, but I really never imagined that America could be so… (words fail mere here) as to ever let things arrive at this point.
You’ve hit on the topic of reciprocity before. It is largely dead and with it societal cohesion. Bad thing. In one of the write-ups on the St. Floyd jury selection saw a quote from one of the potential jurors. When asked if he was concerned for his safety, his answer was basically, “yes, but I also feel it my duty to be willing to do this” Of course he was struck by the prosecution. The rest were either shit scared or were eager for their opportunity to join the lynch mob and maybe get a book deal after the body was cut down from the gallows. But once citizenship becomes a rental agreement, we’re in Late Empire territory.
8
I’m not even sure a genuine crisis would change the “renter” mentality of this former country. We’ve become so atomized – particularly in the past year with the phony covidian hysterics, I don’t know what could cause a large percentage of the population to coalesce around a common goal.
I guess as a fellow poster (Lineman) has exhorted – build small local communities of like minded folks in an attempt to ride out the coming storms as best we can.
5
– wake up 1 minute before work starts in your tiny (but expensive) studio
– log into work remotely
– say good morning to the random collection of foreign aliens that make up your “team”
– pretend to do work all day. Listen to karens bitch and do a bit of work that the African / Arab diversity hire neglected.
– log off
– play videogames
– go to sleep
9
I bet suicide rates keep climbing.
6
You forgot:
— smoke weed
5
What about periodic breaks for… erm…self care?
The OnlyFans account is available all hours of the day.
1
Low interest rates make going into massive debt appealing, after all the payment on 500,000 will be the same as the payment on 400,000 a couple years ago.
And all those subscription services that automatically deduct from my credit card or checking account.?
Who notices?
Certainly not the kids in public schools being educated in wokeness and not basic economics.
I see more renters ahead.
The ruling class are draining the population of assets and the population is willingly participating.
5
We were speaking to a fellow rural-ite and as she walked us around her place she quoted all her acquisitions in terms of the monthly cost. It was just bizarre to me.
7
When I financed a car for the first time 11 years ago, the sales manager asked me what kind of payment I was looking for. I told him No, we’ll negotiate the price, and I’m sure I’ll be able to afford the payments. It was a little unnerving realizing that’s how most people must conduct their finances.
5
Car salesman always negotiate for a monthly payment. People walk in with an amount per month that they can afford and everything works around that.
4
I recently bought a car. I was going to pay cash, as I had not bought a car in 20 years. The car fund was plenty topped up as a result. The dealer kept pushing me to lease and then eventually offered me a negative interest rate loan. The only catch is I could not pay off the note for 120 days. They made sure of that by making the payment three months out.
Doing a little thinking on it, I realized they are bundling my good credit loan with a bunch of subprime loans. The package is then sold off in tranches or in whole. The banks are now renters too. They are renting my car loan for three months.
10
That’s insightful. I bet you are correct. I really bought into the ownership society stuff in the bush years. What a fool i was. Your point about rental lawns is correct. However, how a mortgage that many just walk away from is functionally different from rental contract eludes me.
1
We are well and truly screwed!
Investors are starved for yield. With no ability to earn a real return on treasuries – and less than a percentage point on Aaa corporate bonds – investors being forced to moving into ever riskier assets for return.
Pension funds, endowments, family offices, all the big money are scrambling for return. I suspect that it won’t end well.
2
The main problem with all those schemes was unrealistic planning from the get go.
You can’t have a large, stable pension vehicle that also makes guaranteed 7-8% returns year-in and year-out.
Yet, that range is exactly what institutions like CalPERS thought they could easily achieve.
1
Wild,
A lot of those assumptions grew out of the 80s and 90s when interest rates were much higher. If treasuries are yielding 5% to 10%, and you keep 50% of your money in bonds, you get 2.5% to 5% from that portion of your portfolio alone. Not too hard to fairly safely get to 7.5% from there.
Now, the 10-year is yield 1.6%, so that same 50% allocation gets you 0.8%. Now you need to find 6.7% from the remaining 50% of your portfolio, i.e. 13.4% return from those assets.
That. Will. Not. Happen.
The trailing PE of the S&P BEFORE Covid hit was close to 25. (It’s 40 now, but that’s inflated due to low earnings.) Even if profits return to pre-Covid levels tomorrow, you’re looking at ~6% nominal (4% yield plus 2% inflation). And that’s assuming the PE won’t revert back to its longer-term average of 18-20 and that profit return quickly.
Pension funds, etc., are looking to private equity to help, but PE is a spent force. In the past, it was really just a small/micro value stock play, but PE got too big so they can’t swim in that pond anymore, so PE will return similar to the S&P.
Some them are selling puts to generate income, but that’s a recipe for disaster.
The funny thing about pension funds and endowments is that everyone – and I mean, everyone, including them – know that they’re toast. It’s no secret and hasn’t been for a very long time.
Regardless, their problems are all of our problems because they’ll need a bail out. We also have to deal with the same issues as investors, though I believe that there ways out of this for small investors, but that’s just me.
“The ruling class are draining the population of assets and the population is willingly participating.”
They have been willing to destroy the next generation for years. I look at those that have children and divorce as scum. I know, ‘whataboutism’ the man beating the woman, etc. – as in the case of ‘abortion whatabout rape and incest yadda…’
How hard is it to count the folks you know that see their kids plunged into debt for some undergrad crap degree, ‘everyone is doing it’… while making surely sure two shiny new Subarus or Prius’s (sold based on “love” after all) are in the drive? Replete with the usual virtue signaling, vomit inducing bumper stickers.
How many plan to “die broke”? Enjoy that whopping ‘home equity’ and use it for yummy cruises, while it makes their own children unable to afford a first home anywhere near the age they were when they first bought?
The ruling class? Look in the mirror, people.
4
Orson Welles Citizen Kane clapping.gif
1
It is low-hanging fruit for more control via “private business,” too. Watch for lenders to start to attach more and more government mandates (thinks solar panels and so forth) to home loans, even those that have been extended. Theoretically the original contract with the lender cannot be modified to include such provisions, but, hahahahaha.
1
I think we’re tracking towards runaway hyperinflation and a dollar crash.
They won’t have nearly enough people to collect 1% of the outstanding debts.
May as well max the cards to buy hard assets on credit.
Molon labe.
I’m nervous about my virtual stock portfolio… Could crash – but as others have mentioned it could just be seized. One day my Zman comments will be linked to my brokerage account, and I’ll wake up with 0$. What am I gonna do? They already halted trading of GME and other shares because the ceo supposedly “felt they were valued too high”. So much for the free market.
Might buy a bit of gold. Right now I have a chunk of cash and bullets as hard assets. But 90% is still in online banks or on the stock market.
1
I’m pretty happy buying tubes of 1 oz silver bullion with the occasional 1/10 oz or 1/4 oz gold piece. Maybe toss some 1/2 oz silver in there for flexibility. These will be good for almost all day-to-day trading in goods and services.
I’m just not sure how much utility 1/2 and 1 oz gold pieces will have going forward. ARs and ammo boxes will be seen as having far more value than a 1 oz gold piece.
Large-scale assets like transport and shelter will be so highly valued that people will squat, steal, or shoot to acquire them.
Cryptos might be great for those who bought in from 2008-2014, but I would stay away at this point. I had little vision at that point in my life so I don’t hold any. If I did, I’d be converting at least 25-30% to cash, bullion, and hard assets.
This is really a natural consequence of the globalization we discussed yesterday, no? Borders disappear, community disappears, individuals become hyper atomized.
A small anecdote. I continue to own my family farm and work it part-time. For the first time in my life, I have a nagging feeling the government will take it from me. I’m not talking about eminent domain, political chicanery, or so forth. I can see it seized for no reason other than what it represents.
I feel the same way to a lesser extent about my business.
This is the very definition of anarcho-tyranny. The lack of certainty of ownership is a huge feature of the postmodern era.
14
“A small anecdote. I continue to own my family farm and work it part-time. For the first time in my life, I have a nagging feeling the government will take it from me.”
yeah, it’s understandable for you to get the rhodesian hibbie-jibbies, the younger gen appears to have a collectivist-oriented mindset, they have a flair for those bernie old school practices, especially when they’re directed at white guys.
4
I’ve started to notice that same concern among people and not even particularly rich people. There’s a fear that anything that they save or build will be taxed away from them in the future.
8
Check out the story on zero hedge. A couple bought a house in cali for 560K hard-saved cash. Closed on it, and the previous owner squatted on it. For over a year. Now, they broke and homeless. Police say nothing they can do. How you like those apples? Incidentally, I suspect V Hanson is one of our commentators on this thread:)
3
“I have a nagging feeling the government will take it from me. ”
I have had this feeling for a long time. Ever since I first considered buying a house. When younger, and spurred on to own a property, I used to ask “But can’t it just be taken? I mean, I don’t really own it if I don’t have the force to keep it under all circumstances, do I?”. The stock response was usually that it would never happen. As one respondent to you has noted, many seem more collectively minded, and when this entitled scum float to the top of the tree, they may well begin with seizures of some kind.
Scary indeed. Quite honestly, I can see massive parallels in most people’s respect for freedom and their respect for ownership of things. And a lot of them just keep on gettin’ happier about the lockdowns, so make of that what you will…
2
As an adjunct point, I can see them trying to shut down farmer’s markets to force people to shop at grocery stores so they can be tied into the digital spider web that is the real point of the Covid psyop.
1
One overlooked aspect of the lockdowns is that they’ve not only destroyed a lot of existing businesses but created an atmosphere of uncertainty among those who might start a new business that they will actually be able to keep it open. The answer to the question “Would you start a business here?” for many people, particularly the smarter ones, is “hell, no!”. Sure right now it’s masks and social distancing but who knows, maybe tomorrow The Great and Mighty Fauci declares that you now need 12′ of social distance. Uh, oh, now your maximum allowable occupancy is 1/4 of its current value (remember, area is a *square* function). Your already tiny profit margin is now going entirely to the electric and heating bill.
There are lots of reasons some countries remain shitholes. We all know about the um, genetic factors, but in some it’s just that even the people who aren’t congenital idiots refuse to invest in anything because they know how corrupt and insane the government is. Now, this mentality is spreading here.
The United States is approaching Gilded Age levels of wealth concentration/inequality. But as bad as that age was in many ways, this modern Bankster Age is far worse.
While uttlerly ruthless businessmen, the Rockefellers and Carnegies of that age at least still held some feeling of connection to the American people (even if that feeling was partially out of fear), building universities, libraries and other institutions that made the community better.
Our modern overlords have no love or connection with the people, often because the belong to completely different tribe.
In addition, the Gilded Age was a period of incredible advancement. They actually built things, like railroads and factories that eventually helped make people’s lives much, much better. The Bankster Age rarely makes our lives better and often makes them worse by eroding our social capital and allowing the invasion of our homelands.
How long can a society function when run by grifters who have no connection to the people. The con man doesn’t make for a good leader.
25
One effective seed to plant in people’s minds is Z-man’s observation that Google or Amazon are not going to sponsor your kid’s Little League team, advertise in your church bulletin, or beautify your neighborhood park. And they’re certainly not going to construct anything approaching the century-old Carnegie library in my hometown.
22
I remember in college, the non whites (even Canadian born ones) would gleefully announce during their case study presentations that they would recommend outsourcing. It was a little thing but it always stuck with me for some reason.
Even though they’re born in Canada (just as Canadian as I am), they still hate it and take pleasure stripping it of wealth. Their joyous tone was the main giveaway. For myself and other white guys, Canadian-made was a little more important – and if it had to be outsourced it certainly wasn’t a happy or easy decision.
Another time we were touring a plant, and this old boomer manager was proudly telling some Pakis that all the other plants had gone to Mexico, but he was keeping jobs in Canada. And they just stared at him blankly, and kinda nodded “oh ok”.
8
maybe one part of the post scarcity society is there is no longer a threat of a genuine crisis
—
The accusation over at Zero Hedge (yeah) was that the ongoing chip shortage is being driven by inflationary pressures, i.e., companies way down the supply line are having issues using the money from the widget they just sold to build the next widget since the time value of money has shrunk inside their manufacturing timeline. If true (ZH is prone to “wishful thinking”) the companies involved will cook up a workaround, but it will just buy time until the inflation rate gets larger. However, the real action comes in when food distribution starts running into the same issue. There will be all kind of money, all kind of government checks, but nothing to buy with it.
6
One of the problems with the food supply is nobody wants to work in it. It’s hard work. Nobody wants to go in the Peach orchard and climb that ladder.
3
I don’t know, I find working on my farm to be pretty enjoyable, and vastly more rewarding than paper pushing. But then, I own the place, so maybe that makes a difference. I’d also bet that lots of people could learn to enjoy it if they were paid, say, $20/hr instead of minimum wage.
9
Libs always say “well immigrants will do it”, but that’s presuming there is still a white managerial class keeping things in order. Without white farmers there would be no ag or fruit to pick in California.
It’s not just the “low hanging fruit” jobs being replaced anymore. The entire framework will be destroyed.
7
No no no. You’re mistaken.
Zimbabwe has a booming agricultural sector, and in fact has yields of crop far superior to anything currently in North America. You see, if we could just import some Zimbabweans (average national IQ 120), who were familiar with this area, we’d revolutionize food production.
Said nobody ever.
6
I googled Zero hedge and found faked sites. Luckily I had an old bookmark to get to the authentic site. So ZH has been gay-opped. This confers some degree credibility with me that the right ppl are so upset by ZH that they set up mirror sites. The level of deception at every level of media is dislocating. I’ve begun to only trust people or organizations that I’ve followed for at least 5 years, and them not uncritically. You shall know them by their fruits has never seemed so relevant to me as today. It’s a weird paranoid way of thinking for me. I really miss my high trust society. The red pill sucks most days.
6
In my neck of the woods at least, scarcity is starting to make a comeback, and people are responding by starting to save and be more productive.
This is all nascent, and there are plenty of covid tourists drifting about, but I get the feeling it’s the start of a trend, and I’m glad to see it.
9
“The traveling circuses of old had deeper roots than the typical tech startup. They at least owned the tents.”
After I stopped laughing, I realized: “Shit, this is actually true.”
12
“There is a general shabbiness to our lives that erodes our civic pride and commitment to community.”
Publicly funded modern art?
2
Good column. We live in the Central Valley of California in what used to be a farm and ag support city. It’s a melting pot of colorful folks. But if you drive through our old neighborhood it has in about 30 years turned into a shithole. It’s a real conundrum for me but I’m so old it probably doesn’t make any difference. The fact is some of us are capable of constructing and maintaining a civilized society and some of us aren’t. And the number of folks who can’t are gaining on the ones who can. It’s what happens.
12
The only way to keep a neighborhood “nice” is to make it unaffordable to huge swaths of the population.
Even then, one a-hole signing up to rent out a place via the scourge of Section 8 housing can wreck an entire neighborhood in no time.
11
If you would like to see the insanity that is the logical conclusion of what a Renter Society could be, read this essay by one of your technology betters. It is infuriating to know that people with some power in this world see this as desirable.
https://moores.samaltman.com/
2
Ahh yes, the old “AI will run everything” mental masturbation by another worshipper of scientism (vs. science).
Why just yesterday I had terminal cancer but the nanobots in my bloodstream that were promised in the early 2000s just cleaned that up in a jiffy. Just like this scientism worshipper who wrote this article is certain that AI / robotics will be fully running utopia all built by the industrious minds of the 70 IQ imports we are currently being swamped with. Makes total sense to me… 🙄
Said a different way: Don’t believe everything you read especially from soy sipping science worshipping manlets.
6
Not believing it, just noticing it. These people are insane.
2
Right.
They’re going to implement this massively expanded digital spider web even though there is a semiconductor shortage shutting down parts of the auto and smartphone industries.
Word out of Texas is that there is a looming plastics shortage due to the storm-interrupted petroleum production.
2
Average home price (including condos) in Toronto: now over 1 million dollars. Average detached home is 1.6 mil. Immigration at record levels, 450,000/yr with a population of 38 million. Mostly from India and the middle East. Wages stagnant and fierce competition for entry level jobs. “Skilled immigrants” working at McDonald’s.#1 country of origin (India) – 90,000/yr, China #2 with 30,000. East Asian immigration is slowing alot.
You better bet that you’re gonna be renting for life unless you have family money. And it’s just starting.
Don’t know what the elites plan is. Don’t see the appeal of owning a Ferrari when 90% of the country is a slum (kinda limits the driving options). But they like it in India.
12
Heard from an American Christian White woman:
“These people( illegal aliens)have just as much right to come here as your people did years ago.” “The crisis at the border is not the migrant ‘s fault it’s the government’s.” “God loves all people, so you think only White people go to heaven?” “Segregating yourself from black and brown people is wrong. “You must be racist.” “There are just as many bad White people as there are bad black people.” “You must stop hating POC. ”
And so ends a civilization.
9
2
“These people( illegal aliens)have just as much right to come here as your people did years ago.”
No they don’t.
“The crisis at the border is not the migrant ‘s fault it’s the government’s.”
Who cares.
“God loves all people, so you think only White people go to heaven?”
Let Him have the final word on that.
“Segregating yourself from black and brown people is wrong.”
Safe as well.
“You must be racist.”
At least as racist as the average black.
“There are just as many bad White people as there are bad black people.”
No there aren’t.
“You must stop hating POC. ”
I love Proof of Concepts.
3
Do you have any thoughts on why E. Asian immigration to Canada is slowing vs. India and ME?
In US, interestingly, we are beginning to have a hard time keeping top shelf Chinese tech talent. Flow now looks like undergrad degree at Tsinghua or equivalent, grad degree in US, postdoc/industry position in US, then back to China. 20 years ago these guys stayed here. I am happy they are going back, but it also says something bad about us that we are no longer attractive to this type of immigrant.
Also, interesting subset of Canadian liberal is the property cuck. Owns a few properties in Toronto. Happy to sell out their family and speed down the demographic highway to hell as long as those property prices keep going up.
5
Uh, a lot of the Chinese who stayed were likely long-term plants for the purpose of academic and industrial espionage.
Supposedly, South Koreans have stopped immigrating to the US because the quality of life is so high in South Korea.
There are even rumors that some percentage of long-term South Korean immigrants to the US have even pulled up their roots and returned to the motherland.
Good for them, I say!
More nations should follow their example.
3
Because E Asian (especially China) is decent to live in now. Chinese are also very aware of race. They hate Indians and don’t like having to live with them. They don’t like Arabs either. But if you have an honest conversation with them they’ll tell you that Canada is turning into a brown shithole and they’d rather live in China.
Even Hindus will tell you Canada is making a mistake. Punjabis make up 50% of the indo “Canadian” population. The Arabs coming here to work from overseas are far more intelligent than the average Arab actually born in Canada. We are really taking the world’s sewer sludge.
Boomers don’t care. Frankly nobody has cared, we’ve had open borders since 1970. Only now the cancer is spreading outside of Toronto and Vancouver.
4
Canadian housing market is absolutely insane. I am constantly amazed the lack of rationality in the system (and my feelings about this issue now extent back almost 20 years). And I feel terrible for the young people starting out and having to buy in at the top of this ponzi scheme.
We have the same general problems here in the US, but its worse in Toronto and Vancouver.
2
Uh, the way things are trending anyone that wants to be prepared is going to want a fairly capable off-road vehicle.
At a minimum this is some kind off-road capable vehicle like a Jeep or full-size pickup.
A Jeep Grand Cherokee may be the ideal transition vehicle as things decline. I say this because GCs are decent on the highway while retaining pretty solid off-road abilities.
3
It is no great revelation, but I think that Mr. Z has hit on what should be the core strategy for the DR. Let’s focus on rebuilding and reclaiming our community. The essential tactics will be to enforce boundaries and insist on our right to free association. Boundaries include not just the national ones but, more importantly, the community ones that we enforce through exercising our associational choices. Make the definition and enforcement of boundaries our core objective (schwerpunkt).
5
You would have to be willing to drive some people out of your community. Possibly through the use of unpleasant means.
5
Where I’ve been living it’s essentially the community itself that needs to be driven out of the community.
1
“There is a general shabbiness to our lives that erodes our civic pride and commitment to community.”
There is a word for this that we hear ad nauseam in our degenerate society: diversity.
10
“Maybe the renter society is a natural response to the elimination of real threats to society.”
I suspect that this is correct. Whenever one wants to own anything non-trivial, one must jump through a set of elaborate rules. Negotiating this takes patience and a degree of responsibility. If a society removes all threats, and will provide no matter what; then why would an individual bother themselves with more responsibility?
Unfortunately for me, I am not of this mindset. I’d like a bit of hardship. I’d like to feel as though I’d earned my crust: the satisfaction of owning my own home (which I’d repair), owning my own car (a reliable runner for 12 years now) as well as many other things. Oh yes, owning my own DVDs – you never know when a subscription service may decide that something was, ahem, not amenable to ‘who we are’. On that not I bought the entire series of Tom & Jerry as well as the peerless show Thunderbirds for my son… you just never know when these things will be taken from you. It can be anything from a property to a well worn copy of your favourite book.
Own what you want, while you can; because fuck them.
9
Good observations. Let me add on a couple.
I think the renter mentality in the corporate world hits the analysts and IT guys really hard, on a personal level. None of these guys ever gave a damn about telephones or checking accounts or whatever, they just wanted to build cool stuff. Now that the corporation, itself, is a rental property, everything gets outsourced. These guys keep pointing out that the outsourcers are producing crap, but it literally doesn’t matter because it’s just a rental.
I notice something similar with homes people theoretically own. They often will not make improvements that they would want to make, simply because the cost of the improvement exceeds the increase in the value of the home the improvement would bring. That is, their approach to their own home is exactly that of a landlord toward his rental properties.
10
“I notice something similar with homes people theoretically own. They often will not make improvements that they would want to make, simply because the cost of the improvement exceeds the increase in the value of the home the improvement would bring. That is, their approach to their own home is exactly that of a landlord toward his rental properties.”
That’s an interesting observation. We don’t look at houses as “homes” anymore. These aren’t dwelling places with a certain sentimental and spiritual value. They are potential assets which we would like to parlay off later for a profit.
It doesn’t help that most houses being built today are of such low quality–they aren’t built to last, they are built to be constantly altered. They will change hands several times, and each owner can put their trendy stamp on it and then sell it off again.
We often don’t pass our houses down anymore from one generation to the next. We live in them for a while, pay off the mortgage, and then use the profit to help fund our retirements.
6
North America is moving to a society of owners and renters.
In the states, you need a portfolio (not net worth which includes equity in your house but portfolio, i.e. financial assets) of ~$825k to cross the line into the top 10% of households. In 1989, that same amount (inflation-adjusted dollars) was ~$325k. For the bottom 75% of households, the portfolio has stayed about the same. (The 75% to 90% group portfolio about doubled.)
The rich are absolutely getting richer. They’re pulling away, and now it can’t be stopped because the income generated from their financial assets is beyond what they can spend, so they’re plowing the money back into even more financial assets which produce even more income, which is then plowed into more financial assets . . .
You can give the poor all the money that you want, but they’ll spend it immediately which cycles the money right back to the owners of financial assets – company stock, rental real estate, loans, etc.
What’s more, the middle class is always one set back away from bankruptcy, which puts their assets on the market and thus are bought by the rich. The rich also have set backs, but they can withstand them and bounce back due to their wealth.
Wealth naturally concentrates, generally following the Pareto Principle. The question is whether the brown masses will allow a small group of Jews and Whites to hold that wealth.
11
A few years ago I read an article about the genesis and influence of “Napster” the file sharing music platform.
Whereas Apple/Steve Jobs saw an opportunity and pounced on it, Bill Gates misjudged the circumstances and missed the boat. If I can recall he thought such a concept would never take off. This is America after all, a capitalist nation founded on the principle of private property and ownership. File-“sharing” was inherently a failed concept, he figured, not only because people want to own a physical copy of their music–they need something physical to hold onto– but also because the American government would never allow such a thing. It would undermine its core tenants.
Oh how wrong he was.
2
“It would undermine its core tenants”
I meant “tenet” but the mistake might work better all the same…
1
A New Tomorrow (cont)
The long walk.
Or hike, or bike ride, or whatever suits you as long as it’s at least an hour or more. Pick a nice day and dress comfortably. Choose a path without much distraction or annoyance; as the purpose is to get lost in your thoughts. Take stock of your skills & strengths, plus any worldly circumstances that are unique to your experience. Now daydream about paths not yet taken or opportunities that may present as you go about daily life. Think creatively, but with a focus on simple rather than elaborate or convoluted. Use what you know and incorporate the ordinary and mundane parts as potential solutions to the problems at hand. And work only one problem at a time.
1
The point here is that the relationship one has to the property at his disposal is controlled to some degree by the ownership and condition. For this reason, it has been an article of faith with conventional conservatives that the way to lift people out of poverty is to get them into a house they own. The theory is these people will invest in their community, because they own a house in it. They have skin in the game, while the renter can just pick up and leave if things get bad.
Wet streets cause rain!
2