Cui Bono?

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Early in my working life, I found myself managing a few salesmen, along with some entry level managers. Since my area of responsibility only required three salesmen, it did not warrant a sales manager, so that duty was mine, as well as operations. It was a good training job for a young guy. One thing I learned from the sales guys is something that stuck with me forever. That is, no one cares about a deal more than the salesman working the deal. He’s the one that will make it happen.

You see, even in a big company, every salesman is like a small business. His expenses are his time and his revenue is his commission. The really good salesmen are shrewd in how they spend their time, never wasting a minute on a bad deal. They never fight the commission structure. If selling the crap product gets a bigger commission, then they sell the crap product. If the product is so crappy, they can’t sell it, they find a new job where they can hit their commission goals.

Since sales drives everything about business, it was a great lesson about the reality of business and bureaucracy. The managers have goals and they try to craft incentives so their people naturally work toward those goals. The trouble is, they often see the world through their own myopic eyes, rather than through the eyes of their people. Alternatively, they will foolishly think their people will make personal sacrifices on behalf of their goals. They think everyone cares about their deal as much as they do.

We are seeing this play out in the response to the pandemic. The people making the models and making predictions care about things that are important to them. It has always been assumed that they care most about being right, but as the models have failed and they are now “updated” on a daily basis, it turns out that accuracy really was never all that important to them. Marc Lipsitch, the guy largely responsible for the panic, was never all that concerned with being right.

Similarly, the people making public policy were always working their deals, rather than working your deal. By that I mean they were not issuing crack down orders on people because it was good for the public. They did it because it was good for them or at least they assumed it was good for them. It is why we had a race between states to see who could arrive at the most absurd policies. The nation lies dormant now because of a bizarre beauty pageant among the nation’s governors.

The response from our imperial rulers to this shuttering of the country is another deal that means everything to the people who passed it. Trump and Congress were really proud of themselves for having done the deal in such short time. It turns out though, that the deal was a great public relations stunt, but not much of a deal for the nation’s small business people. This post at the Federalist walks through the math of the Payroll Protection Act. Be prepared for breadlines this summer.

Of course, the most glaring example of this is the health care system. In response to a theoretical problem, it is in the process of creating real problems by faking death certificates and indefinitely postponing medical care for people with real diseases, in order to perpetuate the crisis atmosphere. The system is acting in the interest of the system, because the people at the top making the decisions care about their deal more than anything else. They closed the system to save it from the virus.

All of this should be a good reminder about the reality of anything that has the word “managed” in its label. Whether it is a managed health care system or a managed economy, the people doing the managing care more about their deal than anything else, thus the system they manage comes to reflect their interests. The stone-heads on our side cheering the crisis and demanding managed health care and a managed economy will soon find out what that really means. Enjoy the bread lines.

Of course, the stone-heads will argue that destroying the civil life of the country is the price to be paid for discrediting the current order. That may be true, but that does not mean the people cheering it will suddenly be vaulted to the top by the people being made to pay the price for this disaster. Again, those people at the top with the monopoly of force will surely take care of their deal before allowing anyone else to profit from the turmoil that is coming our way this summer.

The point of all this is even small organizations become very complicated in a hurry, because people have lots of priorities individually, which can coincide with and contradict their collective priorities. Fine tuning those while working your own deal is beyond the skill of most managers. It is why bureaucracies become self-serving and why managed anything is a fool’s errand. Whether it is managed economies or managed health care, eventually, the deal that matters most is the manager’s deal.

Circling back to those salesmen I managed, the second big lesson I learned in that job was from my boss. I complained to him that the commission structure I inherited worked against our interests because it was too complicated to manage. He told me to make it a flat commission on gross, but that I was responsible for the performance of every deal I signed off on going forward. It did not take long for the sales staff to know what was good business for me and what was a waste of their time.

That’s the lesson the stone-heads from the planned economy camp and the free market zealots never grasp. The choice is not between a system managed by angels or a system run by the invisible hand of magic. The choice is always between clarity and opacity. When the incentives are clear and individual interests are clear, everyone makes better decisions and demands more rational sacrifice. When those things are hidden, it is when our virtues are soon turned into vices.

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292 thoughts on “Cui Bono?”

  1. Cui Bono?

    The Adults. You remember them.
    The Adults in the room who were going to save us from Trump.

    Well they have. The Fronde du Trump is over. He is now quite tamed.

    The Adults are back in charge, in fact they’ve never had such power. We are owned, the Adults own this nation and the world as never before. You may rely on them to enjoy it. Let them, we should be diligent in pointing out said enjoyments. Mr. Geffen of course behaves as a child, the real adults are synchronizing the Treasury, The Federal Reserve and Blackrock to do adult things.

    The adults are in charge, and now have full ownership. We need to make sure they own it.

    Every glory to The Adults now.
    Every Breadline a Triumph.
    Every Liquidity Injection a Festival.
    Every Press Conference an adulation.

    Of the adults, certainly for the adults, and we must make sure is clear by the adults, and the adults alone.

    We the People are children, and we’re out of the picture now.

  2. Re: the burn it down faster so the (white) cream will rise argument.

    This is a tempting thing but it’s misguided. We’re never going to “wake up” the normie and have them rebel so we can forget about trying to instigate the normies. Sheep can never be woken up, they can only follow and most people are sheep.
    What the normie does have a keen nose for is who is a good leader, and he does not see the burn-it-down guy (BID guy) as a good leader who cares about him. He won’t follow him because he sees BID as someone willing to sacrifice his well-being on a gamble and see how it plays out. That isn’t to say the BID strategy isn’t going to be the way to go at some point, but right now it feels premature and BID guys come off as chiding and shrill.

    Not wanting to burn it down right now doesn’t make us defenders of the current system. We need to utilize this situation to create in-person groups and present Joe Normie with what he wants – calm, measured leadership from someone who cares and knows how to keep his powder dry.

    I’m sure we’ve all been in situations where someone is stridently advocating for something – perhaps even the right thing – but the timing is off. At the right moment big silent type decides to go with it, and then people follow along. It’s not just about being right, it’s about being right at the right time.

    • BID only makes sense if this truly is “the time” – meaning that the system is ready to topple. It isn’t, and in fact we are nowhere close.

      Those in “our thing” who supported BID are going to end up with egg on their faces (again).

    • Joe Normie just wants his annuity after sucking the devil’s co*k for 30 years. And he’s not going to get it, and he’s not even going to get a semblance of Medicare in 5-10 years. And you know what Joe Normie will do about it? Nothing. He’s a diabetic with a bad back and no stamina. Our society won’t burn down, it’ll just run out of gas, like the early 90’s USSR. What comes after that will determine the degrees of freedom that future. Don’t expect much.

    • Gents; If you didn’t see this with your own eyes you won’t believe it but;
      We’re now governed by The Green Zone.

      The rest of us are outside The Green Zone, aka Emerald City, aka the walled off fantasy island of downtown Baghdad. So far their actions and policies are identical.

      Short version; Literally Fobbits Rule.

      Oh Boy.
      Hold on…

  3. Managers don’t have an interest in what the herd immunity had to say. Too bad because Cuomo gained Rudy points by being unprepared and now is in position to take a shot at the White House.

  4. Anyone else noticing that the Megaphone is starting to push the following two talking points:

    1) Trump has a financial interest in the hydroxy companies!

    -and-

    2) CV-19 can reinfect/reactivate people thought to be cured! Get ready for the second wave in the fall!

    Thankfully #1 has largely been debunked by Cerno doing the math. #2 is more difficult to debunk, though we should have enough data by the time fall rolls around to create a more accurate picture how large the second wave will be.

    • Here in Chicago we’ve boarded up a lot of shop windows, relocated inventory to secure locations, and imposed additional unfair measures that make pillaging too much of a challenge for now. With social distancing, you cannot effectively assemble a flash mob. The vibrancy is doing the best it can manage to remain active in view of what’s feasible, and so they’ve been doubling down on the customary shootings. We did have a shootout on an El train a few days ago, and that’s rare, and early this morning a security guard got into a tussle with a lippy lady vibrant and the gun he illegally carried aboard a train discharged with a bullet penetrating his leg and grazing her, no arrest but “area detectives are investigating.” No pillaging is the new normal apparently and we look forward to more-artful gunfire incidents instead.

  7. On PPP as of this writing it seems to be mere temporary life support, in the end your business will be worth even less than if shuttering now and selling while you’re not so in debt.

    But that’s the follow on game; PPP is further banking consolidation. The smaller banks – smaller than the Big Boys – can either wait to go under because their debtors can’t pay or go under on a different schedule by making PPP loans that they’ll be forced to forgive, that Uncle Sam can be relied not to reimburse in any sort of timely way due to circumstances all very complicated and technical….it was all unfortunate and unforeseen.

    The small banks of course know this, it will be interesting to watch how they die out… what would be salvation is if they agreed not to, but disagreed.

  8. Got the results today … we tested positive.
    Wife had had a moderate fever for two weeks, at the time her doctor “diagnosed” her over the phone but didn’t do any actual tests nor prescribe anything. A few days later she went to a Doc-in-a-box who did the nasal swab; another ten days and she got the results back — positive for corona-virus.
    Step-son had the same,with the added benefit of coughing which devolved into pneumonia.
    They both took a course of antibiotics for any secondary bacterial infection (step-son had green phlegm).
    I had a mild headache one or twice, otherwise nothing; I didn’t take the test, but assume that after four weeks of close contact I must have had it also.
    Step-son had an acquaintance (34 y.o. chinese-american) who died; the principal at wife’s school had it and was hospitalized ..her mother just died from it; three other teachers at the school have tested positive.

    otherwise everything is just hunky-dory.

  9. I enjoy these kinds of posts. Harder for me to comment bc they’re a little more outside my experience but that’s also what makes them good.

    • Boy howdy. Look at these minds!
      I’m learning something new with every comment.

      Such an assembly of experience and smarts really gives this poor jester hope.

  10. The point of all this is even small organizations become very complicated in a hurry, because people have lots of priorities individually, which can coincide with and contradict their collective priorities.

    All managers – public or private – have one thing in common: the incentive to maximize the number of serfs under their domain. That’s why big bureaucracy = good, small bureaucracy = bad. The worst thing you can tell a manager is that you’ve figured out a way to cut his staff in half.

  11. One unexpected side effect of this “crisis” is that it incidentally revealed a lot about the character of a lot of people in the dissident camp. People i used to respect and follow obsessively, or at least just find interesting, have been discredited by this. I wont name names because thats gay, but i will say that i have more respect for Paul Ramsy now than i did a couple weeks ago.

    Its like theres this alternate reality people are living in where the entire country is on death’s doorstep and we need to accept anything no matter how ridiculous or we will probably die. But then you go out in the actual world and everything is fine other than the mild police state and snitch culture that popped up basically overnight.

    Borzoi on TRS talks about hyperreality created by media, and i think that describes the people we are seeing who are afraid: this crisis is just hyperreality, the charts you see on the news and twitter are more real than whats outside where life is just going on as normal. And its ironic because TRS are on board with this crisis, at least to some extent. Im not trying to pick on them, but i am curious what Borzoi would say about all of whats going on, and i cant imagine he agrees…..

    What is bringing me down is that i see how easy it is to not only create this false reality, but even keep it going after it clearly flies in the face of reality, even amongst so called independent dissidents. Im not going to black pill about it, but it is difficult to accept.

    I think i might get off the internet for a little while and grill out and spend some extra time with my kids.

    • Social media consumption has a lot to do with it. Our guys are not immune to the toxins, eg the incremental transition into feminized emo repeaters. This is amplified and accelerated when the already atomized daily life is almost completely siloed in these stay at home times. Stepping away is wise. I am heading out to hike around a lake.

      • Haha! Thanks, fellas, I needed that. Why?

        I haven’t gone hiking or grilled or anything in years. Never saw TRS or Netflix.

        I’m not going out to the lake, either.

        Instead, I’m driving from L.A. to New Hampshire.

  12. Who are these stoneheads on our side you are referring to who seem to be socialists? They did not cross the same Rubicon that I did.

  13. In the realms of money and power, here is a suggested start to a cui bono list.

    1. The media. Hysterias increase viewership and power.
    2. Politicians. They now wield powers that Louis XIV and Marie Antionette would envy.
    3. Health officials. They seem to be directing our entire society without any significant challenge.
    4. Lawyers. As mentioned on Radio Derb, the attorneys never seem to lose.
    5. Government workers. Their paychecks are guaranteed. Less clear are the effects on pensions which will require more borrowings for bailouts.
    6. Corporations. Some like Amazon may well profit. Others may hold even. In general, they likely lose.
    7. Retirees. Social security and fixed pension payments are likely to continue, barring a general economic collapse.
    8. Those in the private sector and under 60. They will be stuck with repaying the ballooning federal, state and local debts along with a greatly weakened economy.
    9. Small businesses. The lifetimes of work and effort are likely to evaporate for a substantial number.

    The foregoing does not take into consideration life and death, general health and the loss of personal freedoms.

    • Old folks living off their savings and social security are big losers. Yesterday, I was in the local food store (suburban Boston) and the produce prices made my jaw drop, I think 33% average increase is rather an underestimation.

      • California produce-picking crews have been reduced to 1/2 or 1/3 of normal, spreading the workers out. (The machines generally accommodate a worker for each row of crops and are usually 30 rows wide.) Having workers every second or third row means the machine has to work ‘round the clock to get the same yield. A 33% increase in produce prices is just a down payment.

        • Boo fucking hoo. If the crews were permanently reduced to one-third of “normal” the machines would be redisigned to make it up. They only reason that evolution isn’t furthered is abundant invader labor.

  14. It’s depressing to think we could be led by Joe Dementia Biden and nut job Kamala Harris and we all know Kamala will be our leader. But Trump is better in appearances to some of us but with incompetent results.
    I do think we are still red pilling though and unfortunately if this economic situation gets out of hand the red pilling will only grow.
    Bad for the nation but perhaps good for us?
    I don’t like rooting against the nation
    It’s still my nation in some ways.
    But Homo Economicus is the prevailing order.
    Until something changes that? Buckle up I suppose.

  15. I’m not sure the extent to which Big Media is “managed,” but it has been readily apparent to me from the beginning of this fiasco, that the media was never remotely concerned with telling the truth about CV. Rather, they sensed a financial mother lode, the Story of the Century. So they manufactured it. They took a novel virus with a pedestrian mortality rate and transmogrified it into the Black Death, all to fatten their accursed wallets. The image we’re receiving about the “Pandemic,” is not a true bill; it is a wildly distorted caricature. But reality doesn’t sell; Armageddon does. There’s no news like bad news.

    • And just think, OK, of all those coronavirus vaccine TV ads and the revenue they’re going to bring in. This gift will be giving into perpetuity, especially since the vaccines are probably going to become mandatory. Good thing, since the consumer item ads are going to be a thing of the past.

      • Of course!

        Why do you think the media is totally uninterested in the hydroxychloroquine treatment success stories being reported all over the US and the globe?

        Hell, Algeria, a country that normally moves at a pace between a glacier and a snail, is reporting success with hydroxy and has ordered enough to treat 325,000 cases.

        Meanwhile in the US, this known drug needs years of controlled studies and the focus is on developing an expensive wonder vaccine that is a fool’s errand because we already know vaccines are not effective against coronavirii.

        • Wild Geese – As an aside, Dr. Birx’s daughter just happens to work for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They’re all in bed together and all in on this whole thing. Regardless of whether it was planned or an accident, I think we can all agree they’ve not let a crisis go to waste and have big plans for us all.

          • Dr. Birx’s biggest priority before the spotlight was American taxpayers providing circumcisions for millions of Africans.
            Maybe they had an outbreak of Onanism or something.

            Now you know how she got the national spotlight.

            (ps- white women didn’t invent radical feminism, either.)

        • The story so far.
          The corrupt banks were bankrupt.
          There was an outbreak of flu, not many dead.
          The media turned the outbreak of flu into a plague.
          The politicians shut down the economy to combat the plague.
          The economy entered the greatest depression.
          Tens of millions lost their jobs in 4 weeks.
          The unemployment rate hit 40%.
          The Fed threw $trillions at the banks to “combat the great depression”.
          Between 8-12% of Fed money trickled down to main st.
          The banks were bailed out.
          The depression continued for a generation.

          Not missing anything so far, am I?

          • The usual arc is then a massive meat-grinder war to get rid of the surplus and cement the position of those middlemen who are far too important to fight and must stay behind for the good of the country.

  16. In today’s innumerate world, the numerator makes the headline but the denominator misses the deadline. I’ve been screaming headlines saying 10,000 DEAD. More people than that die every day in this country of stuff too boring to mention.

    This is an update on the ratio of WuFlu deaths to date to influenza deaths in an average year (389K), worldwide. If it reaches 1.0 then we’ll truly have a new flu-class killer on our planet.

    Today’s ratio:
    4/9/20 0.23

    • I should have added this to my other comment on models, but I will talk about the so-called, ‘data,’ being touted in this situation.

      It’s hot garbage. The numerator is too large and the denominator is far too small. The CDC has issued marching orders to mark just about every death as, ‘CV-19.’ The testing regime in place is laughable. It is under-counting by at least an order of magnitude.

      It’s also certain that NYC is purposefully overcounting deaths to feed the media narrative.

      Then, as you mentioned, the way the media touts the numbers is designed to create maximum hysteria. Only the deaths number is publicized, and it is always given in a misleading context or no context at all.

      Occasionally the too small confirmed case number is mentioned. The deaths number is never compared to things like, bad flu season deaths, the Obama era swine flu, or the Hong Kong and Asian flus of the 50s and 60s.

      Cui bono indeed.

  17. Re the linked Federalist article:

    While insightful, the author missed the biggest reason the PPP has and will fail, an omission that shows although The Federalist remains edgy for a conservative site, it is still cucky. I have seen upfront that most of these federal non-Cloud People bailouts are targeted towards populations likely to riot, a sort of reverse-redlining. An assumption is made that the melanin-deficient for the most part will not apply and dutifully mouth the pulling-up-by-the-bootstraps inanities. Well, Hell’s bells, guess who showed up for tea this time by the millions? Mnuchin didn’t see that one coming and thought loans could be provided and forgiven to the usual suspects simply by looking at addresses and zip codes. His actual constituency, of course, will be served toot suite.

    That is what happened, period. My guess is it has scared the hell out of the Mandarins.

    • The Federalist, like every single Conservative Inc site, is nothing more than a gatekeeping operation. Do you ever wonder how these places make money? They have almost no advertising, no subscribers since everything is freely accessible, and a seemingly endless rotation of 20-something writers.

      The NYT’s has subscribers, the WaPo has Bezos, HuffPost has advertisers. I’m baffled as to the existence of places like the Federalist, National Review, American Conservative, etc.

      • White owned businesses have shown no qualms about going after the helicopter money being distributed through the SBA whether they need it or not. They should go after it, it is their taxes being given away over a business shutdown they had no input into getting. During the 2008 crisis many of these businesses didn’t want to participate in government handout programs unless it was a matter of their survival. Now they understand the system is breaking down and they are trying to get what they can before it is all gone.

        • It’s exactly what is happening, Barnard. PPP wasn’t designed for that contingency. Whites jumping at gibs has the corporate cuck types panicked in a way the virus certainly doesn’t.

          And, yes, whites need to put their feet on the Magic Money accelerator. Next round will likely be mean-tested in a way to make sure they can’t.

          • We have good teachers. The non-whites the cloud people have imported have taught us how to be pigs at the gibs trough as well. Are they going to explicitly ban whites from gibs next time? That would be a ballsy move.

          • Don’t discount the Clouds’ Mandarins easily could be that explicit. My guess is certain zip codes and addresses are going to the front of the line even now. Anyone seen a black or Hispanic owner on the tube bitching about no gibs? I haven’t.

            The easiest way to burn the system is to follow the vibrants’ lead on gibs even though it will require some creativity. All the squalling in Congress now over adding Magic Money to the PPP is because whites got or tried to get on the gravy train. It’s glorious.

          • The assumption was that Y/T was wealthy enough to pay for welfare that most of them would never use until they were rather old.

            Well decades of societal mismanagement and wage arbitrage has led to a situation where that is no longer the case

            Along comes this crisis now we are borrowing half the GDP in one stroke to keep the economy from a deflation spiral.

            If we were smart we’d buffer the very basics and allow (paraphrasing the late Treasure Secretary Mellon here) the rottenness to be purged from the system but the rich would be wiped out and they own the government , so no can do.

            In fairness there are logistical reasons to not allow this too, we lack the manufacturing capacity or skills base to return to a rational non FIRE/ non service economy.

            An example we basically must resume trade with China or we lack 90% of our medicines.

            A proper government would fix this but also no can do.

            Normies want a fix and a good life but no one is offering them one.

            Ultimately if the DR could come up with some kind of ideology that would result in real fixes and would toss out the stoneheads and the anti social Morlocks and learn to interact and organize in the real world, cameras on they could fix things.

            Its fashionable to mock Obama being a Community Organizer but that got him two terms as POTUS which is pretty damned impressive

  18. Can’t forget those utopians and central planners who benefit ideologically. Advancing this agenda to it’s ill fated conclusion gives them hope that their personal life choices are valid. Vicarious secular salvation.

    The DC area, particularly Montgomery county, is full of those types. These are also the types (personality archetype) who clamored for communist revolution, and as Yuri explained, are the first ones lined up against a wall and shot. The truest believer turns into the most bitter cynic. This is a weapon that we should learn to take advantage of.

  20. Another insightful post, Z. I’ve never worked sales (a deficiency, I’m learning; I’ve been a teacher most of my adult life, so I know a lot of trivia), but I’ve had plenty of bad managers. I wrote a post with a similar angle the other day, “The Tyranny of Experts”: https://theportlypolitico.wordpress.com/2020/04/07/the-tyranny-of-experts/

    The piece definitely owes a great deal to your writing and analysis, particularly one of your recent posts about the myopia of medical professionals, who fail to acknowledge—or simply don’t care to acknowledge—there are trade-offs involved in shutting down the entire country to fight a slightly nastier version of the flu.

    How did it work out after going to the flat commission on the gross? Sounds way more streamlined and transparent, and like it would incentivize salesman more clearly than a more complicated structure.

    • Stone heads are ideological lunkheads who get to celebrate chaos and starvation because they’re personally comfortable and insulated from the fallout, like the TRS guys. Just like the dissident left in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it’s easy for a certain wing of the dissident right to fantasize about and cheerlead system collapse because they’re comfortable and insulated from the shock.

      They DO acknowledge the immense pain that the white working poor will have to go through, but to them it’s all worth it for the abstract goal of collapsing the system. They’ve also acknowledged system collapse won’t really happen under the virus anyway (it is only an opportunity for globalism to further consolidate its grip), so they now want the white working poor to suffer for… what exactly?

      These stone heads are no different from the communist “revolutionaries” and salon blatherers of 19th century Europe. Perfectly willing to sacrifice the group they claim to advocate for (the white working class) on the altar of some idiotic abstract goal. A right-wing antifa, but even more cowardly!

        • I always thought my friend Bob made it up in the summer of ’93 when he said, “I’m stoneder than I thought I was.”

    • A stone head is characterized by a Tourette’s-like syndrome causing the stone head to repeatedly blurt out “stonks”, “money machine go brrrrrr”, “big line go”, “gay op”, “muh conomy” and a variety of other meaningless mouth noises.

  22. And of course one of the reasons why government is inherently bad is because of the hidden agendas which lie within each bureaucracy. Featherbedding goes along with government. Because of this opacity, those of us being managed never really grasp the reasoning behind so many pointless, arcane rules. For a bureaucrat, meaningless complexity is a virtue.

  23. Perhaps too early for the millenium award, but the Darwin Award for this century must surely be shared by our very own Stone Heads / Cloud People. Impossible to single out any one individual who has contributed to human evolution by selecting themselves and everyone else out of the gene pool via death or sterility by their actions – you take your pick.

  24. “When the incentives are clear and individual interests are clear”

    There are no incentives for those who remain funded from the Magic Money Bag regardless of circumstances and outcomes. If an axe got taken to government jobs, there would be an instant revolt of the Mandarins and the system would collapse. Hence, the Cloud People have every incentive to keep those particular people in place and happy. It is obviously untenable. Watch for the day the private jets take off for Auckland one last time. That will mean the Managerial Class is about to see their checks bounce. It probably won’t be this time but it will be within the foreseeable future. The welfare-fueled protected classes, if the money runs out for them, would try the same and be put down immediately by the very Mandarins who had protected them. It is just business.

    Along these lines, it is hilarious to watch the desperation among the personal injury attorneys on the tube as they desperately flog their product, which props up their pyramid-scheme-type businesses. They are learning the hard lesson of not being a Mandarin for the first times in their lives. Other professionals in the private sector also are experiencing for the first time what those in the Rust Belt have felt for going on two generations.

    The hierarchy is readily visible to Joe Normie.

  25. ” The choice is always between clarity and opacity. When the incentives are clear and individual interests are clear, everyone makes better decisions and demands more rational sacrifice.”
    ———
    I had always assumed this was an underlying principle for most people in the dissident movement at least at the group level. The fracture in the movement seems to be more about what is meant by “rational” sacrifice.

    The reaction to Corona has given us a gift. Clarity is beginning to shine through the cracks in the opacity. One group see the cracks as enough the other wants to shatter the whole thing. Move forward one step at a time and preserve what serves us… vs… burn it down and start from scratch. This is an opportunity …vs…this may be our only opportunity.

    Since the dissident movement excels at infighting these two sides are now characterized by each other in the worst possible light: The Haves who have managed to accumulate at least something and thus have something to lose …vs… The Have-nots who have never had much opportunity or had it taken from them and thus have less to lose.

    So what should be a joining of forces to reveal the corrupt structure by pointing out not individual interests but group interests and how they are manipulated by our common enemy… we instead fling insults back and forth.

    Luckily for us our enemies are complete and total scumbags and are running full steam ahead in lining their pockets while we get nada…

    2 or 3 weeks have passed since the congress passed the relief bill. Instead of working to facilitate its distribution they are setting up more and more hurdles to jump over. The general pool will be distributed to those groups who have active community organizations (guess who that leaves out), non-profits will get first dibs (again guess who that leave out), small business with already existing loans will be the first in line and banks are scrambling to set up whatever fee structures they can get away with. And that $1200 for working adults? That will be paid in September 6 months from now. That works out to $200/month. Why even bother. The way this whole thing is structured everybody get made whole or BETTER at the expense of the vast majority of whites.

    Bread lines. Maybe we’ll get South Africa like shanty towns as well. Our rulers seem to be hell bent on dragging this out and making it worse and worse for team white. So maybe…just maybe…we will be forced to see this for what it is..not some form of in-group economic conflict…but group racial warfare. Everyone operates this way consciously or by instinct except for whites. And as of late not even dissident whites.

    • All of that. We’re stuck with the pain, we may as well make some gains. It’s what Leftists do – and how they always win against guys who won’t fight on their level.

    • I was kind of excited about that bill when I first heard about it. I had actually forgotten about it since nothing had materialized…going to pay out in September…what a joke

    • Plus, the 2 camps are only arguing about what to root for rather than what to do.
      Watch Asha Logos latest video on The Phoenix Project and join a group of doers. For every 5 hours you spend posting, you can spend 1 doing.

  26. “Whether it is managed economies or managed health care,”

    That’s my vote.
    That’s what I think we’re being herded into-
    the dole and NHS, regardless of what the smart set says about UBI or ‘socialized medicine’.

    5G automation looms over the Internet of Things.
    “Nationalized” sectors? Multinats are gonna turn away the gibs and a free hand?

    Long on Jolly Roger Inc.
    They’ll make us beg.

    You offer a bag of candy- Trump- you snatch it away, and then say, “okay, you can have one piece, if you’re good, you might get two.”

    • Born into a soft world, I wanted to leave in one. Still, I must admire the leadup: lockdown conditioning, starting with Virginia Tech, Boston Bombers, Parkland, and now a repo blowup *cough* Corona *cough*.

      The missus thinks this was supposed to be a controlled burn to eliminate some old, sick Chinese deadwood- they have pension problems too-, but it jumped the fence and caught the whole forest on fire.

      So the governors saw their chance.
      Like a dark mirror Magna Carta.
      No more Yellow Vest silliness, you schlubs.

    • This shut-down is absolutely destroying the private hospital system (might be what the pay-walled NY Times story was about). With all routine and elective medical care on hold, hospitals are furloughing staff and hemorrhaging money.

      • Its not like we can make basic drugs or many supplies anyway. We have a medical system so long as the Chinese think we ought to.

        Truth is we need reform, some kind of private/public hybrid has been shown to work elsewhere, give very good results and cover more people a lot cheaper.

        The financialized system we have now provides bad results and high costs and needs to go.

        We also need to make stuff we need here and control immigration
        for a real fix but good luck getting that.

  27. Been building models for big companies for a while, now. Because I’m weird, I fought against the most important lesson for a long time. It’s this: the least important thing about building models is that they be correct.

    Amusing example. I worked at an institution that was looking to reduce fraud with debit cards. Rather than, like, make better models, they just tightened up the rules. So, our call center guys were wondering what the hell was driving all this new call volume and the answer was that they had made it so that, if a customer went to the beach in a different state, he was very likely to have his card declined when he tried to buy gas or pay for dinner.

    None of that mattered. We just reported that we “saved” $xx millions in fraud by being smart. That’s the game with analytics.

  28. “Of course, the stone-heads will argue that destroying the civil life of the country is the price to be paid for discrediting the current order. That may be true, but that does not mean the people cheering it will suddenly be vaulted to the top by the people being made to pay the price for this disaster.”

    Fair-weather dissidents will argue that pulling punches is the price of good optics. That may be true, but that does not mean the people cheering them now won’t resume kicking them once this disaster is over.

    And their trophy case will still be empty.

    It’s entirely possible (and in fact necessary) for dissidents to hate the game and not the pawns. As in the Roman civil war, some of the enemy’s current supporters and foot-soldiers will be on our side someday, so some restraint is called for.

    It’s a balancing act, but what in life isn’t?

    Brother-wars are always tragic – a good reason to dethrone those who stay on top by turning brother against brother.

    The clarity of pain breaks globalism’s spell of narcotic serfdom. To that extent, I welcome the pain.

    We didn’t start this fire. I make no apologies for taking every advantage of it to advance our people’s interests. It’s how our enemies fight and how I thought we were supposed to learn to fight according to everything I’ve read here.

    • Tell me how fighting on Shlomo’s side will lead us to victory?

      You said just yesterday that the collapse of the Soviet Union is our best-case scenario (a statement I wholeheartedly agree with). When that comes, people will look to those who were on record against the discredited old order. Better to endure the temporary pain of standing on an unpopular position now.

      • Tell me how I’m “fighting on Shlomo’s side.”

        As for standing up for unpopular positions, Meme, how has that worked out for Conservatism for the last 50 or so years? I remember when populism wasn’t a dirty word here.

        • Supporting Shlomo’s biggest hoax since the Hall of Cost would certainly be serving Shlomo’s interests, wouldn’t it?

          Trump got elected on a National Populist platform, so clearly there’s an audience for it.

          “Populism” is fighting for what the little guy knows to be true, but is afraid to say. The little guy knows this whole PLANdemic “crisis” is phony. He’ll be more receptive to that message coming from a normal-looking person, not a slovenly lummox wearing the insignia of a nation his grandfather fought to defeat.

          Meet people where they are at, and bring them to our side. Pace, then lead.

          • Talk about Magic Jew theory, Meme. Let’s game this out a bit.

            If Shlomo has hoaxed us into a panic, we’re supposed to fight him with our capital-T Truth which will be so self-evident and persuasive that Chad & Becky will flock to our banners post-hoax b/c Logos – or simply Deus Vult?

            1. Speak Truth
            2. ???
            3. Ethno-state.

            Show your work. Hint – 2 needs to include proving that this was a “hoax.” 70% of the public doesn’t consider this a hoax.

            And stop fitting me for a Nazi suit, Meme. It’s a weak straw man, particularly where you’re the one pushing the (((globalist))) conspiracy theory here.

            Even granting your premise, when we’re fighting a Tribe that has control of media, it’s a lot harder to debunk a meme than to subvert it. We’re doing some Jew-jitsu to their narratives for a change.

          • “Hint – 2 needs to include proving that this was a “hoax.”

            Absent dead bodies are proving sufficient proof as this goes along. Making a link to “who” is a bit more difficult but may not matter.

          • Wait, so you don’t think this is a hoax? Have you not been reading Z’s columns for the past month?

            Your statements above seem to be based on the premise of winning some grand, glorious victory, either at the ballot box or of the Tricorner Hat variety. Neither is going to happen.

            Right now, our goal is to wake people up and create opportunities. Being clear, concise, and consistent against this madness is the best option available.

            But if you think supporting GloboHomo’s fake and gay PLANdemic is a viable option, I’m all ears as to why that would be.

          • Meme – hoax or overreaction/panic with our enemies making the most of the crisis? There’s a huge difference between the two, both in fact and as effective memes.

          • C’mon, “overreaction/panic with our enemies making the most of the crisis” is literally what a hoax is. Assuming otherwise is allowing them to hold frame and control the language.

            GloboHomo is too smart to invent things out of thin air….All of their lies are built on some kernel of reality.

          • Okay Adolf, calm down. Sorry, that was too easy.

            This is my issue with the “let it all burn” crowd. They assume that a) it will magically put them in charge and b)anyone opposed to collapse is a selfish cuck defending their 401K. It’s childish thinking and men should never follow the led of children.

          • Adolf? Really? You’re trying to make this personal and I’m not taking the bait.

            Is this where I’m supposed to fly off the handle and start rage-sperging to prove your straw man?

            No thanks.

          • I’m maintaining my sense of humor in the face considerable static this morning, Z – not raging, no worries. You’re the one who pivoted to 1.0 in a serious tone – it’s not as if I’m not justified in doubting your jocular intentions when you go Godwin on me.

            I spent 20+ years hearing Jon Stewart do his clown-mask vs. news-mask routine. I’m a product of a low-trust environment.

          • In fairness, I listened to TRS most of yesterday, so maybe I’m less charitable to them than normal as a result. Hearing Enoch say there should be one bank, the Federal Reserve, well, I may have lost my sense of humor as a result.

          • Enoch’s big on the National Bank idea. I look at that like healthcare – proles should have a national bank for prole-level checking, bills etc… with private options – a parallel market. Dirt People customers have no leverage or advocacy in the present banking system.

          • We’re posting Stormer links now, Meme? You want to drag all of this over here really bad, don’t you?

            Enjoy the trolling and in-fighting. On-side agitation isn’t my thing.

          • We used to have hard lines separating retail and commercial banking. We used to know that the guy writing mortgages had a different role from the guy underwriting a merger.

          • Glass-Steagal repeal was a huge boondoggle for Them and another knee-capping for Us. I don’t think we’ll ever get those horses back in the barn, though.

            Let’s give minimum wage guys a National Bank option more like credit unions used to be. And rev the credit unions up again. Anything that forces more options than cartel Big Banking – probably our biggest single obstacle beyond media in terms of institutions rather than tribes.

          • The split was retail/commercial v investment banking.
            The former cash and loans etc. The latter Stocks and Bonds and ownership transactions etc.
            Slick Willie fucked it up.

          • I’ve worked for big banks with commercial/wealth/retail divisions. The Retail division is the redheaded stepchild that nobody wants to deal with. A necessary part of the organization so they can pretend to care about customers, and a good source of cash to tap for ‘reserve ratios’ (the loans themselves are made with magic money), but the leaders of the org really want to go where the big money is – mid/large companies, institutions, and the financial markets. Retail wise, you’re better off in most ways with your money in a credit union.

      • This is a great example of binary thinking. If I think the politics of the “burn baby burn” crowd are juvenile and stupid, it does not follow that I’m defending the current order. Similarly, if I oppose the prevailing order, it does not follow that I’m down with the “burn baby burn” crowd.

        • The only way I ever see a realistic possibility of the current order being replaced by something better is if the populations complacency with it is seriously disrupted, it doesn’t matter if people don’t like the current rulers, nothing will change. People have to absolutely abhor the current rulers for anything to really catalyze. “Cheering” I am not, rather I see silver lining in that a possible opportunity is arising in the midst of all this tumult. I hate being stuck at home as much as anybody else. I’m just okay with paying the price of a bit of pain now for a chance of something better in the future, so admittedly I’m not that bummed about this virus lockdown thing. There’s nothing any of us can do about the damage anyway, we aren’t the current rulers. Let them shoot their feet full of holes I say. Sun Tzu style, one of the easiest ways to win a battle is to let your enemies weaken themselves before it starts.

          • When you think about it, being stuck at home with hot running water, a/c, netflix, and Cheetos is about the best damn war ever.

            And delivery! Pizza is so 80s.

        • So this begs the question, how then will things change? Because on our current trajectory even home confinement, draconian measures, and crushing unemployment are not enough to get Joe Normie off the couch. This on TOP of the various slings & arrows we’ve suffered for the past few decades to normalcy, privacy, freedom, rights, etc.

          I’m a very straight line logic type so forgive me for being obtuse but if the current situation isn’t causing mass defections to ‘our thing’ what further abuse will? Contra-that, a full reset may very well do that.

          I am a burn it down guy, not because I think I will be on top, but because I realize that when things get chaotic the ‘cream’ (read: risk taking intelligent fit white men) generally tends to rise to the top, thereby, reasserting the natural order of things that they’ve spent decades crushing into submission and compliance. I’m not talking some post-apocalypse fantasy LARP, I simply mean a collapse of the comically broken financial system and a reboot of some sort.

          I’ve said this many times and I’ve yet to been proved wrong. The only two things that instantly change behavior and also have lasting effects for that change: Fear & Pain

          We are getting little tastes of it now among people who’ve never experienced it but it isn’t enough. There must be large and constant doses and then you will see the engine of change start to rev up in a way not seen in over half a century.

          • None of the effects are being felt yet. Joe Normie is currently sitting on his couch watching netflix like a nerd on summer vacation.

          • This isn’t quite true. Hell 1/3 of people refused to pay rent this month already and layoffs are at crazy town levels.

            Starvation and deep hunger haven’t set in but I’d argue a lot of people are deeply upset and restive.

            I hear fairly sane people indulge low grade chatter about the purge already.

            Its dumb as hell but its kind of a metaphor for cleaning house and Z-Poc and all that

            Thus far a few weeks have been managed well enough for such a brittle economy and a better idea hasn’t percolated through the system so might as well do nothing.

            When the trouble starts though is when they boot is left up as it has to be and if /when the economy completely fails to reboot.

            I make no sure predictions mind you since it might reboot, maybe but the likely massive rent inflation, banker/FIRE wealth grab, back rent, food inflation and Wiemar level unemployment may well mean chaos not seen since the 1930’s, near a century.

            President Trump will almost certainly win reelection but its a golden opportunity for the hard left to take power and you may see a President like AOC down the line maybe 2024 which is is going to be insane again baring a miracle recovery people actually feel.

    • What’s Matt Heimbach up to lately? Maybe Kessler can organize another costumed retard parade.

      • Who said anything about Hamback or any other 1.0 larper, Z? They make great straw men though, I’ll say that for them.

        • I did. I brought them up. The point being, a group with a long history of bad judgement should at least come in for a healthy bit of scrutiny. Look, that crowd has disavowed me more than once, but I still listen to what they have to say, because every once in a while they say something worth hearing. I’m just cognizant of the fact that their instincts are often horribly wrong. It’s why I assume anything coming from the neocons is a lie and why I assume all libertarians are insane.

          I can be open minded and skeptical. Further, as I pointed out elsewhere, I can think the current order is immoral and still think the “burn baby burn” crowd are out of their minds.

          • That reminds me. Alexander Cockburn, a raging Trotsyite, was for unknown reasons a go to op-ed writer for right-center dailies maybe fortyish years back. Yet twice in twenty or so years that I read him he made the correct call; more remarkable since no one else did, or dared to anyway. The one I remember was the day care child sex ring witch trials. He was first out of the gate to call it as it was and for quite a while the only one.

          • JW, Counterpunch would publish stuff no one else would – including Schanberg’s “Tokyo Rose McCain” stuff that cross-posted at Unz, IIRC. AC & Chris Hitchens seemed cut from the same red cloth. Enemy of my enemy on occasion, but never more adjacent to my interests than Bradley Manning was.

          • Slight correction. Cockburn was a Stalinist, not a Trotskyist. Maybe that’s why Cockburn was right every couple of years or so while the neocons/ Christopher Htichenses of the world – Trots – were never right.

          • I wanted to complement you on the recent podcast about plagues. That taught me, as a healthcare professional, quite a lot. It was a nice change of pace.

      • That thing was horribly planned, they should have stopped after the torch march. I was hearing right wing normies all over the place talking about how we finally have white people standing up for themselves that night… It was really uplifting to see the huge outpouring of public sentiment in our favor… but then the morning circus happened… five steps forward and twenty steps back. Also, if they were going to protest something I can think of at least a dozen better issues to rally around. How about affirmative action? What about refugee resettlement? What about forced busing? How about the erosion of the white middle class? What about how every other race but ours is allowed to create advocacy organizations NAACP, ADL, LA RAZA, SPLC, CAIR etc.? So many better issues to rally around than statues. It could have worked so well had the leadership not been retarded. There is a huge reservoir of public sentiment that went untapped, and worse, the cap was screwed on tighter.

  29. >>>The stone-heads on our side cheering the crisis and demanding managed health care and a managed economy will soon find out what that really means. Enjoy the bread lines.><<

    Name names, damnit!

    • Erik Striker says, persuasively, that every economy is managed, it’s just a question of whether the managers are visible or hidden.

      That’s an interesting question to pose to Z and those of like mind: Has there ever been an economy that wasn’t managed?

      Of course, there are degrees of economic management, so maybe Z just wants an economy as unmanaged as possible?

      • A system that provided for autocracy when necessary (e.g. the Roman dictatorship) and had practical kludges to balance the system’s rough-edges of “principle” (e.g. the Roman Tribunate) would be preferable to either a fully-planned economy or muh invisible hand.

        Balance. A Third Position.

        I’d rather have an overt authoritarian state than a covert pretend-democratic oligarchic state.

      • Saying that every economy is managed is, ironically, Talmudic word-smithing. It an effort to conflate regulate and managed, in order to make them sound like synonyms. He’s also the guy who said Einstein was not smart and North Korea has a thriving economy.

        All economies are regulated, just as all markets are regulated. Saying that is like saying all humans are carbon based life forms. It is a statement of the obvious. What matters is how they are regulated, by whom they are regulated and to what end they are regulated.

        • Given that all economies are regulated, is our current USA economy managed as well?

          • Regulated and not very well. The biggest defect in our system is the regulators are hidden from scrutiny. Even the smartest observers struggle to identify the men behind the curtains. That means they escape scrutiny and culpability.

            Again, comparing our system to Maoist China or Soviet Russia and calling all three “managed economies” renders the term meaningless.

            Edit: Think of a sporting event. It is regulated. That’s not the same as rigged.

      • Z’s plucked the low-hanging fruit – that’s why mentioning Striker here is a waste of time. He’s had bad takes before, QED.

        Does Scandinavian-level socialism = regulated, or is it managed? What and where are the color-bands on the spectrum running from no-private-property-rights state-ownership Communism to laissez-faire capitalism?

        You can’t answer those questions without some “Talmudry,” as Z uncharitably terms “nuance.” Talmudry = nuance in bad faith.

        • Using “managed economy” and “regulated economy” as synonyms is not nuance. It’s dishonest. It is an attempt to normalize an idea by making it synonymous with an accepted idea. It’s the same bullshit they did with “sex” and “gender” to normalize the trannies and sexual deviants.

          Regulated = A set of rules enforced by the state

          Managed = A set of outcomes enforced by the state.

          As I said, it is the difference between an overly officiated game and a rigged game.

          • FTR, I don’t agree with NazBols or Tankies in general for all that they have some good takes.

            For all that China = America is an inapt or inept analogy though, America’s outcomes are certainly rigged at this point. We crossed into stage-managed exploitative despotism some time ago, semantics aside.

          • Our men behind the curtain are middle-men. Their end is the skim, so they have turned our economy into a giant skimming operation. They don’t care about ends or even winners or losers. They just defend the skim.

            Edit: The reason I don’t care for the NazBol/Third Position/Neo-Fascism stuff is it is a distraction. It avoids facing up to the reality of our middle-man economic system.

          • I’ll agree to disagree, Z – some “middle-men” are more equal than others and the Tribe in particular is willing to take economic damage to advance an anti-White agenda – Woke Capital for instance.

            One reason I don’t think we’re in a stage-managed hoax right now is the extent of the damage and destabilization. This isn’t serving elite interests anymore. Jews aren’t that magical.

            There are legit questions as to whether the overall response has been an overreaction, shambolic, etc… but the idea that the virus itself is a hoax is Alex Jones territory.

          • Middlemen, mandarins, out of touch, incompetent, delusional, larpy, bored. Lots of sci-fi out there. It’s a real virus, just not the plague we’ve been told.

          • We are not in as much disagreement as you think. I think the middle-men are myopic and high time preference. In time, an economy run by people with a bug-out bag and a plan to get the airport in a hurry, will lead to disaster. Maybe that’s now.

          • Again, two things can be simultaneously true.

            The severity and threat of Coronavirus was a stage-managed hoax but the response has been unexpectedly destabilizing and damaging and shambolic. The Cloud People are heavily invested in China and knew soon after this first erupted how lethal and infectious the virus was (easily spread and not terribly more lethal than regular flu). Whether that information was obtained through government intelligence services or private business contacts is irrelevant. A decision was made to play up the virus via the propaganda organs and create enough economic uncertainty that the public would accept the power grab it previously wouldn’t via the New Green Deal or whatever. And yet the thing has taken on a life of its own and has become a threat to the people who pushed the panic.

            That’s not Alex Jones territory at all; it is patently obvious, really.

            As I wrote elsewhere in this thread, Mnuchin has been thrown back onto his heels by the immediate willingness, even eagerness, of whites to hop on the PPP train. The Cloud People he serves know that white people no longer going along with shibboleths about self-reliance and wanting a slice of the pie is unsustainable.

            Take note that as the morbidity starts to prove this a fraud in the sense of the danger posed, the propaganda outlets have started to report minorities are disproportionately impacted. The narrative shift still hasn’t caused whites to back off their economic demands.

            Whether the Cloud People are able to grab even more power or not is irrelevant. They have put their long-term welfare in severe jeopardy.

          • I would contend that things like affirmative action are certainly “A set of outcomes enforced by the state”. Our government also desires the outcome of having a strong military and so funds that deliberately. There’s also the massive funding of “higher education” which produces the highly managed result of millions of credentialed fools indoctrinated in Leftist ideology and props up a massive academic-industrial complex which wouldn’t exist without this subsidy. I see regulation more as things like pollution standards, and rules that affect insurance, banking, corporate governance, etc…

      • Has there ever been an economy that wasn’t managed?

        Free markets stop where companies begin – it’s not like employees get to vote on their boss.

    • Managed economy, planned economy, regulated economy, quasi-market economy… This entire article and thread is reminiscent of Spencer carrying on about imperium after he had been completely de-platformed and couldn’t organize a bowling team.

      We’ve always had a mixed economy and we always will. Different castes evolved and organized their politics, their social arrangements, their economics and their religion differently. If we ever return to normal we will do so again.

      Whites have almost no institutional power. The dissident movement has zero. Our job is to get as many whites to become aware of group interests as possible. That means a lot of putting up with temporary arrangements that you won’t like. If something moves us ahead we bite the bullet and put up with it. Look at how far we’ve fallen in the past 70 years at the hands of our enemies…but now we’re going to become hard-asses with one another?

      We are making the exact same mistake the WASP elite made 100 years ago except their argument was with sharing political power. Big cites had become enclaves of political power for Catholics and Continentals. They hired the Fagins to do the dirty work of killing that political arrangement and we got the “Slaughter of Cities”. But once accomplished the WASPs never re-assumed power. They had swept away the foundation upon which their power lay and now the new masters simply pushed them aside and kept them around for sport and mercenary work.

      If the hounding of each other is our new normal then the dissident movement is dead in the water.
      We will continue to lose ground even more rapidly unless our enemies decide to keep us around for entertainment. Maybe when whites hit 30% we’ll find unity. There won’t be much left to fight for. At that point we’ll all be Tankies by circumstance.

  30. Be prepared for breadlines this summer.

    Hell! We’ve got the damned things around here NOW! The local food bank is giving away groceries and people are queueing up (in their vehicles and masked/gloved, of course) for free food. Not sure what folks’ll do come summer when we’ve been released from house arrest and many small businesses have closed permanently.

    Sidebar: I spend my days driving around delivering food. Some of the things I see make me so sad I almost want to weep. Two examples:
    1. Parks/playgrounds closed. The playground equipment is wrapped in police tape.
    2. As I drove by a small strip mall the other day there was a bright sign over a space announcing a new restaurant “coming soon”. Sadly, it will most likely never open now. The owners are almost certainly living off the savings which would have sustained the business in its early days. Small business is the engine which drives our economy and is precisely those business which are taking the greatest hit in this madness.

    • But the stock market is doing great!

      Investors are betting that the fed and Congress can fix this mess with unlimited money. They better be right because if this doesn’t work, there’s nothing left to stop the crash. As I mentioned above, the fed and Congress have done the equivalent of a general bringing up his reserves. If they fail to hold, the battle is over.

      • Seriously, this is just getting comical. The Fed can now buy junk bonds. Junk bonds. The Fed is back-stopping everything. What could wrong.

        The market is rallying, but it should be afraid. If all of this works, the upside is fairly limited, but if it doesn’t, the downside is huge. Asymmetrical bet.

        • Agreed. How would you define, or what would be an example of an ‘asymetrical bet’? Short selling?

          • Yikes. Short selling is brutal. You have to be a master to enter that world.

            To me, the current stock market is an asymmetrical bet.

            The S&P is back up to almost 2800. It’s peak was just under 3400. I highly doubt that it will hit it’s former high anytime soon. I mean, there will be some sort of recession and thus lower earnings. Therefore, at best, the market could rise another 10%, maybe 15%, and for that to happen, you need to near perfect V-shaped recovery.

            However, if people lose confidence in the Fed or the economic news is bad, the market could easily fall 30% to 60%. (Remember, even down 15% to 20%, the S&P isn’t cheap. On a variety of valuation metrics – CAPE, Tobin Q, Buffet Indicator, etc. – the S&P is still pricey relative to history, though maybe not so much relative to treasury yields. And expensive markets are more fragile than cheap markets.)

            When I look at the S&P, the upside looks to be 10% to 15%, while the downside is 30% to 60%.

            That’s an asymmetrical bet. That said, I wouldn’t short the market because 1) your downside is unlimited and 2) you’re fighting the Fed and Congress and who knows what they’re going to do.

            Just own treasury bonds and wait this out. If you’re really scared, buy some gold but don’t go crazy.

            For my own money, I just use a combo of various simple trend strategies. Not the complicated long-short commodity stuff, just simple strategies. Check out Allocate Smartly. Hell, just use AS’ Meta Strategy, which is its own “smart” combo strategy. Super cheap (they use index funds for owning asset classes), once a month trading (takes 5 minutes), not complicated. Honestly, it’s a better system than the pros use. (Seriously, I’m not kidding. I know the pros.)

            Trend screens on stocks do a pretty good job of protecting you (mostly) from the big crashes while giving you most (though certainly not all) of the good times. But mostly, they allow you to stop guessing about where the market will go.

          • Good advice. Thanks. I don’t have the stomach to play in the short sell game.

          • Other than my iffy suggestion to obtain loans or grants during the crisis and … just hold on to the money dispensed, all I can offer is:
            In my current pathetic stock speculations, I have been waiting to buy in to (so far) either a few shale oil producers, but only near the recent crash lows — OR — (newest hatched plot), wait to buy into a ETC that shorts oil after a run-up (e.g. near its pre-crash high).
            Between the two, I recommend swilling at the public trough. It has become the default way to make a living in this world 🙁

        • I think, and fear, that the real power players want a crash, which would give them the room to move in and institute the kind of sweeping changes the financial elites have been discussing for years.
          The virus may be a random act of nature, but there is nothing random about the draconian measures officials have taken in response to it.

        • I’ve lightly toyed with the idea of getting in line for a “business loan” or whatever type of Federal largesse is in the chute. Mind you, I’m not advocating fraud. I don’t even own a business.* Usually there are hoops to jump through. Point being: a lot of people will be carrying away buckets of money that they won’t ever pay back. The smartest ones will be those who aren’t even legally obligated to pay back.AIG, Goldman, whoever this time is raiding the FED. You might as well get a piece of the pie while they’re indiscriminately giving it away. Deep in debt? Why are you still paying, silly? Just default and the bail-out will get around to you eventually.
          * I was going to have some exterior painting done. Instead of hiring a contractor, why don’t I suddenly start my own painting business? Hmmm….

      • A great stock market, right now, creates an additional perverse result. Capital will flood into stocks instead of small businesses. Why take a risk in a small business with tight margins, when you can score big and easily in the markets?

        • This whole fuc$ing thing will likely be a boon to big corps and a killer for small businesses. Big corporations have far more money to weather this storm. The dumb big corps that don’t have cash can quickly and easily get a flood of money from the Fed to get through this. Small businesses will either get nothing or much less. Big corps will own a lot more of the economy after all of this is over.

          • Small businesses are free associations. They are battalions in the battle against globalism. They must die.

        • Don’t overlook my comments above. In a crisis the government wants to be savior to everybody. That will mean dispensing cash to anyone with a “need” of whatever plausibility. Now, the small business is the one that usually gets screwed. The big business doesn’t want you as competition, but will gladly buy out your assets when you fail. The bank could care if you live or die, but especially if the government is guaranteeing everything, will give you loans on some terms. An unprincipled man might see if “small business” really required any proof that such a business exists, if so can it be faked? Or perhaps just a signature and one’s own claims to be a business will suffice? Finally with lawyerly candor, I note that “small business” might reasonably be construed to mean a business that exists only as an idea in the businessman’s head? Who are we to assume that Mr. X did not really intend to start up his own house painting business? After all, his garage clearly needed a touch-up. Therefore, I vote that his $500,000 loan be approved. 🙂

      • Depends on the lucidity of those in power. I read that Hitler, in his last days in Berlin, was issuing orders to brigades that no longer existed. 🙁 You can say he was an evil man deserving of his fate, but the morally righteous are no less immune to the “lost our minds” problem.

    • Anecdotally I offer: in my area one local church’s “food pantry” limited the field to those who could prove limited income/disabled (SSI/whatever); even with that restriction had to turn away would-be beggars. And this was well before the coronavirus. I don’t know the current status of the food pantry because my own organization’s use of the church is suspended due to regulations. Even if the gibs is allowed by the law, I wonder what organization would brave the potential lawsuits due to the epidemic? In the rush to be the savior of all, one thing I have heard nary a peep (no surprise really, since my ideas usually are either very common sense, or so ridiculous that no one would take it seriously): Why not limitations on lawsuits related to the coronavirus? Not in the least to protect the already-wobby health care system but also to protect against “wrongful infection” or whatever the lawyers will end up calling it.

  31. Self interest is different from selfishness. Sales makes the world go round. The natural inclination seems to be that any achiever will insulate themselves from unwanted or unwarranted control by others. Salesmen seem to be some of the best at limiting outside control. They are in control until they’re not. When you have your head up and your helmet on temporary loss of control is no big deal. You roll with the punches. Be prepared. A teaching learned in Scouts. Everyone’s deal is different. Let your conscience be your guide. If you have one.

  32. Incentives matter.

    The hard part is figuring what motivates people. With salespeople, it’s fairly obvious. With others, it’s more difficult. Regardless, where most people (and bosses) fail is in assuming that other people are motivated by what motivates them.

    • Citizen;
      Of course you are right that incentives matter. But even to salesmen it isn’t *only* money that incentivizes. Back before the Powerskirts showed up and wrecked everything, we found that we got more bang for the incentive buck by having a fancy trip to a tropical location, with wives, in winter and a plaque to hang in the office forever. Seems that they ordinarily blew through their bonus in about a week with only a paid-up new furniture set to show for it. Or worse yet, they merely got to clean up the credit card balances so they could start over living beyond in the new year. Pictures with the boss, plaques and bragging rights for a couple of years worked better. But it had to be a package.

      Point for today: Gotta somehow make it a matter of honor to publicly reject the Pozz.

      • we found that we got more bang for the incentive buck by having a fancy trip to a tropical location, with wives, in winter and a plaque to hang in the office forever.

        Can be done for a lot less.

        Back in the day when we had civilization, it was quite common for Danish companies to stop work an hour early on Fridays and have beer on the company tab. This was usually done on an office-by-office basis, so you’d rarely have more than 15-20 people, and it was understood as a forum for generalized observation and venting about the workplace.

        After the hour was up, people were free to go home as per usual, but the free beer would flow for most of the evening. People would split up, visit other departments and mini-parties would often form.

        Best team-building exercise known to man. Which is probably why it was discontinued.

        • Replaced with diversity seminars and (((team building exercises))).

          Not that you’d actually want to hang out with your colleagues these days. Diversity tends to ruin things.

      • Al, it was a regular and well known thing in the sales/trading teams that bosses would encourage young guys to buy (finance) into the ‘lifestyle’ early on.

        This meant stretching for that fancy car, high rent or mortgage, expensive suits (back when they wore them) etc. because they knew that a lot of money moved thru those guys and they didn’t want them getting ‘soft’ or complacent.

        Instead, they wanted them strapped with debt, totally dependent on that job and its outsized earning capacity.

        Bonus and promotion season was when you were expected to purchase-up into the next rung, leverage-up in conspicuous lifestyle.

        So the incentive was the sword of debt-damocles. I knew early on that was a sick culture. I vexed my bosses by driving an ‘80’s model nissan pickup. I loved that truck. Selling it and leasing a “nice” sedan is one of many regrets I have of submitting to inverted incentives aka evil corp.

    • Citizen – The founders of what started as a small business where my husband works are really into the “We’re a family and we’re in this together” thing, and trot it out every Christmas, although my husband no longer recognizes 75% of the people at the party. The salary structure is deliberately opaque, the sales incentives have been replaced by annual goals, and after ‘x’ number of years the employee gets a nice plaque and pat on the back. My view of them might charitably be described as how Bob Cratchit’s wife viewed Scrooge.

    • My old company had reserved parking for managers. One year they took it away, and a coworker of mine, who had a great spot by the door, complained about it for 10 years. Even in years with great bonuses he complained.

      • Having a defined place is important to people. Losing that legibility leads to all sorts of existential angst. Even if his spot was further away, the fact that it was *his* was something.

  33. I would extend this and point out that perhaps the incentives on the inside are perfectly clear. Its just to us they look opaque.

    This asymmetry produces a lot of the confusion as to why certain things happen. They look nonsensical to our incentives but are perfectly rational to those who have a hidden reward system of supra-national organization positions and graft kickbacks. Just becaase you do not see the chairman’s stock option deal, does not mean the whole company is not targeted to this end.

    • Financial elites have been pretty open about wanting to reboot the global economy for years.
      They are using this “crisis” to attempt exactly that, but not all factions are on board.
      Major moves are being actualized behind the scenes, and most of us will never know exactly what happened until the UBI is rolled out or we all go cashless or Bill Gates demands we all get vaccinated with his special digital markers, but we should be prepared for a rough ride as various power players make their moves.
      We all knew this day was coming, but you can never be completely prepared for when it actually does.

      • Many years ago, I had all my assets frozen by my ex’s lawyer for 6 months. since then I have been busy squirreling it away as a single fella. I still work a part time job that covers all the bills but have been essentially retired for almost 6 years now, somewhat counting on my savings and pension to carry me to the end from whatever point I finally decide.
        I did not think that personal equity would ever see the chopping block, at least in my time. The move to go cashless and electronic, given time, would have me banned from participating due to wrong-think.
        Hahahahahahaha, it’s 5 o’clock somewhere.

        • “I had all my assets frozen by my ex’s lawyer for 6 months.”

          HOW THE F*CK IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE

          (Note to self: The judges. First, the judges.
          How tf are gag orders even possible)

        • Child support is something I’ve not had to pay, but I did work for several years in an office next to a computer that held a child support database 🙂 Good citizens tend to think that anyone who won’t pay support must be a heartless heel. This is often true of course, but overlooks the many people who WISH they could pay the full amount but simply CAN’T, at least if they are allowed anything to live upon. This problem will only get worse now with the recess/depress-ion underway. When a man (or woman) has lost his job and has no prospect of finding another, what is an authoritarian gubmint to do? You can’t get blood from a turnip, true, but we must put the turnip in jail to make an example of him 🙂

  34. Would add that increasing complexity brings increasing narrowness of expertise. If I listened only the IT guys, would spend hundreds of millions on technology–since more tech “solves” all problems. But if I listened to the finance guys–I’d never make any investment since riding what you have to ground produces the best cash flow. The actuaries can give me a perfect view of what happened in the past decade, but not the future. And don’t get me wrong all these guys are brilliant. But narrow. What our “expert-ocracy” lacks are good shot-callers. I think you are seeing that in spades right now. The disease guys only care about wiping out disease–that’s their job–and what they have invested everything in. It’s one thing when stamping out an Ebola brushfire in a part of Africa that has a cumulative GDP of $7. Another when you shut down a global economy where people have to eat and pay their bills.

    • “If I listened only the IT guys…But if I listened to the finance guys…”

      A soyboy, a goy, and a Rabbi walk into a Starbucks….sure there’s a joke in there.

  35. A good salesman will manage the manager.

    Mine only got in the way and I thought nothing of pushing him aside when he got stupid and going right to the president of the company to get what I needed. I was not a popular guy in the office, but I got paid on commission, and what was good for me and the company was not good for the office people who saw me only has somebody who only threw more work on their desks. Looking back at it… it was a toxic place to work.

  36. We have had breadlines for fifty years, made invisible by food stamps.

    • Yes but A.C. (After Covid), there will also be a gluten-free bread line.

      The cloud obscures reality from view and then gaslights what remains in plain sight. Its why noticing is a crime.

    • Imagine how all this is indoctrinating children 12 and under. The big show is their parents cowering and not raising any hell about house arrest. All these infernal masks are the natural outcome of the every-child-in-a-bicycle helmet mindset. Needless to say, mine never wore one.

      When this is all over, and the statistics tell the truth, is anyone going to say, “We were wrong.”? Not the politicians. Not Fauci & Co. Not all the women and betas who breathlessly (sorry) lived every minute orgasming to the fear porn. Surely none of the little tinhorn dictators sprouting up like weeds all over this country, issuing edicts and developing a taste for it that will not be easily sated.

      How will Trump reclaim alphadom, after congenially turning the mic over to Fau-Chi-Com and Brix to utter their ruinous incantations and predictions? It makes him a party to the whole mess and what follows. I know that he was performing a political death-defying act, but the first time I heard that mountain of cunning and decisiveness and maleness utter “social distancing”, I knew this country was over.

    • So obvious I missed it.

      Not that you are him but Chester White sounds like a Tiny Duck alias.
      Haven’t seen him here for a good while, think the virus got him?

  37. “people have lots of priorities individually, which can coincide with and contradict their collective priorities”

    Well, that means that “people” are confused and foolish and they suck. Personally, the only priority I ever consider is, “But is it good for the …”

    Eh. Never mind.

  38. White nationalists who want to use this crisis to discredit the current order by making the govt give us free stuff are simply going to turn White people into serfs. And the jewish capitalists(I also decry them) they so decry will have even more power to implement the race replacement the are currently engaged in. People like Enoch have to understand that weakness never defeats strength, even if it has morality on its side. If White people in North America are to survive, it is because we have enough wealth to incentivize our people to take our own side.

    • Our people are not going to take their own side until they have nothing left to lose. The personal cost is too high and the “prisoner’s dilemma” is in full effect. If whites stop were to stop working to maintain the system and instead be leeches on it like the POC, it would collapse. We will never have enough wealth while the rothschilds et. al. control the financial system and through it, our government. It is rigged in such a way as to prevent that from ever happening. Your idea is a pipe dream, not even Henry Ford could even come close to achieving it. The easy, comfortable way is impossible.

      • If White people stop working we will simply be replaced the same way we are being replaced now, with perhaps greater urgency. We have no power right now. We need to regain power in a generational manner. It will not happen overnight.

    • Enoch’s ‘deal’ depends on him not understanding anything that reduces paywall subscription numbers, and Striker’s red-brown shtick is popular.

      • The national socialism “shtick” is popular because it has an actual historical track record of working. Go read up on Mussolini’s rise, Uncle A, Franco. Conservatism has a track record of conserving nothing. It’s a impotent trap for people who might otherwise achieve something politically. If it wasn’t for blacks and now the POC rainbow, we would already have a less capitalist country, just like every other white country on earth. The USA is dead last among white countries on health outcomes, educational outcomes, level of wealth stratification, etc. We are the only country who’s average life expectancy is decreasing. Why would you not want to limit the power of the wealthy? The wealthy are mostly made up of small hats who hate you.

        • “The national socialism “shtick” is popular because it has an actual historical track record of working.”

          Lol. It’s appealing, sure, but it’s resilience as a national system sucks. Don’t believe me? Your pining for something that never was.

          “Go read up on Mussolini’s rise, Uncle A, Franco.”

          More importantly, read on their respectful falls. You can point to any number of magic Jews who contributed to their failure, but truth is national socialism has a fan base relegated to a tiny fringe. It didn’t have the resiliency required to survive beyond a brief period and has too much baggage associated with it to be taken seriously today. Get over it, the Nazis lost.

      • Ah, yeah, I have a notion their subscription base is shrinking. Their better hosts have disappeared and the remaining leadership sticks to the same moldy schtick. Their free content output has shrunk considerably and the (paid) forums are a ghost town. What free stuff is still left has either went on to greener pastures or backstopped to external sites. You’re not missing anything in neither paid content nor inane TRS cheerleaders posting reddit-tier echochamber garbage. The smarter forum users have either left or been banned for raising complaints. I don’t even mean banned for shitposting, but banned for merely bringing up how despondent and “gruggish” TDS/FTN have gotten.

  39. What’s the protocol for bread lines? Do we get a number like at the deli counter, or an umbrella if we stand out in the rain? Is it just bread or is that just a euphemism? How will white folks fare in such a system? So many questions since I never had to do this before.

    • You download the breadline app onto your phone, which allows childless shrews and other AWFLs to virtue-signal about how wonderful it is to #sharetheline

      • …and are required to grant full access to your contacts and files, of course.

      • Hahaha. The bread line selfies posted on Facebook will be hilarious as they transition from virtue signaling to food panic.

          • And then there’s their other hit, prognosticators that they were: (Because of Social Distancing I Don’t Want To Be) Close To You.

        • I’m looking forward to YouTube videos of SJW wammen with purple hair yanking each other’s piercings out over cans of tomato soups and hipster nu-males trying to figure out how to throw a punch.

        • Only then will they understand the foolishness of the great toilet paper crisis.

    • Nah, lines mean people will experience shame and stigma. Can’t have that. Its all going virtual!

      Amazon is awarded $5T gov’t contract to manage fulfillment of the National Mac N Cheese Act, commits to next day delivery of gubmint cheddar, bread, eggs, and milk for low-income earners.

      Apple is awarded $2T Gov’t contract to supply freedom fones to low-income earners to facilitate access to Amazon’s new ‘every fridge full’ Program.

      Comcast & Netflix are awarded a $1.5T gov’t contract to provide basic internet and media streaming service to every household qualified under the Mac N Cheese Act.

      Google will be charged with collecting and monitoring all “data” to ensure the system is not abused and to provide real-time algos to optimize end-user experience.

      Click here to sign up.

      • I hope it’s the “National Mac N Cheese Act” and not the “National Bug Meat Act.”

        • Bug meat optional. But if you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding.

          We love our freedom, after all.

      • You can rest assured the vibrancy will cut in line and whitey will not say or do jack squat.

        • I disagree. Stress can make tempers flare and sometimes this could work to the advantage of the white man and to the black man’s disadvantage, particularly if Jamaal is at a numerical disadvantage. Alas, there some people who don’t know how to “act white” when it may be essential to survival.

          • Locally, we call majority those who won’t act white “millennials.” They won’t do jack squat to jammaal, who is probably a stepsibling from the virtue signaling.

  40. Another problem with the wonkish/quantitative types is their total distrust of anecdotal evidence. Yes, your anecdotal evidence is based on what you personally see and feel, but you have to balance the numbers with what your heart and your eyes tell you. My neighbors always seemed peaceful and now I can hear them screaming at each other (the wife lost her gig, and the man is a “progressive” stay-at-home type). Fruit is literally rotting on the field and the vine in Deutschland because the Romanians and other seasonal workers (not illegals) can’t come in. These people have no Hartz IV or Plan B. I personally wish Boris Johnson would give Angela Merkel a big hug and plant a sloppy, wet kiss on her Winston Churchill waddles of fat (coughing a couple times wouldn’t hurt, either).

    • I have that problem with the actuaries right now. They are delighted that no claims are rolling in. Keep trying to explain to them that their modeling has to account for what happens if that business no longer exists.

    • Indeed. The model fetish, much like the tech fetish in general, assumes a moral quality for its own sake.

      These tools become beyond reproach, a kind of territorial guarding by the credentialed that ends up functioning like a rolling the bones mythology that often ends up undermining most of their utility.

      Once deployed, common sense and most other low hanging observations are treated as luddite threats to the magic box.

      I see the common sense vs modeling as yet another way in which the cloud and dirt just aren’t going to see the world in the same way.

      I once had a boss who could barely send an email. This was back in the late ‘90’s, so not uncommon then, but he had a skepticism of all the fancy quant that was bearing down on the investment world.

      He would literally make me write out the math on the back of an envelope in front of him while explaining to him why the deal made sense.

      I quickly learned that in this approach I was far better off talking to guys working in the warehouse and a couple of the staff accountants as opposed to hanging out with the CEO and his banker. People don’t talk to people like they used to and that is a huge deficit that no model can bridge.

      Interestingly, he would say “explain it to me like I am an idiot. After all, I am just a simple mud person.” Funny how things come full circle.

      • Exactly, this entire “pandemic” is just another model fetish that spiraled out of control. I don’t think it was conspiratorial (at least not initially), but now it’s just another runaway train of divorced-from-reality decisions driven by Fauci-esque modelers.

        • Imagine the modelers delight that Americans bought it all hook, link, and sinker. I was looking at an American flag last night and thinking that we don’t deserve to see it waving in the breeze anymore. Our new flag should have a mask and nothing else. I pledge allegiance . . .

        • Modeling, whether of climate, epidemics, or the way a car crumples when it hits a wall, are just supposed to be tools wielded by sober and intelligent people who understand that initial parameters and foundational assumptions are critically important. The problem is that, while almost nobody but automotive engineers cares about crumpled sheet metal, everyone cares about weather and disease and that makes these things political. So you go from a realm where engineers are in control to one where politicians are in control.

          The scientists and engineers are always mainly concerned with how well their models fit reality and have pretty good procedures in place for determining that. That’s basically where the process begins and ends – in the realm of engineering with the only real question being the model’s verisimilitude. If your car crash model shows some little piece of the door flying off at 12% light speed, it’s pretty certain that’s a glitch and an good engineer would also be thinking “Hmm, I’ve never heard of a city block being leveled by a tiny bolt from a car crash going relativistic…” This is a “closed loop” that self-corrects.

          When a model “escapes” into the political realm you start to see that, while it began in the realm of math and some scientific specialty, it ends in politics. That is, it begins to be evaluated, not on the basis of verisimilitude but on political efficacy. The question then becomes “how can this model help us achieve our political goals and advance our political careers?” When the model doesn’t produce the “right” results you just ask your modelers to change the initial parameters or use different numerical methods until it does. This is an “open loop”. These can actually spiral further from reality still as other politicians use other models that predict even more extreme things so they can grandstand and show how much more seriously they are taking the problem than their opponents.

          • And most people are not equipped to analyze all this. Thus, they are at the mercy of Fauci’s whims.

      • The fundamental problem with the models being thrown around during this plandemic is that most of them are terrible.

        I get that medicine is not engineering and the criteria for success is not the same between those fields.

        That said, if I went to production team meetings with models that were as far off as the University of Washington or Imperial College I would have been walked out of the building years ago.

    • There’s certainly a lot you can miss if you only take into account that which can be quantified. Those types have enormous blind spots.

    • Joey – Very well said. Yes, we all know the difference between anecdotes and data, but multiple anecdotes are what constitute data and too many (Cochran, Sailer, et al) cannot see beyond their tidy little numbers and graphs.

      • In recent days Steve has taken to writing as if he didn’t unequivocally accept the absolute worst case scenario from day one.
        Some of his regular commenters are ever so gently bringing that fact to his attention.

        • Dave – Sorry, I know he’s a lot of guys’ hero, but I stopped cutting Steve slack a long time ago. He’s been stuck in the same ‘ironically noticing’ rut for over a decade now, and he utterly panicked about the plague.

        • Was just listening to Molyneux. He said we’re getting a preview of communism. Later he asked the back-to-work crowd how many lives are worth it. I thought ‘Stef, how many lives saved are worth communism?’ This whole thing has been an eye opener.

  41. Thinking ahead to The Summer of Our Discontent, Zman I hope you have a plan B to get out of Lagos should things go sideways there. If the gibs keep rolling in on schedule I suppose things won’t change much for the no-job demographic. Riots can start for really bizarre reasons sometimes though.

    It truly is amazing how myopic all the people in power, with guaranteed government checks and big TSP accounts are completely failing to see how this shutdown is destroying working peoples’ lives and livelihoods.

    • We may reach a point where the rulers have to choose between maintaining the riot insurance (welfare programs) or supporting the middle-class. My bet is they pick the former until the latter realize they have nothing to lose but their chains.

      • The Fed is feeling those tremors. It just announced another $2.3 trillion injection into the economy. Most of that will go to existing programs, propping up the IG market (i.e. Wall Street gets to buy bonds guaranteed by the Fed at 5% when treasuries are paying less than 1%), the muni bond market except now the fed is going lower down the chain to smaller govts and small business loans. Hell, the fed is buying student, car and credit card loans.

        Technically, the fed isn’t buying stocks, but it’s doing everything possible to keep the market from crashing. Hell, the market is only down 17% from its high, which implies it is pricing in either a V-shaped recovery or that the government will simple do whatever is needed to prop up the economy – or a bit of both.

        My guess is that investors look at 08-09 and took the lesson that fed and govt intervention can stop a freight train. In that case, the fed and Congress acted much slower and with much less firepower, yet still managed to keep the economy from spinning out of control. This time, the fed within days literally said it would spend an infinite amount of money while Congress within a month committed to spending $2 trillion with promises to spend that and more if needed.

        Investors are betting that the speed and unlimited promise of spending by both the fed and Congress will save the day. They may be right. In fact, I really hope they’re right because there’s a very scary downside to what the fed and Congress are doing.

        They’ve promised to do everything in their power to fix this, but what if it doesn’t work? There’s nothing left. You’ve called up all of your reserves. If they fail, there’s nothing between the Red Army and Berlin – and workers and investors are the equivalent of a pretty girl living in Kreuzberg.

        Your palace economy is coming to fruition.

      • The working class figured it out long ago because they got destroyed long ago. Now the pain moves up the socioeconomic ranks looking for new human resources to exploit, now the educated white collar middle class starts to get it as they feel the pain. These are the same who were calling me racist scum even a few months ago. It’s hard to like them even though our interests are lining up. Erstwhile mercenaries. More forgiving to be done I guess. EXCEPTIONS as always!

        • A significant majority of the middle and upper middle class came from middle class backgrounds – really no surprise. The economy of the last 20-30 years has allowed them to self-isolate from the lower class. If you are in the middle class or upper middle class and spent a summer working in a factory, kitchen, or outdoors (almost anything with your hands), you are the exception.

          Your Naxalts come from this small demographic.

          The past weeks have been black-pilling and sad, as I don’t believe much can be done with, or for, the majority of the middle and upper middle class. I pray reality does not strike hard this summer.

          • Certainly. In a different time I’d have been one of the exceptions, but I figured great difficulty ahead so I took my bachelor’s and got to work. Take the hit in your 20s instead of middle age, get a broad and practical skill set, get prepared to dig in. Starting to look like one of the few examples of good judgment from my youth 🙂 The bubble people are going to suffer.

          • Why we older guys are panicking is because we can’t get a job either.

            We lack those years to develop employable skills;

            employer insurance incentivizes, no, mandates not hiring anyone over 50 and has worked against over 40s since tax policy brought it in;

            Sancho and Maria now hold the blue collar and entry level jobs we used to be able to fall back on, same as with our young guys and gals.

          • Maybe it’s the optimist speaking, but I think that will change. People are going to have to rediscover value beyond the bottom line.

      • Rahm Emanuel’s brother was being interviewed on Pravda last evening, and actually said the shutdown will have to continue for at least another year!?!
        This is after a Dr. Redfield, one of the heavyweights at the CDC, just stated that the number of deaths was going to be ” much, much lower ” than expected.
        None of these geniuses are on the same page, or even reading from the same book, but many of them think you can keep this economy frozen, and tens of millions out of work, for more than 12 months, without mass civil unrest.
        Our betters are so monstrously out of touch with reality that words can’t accurately describe our situation.

        • A Democrat saying for at least another year means until the election is over and (he hopes) Trump is out.

          • If the Dems somehow retake the White House watch how fast they and their media tools do a complete 180.

            Don’t be surprised when you hear this at a press conference in that timeline:

            “Covid-19? Oh, we revisited the data. Turns out, it’s just the flu, bro.

            Next question!”

          • Exactly. Or, to gain even more control, “Uh-oh, here comes Covid-20,000to the 10th power and it’s even worse. Face masks at the ready. Stay in your bedrooms. If you see someone going in the kitchen, call the police.” Which reminds me, are Oath Keepers saying anything about following these local Stalinist measures that are becoming commonplace? This will be a test of their steadfastness.

          • If Trump gets re-elected we’ll see, “Airborne AIDS, ” within six months.

            Or the Deep State may get so fed up with Trump that they move straight to the, “Executive Action, ” phase.

          • I do see this as punishing the serfs for voting Trump here, for Yellow Vests and Brexit there.

            We were getting “dangerous ideas”.

          • We were getting dangerous ideas. I also get the sense that the Cloud People running Sodom-on-the-Hudson and Gomorrah-on-the-Potomac felt that we serfs have it far too good.

      • All I see from the middle class is its going comatosely into that good night. Hope something changes my mind. They think they’re going to vote for Trump again and everything will be okay. They don’t realize we’re probably too far gone for that to do any good. Maybe hunger and losing their homes will shake some of them out of their blue light stupor.

        • While my husband and I are solidly middle class, his first job was working in a gas station. Out of all his friends from life, perhaps one – the buddy from Alabama whose relatives owned that gas station – is somewhat a race realist and can be talked with. Everyone else, particularly those he knew when we were DC denizens, are blind as bats both racially and economically.

      • Dear Z: the Hour is later than you think. I don’t suppose you ever saw Iraq or the Green Zone in person?

        My Dear Sir; we are now governed by the Green Zone Kids. Really. All grown up now: the adults in the room. The Green Zone Adults now have America. They have DC, they have NYC.
        You may rely on them to enjoy it.
        As you note Blackrock is at the head of the line, I’m sure Halliburton isn’t far back in the queue.

        Our Fronde du Trump is over.
        The adults are in charge now.
        If they has toppled a statue of Trump on the National Mall, the Green Zone Redux could not be more complete.

        Glorious Days await us.

        I’ve seen them. Surprised how it happened here. God Bless Life for all its surprises!

        Speaking of which Z the top|middle| bottom world…is gone.

        They won’t be paying the bottom to attack the middle then try to buy middle with tax cuts that go to their pals instead so lets elect a populist and then… no.

        No dears. No.

        There’s the green zone and the rest of us. There are no good choices. Choose wisely indeed.

    • The people of whom you speak, are either too stupid to see it, or
      can see it but simply don’t care. Or, in the bizarro world they inhabit – they see it and ‘care’ – but in a way that allows them to be the heroines who get to save humanity and without having their hair mussed.
      In the real world, when the destruction they’ve wrought eventually knocks on their door, twill be hard lesson learned too late.

    • As I recall from my days in MD the law there is that all alcohol has to be sold in liquor stores. In most other states you can get beer and wine at the supermarket. If I were stuck in Baltimore I’d be worried about interruptions in the booze supply or riots at the liquor stores. Gibs ain’t worth shit if you can’t get your 40oz on.

    • Change may not come until the no-longer-working people start to destroy the lives or at least livelihoods of those who rule over them.

  42. I so enjoy reading your posts. This is very true. We should have a requirement that you can’t be a politician without spending some years in the private sector. What? You’ve never managed so much as a a shoe store, but you want to be hold the number one job in the United States?

    • I would add to the wish list: term limits. Mine would allow no repeat terms in office. How about enforced periods of not being in any elected or appointed office? I want my politicians doing the job they are being paid for, not to be running for the next office they want to fill.

  43. This event has also revealed that our thing isn’t ready to win a church softball game, much less wage actual struggle for self-determination.

    • I despair that it ever will, Veg. You need at least a triple digit IQ to get here, an addiction to red pills and common sense, and the ability to think critically just to get here.

      The guys that built our nations had courage, the smarts to sacrifice today for a much better tomorrow, and good women to support them. We don’t have any of that. This can only end one way too. We will not vote our way out, and to get out would actually most likely involve killing some people… probably a lot. Given that our women are 50% of the worst problems (or more)…

      I used to have faith we’d get our poop in a group but the Chinkypox plague panic shows us just how big our cultural problems are. Darwin and Murphy are going to have a field day.

      • Hard times create hard men. I have faith we will get our shit together as necessity demands. The current period is a strange one and there is a great deal of confusion and denial going on. This should abate as reality sets in and the situation becomes clearer. I don’t know how rough any of you have had it in your lives, but in my experience, when your back is against the wall something changes inside you and your full potential is activated. Adversity breaks some, but others it forges into iron. A decadent society fosters an indolent and apathetic population so I think tough times might just be the perfect antidote to clown world. Have hope. This thing has only just begun. Actually, it hasn’t even started.

        • We live in interesting times. Sadly, the skill set required by a Gaucho (Argentina) for optimal survival are not the same, and largely in conflict, with those the civilized man from Buenos Aires would require. For those not familiar with Latin America, you can substitute “savage”, “tribesman” or even the Appalachian Red-Necked Beer-Bellied Deer-Hunter (or equivalent bird for other parts of the land) for the first category; the 2nd will encompass nearly everyone who lives in and depends on the infrastructure the civilization provides. It is no doubt true that hard times create hard men; the problem is that it may have to eliminate a certain number of not-so-hard men (and women).

        • Back against the wall is called death ground. You either fight or die. No other choice. Cortez burned his ships in the Gulf, putting his men on death ground.

      • The wymyn are going to in for a big surprise when all this fetal positioning gets us to a point where some very hard men are going to have to take over to get things right again. The girls will be lucky if they’re allowed a set of car keys, let alone professorships and managerial positions where they can grouse about the patriarchy that gave them more than any other population of women have ever had. They could end up in burqas, which would actually be a measure of justice for what they have brought upon us.

        • I think of them more as children who are doing what they are told to do by big daddy media academia government industrial complex. Same goes for the feminized men. We need to be the young lion that takes on big daddy lion and wins to become the new big daddy of the pride. Once the new big daddy isn’t some anti-white misanthropic yid collective who considers it their mission to terrorize the “evil nazi descendants” (i.e. all white people somehow) the machine they will no longer control will stop making the women (and feminized men) so terrible.

          • I think deep down the wymynz are just itchin’ for some male to come along and put them in their place. Thus their submitting to all this Moslem immigration without so much as a by your leave. In the subconscious of their subconscious, it’s the ultimate romance novel, surrendering to the swarthy dominant male. Actually, it’s a twofer . . . they get to virtue-signal with a minority and stick it to dear old white dad at the same time.

          • I don’t agree with that, if I thought Angela Merkel represented all our women I would seriously look into whether it is possible to turn yourself gay. I do agree that women want to be led, but I don’t think swarthyness has anything to do with it, most of the men where I live are swarthy and I do better than any of them. Feminized men are a turn off though, and our small hat media and educational system has damaged many of our guys horribly.

          • Vikings…

            I think you are right about the romance/virtue signaling thing with gals. Deep down they think Omar Sharif or Antonio Banderas (playing an Arab) will come and satisfactorily ravish them, (but still see their inner beauty of course), and take away all that nagging need for decision making.

            Been to Saudi Arabia. Seen men driving their gaggle of garbage bag shrouded women around. It’ll be interesting when our gals find out that there is a 98% chance their future Arab master looks like Yasser Arafat, smells like buttered sweat and cigarettes, and thinks any sexual pleasure his women get is laughably problematic.

          • also, the husbands think nothing of passing their wives around to their brother or cousins. community property.

          • In some tribal societies, nearly ALL property is considered communal. Perhaps not informed by Islam, however. I think this is common in the worst-off African countries. I read a piece on Senegal and this was a prominent feature of the (lack of) local economy. You come from a large extended family, which you are expected to support (and vice versa). If you ran a tiny business and were even able to make a profit, you would have to share the spoils with your extended kin. No word on how (or if) losses are similarly distributed. In any event, very hostile to capitalism. The few businesses in Senegal (per that account) were run by foreigners! Similarly, cultures other than ours have wildly different standards on women’s roles. In some countries, I understand it is considered merely good hospitality if the host invites the guest to bed with his wife. Perhaps America can learn from some of the exotic cultures the world has to offer 🙂

          • This fucking attitude is exactly why women turn you beta cucks down. “Women are all whores who want brown dick, woe is me! MGTOW” Quit the pity party and man up and maybe a woman won’t be immediately turned off by the smell of your weakness. All your bullshit excuses for your own inadequacies are paper thin, women don’t want a brown guy they want a guy who’s not a whiny pussy. If my anecdotal examples aren’t enough go look at the data from dating apps, you have a huge advantage just by virtue of being a white guy. If you aren’t getting women it’s on you personally. Stop fucking whining and stop spreading this shit, you are making us all look bad.

          • Fash, I’m a girl and I think I have a little insight. Young white men need to get some testosterone pumping, and women won’t have to seek it elsewhere. But until then, hormones, not to be denied, are leading these females in other directions. The evidence is all around you in public places. A good first step is to quit buying products the ads for which portray white guys as idiots, and let the company know that you’ve quit buying its products because their ads portray white guys as idiots.

            Young women’s natural instincts are also going to lead them to “mother” someone they see as disadvantaged, and that mothering and trying to be “nice” leads to a sexual relationship that I suspect many times they don’t want but are too intimidated by the culture to refuse.

          • FG, +1 with caveats. There a huge systemic problems with the sexual “marketplace” nowadays. MGTOW is a survival strategy for sh*tty times.

            It’s a bitch to learn how to be a man and handle the WQ in normal times, much less the Age of Pennywise. Considering how many guys grow up without a strong man around now, 10x harder.

            You’re on-message in terms of telling guys not to despair-pill and cope-out but a lot of guys are stuck in a dilemma of society’s making. You have to find a way to make it work, guys. Cut yourself some slack and cut her some too.

            The most counter-productive things MGTOW’s do is fantasize about muh virgin arranged marriages and purity-spiral over notch-counts, tattoos, smoking, etc…

            We’re all damaged to some extent. Flexibility > Fanaticism

          • I agree in part, Fash. There are alot of loser white guys around. Alot of white guys are smoking huge amounts of weed, or are fat, or just play videogames. If not that they’re super beta and feminist. There is literally no excuse for being fat, or being a pot-head.

            Alot of white people of all ages also despair when things fail. They get depressed when they fail, or in this case get rejected. Just don’t have the chutzpah I guess. Non-white males have infinite chutzpah for white women. I’ve had so many disappointing experiences, failures, rejections, insecurities, and lonely times but I just keep moving forward and getting better. Never giving into weed or vidya. Alot of white guys aren’t able to do that.

            The part outside of our control is the destruction of the working class, now middle class and the inability for many white guys to have a decent career. It’s not really their fault and there’s not much they can do. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps is not an option when there’s affirmative action, outsourcing, mass immigration, etc.

            Yes, overall being a white man is a huge boost in dating. But white men are also acting like losers now and I don’t blame a white woman for dating a non-white guy, at least he’s not fat, doesn’t do drugs, and has a stable paycheque. My own sex life has been average by my estimation (some LTR, some hookups – could definitely be better though) but better than 90% of non-Chad white guys. Most of my white early 20s friends have given up and just do drugs.

          • Your friends should not give up, take a break from dating and other stuff, get a nice manly hobby, go hiking, do some leather work, learn to work on cars, or learn how to use shop tools and make stuff, etc.

            Work out, pump iron and stay away from the high carb crap that fucks with our mood.

            And they need to stay away from Pot. There is a reason the elite is pushing that crap.

            BTW the rest of the stuff you mention is spot on. “Our Thing” should have e-books explaining what you posted To help them.

            That is what “Our Thing” should be in a sense a “outreach program” for our peeps. Jordan Peterson popularity showed there is a need for that. It’s too bad our side never leveraged it.

            These young men need to know it’s not their fault. They were handed a shit sandwich by our ruling class who took everything good away from them. They need to stick together, support one another and build themselves up

          • This is correct. A lot of girls are curious about the assorted mystery meats but their heart’s desire is for a strong white man. This is true for most non-white girls too. Exhibit A: AOC.
            The problem comes when there are no strong white men. Then white girls turn into forbidden paths. In my experience it’s actually easier in a city with few white men than in the heartland where buff white dudes abound.

          • In a diverse city there’s diverse choosings. A woman of any race is happy to jump into bed with a white guy, especially if he’s not a loser, in decent shape, and carries himself with confidence.

            While in the Canadian rustbelt I had the same issues – there’s always some jacked dude in his 30s with a big truck taking all the women. Women like manly guys regardless of what the media says.

            In Toronto there’s a ton of Asian women who would love a white guy’s attention especially given the ton of betas around.

            Of course, Our Thing is priority #1. It’s easy to get distracted by chasing p*ssy – but it should be a means to our end which is ultimately promoting the social cohesion and rebirth of white peoples across the planet.

          • Good point UFO – part of what makes the cities easier is the large number of non-white women to lend social proof.

            Another oft passed over point is how much easier it is to meet women when you walk everywhere. The subway was heaven. Part of the atomization problem is that suburban design limits human contact. It’s home –> car –> destination –> car –> home. In avoiding blegs we created a new problem.

          • Yes, PM, all the while turning their nose up at Lawrence of Arabia . . .

            I’ve seen the pictures of English girls in burqas. In fact I’ve seen some American girls in burqas. I read one quoted as saying that Islam provides her protection. Feminism threw young women to the wolves. Some, even if only a few, may see a slightly-moderated Islam as salvation. Or maybe not slightly-moderated. Either way . . .

          • That’s the way it’s going, anyways.

            Secular white people will be extinct faster than we expect, with Amish, Mormons, Muslims, Haredi, etc. filling the void. The White Death is emptying out rural America and the Amish are filling in.

            People raised in those insular communities no longer find the World quite so attractive… and it’s not the English that the Amish are going to find out in Philadelphia or NYC in 2020.

            Joining a religious community is the religious answer to MGTOW – eschew the shiny lights of hookup culture in exchange for a boring but stable existence. Not looking so bad.

          • “any sexual pleasure his women get is laughably problematic.”

            Cliterodectomy performed by a grandma with an old razor blade = problem solved.

            For bonus points: infibulation

            And if anyone doesn’t know those terms, now would be a good time to learn what they mean. Add them to Matt Bracken’s “Ten Arabic Words: Bracken’s Challenge to National Security Professionals” (at GoV)

          • Mike_C, they’re called ‘shorn’ women.
            Their husbands absolutely hate it; in Egypt its the women who do it to their girls.

            What I want to know is when the slave-mark of Shechem (circumcision) became standard practice, routinely done in American hospitals.

            I get blather about 19th c. anti- masturbation quacks, but this is a procedure, with specialists, coding, insurance payment, etc.

            It does permanent brain damage.
            I think it may explain much of the soy in America, why we gave up so easily to the massive brainwashing.

            The muslim practice of ‘initiation’ without anesthesia on much older boys and girls
            explains why muslims are a wreck of a culture. No, white man, we never want to go there.

          • You make it sound like all Islamic countries treat their women as property, denying them any self-assertion and keeping them in their place. Hmmm, maybe these Arabs are onto a good thing? [evil grin]

          • Zman hints at this occasionally. Is there psychology or sociology to back up this claim? And a quite depressing condition, if true! It’d be wonderful to be able to play the white knight. Given the present system, Don Quixote is far more likely to lose his job, be socially ostracized, and face civil or criminal charges. Besides, in the story most of his damsels* turned out to be whores anyway! Reality really sucks, especially when you’re being disabused of your cherished ideals.
            *Or just dull, ugly women when viewed up close. One woman was a too-virtuous shepherd who indirectly leads a lovesick man to suicide…

          • When women sew chaos that leads to males fighting they get to choose from winners. It’s setting up their own hierarchy, and then choosing from the ones at the top.

            I don’t know if women do this on purpose or just lack the instincts to avoid it. Either way, it’s a good reason women shouldn’t make political decisions.

            “This” society was won with blood from men, the next one will be as well. Therefore men should be the ones deciding its direction- since they pay for it.

        • Don’t get me fuggin started!

          My wife is good (after all, she married a good man!)… and she can see this thing for the hoax or panic it is. But… fricksakes… of the half dozen women I met today, all of them clucked about the lockdown and made a big show of social distancing… and every single one of them had to blab about some relative or friend that needed to be scolded for not social distancing or being locked down enough. The sheer vapid stupidity of this has them all in lockstep too.

          Our gracious blog host has spoken in the past about the need to cleverly mask disagreement and instead use their own politics to spark some critical thought – none of these women wanted to listen, never mind think! All they wanted to do was make a big show about how terrible things are, and what they are doing about it.

          I am getting too old for this shite. I just wished they’d STFU so I could do some social distancing of my own…

        • A little White Sharia is more likely or maybe White Kampuchea.

          Looking at the longer than any of us will live picture, the US will be mostly White Opt Out Religious people since they the only people with high fertility. Even Latinos won’t have kids in this mess.

          Future women will have a few duties, farming (or trade) wife, mother and church and jack for freedom.

          This kind of sucks because that frisson caused by the mix of modernity and tradition makes for alluring and interesting women instead of tractor people but so be it.

      • Search anything by Tim Wilson. He describes the South I grew up in.

    • …and we’d likely be arrested, or at least issued citations (by glove wearing deputies, we’d hope), for having an unlawful assembly. Unless we could convince the law that playing softball is protected religious expression 🙂

    • Quite so.

      The problem unlike the first American Revolution is that our side has not defined anything that they are for. Our side is vague, nebulous, overly intellectual. I once called it a kegger for intellectuals and that’s what it basically is.

      Where is our Tom Paine and a modern “Common Sense”? We don’t have tit.

      There is no outreach to the working class as we have nothing to offer them even in the way of what we stand for.

      Instead we engage in circular firing squads blaming Boomers, the Silent Generation, etc for why things went to shit for whites. God almighty what a fucking cop out by cowards. HTFU and take charge if you don’t like it,change it by hook or crook. Don’t go around writing cry baby missives about the bad boomers.

      Worse the few media types who do side with us like Tucker – who has done more to open normie eyes than any of our web based peeps gets slammed as the enemy, WTF is wrong with our side?

      Quit wishing that a Pinochet will ride to our rescue while we sit on out asses.

      If Our Thing was serious they’d have pamphlets, e-books, flyers to help recruit whites to our side. We don’t, we have What we little we do have comes from the 4Chan people.

      Our Thing is not serious.

    • Our thing seems fine to me. This panic revealed libertarianism is a dead end and when people are sufficiently concerned they drop it quickly. It revealed that anti-foreigner sentiment is pretty much boiling, and ready to spill over.

      We don’t need a team of geniuses. The left uses their army of morons. If anything not having an army of morons is the disadvantage we suffer from.

  44. Bummer. I checked in expecting the podcast! All the days seem the same with the flu scare lock down.

    • Same, though it happened to me last week after getting “Ground Hog Day’d” the rest of the week.

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