The Renter Society

Anyone who has rented a car, or an apartment knows it is a different relationship from owning a car or especially a house. Drive through a working class neighborhood and you can easily spot the owners from the renters. The houses with overgrown lawns will usually be the renters. Of course, everyone knows the jokes about rental cars. Even the most conscientious renter tends to be more reckless with a rental car. You just do not have the same connection with it as you own car.

Another thing goes along with this. People with old beat up used cars tend not to be as careful as people with new cars. This has been tested. Take that old clunker and fix it up or replace it with something nice and the driver gets more conscientious about his driving and how he treats the car. The same thing probably happens with houses or even neighborhoods. What is the point of having a great lawn if every lawn in your neighborhood is a trash strewn, overgrown mess?

The point here is that the relationship one has to the property at his disposal is controlled to some degree by the ownership and condition. For this reason, it has been an article of faith with conventional conservatives that the way to lift people out of poverty is to get them into a house they own. The theory is these people will invest in their community, because they own a house in it. They have skin in the game, while the renter can just pick up and leave if things get bad.

This is not something that gets much attention now. While homeownership rates are about where they have always been, few people really own their house. They have a mortgage that they may never pay off. Each generation of American is poorer and carries greater debt. The policy to inflate home prices means younger people will carry a mortgage much longer and carry a much larger debt load in general. America is a land of debtors falling deeper in debt with each generation.

Then there is the general erosion of property rights. You may own your home and your car, but some company is tracking your use of them. That information, which is your property, is bought and sold without your consent. If you have a smart TV, it is spying on you, maybe even listening to your conversations. Just as the landlord can come into your apartment at any time, corporate America can poke around in your life whenever it feels the need to harvest information about you.

It is not just in our private lives where we see the transactional arrangement supplanting the ownership society. Businesses are increasingly moving to technology platforms that are pure services. Instead of owning the accounting system and running it on your server, you sign up for a web-based option. You pay monthly and agree to their terms of service, like all the other services that now dominate our lives. Increasingly, a business is just a temporary set of rental agreements.

This is something that cannot be overstated. if you look at the firms behind the apps that pop up in our lives, there is nothing to them. They have assembled a collection of licensed products that they have given a clever name. They work out of temporary offices and rent server space from Amazon. The employees are contract labor from somewhere over the horizon. The traveling circuses of old had deeper roots than the typical tech startup. They at least owned the tents.

There is something else that relates to this change in our society. Drive around and the infrastructure is looking shabby. Streets are full of potholes. Utility lines are a cluttered mess, often looking like something from the third world. Schools are old and shabby, even in nice middle-class areas. People think about the tyranny part of anarcho-tyranny, but it is the anarchy part that has the greatest impact. There is a general shabbiness to our lives that erodes our civic pride and commitment to community.

Taken together, the engine for creating social capital has slowly fallen into disrepair, to the point where we have adopted the renter’s mentality. The only time politicians speak of community is when they are discussion artificial or imaginary communities like the “trans community” or the “Asian community.” Even more bizarre is that most people think about their on-line groups when they think of community. The typical millennial has a stronger relationship to other gamers than his neighbors.

The other thing about the renter’s mentality is the owner of the rental property does not invest more than necessary. The landlord does not install granite counter tops in a rental unit and the car rental place is not waxing the cars between rentals. The software as a service vendor is cutting costs on development, because that is his only way to increase his profit margins. Eventually, these savings have to be balanced out with a capital infusion, but often after the property is sold.

This cannot work in a society. There is no way to replace the social capital that is not being created due to the lack of community. We see this with the attempts by Washington to inject money into the economy. What is not stolen by the pirates that prey on the economy has no impact on the people. The $1,400 check is never going to be the same as a job at a local business, run by one of your neighbors. Once the money is spent, there will be a new cry for more checks.

America is a rentier economy populated by people with a renter’s mentality. Every relationship is transactional. Once the transaction is over, the parties go on their way until the next transaction. One result of this is the country now looks like a neighborhood full of rental properties. No one, not even the government, sees a reason to invest in anything other than their immediate needs. The last functioning institution is the military, and it is succumbing to the same mentality.

It is tempting to call this feudalism, but feudalism had a strong ownership component and a well-defined set of reciprocal responsibilities. Modern America is becoming something different. A tiny group of people own everything, either directly or through the financial system, with no relationship to anyone other than through the rental agreement, the terms of service or the short term contract. The vast majority are just passing through society like renters.

Whether or not this is sustainable is an open question. The only societies we have ever created without social capital are penal colonies. Even in those, the inmates build bonds with one another. A prison cellblock has more social capital than a gaming community or social media network. We are into uncharted territory. Can a society sustain itself in a crisis, even a society post scarcity, when none of the members feels any connection to the other members? It seems unlikely.

On the other hand, maybe one part of the post scarcity society is there is no longer a threat of a genuine crisis. The great crises of the last few decades have been imaginary or exaggerated. There is a strong sense that things like the Covid panic are due to the political class not having anything to do with their time. These fake crises give them a reason to demand our attention. Maybe the renter society is a natural response to the elimination of real threats to society.


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210 thoughts on “The Renter Society

  1. My comment is that there’s a big difference between an online-only gaming community and in person. I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons weekly with the same group of friends for ten years now. We are actually something close to a healthy community. So last month when the week long power outage hit Houston we were all crashing at whoever’s house happened to have power that night, letting each other come over to use the shower or do laundry. Two houses had pipes burst, we were all there to help clean up. The week was generally speaking miserable but knowing that we all had good friends we could rely on was pretty heartening.

  2. Self fulfilling feedback loop? When browsing through the long list of comments we may be tempted to stop only at those well applauded while ignoring others, which means those applauded gather even more attention and more applause. Fine, but In so doing little gems may be missed.

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  3. Humans have instincts . When you are on the hostile ground then nomadic instincts kick in. People unconsciously understand that maybe they must move out fast and there is no point to invest into something what you should leave behind with very short notice. Soviet Union was dirty by the very same GTFO mentality.

  4. I’ve been thinking the same thing recently especially in response to Keith Wood’s silly video about “Techno-Feudalism.” I think the system we currently under can’t be called Capitalism as there is little new physical capital being created and we have is series of rental agreement for using capital and often that capital is physically global in a long interlocking global supply chain. The “control of the means of production” has long ceased to be a Factory Owner but is instead a network of licensing policies that you mentioned. I don’t see how any of the global system can be called “capitalism” when it build around extracting rents from already existing capital supply chains. I call this “Rentalism” where the control of the “means of production” has shifted from “Capital Owners” to Licensors for access to the global supply chain. Capital formation isn’t the goal anymore. It is all about what “platform” you have access on the global markets and you have digital fiefdoms (maybe we should call them thiefdoms) like Amazon and Stripe who essential own the platforms your need to operate any business in the digitalized economy.

    Nobody is building “new technology” in the sense of inventing a new combustion engine rather we have new was of selling the same stuff from the same Chinese factory to different niche markets and inventing “identities” to expand marketable products. I don’t see how anyone can call this “Capitalism” as it isn’t about building capital but picking the remains of capital’s corpse.

  5. Zman – come to eastern Tennessee. I moved down here from your neck of the woods a little over a year ago. I have never had relationships or friends like I do now with our “community”. Having lived in Howard and Montgomery county for the last 10 years or so, it is so refreshing to live with like minded people who have the same beliefs and outlook that I do. Also, we all carry and have carry licenses, so there is no crime at all. Great article on Taki by the way.

    I have not been such a faithful reader like I used to be, but your writing is so clear and compelling it is great to start catching up again. You are doing Gods work. Thank you.

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    • Other than it being the 4th most move out of state in the US because of how garbage it is (CA, NY, NJ, MD in that order), what made you leave the wonderful shitlib hellhole of MD / Mont Co? I can think of a laundry list of reasons but wondering what made you finally take action after 10 years.

  6. Just finished The True Believer that Z recommended on last Friday’s podcast. A fair portion of the book described the self-hatred these people feel. I think it is directly tied to today’s post: If you don’t own anything (including accomplishments personal or artistic) then you have no pride. An overgeneralization it may be, but it holds water pretty well.

    And I thought Z didn’t like psychology! 😉

    The antidote to Nihilism is responsibility. Even (especially?) small daily improvements will engender confidence.

    I think this is the central core of how we win back the culture. I don’t think much else is worth talking about until this is handled. How do we win, after 50 years of losing? Learn to fight dirty. Never let a Baby Killer moralize with you on any subject. Never argue policy with them, just shred their meaningless lives to their faces. In the book, he minces no words. The only reason to be a fanatic is if you have a desperate need to anesthetize your shame. I call it ‘external morality’. YOU have no responsibility for making the cause happen, but you CARE! You’re a Goooood People.

    Anyway, I’m not good a summarizing so I hope this isn’t too disjointed.

  7. The renter dynamics Z Man addresses are why the Great Reset has a slogan you won’t own anything and you will be happy.

    All ownership will be among the overlords. A society where no one has strong ties to it is easier to shape and mold based on the whims of the ruling class. It definitely makes it easier to kill off /marginalize populations and replace them

  8. The craziness of covid politics and the radical left have constellated a reactionary movement, a regression to the old and familiar normal.

    • Falcone, I drove through Hollywood the other day. It’s a town of billboards and almost every billboard was “black”. For a new black movie. Black TV show. Black talk show. Black beer. Black cigarettes. It was bizarre. So blatant that even all the Hollywood liberals must notice and get an odd feeling. You know they mutter to themselves, “ok, ok, it’s a bit much.” Maybe they even do the “blackity black black black” thing.

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  9. “ Modern America is becoming something different. A tiny group of people own everything, either directly or through the financial system, with no relationship to anyone other than through the rental agreement, the terms of service or the short term contract.”

    So true. We even have a name for that tiny group who owns everything.

  10. Welcome to jeworld, when the hyperinflation kicks in, like Weimar, y’all get what the Germans were so fed up with. Termites destroying the frame, you’re witness to it live, in color, full of vindictiveness and spite. Uncle Shmuel is gonna die a painfull death..

  11. One thing we can do, is make renting more expensive. Cigna is all in on BLM, Cultural Marxism, no White men need apply.

    How about, a flood of White men apply. When they are turned down, sue class action. Repeat/rinse with Coke, other companies. We just need a law firm willing to take losses (and not “respectable”) to get that one windfall. The process being the punishment. It just takes one judgment.

  12. Short version as my moderation hell comment waits for approval —
    We need our own Henry VIII to seize power, money, and ownership from the Managerial Renter Class. And it is up to us to help make that happen.

  13. This ties into the guy who wrote more than a decade and a half ago that Hollywood is so awful precisely because everyone is a renter, there are no individual moguls making their entire bank from movies and/or TV shows. Instead you get endless virtue signaling to build social networks dominated by White women, gays, and various non-Whites. See the suits against Blackrock demanding essentially firing all the White guys (by Muslim women and gay black dudes).

    And just like the Catholic Church’s problem was a money/power one, not distance from the people (sorry ZMan, wrong on that one), our problem is that there is no one in power who can become an owner. Putin is an owner, that’s why his view on Russia is different than drunk old Yeltsin’s. He owns Russia. Yeltsin was just there. Same with Xi. He owns China. Henry VIII crushed the Catholic Church for dynastic reasons (to remarry and get a male heir) and for money — to seize their property and money. Northern Germany revolted against the Church for the same reason, and also the limits on usury and so on imposed by the Church. Henry had no problems getting men at arms to fight for him as King and the Lutherans using new tech: firearms and the printing press had training manuals and massive armies crushing the old Catholic Knightly order that required massive amounts of money and training (Knights analogous to Delta Force or SEALs).

    Our way forward is to convince/manipulate some in the Managerial Class who insecure and renting of the security and peace of mind of ownership. I don’t know who that might be, but without help from a powerful faction of the Managerial class running the government, security services, media, legal profession, military, and corporations we will get nowhere. Anymore than the Hussites and such got anywhere.

    I would suggest that people like Elon Musk, and other owners of tangible assets unlike Bill Gates or Zuck or Bezos are the more likely candidates. King John tried the same stuff that Henry did centuries earlier, in the quest for money as he was always broke. I would say the formula would be: A. Influential owners of businesses like Trump or Musk or Steve Wynn see both threats — immavaders vote themselves their stuff, and opportunity — crushing the Managers gets them the money the Managers rake off as owners; B. New tech of some emerging nature makes Managers more vulnerable and would be owners more powerful; C. Some crisis pushes an influential power figure to act.

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  14. I don’t know if you are willfully overlooking the obvious so I will say it: the globalists who now control our lives have absolutely no desire whatsoever for white people in America, who are still the majority, to come away from this situation with systems of “social capital” intact. They are destroying the last vestiges of white culture here. You get to keep nothing. New people will inherit it and once they are demographically correct, the old civic virtues will return. Family, homeownership, faith. All of that will be brought back to the fore of culture by the globalists who want to finally see Brown people at the pinnacle of humanity.

    It’s a lot like you are The Indian Nations in Oklahoma right before the land rush and statehood. 1887 or something. Nobody waiting on the border is expecting you to keep anything. They will possess it. You are dispossessed. There really isn’t anything we can do about it now. At best your neighborhood will have a few close knit families and you keep to yourself and preserve some dignity. But you are in no way a representative of or even a beneficiary of the new America that is being created. And your opinion about it doesn’t matter at all. They already announced that you are basically a domestic terrorist and likely soon to prosecuted for even disagreeing with them. It doesn’t get more menacing than that from a civic point of view.

    That’s what I realized over the last year. It is truly over. What you are talking about with the renter economy/mentality is the reality that has been imposed on white people in America. Same as how becoming a transexual is being imposed on white kids as a true expression of their self identity. Illegal Aliens are being flown to big cities to live in luxury hotels. Black people are being given mortgage free homes. Foreigners are being imported to take high paying jobs in the corporate hierarchy. Absolutely nothing is being given to white people. You already got everything you will get from the old America. You’ll be lucky if they let you keep your retirement. They probably will because it will be worth practically nothing in real money.

    I liked the Taki Post about Kremlinology. We too need to start studying the US government to figure out what is really happening because none of our so-called representatives are saying anything meaningful to us or to benefit us. They are not even trying to communicate ideas to us anymore.

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    • The only non-violrnt hope is reality/gravity. The replacement population cannot sustain a society the Clouds accept. We throw around many preferences to Brazil but the truth is the White Cloud People there live with some degree of fear and uncertainty. Making the lives of the Ruling Class miserable in a manner that doesn’t get our people killed or arrested is the only safe and practical response; the imports are well-positioned to do so.

      With that mere glimmer of hope you are likely right and the wind is at their backs. Long-term it would not work as they envisioned but our days would have ended.

  15. America is a rentier economy populated by people with a renter’s mentality.

    If I use nothing else from the Zman this year. This piece is worth the Widows Mite it costs me.

    (Always assuming the Widow doesn’t figure out where it’s going.)

  16. Did anybody say it yet?

    “You’ll own nothing… and you’ll make payments (forever)”

  17. Having nothing to do with today’s essay, but too humorous to not mention. Get a load of today’s Power Line:
    (1) The New York Times is pissed at Babylon Bee, because their satire may be believed by some gullible folks.
    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/03/thats-not-funny-2.php
    (2) A “traditional” Marxist site bemoans the Woke takeover of media.
    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/03/how-woke-media-becomes-broke-media.php

  18. I would argue the attitudes between owned and rented has a lot more to do with culture than anything else.

    In the United States home ownership rate stands at about 65 percent where in Germany only about 45 percent of households own their homes (1). France and the Netherlands are even lower. But here you won’t find garbage strewn in back streets, no one has derelict cars in their yard or ancient washing machines on the porch or roofs partially covered with tarps to keep the rain out.

    Even the smallest German Weiler or Dorf (a very small village) is always neat and tidy. Of course the buildings have been standing for over 200-years, so we forgive them if it needs a touch of paint. But even Bavaria and along the border of Germany and Austria, people still paint traditional murals on their homes (2). In every German city, town and suburb, people still sweep their sidewalks every Saturday morning. And God help the person who fails to arrange to have it done while they are away on holiday.

    I’ve driven across the USA; from Main to Washington, Florida to California and you don’t have to go far to find crummy, run down houses and horrible looking yards. Anyone who’s driven down highway 99 from Sacramento to Bakersfield knows what I’m talking about. And please don’t get me started on the shacks and mobile homes scattered across Mississippi, Alabama or Arkansas.

    And I’m not talking about Detroit suburbs or tent cities popping up on sidewalks in San Francisco, I’m talking about established small town community suburbs that date back 100-years. They are simply not being kept up or maintained by their owners. And this is across all races, white, brown and black.

    This isn’t just my personal observation, many Europeans who travel beyond the traditional US tourist destinations see this too as soon as they get off the main highways and venture into the smaller, lesser traveled areas.

    The people are still incredibly friendly and wonderful to talk with, but we wonder why does the average American seem to care so little for their property and live in such shabby conditions?

    (1) https://www.bundesbank.de/en/publications/research/research-brief/2020-30-homeownership-822176
    (2) Google search “Bavarian murals on houses”

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    • I think that addiction to television may be a big part of this problem. Many people spend up to 5 hours a day idling in front of a TV instead of doing something active such as tending to their yard or home upkeep. This is why I argue that the collapse is the cure. The only thing that will get a fat-ass off the couch is real hardship in the form of no food in the cupboard or frig. Kill your TV today!

    • But here you won’t find garbage strewn in back streets, no one has derelict cars in their yard or ancient washing machines on the porch or roofs partially covered with tarps to keep the rain out.

      You just haven’t gotten diversified hard enough, yet.

    • The first time I visited Berlin the sidewalks around the Brandenburg Gate area were so clean one could eat a meal off of them. I lived 5 years in one of the filthiest cities in the US (Philly) so it was impressive. Tokyo is the same way. My ancestry is half German and I feel a much greater affinity for how life is lived there than in my home. And then to be losing even that on top of it. Very sad.

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    • You live with White people who have a common heritage, we’re in a fuckin zoo brother.

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    • The one thing I’ve noticed in some European cities is graffiti everywhere – even out in the countryside – I was fairly shocked. Of course we have it here as well, but not like in some of the larger Spanish & French cities imo.

    • Robert Putnam found that social capital even within an ethnic group erodes under the imposition of diversity. Bonding capital as well as bridging capital suffers from diversity.

  19. We are importing a million strangers a year – they have to live somewhere so there is price pressure on housing. Also stagnates wages as their are plenty of migrants for cheap labor. Those “unforeseen consequences” of immigration policy that everyone could foresee.

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  20. So now we live in a floating world where the pursuit of beauty and power has a transactional outcome. Rootlessness is a cheap wine tasting of freedom, intoxication with the hope of no headache the morning after. Nothing floats forever or escapes the embrace of gravity for long.

  21. Consider: Our politicians are all short-term rentals (tho many turn into permanent squatters).

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  22. “Maybe the renter society is a natural response to the elimination of real threats to society.”

    Bingo. “Conservatives” are people who need to desperately convince others that things must be going to Hell in a handbasket thanks to technology. Social security is the Road to Serfdom (Hayek). “A conservative is someone for whom change means, above all, loss” (Oakeshott). Richard Weaver argued that rural electrification would steal the souls of the rural poor; they just wanted lights and heat, just like he had in Chicago. (And yes, he argued against shoes; read Ideas Have Consequences). Russell Kirk thought life insurance was the devil’s tool. Etc.

    Surprise: people would rather drop the hassles of ownership, just like they actually like being far away from prying eyes and conformist demands of the warm and snuggly “real community.” They’d rather have electric lights than “the simple satisfactions of a true community.” How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?

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    • And a “liberal” is someone who needs to desperately to convince others to ignore their lyin’ eyes. Everything’s fine.

      I’ve noticed your articles are a bountiful delight of half-truths, outright lies and carefully cherry-picked quotations.

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    • What are you smoking?

      Everybody wants to own a house. It’s just that more and more people can’t afford it.

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      • I’ve picked up houses for as low as $12,000. Of course, you’ll have to be down with living surrounded by crackheads and gang-bangers….

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          • Silly millenials and their avocado toast. Just buy a 12,000$ house in the Detroit ghetto, bro. The neighbours DeQwaryus and Tyrone love football and grilling too! What a steal.

        • I can get you a house for about $60-$80k in a neighborhood that’s not too dangerous. $100k-$120k for an okay neighborhood and a bigger house, but you’ll want to send your kids to private schools or home school. That’s in a large, thriving midwestern city, not a craphole like Detroit.

          You can get frickin’ fantastic deals — homes that a Bay Area person would drool over for a price that wouldn’t let them renovate their garden shed — in Appalachia or near Lake of the Ozarks and stuff.

          • And that’s something of a hazard, too. California vermin can sell their garden sheds for enough to purchase a palace in Jonesboro. And when they do, they bring their repulsive culture and politics with them.

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          • But you can’t make any money out there. Those people are going to be inflated away into absolute destitution so that the center is hollowed out. Like how Eastern Europeans are/were poor after the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

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          • Vizzini: Shhhh!! Stop telling everyone where the few good spots left are. And as a reply to American Citizen 2.0 below (who I thought bade us farewell not long ago): Some things matter a whole lot more than money. Like community and culture. Sell your big suburban home, buy or build something modest in a White rural community, live simply, and be thankful.

          • But you can’t make any money out there.

            Whatever you say, guy. Clearly you know a lot more about it than me. I only live here.

  23. ZMan is half right about post scarcity. Plenty of cheap carbs out there for the massive masses.
    However if one eats low carb like me and zman food is expensive, I do all my own cooking, meat + salad greens, and the cost is $1300 a month. Most people can’t afford that.

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      • Surf and Turf. Or the guy is a monster consuming 5000 cals a day. To the lack of jobs in rural areas. Some truth in that. Telecommute and small niche manufacturing operations might be the answer. I sorta playing around with the idea of mushroom barns. I targeted three or four small rural unversities for jobs 15 years ago. Haha, I’ve been a crackpot far longer than you Johnny come latelys.

  24. The point here is that the relationship one has to the property at his disposal is controlled to some degree by the ownership and condition. For this reason, it has been an article of faith with conventional conservatives that the way to lift people out of poverty is to get them into a house they own. The theory is these people will invest in their community, because they own a house in it. They have skin in the game, while the renter can just pick up and leave if things get bad.

    Wet streets cause rain!

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    • Viz;
      Agree. The big mistake Cons make re home ownership is, as you say, that it reverses causality. Virtue begets the hard work and thrift necessary to buy a home and the pride in ownership to maintain it. (Near) costless ownership does not and cannot beget the virtue to maintain anything.

      Or as Professor Reynolds said some years ago (apropos of the ’08 housing bubble collapse), politicians thought that they could create the middle class attributes required for paying a home mortgage just by making it easy to get title to a house.

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      • Virtue doesn’t beget an income matching inflation, productivity, and price increases; and income buys houses, not hard work or saving.

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  25. A New Tomorrow (cont)
    The long walk.

    Or hike, or bike ride, or whatever suits you as long as it’s at least an hour or more. Pick a nice day and dress comfortably. Choose a path without much distraction or annoyance; as the purpose is to get lost in your thoughts. Take stock of your skills & strengths, plus any worldly circumstances that are unique to your experience. Now daydream about paths not yet taken or opportunities that may present as you go about daily life. Think creatively, but with a focus on simple rather than elaborate or convoluted. Use what you know and incorporate the ordinary and mundane parts as potential solutions to the problems at hand. And work only one problem at a time.

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  26. A few years ago I read an article about the genesis and influence of “Napster” the file sharing music platform.

    Whereas Apple/Steve Jobs saw an opportunity and pounced on it, Bill Gates misjudged the circumstances and missed the boat. If I can recall he thought such a concept would never take off. This is America after all, a capitalist nation founded on the principle of private property and ownership. File-“sharing” was inherently a failed concept, he figured, not only because people want to own a physical copy of their music–they need something physical to hold onto– but also because the American government would never allow such a thing. It would undermine its core tenants.

    Oh how wrong he was.

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    • “It would undermine its core tenants”
      I meant “tenet” but the mistake might work better all the same…

  27. North America is moving to a society of owners and renters.

    In the states, you need a portfolio (not net worth which includes equity in your house but portfolio, i.e. financial assets) of ~$825k to cross the line into the top 10% of households. In 1989, that same amount (inflation-adjusted dollars) was ~$325k. For the bottom 75% of households, the portfolio has stayed about the same. (The 75% to 90% group portfolio about doubled.)

    The rich are absolutely getting richer. They’re pulling away, and now it can’t be stopped because the income generated from their financial assets is beyond what they can spend, so they’re plowing the money back into even more financial assets which produce even more income, which is then plowed into more financial assets . . .

    You can give the poor all the money that you want, but they’ll spend it immediately which cycles the money right back to the owners of financial assets – company stock, rental real estate, loans, etc.

    What’s more, the middle class is always one set back away from bankruptcy, which puts their assets on the market and thus are bought by the rich. The rich also have set backs, but they can withstand them and bounce back due to their wealth.

    Wealth naturally concentrates, generally following the Pareto Principle. The question is whether the brown masses will allow a small group of Jews and Whites to hold that wealth.

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    • The question is whether the brown masses will allow a small group of Jews and Whites to hold that wealth.

      Oriental Asians and Indians are also disproportionally in the wealthiest stratum. Globalization.

      Some of this could be reversed if we had a nation again, and if that nation didn’t reward throwing members of the nation under the bus in favor of foreigners, and privatizing benefits while socializing costs.

    • Citizen: Had a text exchange with my older son the other day, and I noted that it was that extreme wealth disparity that caused one to start questioning the purported ‘principles’ behind capitalism (specifically re economics, as opposed to American corporatism which is a different animal). My husband is still on board the whole “build a better mousetrap and get rich” fallacy, but I know and see plenty of smart, capable, hard-working people who are struggling. And then Bezos’ ex-wife gives multi-million donations to ‘charity,’ but nothing ever changes. I could pick any small town in America (majority White, of course, say fewer than 20,000 residents). Buy the young couples a house, or pay off outstanding mortgages or stupid college debts, and you would change lives. No one ever does that; it’s more gratifying re vanity and social status to build a hospital wing with your name on it, or to ‘uplift’ POX lives in some shithole.
      By income alone, my family is doing pretty well, but we’ll never reach that top 10% portfolio. But we don’t take vacations, don’t go out and buy big ticket items, and it costs a ton just to try to live a White, middle-class life in a country that is a third-world motel. The people who could really utilize the financial help will never, ever get it, and those who do will endlessly waste it and never get enough and have their hand out in supplication forever.
      I no longer believe in the whole ‘do your best,’ ‘earn a just reward,’ and effort=sucess garbage. There IS such a thing as too much. I don’t know who ought to establish it or precisely where it ought to be, but there should be some limit on just how much one individual can make or amass. There IS something to be said for a certain amount of social and financial equity (NOT racial equity). There’s a reason, besides simple homogeneity, that the Scandinavian countries historically have been the happiest.

      21
      • tell the son to find a wife and have a family. there is nothing that adds more to your happiness. don’t let him hide behind the “I have to have a lot of money to do that .” excuse . the folks in Appalachia where I am from don’t have much money, but the ones who have families are among the happiest I know .

        14
        1
        • miforest -He’s married and expecting his first. We’re planning on helping financially in every way possible, thus all my musing on finances of late.

        • Absolutely agree that it’s not all about money. You don’t need to be in the top 10% to have a very nice life.

          I’m simply point out that the current system is squeezing the middle class hard.

      • Blind fealty to Marketism has been just as destructive to our people as the magical belief Muh Constitution will save us. Just as lower-case republicanism requires a White population to work, only the same group makes capitalism possible as something other than a human-destruction machine.

        Absolutely agreed that a focus on wiping out indebtedness of responsible Whites is the most productive charity.

      • Pieces of shit like Bezo’s ex-wife, Bezos, Buffett, Gates, etc., are a waste of human tissue. They won’t life a finger to help their own people.

  28. Good observations. Let me add on a couple.

    I think the renter mentality in the corporate world hits the analysts and IT guys really hard, on a personal level. None of these guys ever gave a damn about telephones or checking accounts or whatever, they just wanted to build cool stuff. Now that the corporation, itself, is a rental property, everything gets outsourced. These guys keep pointing out that the outsourcers are producing crap, but it literally doesn’t matter because it’s just a rental.

    I notice something similar with homes people theoretically own. They often will not make improvements that they would want to make, simply because the cost of the improvement exceeds the increase in the value of the home the improvement would bring. That is, their approach to their own home is exactly that of a landlord toward his rental properties.

    33
    • “I notice something similar with homes people theoretically own. They often will not make improvements that they would want to make, simply because the cost of the improvement exceeds the increase in the value of the home the improvement would bring. That is, their approach to their own home is exactly that of a landlord toward his rental properties.”
      That’s an interesting observation. We don’t look at houses as “homes” anymore. These aren’t dwelling places with a certain sentimental and spiritual value. They are potential assets which we would like to parlay off later for a profit.

      It doesn’t help that most houses being built today are of such low quality–they aren’t built to last, they are built to be constantly altered. They will change hands several times, and each owner can put their trendy stamp on it and then sell it off again.

      We often don’t pass our houses down anymore from one generation to the next. We live in them for a while, pay off the mortgage, and then use the profit to help fund our retirements.

      23
      • A statistic I recently saw just blew me away. 65% of Canadians are retiring with a mortgage. I wonder seriously if these people aren’t effing nuts.

        Debt is a TOOL, and if that tool is misapplied, you can really hurt yourself. If I were a single young man today, I would seriously consider Van Life. Were I married – a Tiny House.

        The first priorities of the Modern Dissident should be escaping the neoliberal madness (political correctness, wokism, progressiveness & pozz etc) – and establishing his financial independence – at any cost. Jews are not the only ones that wield debt and usury as a weapon. The banker is NOT your friend.

        Be smart and careful you young ones. Think with the big head, not the little one or the heart.

        26
  29. “Maybe the renter society is a natural response to the elimination of real threats to society.”

    I suspect that this is correct. Whenever one wants to own anything non-trivial, one must jump through a set of elaborate rules. Negotiating this takes patience and a degree of responsibility. If a society removes all threats, and will provide no matter what; then why would an individual bother themselves with more responsibility?

    Unfortunately for me, I am not of this mindset. I’d like a bit of hardship. I’d like to feel as though I’d earned my crust: the satisfaction of owning my own home (which I’d repair), owning my own car (a reliable runner for 12 years now) as well as many other things. Oh yes, owning my own DVDs – you never know when a subscription service may decide that something was, ahem, not amenable to ‘who we are’. On that not I bought the entire series of Tom & Jerry as well as the peerless show Thunderbirds for my son… you just never know when these things will be taken from you. It can be anything from a property to a well worn copy of your favourite book.

    Own what you want, while you can; because fuck them.

    31
    • That’s funny. I bought the entire Fred Quimby era Tom and Jerry DVD set while overseas, more than 15 years ago. Even then, the scenes involving the black maid were being memory-holed.

      • Hmm. We saw an episode the other day where Tom was sat on a record player. Jerry then activates the arm to place a record over Tom’s head… hard. The result is that it looks like one of those stereotypical chink hats. To add even more humour, as Tom rotates back around his eyes become slitty.

        The black maid appeared to still be going strong. “THOMAS? THOMAS!!!”… Or in the pilot episode ‘Jasper’, as Tom was then known.

  30. “There is a general shabbiness to our lives that erodes our civic pride and commitment to community.”

    There is a word for this that we hear ad nauseam in our degenerate society: diversity.

    31
  31. It is no great revelation, but I think that Mr. Z has hit on what should be the core strategy for the DR. Let’s focus on rebuilding and reclaiming our community. The essential tactics will be to enforce boundaries and insist on our right to free association. Boundaries include not just the national ones but, more importantly, the community ones that we enforce through exercising our associational choices. Make the definition and enforcement of boundaries our core objective (schwerpunkt).

    12
    • You would have to be willing to drive some people out of your community. Possibly through the use of unpleasant means.

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      • BTP: Absolutely. Which is why no woman should ever have a say. If you have leftists/globalists/diversity in your nascent community, don’t stop and chat. Don’t let your kids befriend theirs. Don’t do favors. Don’t include them in any get together. Don’t be a ‘neighbor,’ be a sub-rosa adversary. There are tons of subtle and not-illegal things one can do to make them know they’re not welcome. If you have the core of a White community and you all do this, you will drive a number of them away, eventually. Nice equals stupid. Don’t be nice, and don’t let women have a say. Be a man and police your boundaries.

        20
        1
        • Seen it. One black girl, looking a bit smug and celebrated, at the 2nd grandaughter’s high school graduation.

          Everybody, being small town rednecks, cheered and clapped when their ugly kid got the diploma. The black girl was announced, and… total silence.

          Not hostile. Complete and absolute indifference. Not one peep of welcome. No hellos, no scowls, simply nothing. At the high school, at the store, at the bank, the gas station, the Taco Bell.

          This happens every five or so years, a black family moves in. They last about 4 months.

          Not nice. Hard to do.
          A town tradition, and less than an hour below Ferguson, Missouri. 160 years, and still Negro-free.

          19
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      • Now, surely you don’t mean something like Mexican gangs fire-bombing Black families to discourage them from moving into the Barrio? 😈 I don’t recommend that, as it’s a good way to have the FBI and lesser lawmen on your ass and you’re probably looking at life in prison…

        But no law says you can’t fly a Confederate flag in your front yard (well, on 2nd thought yes, some HOAs may restrict that…)

        On a relevant note, I own in a not (yet) too shabby subdivision. Our HOA has a one-year-residency requirement to discourage investors. Still there are some rentals. And yes, they often create problems. There is even a NEGRO 😲 family but apparently we can’t do anything about that, since the 1960s or something 🤓

        For my future home, I’m going to look for a community that has a 100% ban on any rentals, short or long term. These exist but are infrequent. Besides restrictive covenants, other property rights (e.g. zoning) are being chipped away. Do you really want “low income” housing anywhere near you? Of course not. Even the 55+ community was hobbled years ago, some family wanted their daughter and child with them and eventually got the right. I think now there is a 30% set-aside for under-55s. Still, having met the age requirement some years ago 😡, I might consider it…

      • Life for Angolans in Idaho should be made so unpleasant that they flee pell-mell.

        9
        1
  32. Average home price (including condos) in Toronto: now over 1 million dollars. Average detached home is 1.6 mil. Immigration at record levels, 450,000/yr with a population of 38 million. Mostly from India and the middle East. Wages stagnant and fierce competition for entry level jobs. “Skilled immigrants” working at McDonald’s.#1 country of origin (India) – 90,000/yr, China #2 with 30,000. East Asian immigration is slowing alot.

    You better bet that you’re gonna be renting for life unless you have family money. And it’s just starting.

    Don’t know what the elites plan is. Don’t see the appeal of owning a Ferrari when 90% of the country is a slum (kinda limits the driving options). But they like it in India.

    29
    • Heard from an American Christian White woman:

      “These people( illegal aliens)have just as much right to come here as your people did years ago.” “The crisis at the border is not the migrant ‘s fault it’s the government’s.” “God loves all people, so you think only White people go to heaven?” “Segregating yourself from black and brown people is wrong. “You must be racist.” “There are just as many bad White people as there are bad black people.” “You must stop hating POC. ”

      And so ends a civilization.

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      2
      • “These people( illegal aliens)have just as much right to come here as your people did years ago.”

        No they don’t.

        “The crisis at the border is not the migrant ‘s fault it’s the government’s.”

        Who cares.

        “God loves all people, so you think only White people go to heaven?”

        Let Him have the final word on that.

        “Segregating yourself from black and brown people is wrong.”

        Safe as well.

        “You must be racist.”

        At least as racist as the average black.

        “There are just as many bad White people as there are bad black people.”

        No there aren’t.

        “You must stop hating POC. ”

        I love Proof of Concepts.

        16
      • “God loves all people, so you think only White people go to heaven?”

        Who God loves has zero to do with who I want living next door.

        God has always been a big fan of (ethnic and racial) nations and recognizing the differences and separations between them.

        15
        • Vizzini – I had someone once try to tell me that if I didn’t like big churches and/or diversity, I wouldn’t like Heaven either. But, for what it’s worth, the bible repeatedly speaks of different nations and peoples in the afterlife – i.e. no, we’re not all one mixed happy globalist community in Heaven. Now diversity and crowding in Hell, I can easily believe in.

          20
          • To riff on Osteii ‘s comment that I could not reply to. Hell must be like Jersey. But without the pizza. But with Bruce Springsteen.

            1
            1
      • Being a smart ass, I would throw back her “There are just as many bad White people as there are bad black people.”

        By saying something like: “You are correct but you won’t like knowing WHY! Because Blacks have about six times the violent crime rate as Whites, and Whites are about six times as numerous.” Which observation is generally correct.

      • Sadly, your report matches my experiences with most American Christians.

        Their belief seems to be, “If we all go to the same heaven then why shouldn’t we all be in the same country?”

        I know conservative Christians have a rebuttal to that, Tower of Babel and all, but they seem to be a miniscule minority. But what the heck, my beliefs are a miniscule minority with respect to most whites.

        8
        1
        • Having been around Evangelical churches on and off for about 30 years, it’s amazing to behold how they morphed from being a sorta-kinda bastion of badwhite crime think to today where they are on their way to becoming almost as much a pillar of the Poz as the fuckin Methodists and mainline Presbyterians.

          • We can blame it on the Leftist “march through the institutions.” But the problem is far broader than that. Far from being an unchanging edifice, the Church has adapted itself one way or another as times change. It’s not fair to single out Christianity for this; it is probably true of all human organizations. But to notice radical changes in a lifetime, that seems significant.

    • Do you have any thoughts on why E. Asian immigration to Canada is slowing vs. India and ME?

      In US, interestingly, we are beginning to have a hard time keeping top shelf Chinese tech talent. Flow now looks like undergrad degree at Tsinghua or equivalent, grad degree in US, postdoc/industry position in US, then back to China. 20 years ago these guys stayed here. I am happy they are going back, but it also says something bad about us that we are no longer attractive to this type of immigrant.

      Also, interesting subset of Canadian liberal is the property cuck. Owns a few properties in Toronto. Happy to sell out their family and speed down the demographic highway to hell as long as those property prices keep going up.

      • Uh, a lot of the Chinese who stayed were likely long-term plants for the purpose of academic and industrial espionage.

        Supposedly, South Koreans have stopped immigrating to the US because the quality of life is so high in South Korea.

        There are even rumors that some percentage of long-term South Korean immigrants to the US have even pulled up their roots and returned to the motherland.

        Good for them, I say!

        More nations should follow their example.

        17
      • Because E Asian (especially China) is decent to live in now. Chinese are also very aware of race. They hate Indians and don’t like having to live with them. They don’t like Arabs either. But if you have an honest conversation with them they’ll tell you that Canada is turning into a brown shithole and they’d rather live in China.

        Even Hindus will tell you Canada is making a mistake. Punjabis make up 50% of the indo “Canadian” population. The Arabs coming here to work from overseas are far more intelligent than the average Arab actually born in Canada. We are really taking the world’s sewer sludge.

        Boomers don’t care. Frankly nobody has cared, we’ve had open borders since 1970. Only now the cancer is spreading outside of Toronto and Vancouver.

        16
        • Canadian housing market is absolutely insane. I am constantly amazed the lack of rationality in the system (and my feelings about this issue now extent back almost 20 years). And I feel terrible for the young people starting out and having to buy in at the top of this ponzi scheme.

          We have the same general problems here in the US, but its worse in Toronto and Vancouver.

          • Like the pederast said: “The market can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent”

      • Flow now looks like undergrad degree at Tsinghua or equivalent, grad degree in US, postdoc/industry position in US, then back to China.

        And it is unbelievably foolish of us to enable that flow by allowing them to come here for grad degrees and industry experience/espionage.

        10
        • The way this is treated is to exclude Chinese nationals from sensitive industries and research. Same is true for Iranians and N Koreans, though I have less experience with the former and none with the latter.

          So, for example, if you were a Chinese scientist doing physics research you could work in basic research in an academic or government lab, or both basic and applied research in a academic/government lab in the biosciences but not basic and applied work in defense lab or applied work in a national lab. To give an example, it would be okay for a Chinese scientist to do anything at NIH but they would have a much harder time getting a position at John Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (which is a defense contractor). Other international scientists would be able to get a position at APL, but only if they were able to become US citizen and willing to give up their dual citizenships. Generally, US tries to be permissive to use of foreign talent and tries when there are issues with clearances to have talent work on basic rather than applied research or work on niche elements of a project that isolates them from system design and use. Applied defense work is done a need to know basis which means that no one (not even heritage Americans) has complete understanding of a project. One frustrating element of defense work is the inability to share learnings from projects with other people. In defense projects mistakes are made and corrected again and again and again because information sharing between projects is not allowed.

          Though I am an extreme immigration skeptic, as a scientist I still believe we benefit from the immigration of extraordinary talents to the US. Historically this was done using the O visa, with annual immigrants numbering a few thousand/year. IMO, in STEM fields these immigrants are unique and valuable and do not compete with ordinary Americans for jobs to a significant extent. O visa STEM immigrants would tend to be academic PhD researchers only and few would end up in silicon valley. I oppose bulk immigration of H1Bs and family visa immigrants that compete for jobs with Americans.

          2
          2
          • What a bunch of nonsense. Modern civilization was built with virtually no help from Asia. We’ll get by without them. Chinese immigration is a brain suck that goes largely in one direction — to Asia’s benefit.

    • Uh, the way things are trending anyone that wants to be prepared is going to want a fairly capable off-road vehicle.

      At a minimum this is some kind off-road capable vehicle like a Jeep or full-size pickup.

      A Jeep Grand Cherokee may be the ideal transition vehicle as things decline. I say this because GCs are decent on the highway while retaining pretty solid off-road abilities.

      • Off road vehicle and/or truck, yes. Jeep Grand Cherokee, no. I’d rather not specify which vehicle I’ve decided on (pending us having the $ after replacing one son’s aging truck and buying his wife a vehicle suitable for transporting soon-to-be grandson). My friend came to the exact same conclusion as I (we only learned that we thought the exact same thing, as usual, when we got together a few weeks later). Her husband bought a used Hummer a number of years ago and various Christmas gifts have been mods to that. It’s all part of hunkering down and trying to plan for a very dicey future.

          • Absolutely 4 wheel drive. The roads are so bad and under constant construction here in the DFW area. Add in inclement weather and I would no longer consider a simple sedan under any circumstances.

        • Okay, just looked into comparison of Grand Cherokee and other vehicles and I am rethinking. I want something used, though, say 2014-2019, so it depends on $ and what’s available when we can afford to buy.

          • If you’re looking at Jeeps, Wranglers are their primo off-road vehicle. The four door is a family friendly version.

          • We bought a 2014 unlimited sport last August and I couldn’t be happier. Gas mileage isn’t great (19-20 Hwy) but I can live with it. Good luck.

        • It’s strange but the Marty McSorley/Donald Brashear incident seems a tad bit more satisfying in today’s world. I can’t quite put my finger on it.

    • Canadian here too. You must have read that Turdeau and the Libs have plans to raise our pop from 38 to 100 millions by 2100. Just 80 years from now which seems far away., right ? Yet we were 96.5 % Europeans Whites in 1971 and are set to be a minority by 2040 if not sooner. That whole criminal enterprise has been implemented in less than 70 years where we have now Turd World immigrants everywhere. Picture the horrifying reality of 2100. Subsribe to: https://www.eurocanadian.ca/

  33. If you would like to see the insanity that is the logical conclusion of what a Renter Society could be, read this essay by one of your technology betters. It is infuriating to know that people with some power in this world see this as desirable.

    https://moores.samaltman.com/

    • Ahh yes, the old “AI will run everything” mental masturbation by another worshipper of scientism (vs. science).

      Why just yesterday I had terminal cancer but the nanobots in my bloodstream that were promised in the early 2000s just cleaned that up in a jiffy. Just like this scientism worshipper who wrote this article is certain that AI / robotics will be fully running utopia all built by the industrious minds of the 70 IQ imports we are currently being swamped with. Makes total sense to me… 🙄

      Said a different way: Don’t believe everything you read especially from soy sipping science worshipping manlets.

      17
      • Right.

        They’re going to implement this massively expanded digital spider web even though there is a semiconductor shortage shutting down parts of the auto and smartphone industries.

        Word out of Texas is that there is a looming plastics shortage due to the storm-interrupted petroleum production.

      • Their so-called “science worship” rubs right off when the science of genetics, biology, intelligence and evolution comes up. At that point, they make snake-handlers sound like Wittgenstein.

      • As a long term reader of science fiction, but a born pessimist, what amuses me the most is how the magical new technology is always used for good, never ever or selfish, ends. The nanobots (which don’t exist, so far as I know) or the mRNA therapy (been around years) that can cure diseases can — with some tweaking — probably do all manner of evil stuff I know little of, and want to think less of. 🙁

  34. Good column. We live in the Central Valley of California in what used to be a farm and ag support city. It’s a melting pot of colorful folks. But if you drive through our old neighborhood it has in about 30 years turned into a shithole. It’s a real conundrum for me but I’m so old it probably doesn’t make any difference. The fact is some of us are capable of constructing and maintaining a civilized society and some of us aren’t. And the number of folks who can’t are gaining on the ones who can. It’s what happens.

    32
    • The only way to keep a neighborhood “nice” is to make it unaffordable to huge swaths of the population.

      Even then, one a-hole signing up to rent out a place via the scourge of Section 8 housing can wreck an entire neighborhood in no time.

      27
      • See Ware, Massachusetts for further illustration of what Section 8 housing can do to a town.

        Family story; might be BS but I believe it:

        My dad’s father purchased a house on the tidy, blue collar, East Side of St. Paul in about 1910. It was a neighborhood of mostly first and second generation Swedes and Norwegians. He could have bought a bigger place in the same neighborhood for about five hundred more dollars, but it would have meant getting a loan, which he refused; taking on that much debt was unthinkable to him. And even in 1910 $500 wasn’t THAT much dough.

        My grandparents raised four boys in that little house, all of whom went on to become productive citizens, even though one was killed in the Philippines in 1945.
        Drove by the house last summer, it’s now in a third world slum.

        • That story rings true. My mother still lives fairly close to that area. (age 96). E. St. Paul is now a suburb of Mogadishu.
          The speed of decay is truly astonishing.
          Mom does not recall ever voting to turn Minn into the Horn of Africa.

          • I grew up in Merriam Park, on the other side of St. Paul; that’s still a pretty nice neighborhood.
            St. Paul, now with its first black mayor is in trouble: Melvin Carter is filling city hall up with hacks, and high salaried hacks at that, all the while ignoring the basic functions of city governance.
            And, I highly doubt that Carter, the pathetic Jacob Frey, and Tiny Tim Walz are even close to prepared for the shitstorm in the wake of an acquittal in the Chauvin trial.

        • I shared this story not long ago, but in a journal my father kept, he related the story of my grandfather (ethnic German steel worker, devout Catholic, able to make/modify/fix anything, avid reader, etc.) tossing a neighbor out of the house in the 50s, because the neighbor was circulating a petition to keep a Puerto Rican from moving onto their block. Grandpa passed away in 1976, when the same block was still reasonably middle-class and white. Today, it’s majority vibrant, mostly Hispanic, and a complete dump from one end to the other. I’ll never stop wondering if the shoe would have dropped had he lived longer.

      • The good news is that affordable, ethnically, religiously and otherwise self-segregated communities are probably coming back.

        The bad news is that it’ll probably require a devolution until our countries are similar to what daily life is in Africa, the Mid-East, Latin America, etc. In many parts of the world, your “neighborhood” would better be described as an armed camp or garrison. Inside, life is pretty decent. Kids can play in the street. But never too far away are the men with assault rifles and in some cases more powerful weapons. Does your neighborhood really need mortars and an anti-aircraft battery? Apparently in some parts of the world, it does.

        Trips outside the perimeter? They will be infrequent, and only with good reason. If you go, it’ll be in an armed convoy, or at the least, with one or more escorts fully armed.

        Of course, such a world places signifcant limitations on freedom of movement, commerce, as well as other qualities of life that we even now, still enjoy in the West. I don’t think Amazon delievers much in these areas.

  35. “There is a general shabbiness to our lives that erodes our civic pride and commitment to community.”

    Publicly funded modern art?

    11
  36. “The traveling circuses of old had deeper roots than the typical tech startup. They at least owned the tents.”

    After I stopped laughing, I realized: “Shit, this is actually true.”

    22
  37. In my neck of the woods at least, scarcity is starting to make a comeback, and people are responding by starting to save and be more productive.

    This is all nascent, and there are plenty of covid tourists drifting about, but I get the feeling it’s the start of a trend, and I’m glad to see it.

    17
  38. maybe one part of the post scarcity society is there is no longer a threat of a genuine crisis

    The accusation over at Zero Hedge (yeah) was that the ongoing chip shortage is being driven by inflationary pressures, i.e., companies way down the supply line are having issues using the money from the widget they just sold to build the next widget since the time value of money has shrunk inside their manufacturing timeline. If true (ZH is prone to “wishful thinking”) the companies involved will cook up a workaround, but it will just buy time until the inflation rate gets larger. However, the real action comes in when food distribution starts running into the same issue. There will be all kind of money, all kind of government checks, but nothing to buy with it.

    10
    • One of the problems with the food supply is nobody wants to work in it. It’s hard work. Nobody wants to go in the Peach orchard and climb that ladder.

      7
      1
      • I don’t know, I find working on my farm to be pretty enjoyable, and vastly more rewarding than paper pushing. But then, I own the place, so maybe that makes a difference. I’d also bet that lots of people could learn to enjoy it if they were paid, say, $20/hr instead of minimum wage.

        21
      • Libs always say “well immigrants will do it”, but that’s presuming there is still a white managerial class keeping things in order. Without white farmers there would be no ag or fruit to pick in California.

        It’s not just the “low hanging fruit” jobs being replaced anymore. The entire framework will be destroyed.

        19
        • No no no. You’re mistaken.

          Zimbabwe has a booming agricultural sector, and in fact has yields of crop far superior to anything currently in North America. You see, if we could just import some Zimbabweans (average national IQ 120), who were familiar with this area, we’d revolutionize food production.

          Said nobody ever.

          24
          • To quote the great William Windom in the Star Trek episode “The Doomsday Machine “:

            “There was, but not any more…”

    • I googled Zero hedge and found faked sites. Luckily I had an old bookmark to get to the authentic site. So ZH has been gay-opped. This confers some degree credibility with me that the right ppl are so upset by ZH that they set up mirror sites. The level of deception at every level of media is dislocating. I’ve begun to only trust people or organizations that I’ve followed for at least 5 years, and them not uncritically. You shall know them by their fruits has never seemed so relevant to me as today. It’s a weird paranoid way of thinking for me. I really miss my high trust society. The red pill sucks most days.

      16
    • In defense of Zero Hedge, it is one of the very few sites I financially support. This one is another. Yes, they write or republish some very left-field (as opposed to left-wing!) stuff. But they often are far ahead of the curve. I first read about the Covid-19 (possible) lab release, way back in January 2020. One reason I contribute to them (and here) is because they allow great freedom in posting comments.

  39. The United States is approaching Gilded Age levels of wealth concentration/inequality. But as bad as that age was in many ways, this modern Bankster Age is far worse.

    While uttlerly ruthless businessmen, the Rockefellers and Carnegies of that age at least still held some feeling of connection to the American people (even if that feeling was partially out of fear), building universities, libraries and other institutions that made the community better.

    Our modern overlords have no love or connection with the people, often because the belong to completely different tribe.

    In addition, the Gilded Age was a period of incredible advancement. They actually built things, like railroads and factories that eventually helped make people’s lives much, much better. The Bankster Age rarely makes our lives better and often makes them worse by eroding our social capital and allowing the invasion of our homelands.

    How long can a society function when run by grifters who have no connection to the people. The con man doesn’t make for a good leader.

    43
    1
    • One effective seed to plant in people’s minds is Z-man’s observation that Google or Amazon are not going to sponsor your kid’s Little League team, advertise in your church bulletin, or beautify your neighborhood park. And they’re certainly not going to construct anything approaching the century-old Carnegie library in my hometown.

      36
    • I remember in college, the non whites (even Canadian born ones) would gleefully announce during their case study presentations that they would recommend outsourcing. It was a little thing but it always stuck with me for some reason.

      Even though they’re born in Canada (just as Canadian as I am), they still hate it and take pleasure stripping it of wealth. Their joyous tone was the main giveaway. For myself and other white guys, Canadian-made was a little more important – and if it had to be outsourced it certainly wasn’t a happy or easy decision.

      Another time we were touring a plant, and this old boomer manager was proudly telling some Pakis that all the other plants had gone to Mexico, but he was keeping jobs in Canada. And they just stared at him blankly, and kinda nodded “oh ok”.

      17
    • Morgan was a banker, but the robber barons made things, oil, cars, steel etc. what do Gates, Bezos et al really make?

  40. This is really a natural consequence of the globalization we discussed yesterday, no? Borders disappear, community disappears, individuals become hyper atomized.

    A small anecdote. I continue to own my family farm and work it part-time. For the first time in my life, I have a nagging feeling the government will take it from me. I’m not talking about eminent domain, political chicanery, or so forth. I can see it seized for no reason other than what it represents.

    I feel the same way to a lesser extent about my business.

    This is the very definition of anarcho-tyranny. The lack of certainty of ownership is a huge feature of the postmodern era.

    33
    • “A small anecdote. I continue to own my family farm and work it part-time. For the first time in my life, I have a nagging feeling the government will take it from me.”

      yeah, it’s understandable for you to get the rhodesian hibbie-jibbies, the younger gen appears to have a collectivist-oriented mindset, they have a flair for those bernie old school practices, especially when they’re directed at white guys.

      11
    • I’ve started to notice that same concern among people and not even particularly rich people. There’s a fear that anything that they save or build will be taxed away from them in the future.

      21
      • Citizen: Definitely this. Totally aside from 0% interest rates, it’s foolish and dangerous to keep more than a minimal amount of $ in the bank or one’s 401k (like a big flashing come-and-get-me light to the new POX feds) and it’s worth buying at least some precious metal. Groceries/supplies cost ever more, but I am still building our stock of various items. The water still runs, but I’m taking concrete steps to have a substantial emergency supply. Same in all areas of life. Nothing feels secure anymore, and whenever I read any post or comment anywhere talking about “the next generation” or “in 20 years” I just laugh.

    • Check out the story on zero hedge. A couple bought a house in cali for 560K hard-saved cash. Closed on it, and the previous owner squatted on it. For over a year. Now, they broke and homeless. Police say nothing they can do. How you like those apples? Incidentally, I suspect V Hanson is one of our commentators on this thread:)

      14
      • Well, it is California after all, and there’s a decent likelihood those two dweebs voted for enough of the s*** they’re now having to deal with. And as a further unfortunate consequence, I’m seeing a lot a Cali license plates in my neighboring state – we need to build another wall.

    • “I have a nagging feeling the government will take it from me. ”

      I have had this feeling for a long time. Ever since I first considered buying a house. When younger, and spurred on to own a property, I used to ask “But can’t it just be taken? I mean, I don’t really own it if I don’t have the force to keep it under all circumstances, do I?”. The stock response was usually that it would never happen. As one respondent to you has noted, many seem more collectively minded, and when this entitled scum float to the top of the tree, they may well begin with seizures of some kind.

      Scary indeed. Quite honestly, I can see massive parallels in most people’s respect for freedom and their respect for ownership of things. And a lot of them just keep on gettin’ happier about the lockdowns, so make of that what you will…

      • I get reminded of that nagging feeling about the government’s appetite for our assets when I pay my annual property tax. Not only the money, but the realization that you’re not actually in full control of what you “own”. Don’t even want to get started on having to ask permission for minor renovations to “my” property.

      • The wildest part is the entitlement mentality manifests almost universally among White Upper Middle Class Millennials and Gen Z’ers. They are quite aware the holdout owners will be wealthy. Where they are deluded is this eventually will include them when the Cloud People-adjacent are impolitely informed they are not in the Club.

        To be clear, this is not a new phenomenon limited to the young and the rich. When I first experienced home ownership, I was single. A female acquaintance was familiar with the property and informed me the 1200-square feet were excessive for one person and it was selfish to live in such extravagance. This was not some fire-breathing Marxist or a woman who wanted to cohabitate, either. That mentality has grown worse.

        Those who early on pegged this as “socialism for thee, crony capitalism for me” nailed it.

        There will be an ongoing struggle the remainder of our lives to retain our assets. What isn’t stripped from us to bribe the Vibrant will be stolen on behalf of the Cloud People.

        Mentally, I no longer own my farm.

      • Back in the 2000s I considered emigrating to Latin America. From reading a few books, one message I got was: Beware buying your home or any real estate! Not to make a dissertation of this, but the legal systems are completely alien and not to put too fine a point on it, fraud is endemic. In fairness, many of these nations are quite peaceful and tolerate, sometimes even welcome foreigners. But they have different traditions and ways of doing business. Yes, there is crime and fraud, but a lot of the problem is Gringoes expecting business being done the same way as it was back home. If you go in with that attitude, you are bound to be disappointed.

        In the case of Mexico, which is probably one of the better countries, one trap involved thinking you’d bought property and owned it, but later discovered it was Ejido land — bascially land that belongs to the government. You’d get booted off what you thought was “yours.” In other lands, “selling” the same property to multiple gullible “owners” (at same time, not serial flipping) was a popular deception. The general advice was to RENT, not BUY. Similar caveats apply for banking, investing, etc. As someone said, “They are called a third-world country for a reason.” Even having said that, lots of people buy. One amusing gambit: in Mexico it’s illegal for a foreigner to own land a certain nearness to a border. To get around that, you just have a Mexican trust “own” the property. Gringo gets his home, Mexican legal system pockets some funds, everybody happy.

        There are always ways to work the system. Even though Mexico is realtively easy to get a resident visa, on one trip, I met an expat who found it easier to just hire a local to take his passport down to the Honduran border every few months and get it stamped for a nomial cost 😀

    • As an adjunct point, I can see them trying to shut down farmer’s markets to force people to shop at grocery stores so they can be tied into the digital spider web that is the real point of the Covid psyop.

      • After a movement to encourage urban gardens and animal husbandry, the recent trend has been to discourage individual food production, so you may be onto something. While the obvious anti-White bias got all the attention in the recent farm component of the “Covid” bill. But it has far worse implications because 92 percent of farms are owned by Whites, and the foundation has been laid to end that.

    • One overlooked aspect of the lockdowns is that they’ve not only destroyed a lot of existing businesses but created an atmosphere of uncertainty among those who might start a new business that they will actually be able to keep it open. The answer to the question “Would you start a business here?” for many people, particularly the smarter ones, is “hell, no!”. Sure right now it’s masks and social distancing but who knows, maybe tomorrow The Great and Mighty Fauci declares that you now need 12′ of social distance. Uh, oh, now your maximum allowable occupancy is 1/4 of its current value (remember, area is a *square* function). Your already tiny profit margin is now going entirely to the electric and heating bill.

      There are lots of reasons some countries remain shitholes. We all know about the um, genetic factors, but in some it’s just that even the people who aren’t congenital idiots refuse to invest in anything because they know how corrupt and insane the government is. Now, this mentality is spreading here.

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      • Pozy;
        Good observation. Side point: Equities have (more than) priced in a business rebound that’s unlikely for the reasons you cite. At bubble levels even.

        Plan accordingly, I’d say.

      • Killing the entrepreneurial spirit is most definitely one of the main goals of the build back better crowd.

        • Hey, the Biden administration, *cough*, is discussing a 3T dollar infrastructure bill – maybe it’ll supply shovel ready jobs to fix all those potholes in Z’s hood. That’ll be sure to put those future and ex entrepreneurial talents to good use.

          • Interestingly maintaining infrastructure is something that the government is supposed to be doing, but I have no confidence in their ability to do so.

          • As bad as Baltimore, Z’s “Lagos” is, and it’s pretty bad, take a video field trip to the real city in Nigeria. Look at some of the photos. Read some of the accounts. Baltimore looks like a paradise in comparison.

      • We may overlook it but the Ruling Class did not. In fact, fear of opening a small business very much is a feature and a bug for them. Regardless of the merits of the lockdowns, there is no question one goal was to eliminate small business and it largely succeeded. The riots also had as a goal to do the same and run Whites out of gentrified urban enclaves.

        • Re your last sentence. Perhaps a silver lining. If things really deteriorate, a large, or even small, city is the last place on Earth you’d want to be 🙁

  41. Low interest rates make going into massive debt appealing, after all the payment on 500,000 will be the same as the payment on 400,000 a couple years ago.
    And all those subscription services that automatically deduct from my credit card or checking account.?
    Who notices?
    Certainly not the kids in public schools being educated in wokeness and not basic economics.
    I see more renters ahead.
    The ruling class are draining the population of assets and the population is willingly participating.

    13
    • We were speaking to a fellow rural-ite and as she walked us around her place she quoted all her acquisitions in terms of the monthly cost. It was just bizarre to me.

      13
    • When I financed a car for the first time 11 years ago, the sales manager asked me what kind of payment I was looking for. I told him No, we’ll negotiate the price, and I’m sure I’ll be able to afford the payments. It was a little unnerving realizing that’s how most people must conduct their finances.

      13
      • Car salesman always negotiate for a monthly payment. People walk in with an amount per month that they can afford and everything works around that.

      • I recently bought a car. I was going to pay cash, as I had not bought a car in 20 years. The car fund was plenty topped up as a result. The dealer kept pushing me to lease and then eventually offered me a negative interest rate loan. The only catch is I could not pay off the note for 120 days. They made sure of that by making the payment three months out.

        Doing a little thinking on it, I realized they are bundling my good credit loan with a bunch of subprime loans. The package is then sold off in tranches or in whole. The banks are now renters too. They are renting my car loan for three months.

        34
        • That’s insightful. I bet you are correct. I really bought into the ownership society stuff in the bush years. What a fool i was. Your point about rental lawns is correct. However, how a mortgage that many just walk away from is functionally different from rental contract eludes me.

        • Investors are starved for yield. With no ability to earn a real return on treasuries – and less than a percentage point on Aaa corporate bonds – investors being forced to moving into ever riskier assets for return.

          Pension funds, endowments, family offices, all the big money are scrambling for return. I suspect that it won’t end well.

          • The main problem with all those schemes was unrealistic planning from the get go.

            You can’t have a large, stable pension vehicle that also makes guaranteed 7-8% returns year-in and year-out.

            Yet, that range is exactly what institutions like CalPERS thought they could easily achieve.

            11
          • Wild,

            A lot of those assumptions grew out of the 80s and 90s when interest rates were much higher. If treasuries are yielding 5% to 10%, and you keep 50% of your money in bonds, you get 2.5% to 5% from that portion of your portfolio alone. Not too hard to fairly safely get to 7.5% from there.

            Now, the 10-year is yield 1.6%, so that same 50% allocation gets you 0.8%. Now you need to find 6.7% from the remaining 50% of your portfolio, i.e. 13.4% return from those assets.

            That. Will. Not. Happen.

            The trailing PE of the S&P BEFORE Covid hit was close to 25. (It’s 40 now, but that’s inflated due to low earnings.) Even if profits return to pre-Covid levels tomorrow, you’re looking at ~6% nominal (4% yield plus 2% inflation). And that’s assuming the PE won’t revert back to its longer-term average of 18-20 and that profit return quickly.

            Pension funds, etc., are looking to private equity to help, but PE is a spent force. In the past, it was really just a small/micro value stock play, but PE got too big so they can’t swim in that pond anymore, so PE will return similar to the S&P.

            Some them are selling puts to generate income, but that’s a recipe for disaster.

            The funny thing about pension funds and endowments is that everyone – and I mean, everyone, including them – know that they’re toast. It’s no secret and hasn’t been for a very long time.

            Regardless, their problems are all of our problems because they’ll need a bail out. We also have to deal with the same issues as investors, though I believe that there ways out of this for small investors, but that’s just me.

        • I’ve been in similar situations. I got the car price on the internet via Edmunds or a similar service, walked in and told them I was just paying cash. The sales guy was visibly disappointed which was the exact opposite of what I was expecting.

          • These days they have all kinds of ways of making their vig off you, and they get the commissions to make it worth their while.

    • “The ruling class are draining the population of assets and the population is willingly participating.”

      They have been willing to destroy the next generation for years. I look at those that have children and divorce as scum. I know, ‘whataboutism’ the man beating the woman, etc. – as in the case of ‘abortion whatabout rape and incest yadda…’

      How hard is it to count the folks you know that see their kids plunged into debt for some undergrad crap degree, ‘everyone is doing it’… while making surely sure two shiny new Subarus or Prius’s (sold based on “love” after all) are in the drive? Replete with the usual virtue signaling, vomit inducing bumper stickers.

      How many plan to “die broke”? Enjoy that whopping ‘home equity’ and use it for yummy cruises, while it makes their own children unable to afford a first home anywhere near the age they were when they first bought?

      The ruling class? Look in the mirror, people.

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    • It is low-hanging fruit for more control via “private business,” too. Watch for lenders to start to attach more and more government mandates (thinks solar panels and so forth) to home loans, even those that have been extended. Theoretically the original contract with the lender cannot be modified to include such provisions, but, hahahahaha.

    • I think we’re tracking towards runaway hyperinflation and a dollar crash.

      They won’t have nearly enough people to collect 1% of the outstanding debts.

      May as well max the cards to buy hard assets on credit.

      Molon labe.

      • I’m nervous about my virtual stock portfolio… Could crash – but as others have mentioned it could just be seized. One day my Zman comments will be linked to my brokerage account, and I’ll wake up with 0$. What am I gonna do? They already halted trading of GME and other shares because the ceo supposedly “felt they were valued too high”. So much for the free market.

        Might buy a bit of gold. Right now I have a chunk of cash and bullets as hard assets. But 90% is still in online banks or on the stock market.

        • I’m pretty happy buying tubes of 1 oz silver bullion with the occasional 1/10 oz or 1/4 oz gold piece. Maybe toss some 1/2 oz silver in there for flexibility. These will be good for almost all day-to-day trading in goods and services.

          I’m just not sure how much utility 1/2 and 1 oz gold pieces will have going forward. ARs and ammo boxes will be seen as having far more value than a 1 oz gold piece.

          Large-scale assets like transport and shelter will be so highly valued that people will squat, steal, or shoot to acquire them.

          Cryptos might be great for those who bought in from 2008-2014, but I would stay away at this point. I had little vision at that point in my life so I don’t hold any. If I did, I’d be converting at least 25-30% to cash, bullion, and hard assets.

          • Apropos of nothing, but I recently learned — and the person who told me this said that it should remain a secret locally — that a fellow living out in a rural area of my county bought the farm adjacent to his existing 250 acre spread. So he sent an Amish worker over to the farm house, >3000 sq. feet, to assess its condition and makes some repairs. The first day on the job the Amish guy calls him and says, “you’d better come over here.” He had decided to work on the main staircase and for some reason felt that one of the stairs looked off. So he decided to pry it up and redo it. Underneath, he found $70K worth of silver bars. Who knows how long they’d been there? Probably a century or more. Most likely, there was an owner who had put them there for safe keeping, then forgot to tell anyone before he died.

            The new owner of course bought a good metal detector and combed the rest of the house, but came up empty. He wants to keep it quiet however, in case the previous owner wants to make a claim on them.

  42. I’m not even sure a genuine crisis would change the “renter” mentality of this former country. We’ve become so atomized – particularly in the past year with the phony covidian hysterics, I don’t know what could cause a large percentage of the population to coalesce around a common goal.
    I guess as a fellow poster (Lineman) has exhorted – build small local communities of like minded folks in an attempt to ride out the coming storms as best we can.

    14
    • – wake up 1 minute before work starts in your tiny (but expensive) studio
      – log into work remotely
      – say good morning to the random collection of foreign aliens that make up your “team”
      – pretend to do work all day. Listen to karens bitch and do a bit of work that the African / Arab diversity hire neglected.
      – log off
      – play videogames
      – go to sleep

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        • What about periodic breaks for… erm…self care?
          The OnlyFans account is available all hours of the day.

        • I know a couple guys into vapes and weed.

          Frankly, it’s annoying as both are highly overrated.

          “Dude. You wanna smoke a bowl?

          C’mon dude, this stuff is great.

          Dude you wanna hit this?”

          Yeah….no.

      • ‘say good morning to the random collection of foreign aliens that make up your “team”’

        Sounds like my team catch ups at many a previous employer. So many asians. All wobbling their heads in agreement. It may sound harsh, but when one pissed me off (due to poor language skills) I’d imagine being an old governor of an Indian province, and having him blown from cannon…

        Can’t do that anymore.

  43. You’ve hit on the topic of reciprocity before. It is largely dead and with it societal cohesion. Bad thing. In one of the write-ups on the St. Floyd jury selection saw a quote from one of the potential jurors. When asked if he was concerned for his safety, his answer was basically, “yes, but I also feel it my duty to be willing to do this” Of course he was struck by the prosecution. The rest were either shit scared or were eager for their opportunity to join the lynch mob and maybe get a book deal after the body was cut down from the gallows. But once citizenship becomes a rental agreement, we’re in Late Empire territory.

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  44. I definitely have a renters mentality about this country. I have no interest in watching it prosper, thrive and grow. I only care about what I can take out of it. And look forward to the day when the global world is fully realized it will only take one match to set it aflame.

    17
    • Sadly I have to admit that I am pretty much of the same mind.What would “prospering” actually look like anyway other than providing for even  more degradation, corruption, stupidity, incompetence and general failure?The “America” that I grew up in is now long ago and far away. My awakening began about 1970 and has been a continuing process ever since, but I really never imagined that America could be so… (words fail mere here) as to ever let things arrive at this point.

      • I think that our prosperity/success has ironically led to our decline.
        We are such a wealthy nation that legions of idle people have nothing better to do than complain and protest imaginary issues.
        If we were all concerned with getting enough work to buy our daily bread, things like “tranny story hour” could never exist.

      • You started it! A Montana sheep rancher is vacationing in New Zealand. Walking down a country lane, he comes upon a local committing an unnatural act with an ewe. “You know, back home we shear those,” he chuckles. The Kiwi retorts, “I’m not bloodying shearing this with anyone.” 🙂

  45. What is that saying from the resetters, in the future you will own nothing and be happy. Well, maybe not the happy part.

    Infrastructure really does look worse than ever. Finally got around to fixing a bridge near me and looks like it will take a year and half of closure to repair. Not so if they addressed it earlier. Money probably went somewhere else. Until then paybridge $5 a pop.

    Can’t even update my Quickbooks 2012 unless I go with subscription. I relented on Photoshop finally at ten dollars a month. No more I hope. Windows, games will all be subscription based soon. Changes are always for the worst it seems.
    All change isn’t progress and all progress isn’t forward.

    Oh yeah, I forgot, the country truly is screwed.

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    • Software as a service is a huge scam, there is no benefit to the end user. Plus you are giving all of your data to the software company. It amazes me that people didn’t do more to resist the implementation of it.

      16
        • Generally speaking corporations aren’t very smart. Decisions are made by individuals in the middle and upper levels based on personal interest; as in short term how will it help, reflect on, or otherwise affect my career.

    • I have my Office 2010 suite on disc and it gets recylced every time a family member gets a new computer. At work we’ve recently switched to Office 365. I don’t see how it’s any better than the product from a decade ago, and the printed page looks the same, no matter what version you used to create it.

      15
        • “Bah, technology: why, a fax machine is just a toaster with a phone hooked up to it.” Grandpa Abraham Simpson

          • Peloton, the company whose product is basically an iphone hooked up to an exercise bike, now has a market cap greater than the company that has made the best selling automobile in America for the past 20 plus years ; Ford.

      • The free office suites have gotten really good over the years.

        NeoOffice and LibreOffice are the two most similar to MS Office.

        Yes, you are simply sending your data to different folks, but at least you’re not actively paying for that privilege every year.

      • Enterprise businesses, especially in the current age where anyone wants to have any hope of being part of a government supply chain, cannot use unsupported software like that. Microsoft, Adobe, etc. have used their monopoly power to basically dictate the business usage (and as some of the more conspiratorial minded think, have themselves driven the security standards that would “encourage” businesses to use their rental products.

    • This is why one needs skills. Same here, but run an XP machine as a Quickbooks server for 2012. Run Photoshop CS5 on that garbage known as Win 10. That scuzz Gates moved on from monopolistic practices to force his inferior products on the market to fomenting for us to eat bugs. And blit out the sun.

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