The American economy is a middleman economy, designed around the idea of there being a person or group of persons between the parties of a transaction. No matter how trivial the transaction, there is someone trying to get in on the deal. This middleman brings nothing to the transaction. He adds no value and only facilitates the deal because the rules have been set so that he is required. The middleman is the ever-present silent partner that is the point of the economic arrangements.
If you go back a century, selling a house involved three parties. The seller and buyer, of course, and the government. You had to register the transaction with the government so it was known who held the deed for the property. If there was a lien on the property, then the bank would be involved, but only on one side. Today there are dozens of people involved in the transaction. The government is promising to add dozens more in order to flood stable neighborhoods with magic.
Just about every transaction in the economy now has silent partners. This is why the economy is still a mess due to the Covid lockdowns. Shutting down supply chains was always a dumb idea, but getting them restarted means activating millions of middlemen who have to get paid for the system to work. In a completely financialized economy, nothing moves without money moving first. The money men are the ever-present middlemen in every deal, no matter how small.
The riddle for all human societies since the first settlements was what to do with the people who could not work or would not work. The old and the sick needed care, so they not only were not working, they took someone out of the workforce. This meant that those who did work had to produce extra. It also meant that those who were loafers had to be dealt with so they were not freeloading off the system. Of course, many of the loafers were called the rulers, so that was a problem.
The way out of this problem has been productivity. The farmer who could grow enough food for his family plus the king’s share was never enough. He had to grow enough to feed himself, plus the king and some extra for the king to sell. That way the king could field an army and have a nice castle. Every king wants a better castle, so the drive to produce more with less is a feature of human society. The great ideological wars since the Enlightenment have been about how best to do this.
The claim by communists and capitalists was that eventually, productivity would produce so much that scarcity would be solved. Human society, if planned the right way, would produce so much with so little that want would disappear. That could never happen, of course, but the West has reached the point where everyone has the basics if they want them. In America, poor people are obese because they spend all day eating and watching television in comfortable homes.
That does not mean the problem of economics has been solved. The old free loading problem is still there. Those millions of middlemen baked into the economy are still there, snatching away a little from every transaction. Not only are they skimming from every transaction, they no longer help facilitate the deal. Instead, they often just steal the entire value of the deal. America cannot build a road or bridge, mostly because the money is stolen before the first shovel hits the dirt.
In other words, all of those middlemen are now consuming the host. This army of people involved in every deal are no longer just a weird patina on the economy, but a very serious rot of the system. This is why hedge funds are buying up residential housing to create new renters. The very top of the rentier economy has run out of people from whom to skim, so they are forced to eat their own. The big skimmers are now going after the small skimmers down the ladder from them.
Running a skim is nothing new, but even the mafia understood that you can shear a sheep many times, but you can only skin him once. The modern mafia, the managerial elite, entangled with the powerful, are moving from sheering to skinning. They have busted out everything, so now they are busting out the bust outs. The hedge funds robbing the real estate bandits is like a bank robber robbing drug dealers, in that it says the criminal ecosystem is out of balance.
The story that started with the problem of scarcity has arrived where it started. What is to be done with those who don’t produce? Every society needs an elite and they do not produce in the conventional sense. Their duty is to coordinate. What happens when you have too many people in the elite? Turning them into middlemen seemed like a solution, but now we have too many middlemen. So many in fact that they are now making it impossible for the productive to stay ahead of demand.
The old image of economics is of a group of men pulling a wagon. In the wagon are the unproductive, like rulers and bankers. The goal was to keep the people in the wagon to the barest minimum. The modern wagon is still relatively light, but now the men pulling the wagon are surrounded by an army of people impeding their progress, as they demand a fee for every step. Worse yet, the people in the wagon are creating people who take up positions between the men pulling the wagon.
That has been one lesson of Covid. The reason the economy did not collapse when millions were sent home from their jobs is that most of the people being sent home were not doing anything all that useful. Some were, for sure, but the empty offices went unnoted for a reason. Just as every snowstorm in Washington reveals that vast number of unessential workers, Covid revealed the vast number of middlemen. Many were unaware of their middleman status. They thought they were essential.
Of course, the bizarre fads vomited up by the Cloud People is another sign that we have too many people standing around looking for something to do. Idle hands to the Devil’s work and Old Scratch is spoiled for choice these days. We simply have too many middlemen with time on their hands. The system is overstocked with them, so they sit around dreaming up new ways to horn in on the life of the productive. Now the middlemen have middlemen and that cannot go on forever.
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Z, you do realize that the entire government that actually does anything, accomplishes anything is also ‘financialized’? Meaning contracted out.
Certainly this is how DC actually governs.
They do nothing, nothing of import but cut contracts.
DC usually spreads and rotates the contracts, this is called ‘consensus’ and of course not of the voters, silly! The people who actually count.
Core businesses like Blackrock, L3, Halliburton, etc are excepted, but generally DC has ‘consensus’ by spreading contracts around.
This includes now military logistics and administration.
Troops cannot deploy until the contracts are cut, the logistics is all contractors.
Our actual government in any real terms beyond pointy sharp bang bang things like the police, military [and not all of the military in real war terms] are contracted out.
SNAP, EBT, Obamaphones…
Our government is a financialized contracting office.
That’s it, the rest is farce. This of course was what really scared them about Trump, he understood contractors. Not that he applied the knowledge, too busy with being a TV show.
Apparently, the drama in the Senate is reconciliation of Biden’s “Green” appropriation bill which is not Green enough for Bernie, Lizzie, etc. So using 51 votes they will ram through some god-forsaken mess that will jack up energy prices immediately for some green nirvana where special interest grifters get paid lots and lots.
Meanwhile Glencore and Trafigura and the rest are predicting $100 barrel oil. Heck any major crisis and I think we could go to $200. And stay there for a good long time.
Normie will be pissed when he can’t afford even chicken, can’t gas up his car, vibrants conduct ever closer home invasions, TV is nothing but depraved vibrant garbage, and his power is out anyway most of the day. Wells Fargo is apparently now canceling and freezing accounts of Republican office seekers, and may well expand that to voters. Woke capital doesn’t care — they always have DC bailouts.
Woke Capital and the Political Class seem intent on fighting some battle this summer or fall — the smart thing for the Regency would have been to let the good times roll for everyone, but Punitive Virtue Signaling is harder to stop than the Flagellants. [The Church hated those guys, as they signaled that spiritual salvation could be had by whipping ones self instead of communion, confession, etc. through the Church. They were too powerful however to take on directly. A lesson there I suppose. We are being directed by Flagellants. As opposed to flatuence. ]
It’s going to get better when normies credit lines get closed or shaved down. It’s a good thing employers have to take taxes out of paychecks, or there’d be a tax revolt.
The Atlantic posts Charles Murray, who says Identity politics are poison to the American “Experiment “ and it’s probably too late.
https://spectatorworld.com/topic/identity-crisis-politics-race-wreck-america-charles-murray/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
It was too late after the Watts riots @sshole, thanks for checking in Mr Murray.
Now we play out the hand we were dealt.
As much as I respect Murray, it will be a supreme pleasure to deny him sanctuary in the ethnostate. Godd@mn traitor. Go join your vibrant friends, you brilliant imbecile.
“Go join your vibrant friends, you brilliant imbecile.”
LOL
Years ago, back when I was still [more-or-less] a Normie-Con, I had an email exchange with Murray & Cuckbyshire, concerning the proper use of the word “devolve”, which Cuckbyshire insisted on spelling as “evolve” [i.e. darwinian nihilism in a nutshell – there being no difference whatsoever between evolving and devolving – they are precisely one and the same phenomenon].
“To degenerate or deteriorate…”
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/DEvolve
“To arise…”
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Evolve
The tl;dr == I can assure you that Murray is a world-class jackass.
PS: In retrospect, the aforementioned email exchange was one of the little bumps in the road which helped awaken me from my slumber and eventually realize that Conservatism Inc was rotten to the core.
So thanks for that, Boomer Metacuck #1 and Boomer Metacuck #2.
OT: Who says the USA no longer has an appreciation for its history (from the Smithsonian magazine no less):
“A priceless piece of queer history has returned home to San Francisco”
Long-Lost Fragment of First Rainbow Pride Flag Resurfaces After Four Decades
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/original-rainbow-pride-flag-returns-san-francisco-after-43-years-180978000/
Smithsonian magazine executive editor Debra Rosenberg.
Smithsonian magazine executive editor Debra Rosenberg.
A few years ago, I realized that the PAW was completely pwned them – all of the editorial positions and all of the authorships [and pretty much all of the class officers].
I guess Unitardian nihilism let down all the Yankee WASPs, and they lost the energy necessary to be bothered with attempting to mount even just a symbolic effort at retaining control of the Narrative at PU.
It’s a crying shame the Unitards couldn’t have lost that energy a little sooner, like, say, back in April of 1864.
I’ve got a psychological question. I’m a reasonably smart guy but I have none of the middle man, opportunistic traits.
Maybe you have some of those traits. No judgement. What are these traits?
Okay, a financial question too. Do these traits have socially beneficial effects or is it all grift? For example, when I propose banning all financial derivatives except futures on physical goods (futures for farmers/ranchers), smart people tell me that shorts and options provide a benefit to the market.
The ability to bullsh1t is the most important trait. Middlemen have to match a buyer with a seller, so the main job they have is promising the seller a higher price and/or predictable demand and offering the buyer a lower price and/or predictable supply, while keeping both sides from dealing directly.
It’s mostly grift, but there are some people who are gifted at making things but haven’t the first clue about selling effectively or profitably. There are also some buyers who want custom or niche products that can probably not be provided by their immediate social circle.
The classic case for futures is airlines needing to buy futures to hedge against short-term dramatic increases in fuel prices. They’ll pay more for basically insurance against a sudden spike. It does nothing to stop ultimately higher market prices at a sustained level though. Like insurance it has benefits, but can be (and often is) abused constantly.
The first financial instruments recorded were derivatives: Futures.
The baker buying future delivery of corn from the farmer to be delivered after the harvest.
Hard not to see that as useful to both parties.
Whilst I’m a not a huge fan of the Tribe or of Middlemen of any ilk, we have to understand that this behavior is inherent to the human condition. Say you come up with a new product/process or even invent an entirely new business. If *you* don’t work quickly and using all means to establish yourself as the Middleman in that industry, someone else will.
The Miller will always be fat even when he’s plain old Salt of the Earth Miller and not (((Miller))).
When the Miller owns half the town aldermen and the Corn Factor the other half, well then you’re off on a journey into a spiraling world of pain.
Eternal Vigilance needed.. and that’s going to require chip implants. We just don’t do that well at all.
My mom grew upbin just that kind of environment. The actual miller had a human- and donkey-powered mill to which locals could bring their flour. He and his family all attended the same (itinerant) pastor’s church, and dealt fairly with their customers. Taking the risk to build the mill, working it with the wife and kids, he was a blessing to everyone. Less time spent hand-grinding corn meant more time growing food, raising livestock, and even cash crops, like coffee.
Do not bind the mouths of the kine that tread the corn. Or begrudge the miller his due.
I would not call the ESG activists who got board seats on Exxon and got Shell to comply with a court order mandating it not have any oil or gas production by a certain date middlemen. Rather an over-supply of clergy. We are over-run by religious lunatics who want utopia NOW! Complete with Children’s Crusade leader Greta “Retarded Fat Kid” Thunberg.
What made the economy resilient was its supply of cheap energy, chiefly oil, and cheap materials, chiefly plastics from oil/gas. Without that, we are screwed. No doubt everyone has seen the Deutsche Bank report predicting MASSIVE energy based inflation as increasing demand particularly in China and the Third World meets decades of under-investment in oil and gas production driven by ESG idiocy. This means not just a shortage of oil, vastly higher prices, but a shortage of materials as well.
Though the report did not mention it, likely Trans-Pacific trade with China will be defunct. Transport costs will outweigh the cheap factor of evading labor and environmental regulations. And EVERYTHING will get more expensive — as there won’t be enough oil and gas for both petrochemicals and energy. Ford has now matched GM in promised “green” electric vehicle production. Meaning a looming shortage of useful vehicles.
Western nations are not set up to deal with chronic shortages of everything due to massive and permanent increase in energy and materials costs. Any short-term rationing depends on an external enemy (Nazis, Soviets for the UK) and requires visible sacrifice by elites. Can you imagine Zuck much less the KANGZ he answers to sacrificing private islands or rims? Can the United States exist with shortages lasting 20-30 years and some animals being more equal than others?
Already the media is angry/upset that Biden was chummy with Putin. They were promised a showdown and instead senile Bane wanted ice cream. No central enemy to rally against, and sacrifices only for Dirt Whites.
The greatest difficulty with this clerical class is their wonky theology. Christians had a well-based system that only improved under development and examination (though it had its share of lunatics and boll-weevils as well.) The earliest Christians saw themselves as the sane among the insane (something lost on present day critics). Our modern day priestly class embrace destruction and insanity as fundamental to their cause – they merge class and resentment-based interests with low-to-middle-brow metaphysics, giving rise to mantras like ‘There is no such thing as race’ and ‘Men and women are the same’ and ‘There are more than two genders.’ Such positions crumble under any sane analysis, but provide excellent disruptive force to systems populated by people who have most basic needs met.
A good example of this I found on Sailer’s blog:
Anti-Blackness and transphobia are older than we thought
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/06/16/anti-blackness-transphobia-are-older-than-we-thought/
If you read carefully through the bullshit, basically Constantinople was made up of various shades of brown people. White men were seen as unattractive and feminine, while white women were prized as beautiful. The only actual bigotry appears to have been against white men.
But the manufactured oppression narrative goes back thousands of years, as whiteys were being racist even back then. Whiteness was already claiming victims. Even as NW-Europe was hardly on the map back then compared to Asian and Middle Eastern civilizations, we were still racist oppressors.
They are coming for us 🙂
Our modern day preistly class are jews, they want you dead{vaccinnation] or enslaved, if you don’t believe me, read what their talmud says. We’re being fed to a meat grinder, whitey better wake up quick.
I used to live in the Canadian Maritimes, and where we were (far out on the coast), the amount of middlemen dropped away the further you got from the capitol. Oh sure, they were still there, but sparse populations make things like barter, handshake, etc. more of a daily item.
Helping this, of course, was the fact that my old man religiously forbade us to put in a pump or holding tank. Well and out-house, it was. Wood-burning cast iron stove. He kept saying that if we succumbed to those modernities, there would be a long line of yearly inspections, tickets for this and that, and so on. If I had a problem with
the provincial inspector coming around, I would talk to the local Fire Dept. chief and they would meet down at the pub and then we’d be ok for another year.
I miss much of that, but I do not know how sustainable it all can be in the long run. Hell, I have moved to Lagos for some reason and now wade through thickets of middlemen just to do business. I know I can pay for ‘fixers’ to get things done, and meet such-and-such at the (half-open) bar to grease the City, but I am not from here and I don’t trust these people.
Perhaps the most heartbreaking song about the loss of the Canadian Maritimes. I’m a suburban American boy, but this song can make me weep.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E2DFa18kYI
Great song!…also terrific is Free in the Harbor by Stan Rogers..
My friend, you’ve enhanced my life. Stan Rogers has a masculine beauty and I’m not afraid to say it. One of our best.
For those of us with vestigial libertarian feelings, you’ll appreciate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMfwxWA14zo
Middlemen, money-men, there’s another word for this tribe, can’t quite recall it…
James (and others), I agree with your implication but I wonder about the white middle men. Bill Gates may be a good example, or Elan Musk. Minimal technical innovation and maximal monopolistic or rent-seeking instincts. Can we explain them? Are they just short sighted, sociopathic, and very effective?
You’re thinking of the more descriptive word…”parasites”
Like the old joke – “How many people work at your company? “About half.”
CV-19 has quickly proven that number is even higher and middle mangers have been put under the spot light for just how unnecessary they really are.
When your administrative office has more people than those who make the products, you’re no longer a factory, you’re just another bureaucracy.
And maybe, just maybe this was the covidian “vaccine” is all about – culling all the middlemen, among others…
As a small business owner, I get deluged in people trying to steal away my profits with all sorts of promised automation or greater marketing impact or some sort of new payroll or accounting feature. You get used to saying “no thanks”.
When people find ways around the middle-men, like when Zillow came along and showed people they could shop for and sell their houses without paying the realtor 6%…the National Association of Realtors sued Zillow to stop the practice. They failed, and so instead have moved on to making it nearly impossible for somebody to list their home as “For Sale by Owner”. FSBO homes are avoided, and you see a lot of TV shows where people who tried to sell their own homes are portrayed as miserable disasters rescued by some smart realtor.
But it’s not like the middle men solve anything, as there is another entire industry of people who come in to fix all the things that weren’t caught during the inspection by the middle men…because the middle men don’t want to lose profit fixing broken things either, so they bribe each other to ‘overlook’ problems and cut corners.
The solution? Do it yourself. The middle men have much less power once you realize you can do something yourself. I fix my own house and have gotten pretty good at it. When it’s in my skill level to do so, I fix tools, cars, and other equipment myself…and just pay the low, low, price for the spare parts. When we had to buy a used car for the kids to get around in, we used free online tools, went to the dealers, said “I want to drive *that* car,” test drove, then left and completed the purchase experience for free at home. Oh, and we saved up and paid cash. No bank needed. I’m not a computer repairman by trade, but most computer problems I’ve learned how to fix on my own. My kids teased me about my 10 year old desktop…the one that runs great and never breaks down and does everything I need it to do. But they DO listen. So when they wanted their own computers they found models that ran $1,500+ and I said, “Build one yourself, it’ll cost you $500, it won’t have anything on it clogging up performance, and you’ll learn something useful.” My son did such a good job, he built one for his sister.
Middle-men are often the result of sloth. People are lazy, don’t want to take the time to learn how to do it themselves, enter the middle-man.
The kicker is your last statement, middle men are the result of sloth. Sometimes it is antifraud verification, like why Walmart uses plastic bags for checkout (another free benefit of diversity) – the insurance company wants a licensed thingdoer to come look and make sure the pipe really did burst before they pay you.
And sometimes, it is legit: who here has infinite time and money? If i have electrical conduit to run, do I pay a guy $500, or buy the $1,500 cutting and threading tools? Or if I just need the car running, and dont have time to fix whatever just broke? That’s the camel’s nose, but how do you keep the camel out of the tent once his nose is in?
In certain situations, it makes perfect sense to pay money to save time or gain the benefit of an expert’s experience, which is an indirect form of time savings.
Wild Geese: Agreed. We can’t all be jacks of all trades. There is nothing inherently wrong with specialization, particularly within reasonably-sized communities. When it goes national or global, it’s a disaster.
True, but that guy isn’t a middle man. Salespeople generally are, definitely marketing, and just about anyone whose job it is to stamp something “approved”. Health Care is LOADED with useless middle men.
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The economy is riddled with parasites who skim productivity from actual workers, the problem being that the ratio of parasites to productive is skewing heavily toward parasites and they are killing the host.
I agree, now connect the dots.
Eventually the parasites kill the host. Then something must happen next. It could be a new draconian dictatorship and enslavement of the few remaining productive peons to push out the correction horizon for a little longer. Or, it could be a major economic collapse akin the 1930s Depression. Or, it could be a new bio-engineered pathogen that takes out a huge chuck of the population similar to the Black Plague. No matter which of these scenarios plays out, ask yourself, where is a good place to ride out the storm?
My answer . . . somewhere remote with few roads, good hunting, reliable fresh water, and long sight-lines downslope (at least 400 meters). Just sayin’.
It’ll be water. A couple of years ago people in NH on wells had to abandon their homes because the wells ran dry. But yeah, lets bring in 3M/year because it will advance the cause of the “eat the bugs” “live in the pod” “you’ll own nothing and like it” crowd.
Ever noticed how LITTLE the “eat the bugs” “live in the pod” “you’ll own nothing and like it” crowd likes to follow their own sage advice? I well remember when Al Bore was the chief priest of global warming and published power consumption for his house was something like half of that of my ENTIRE SUBDIVISION! It’s rather like another class of “middlemen” – “televangelists”. Some grossly obese guy in a $5k Italian silk suit wearing $3k shoes wearing freaking Rolex claiming to be a “servant” of one of whom it was written “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” preaching to ME about frugality! Did I mention that his name is in a larger typrfont on the sign than the word “Church”? Something, something ” beam”, something, something “splinter” . . .
Reminds me of an organization I occasionally come into contact with that helps insurance companies get claims back from medicare and medicaid, a literal middleman for the middleman!
They’ve got nothing on the DoD cybersecurity scam coming down the pipe though. An army of layabouts who are too bright to push a broom, but too dumb to get a “real job” are chomping at the bit waiting for the DoD to mandate third party security audits for their supply chain. They will be backed by an ocean of tech money that will make sure their niche tool is on the mandated function list from NIST. It will be like Y2K, but never ending. (The irony being that, yes, the same DoD that will give you everything plus the kitchen sink in exchange for a “handy” from a Chinese prostitute wants Bill’s Garage Welding Service to meet the same IT security standards as GE).
All those cybersecurity tools are guaranteed to have backdoors to facilitate the cyber-plandemic op the WEF keeps nattering on about.
It’s middlemen all the way down.
The middlemen on SCOTUS just saved Obamaocare…again:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/supreme-court-saves-obamacare-again-after-gop-challenge-rejected
“No standing,” they said.
Speaking of unproductive parasites, “no standing” is this court’s new favorite excuse for not doing their job. I recall that the court also thought all kinds of citizens and states had “no standing” to challenge the 2020 vote. It’s amazing how few people/entities have “standing” under the crushing burden of all these laws that supposedly apply to them.
Come the reckoning these robed worthies can stand to death; Impale them.
How is it that human beings can create government programs but human beings cannot end government programs?
Because they fought in the streets and we fled.
Never let it be said Whites aren’t athletic.
Be it running or contorted gymnastics, crawling and begging the world has never seen the like.
Yes of course I’m white. Not a self loather, but this spectacle is loathesome.
Don’t forget about all those ladies in the HR department who are doing both. They impose costs by their existence and they are actively interfering with the productive.
The credit card companies impose a huge cost on us as well in addition to the interest.. They managed to get laws passed which forbid retailers from charging more money for using a credit card and so now retailers just price every single thing they sell as if it were being sold via credit card.
People who don’t work are probably the least of the problem. All they really require is a small check. But how about the lawyer who sends people into every small town in the state to hunt down public businesses without perfect handicapped accommodations? Or multi-million dollar settlements for a dumbass who spills coffee down their pants?
Well, let’s not go all “kill all the lawyers” yet. We just need to get in on the grift ourselves, and target every woke capital establishment possible. Lawfare is a tool, nothing says it can only go against us. I dream of ADA/Title VII milling every Starbucks, pervert bookstore, and “community activist” group in my ao, if only I could…
Risible.
Its not our Grift.
Its a closed loop, this is like Jews for National Socialism. The only way would be to betray.
And we have No Standing.
I’d settle for dyeing faces all attorneys indellible purple for easy discreditation anything issuing from their lying mouths.
there used to be an argument that feminism would be self defeating because it would make women more expensive to hire. Yet here we are. I guess that was a cope.
Among his lesser known sayings Nietzsche said “Against boredom, even the Gods struggle in vain.” Very well, that has bugger aught, as the British might say, to do with today’s essay. Here’s a quip a bit more relevant. Voltaire wrote an essay called “The Man of Forty Crowns.” This recounts the plight of a typical farmer in 18th century France. Life for the peasant was most unpleasant. Virtually all the taxation fell on him! The King and Nobles of course existed off their rents. But so did the Church. Both these entities paid diddly squat in taxes. The thrust of his essay is that the poor farmer struggled the year round in effect supporting his church and government and scarcely had anything left to feed himself and his family. Now you might not typically think of taxes or tithes as payments to “middlemen,” but economically, aren’t they the same thing? Those payments are not optional; if you attempt to stop them, various bad things will happen to you.
The above injustices, assuming they are accurately portrayed, must have given a lot of the impetus to the Revolution which was to come a few decades later. (Voltarie died roughly two decades prior.)
I’m not shy about conspiracy theory and the past year or two has been looking a lot like the NWO endgame. There are too many correlations and coincidences, such as the WEF Great Reset showing up right on time to meet the Agendas 21 and 2030 goals. It’s as if the global elite are scrambling to meet a deadline and they drastically turned up the heat under the frog boil.
The Fed is now printing money to buy up everything via Blackrock. For 100 years the guys running the money printer understood there were limits imposed by social physics but now they’re doing what will necessarily ruin their own privileged position. This makes sense in an endgame scenario because they can use up the rest of their capital in buying out all capital as they switch us from capitalism to neo-liberal techno-fascism.
It seems clear to me this what’s happening but I very much appreciate the alternative explanation that Mr. Zblogman offers.
I think a lot of it is to create the pretext for raising the minimum wage in a massive way — or UBI
They are flooding the kitchen (printing money) and we need a big mop to soak it all up (raising wages/UBI)
Yes, I expect them to hit the UBI button pretty hard in the coming years. Don’t know how it’ll work out, but there are big players who’d probably love it. Imagine that, the plebs eating out of your hand. The ‘respectable’ government benefit.
If the Chine Virus has shown us one thing, it’s that millions would actively welcome it. I suspect that the many people, work, even if make-work, is incredibly important. UBI both monetarily and socially will be, ahem, an interesting (terrifying) aside on our current drama. Still, what’s one more giant wart on the already infested, wrinkly ball sack of GloboHomo?
Yeah I think the PTB are getting antsy knowing that a good 25% of the workforce is or will soon be obsolete. They have Silicon Valley selling them on the idea that AI will make this so, in addition to a general uselessness of so many of our vibrants.
So they had the flood the economy with money, get it into circulation, so this way when they raise the min wage and install UBI it is there to gradually mop it up all that money sloshing around.
maybe we should all move to Idaho since it’s not as effected by those trends.
Idaho is one of the most popular destinations of Californians. They’re rapidly ruining large parts of it. Idaho, Arizona, North and South Carolina, Florida. Places NOT to move to.
Potentially 8 million homes go into foreclosure next month as the mortgage forbearance programs sunset.
And Blackrock sits in the wings, licking it’s chops, as a permanent serf class is born.
Its a Bust out.
Planned Bankruptcy.
We will be dead as a result, so that is the “social physics “ involved.
When the open policy is genocide, you don’t really worry about the victims credit rating.
two thoughts this AM:
1) Does anyone find the COVID thing (as well as the trump presidency in general) to be a kind of “War of the worlds”? I don’t mean the book but the 1938 broadcast of it by orson wells. It’s not about the thing itself but what it exposes
2) Does anyone find changing insurance to be a pain in the ass. I did it last night and calling into a call center where every last word is dropping out and listening to someone speaking bad english – why even have insurance? Like at some point it might be easier to just earmark cash somewhere in your house and use it as insurance.
Depends on what kind of insurance you are talking about. Self-insurance is a thing. It’s a matter of doing your own risk assessment, deciding how much risk you are comfortable with, and how much liquidity you have to cover the various likely and unlikely scenarios and compare that against the cost of insurance payments.
In cases such as car insurance you’re legally required to have insurance and if a state allows you to self-insure, the size of the bond you have to post to obtain that may be prohibitive for most people, but I have worked for companies that did it.
For health insurance, it’s complicated. The less you have to lose, the less it matters. Hospitals can’t refuse to treat you for anything life threatening, and they can’t get blood from a stone. Of course, at that point, you can probably qualify for Medicaid. Hospitals are swamped by indigent uninsured. My daughter assists in surgeries every day for people with no ability to pay.
Government mandates have made health insurance and healthcare ridiculously more complicated and expensive than it needs to be.
If you do have something to lose, well, then it’s a minefield and I wouldn’t dare to give advice about that.
Also, non profit hospitals are required to have financial aid for qualified poor people. Exploit as necessary.
Car insurance is a government mandated scam.
That said, unless you have horrible credit, they make it pretty simple to switch.
It’s a scam for White people. The others don’t even bother getting it. Here in Texas you’re lucky if the person you’re hit by even speaks English, let alone has a valid driver’s license. And the last lady who hit me, although she spoke English, had insurance from some fly-by-night company no one as ever heard of out of Boston. My son was hit by an old Indian visiting his daughter, who claimed she was driving the vehicle (lesson son learned: take lots of pictures).
Dashcam. I put them in all of our cars.
Insurance…why not self insure? I’ve thought of such, but almost always come back to the essence of insurance in this society. Insurance is not so much as to protect you from “loss”, but rather to protect you from *lawyers*. The cost of lawyers is most obvious in auto, but also home, and increasingly health insurance.
Folks can be sued by anyone for any reason and you get to pay for the privilege of defending yourself in the US.
Yup. The defense that $500 a year 25/50 minimum limit policy buys you costs $20,000 minimum – and that’s carrier rates, $150 an hour, not private market rates. And Lord help anyone who has real assets and a minimum limits policy, they WILL bleed you dry.
Yes, the entire period from the start of COVID to now is Orson Welles War of the Worlds. Good catch.
I have some insight into the home buying example. The army of middlemen scenario happens mostly to the rubes, no offense. The people who just go through the traditional path: engage a realtor, get an FHA loan, 30 years and a cloud of dust. They just want that American dream home, and there’s an entire ecosystem built around preying on them.
Things are much different when you buy real estate professionally, because that line of middlemen is simply intolerable when you are trying to make a profit.
But then we have nothing to comment on and complain about
Please, do go on. Let us in on it.
Nope. I don’t do real estate seminars.
Basically, if you have the cash, all the crap goes away.
It’s when a lender is involved that all the b.s. comes up.
All cash = no lender = no escrow = no appraiser = no inspector = no everything
You can close a deal that day if you want, but then you have to know a little about what you’re doing. I guess if you had to put a value on it, the value of that experience = the value of all those fees and so forth you are saving which is about 10%. Which is how those flippers make money.
Isn’t this essentially what Blackrock is doing, and paying 20-50% over market to freeze out retail home buyers.
If you come in all cash, yes, you can close a deal in a week. For the seller, having $200,000 cash in hand in a week beats having $225,000 cash in hand in 30 to 60 days and after all the headaches and dealign with the lender, the appraiser may kill the deal, the inspector might and a termite infestation and require the seller to repair, etc etc. So cash buyers like Blackrock will realize that immediate $25,000 gain, plus appreciation of 10% a year which isn’t going away any time soon.
and don’t forget the broker commissions you save as the seller, which is 5% typically
And one other big important thing
Blackrock as an investor gets to write off depreciation.
“You will own nothing, and you will love it”*
*(But you’ll still be paying for everything. Forever. At inflated rates and with terrible service.)
I pretty much agree, but you’d better make sure you have a clear title to the house you buy, otherwise you’re just taking care for someone else’s property. In that there is some value added by the title company, which provides insurance against such an event as well.
Title Policy is one of those critical necessities. Very much worth it. And they aren’t expensive
I was surprised how easy it was to sell a home by owner when I did it with my ex. It was a full time job for about a month to figure out how to do it along with making the repairs and cleaning but I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.
So just to do the math, if you have to pay the buyer’s broker, FSBO will save you 3%. On a $300K house, that’s $9,000, or dividing by your month of full time (160 hours), $56/hour. Double that if the buyer does not use a broker, but that is probably rare these days. Not bad. The repairs and cleaning fall on you either way.
“Profit” lol middleman cuts out the other middlemen so he can have moar from the middle himself.
It would have been fun for you to encounter my wife in person a couple weeks ago after she spent all day in a basement wading in shit to tell her how she’s just a “middleman.” I might have sent flowers to your funeral.
We do hard, dirty work. Fuck you if you don’t think we earn our money.
Relax Francis. A lot of middlemen work very hard. I am a middleman. I work hard.
The good merchant is honest about his role and from where the butter comes for his bread.
To insult the “rubes”, in essence the customers whose very rubeness facilitates his profits, is rather obtuse.
My snark was really just to point out the irony of some implied status hierarchy of the middle ie out middling the middle. Nothing personal.
There is no shame in middlework but if our people are ever to restore goodwill and cooperation we will have to be honest about the real costs of said “profiits” and financialization as a whole.
Don’t call me Francis. The name’s Shirley.
“Lol” and “moar” are inherently insulting language. Talk to me like that and I’m going to snap back.
“Rubes,” however, is just intended as a wakeup call.
I don’t profit off people who buy their own houses and get preyed on by that ecosystem.
I don’t consider myself a middleman. I build things. I build new roofs, new plumbing systems, new HVAC. We do 95% of the work ourselves, but we also provide jobs to many handymen and tradesmen. I take real property and I create value with it.
Also, who am I in the middle of?
I own the house. The tenant wants to live in the house, not buy it.
MeTenant.
I don’t see any middleman there.
Downvotes from babies raging against reality.
Is everyone who rents stuff exploiting the renters? If you acquire tools and rent them to people, are you exploiting them? I can rent a skid steer for the 3-5 days a year I need one and it’s way more cost effective for me than owning one — I’m not responsible for the long-term maintenance, repairs and eventual replacement. I call that a good deal.
Most people who rent homes aren’t exploited. There are a lot of people out there who don’t want to own, and even more people who simply are not responsible enough to handle ownership. We cover up the hidden costs and headaches of owning a home for people who either don’t want to or aren’t able to deal with it.
The vast majority of being a landlord is babysitting what ought to be full-grown adults, making them hold up to their obligations — keep their water, sewer, gas and electric paid, their lawn mowed, their pets from destroying the property.
They rip cabinets off hinges, kick and punch holes in the wall, park cars all over the lawn unless you come and force them to move them, leave trash all over their yard and porch. let their dogs shit all over the yard without ever cleaning it up (and, more horribly sometimes, all over the house without ever cleaning it up. Ask me about “poop lasagna” sometime and how it came to be a part of our landlord vocabulary). And they lie. They lie and lie and lie and lie some more.
They need to be managed. If they had their own home it would be a filthy wreck in no time. Of course, they’d never make the house payment — they’d get behind and get foreclosed on. If they owned it outright it would be unlivable in five years and need to be knocked down as a danger to public health. Sometimes we have to tell people to move out just so we can save the house.
Between the taxes, the maintenance, the cleanup costs between renters and the legal fees, the loan payments on properties we don’t own outright, we make enough extra to live on. If that’s your idea of a rapacious middleman, go to hell.
Cloudbuster is me, BTW.
Flippers are leaches and get a last cigarette and a blindfold when the balloon goes up, same for developers and land speculators. Landlords will be judged on their merits, though if the other side wins, I wouldn’t be a landlord for all the gold in Ft Knox. See, “necklacing.”
When you come to “judge” me, bring some friends.
Well most people aren’t professional house flippers who know all the ins and outs of real estate.
Neither am I. I’m a landlord. I’ve never sold a rental property I’ve bought.
Falcone covers the broad strokes above, but I think going into any great detail is beyond the scope of blog comments. The information is widely available, though. There are associations in every state eager to educate people on home buying and real estate investing. Just look it up.
Most people just don’t take the time to educate themselves. Neither did I when I was in my early twenties and buying my first home. Rational ignorance is a thing — the event itself is just a blip in most peoples’ lives and the cost of becoming an expert seems too high.
Then I went to purchase agricultural real estate and I started to get an education. Nobody wants to loan on unimproved agricultural land, so that’s where my education in real estate financing started.
So apparently me using the term “rubes” was bad.
The naive home buyer is a rube. If that term offends you, good.
You walk into a room with a whole bunch of people who make their livelihood off the financialization of the transaction in which you are engaging and, well…
“If after ten minutes at the poker table you do not know who the patsy is—you are the patsy.” — Poker Proverb
“army of rubes” I.e. people who do not have all cash, i.e. most people. Damn those people who can’t just pay cash, what morons!
At least get the quote right. It was “army of middlemen.” The rubes are traditionally outgunned in the transaction.
Congratulations for ranking yourself among the terminally dim who can’t understand the difference between a warning and a condemnation.
You know I generally like your commentary but your asshole routine today isn’t a good look. But then again I probably don’t manage as many properties as you do, (((sorry))).
looking through some of your old posts Z, your post on August 2, 2018 one felt like you were looking into a crystal ball
thezman.com/wordpress/?p=14633
Wow. That’s pretty amazing.
This bit, though, “Given the disease rates would inevitably be higher in non-white areas, white intolerance of non-whites would spike.”
Instead we’re so far into the anti-White hole that what we saw was non-Whites blaming Whites for their disease rates. Whites just kind of sucked it up and continued to virtue-signal.
That piece from 2018 is remarkably prescient. One thing that didn’t come out as predicted is
“Given the disease rates would inevitably be higher in non-white areas, white intolerance of non-whites would spike… This would make it impossible for the politicians to continue the white replacement project…”
The Great Replacement continues apace and GoodWhites are bowing and kneeling more than ever. The WuFlu has been an accelerant for anti-whiteness.
Very interesting. In one way Z’s scenario was thankfully not realized – the CCP making the virus more deadly. They just made it more contagious. In another way, he was too optimistic: “This (a pandemic) would make it impossible for the politicians to continue the white replacement project, at least not without declaring martial law.” The politicians/media easily overcame this by simply ignoring Covid brought in by illegals. That was one of the tells that they were wildly overstating the Covid problem.
The pursuit of leisure approaches its surprisingly unnatural end. Turns out work isn’t just good for the soul.
Speaking of work being good for the soul
I have found that a man who does not cook his own food, at least once in a while, goes insane
If every meal is made by someone else, you seem to come ungrounded and go nuts
A man who can not cook for himself is still a child.
Perhaps I’m a biased source, but I was hoping that you accidentally reversed wording of “isn’t just”; the meaning of that sentence would then change much more to my liking 🙂
Honestly, of course some work is necessary*. Even I sometimes will rise to a challenge, if for no other reason that laying about gets dull after a while and it breaks the monotony. Like most things in life, balance is the key. As Dad used to say, “Moderation in all things, including moderation.”
*As a wise man once stated: “I’ve got nothing against an honest day’s work, provided somebody else does it.”
Ben, this post marvelously captures the essence of your moniker “the Layabout.” I salute you sir. We idlers must remain united in our purposeful pursuit of leisure.
Here you go: Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughtsvof an Idle Fellow. Enjoy.
gutenberg.org/ebooks/849
Great point from our host, as always.
Let me try and provide a DEFENSE of the middle man. Not the government man or the compliance director who reports to the government man, but the honest legal, supply chain, accounts payable or manager who has to draft the contract, ship the product, cut the check or manage a group.
Large corporations are ALWAYS cutting middle management. Every 9 to 18 months, my global corp arbitrarily lays off 5-15 people in my division of about 400-500 people (moral: work as little as possible, globocorp hates you).
However, the beauty of the middle man is that they are GREASE. Without them, the whole system seizes up. Essential, but not glamorous: make the system flow and stay out of the way.
Our modern middle men have forgotten that they are only grease. After 16-20 years of “education” (wallowing in filth and grit) entitled know-nothings expect to be compensated like they are a piston or other custom component.
The dreaded private sector doesn’t enjoy the padding that governments do. The bottom line must be watched. Alas, salaries are a major part of that, so all possible measures must be taken to reduce the working staff to the bare minimum possible, while allowing the upper management the time to play golf, sail on their private boat, and, if absolutely necessary, check in at the office.
As the pointy-haired boss in a Dilbert cartoon said: “Theoretically, if I reduce costs enough, we could make a profit without selling anything.” Isn’t much of what emanates from Globocorp of equivalent goofiness?
RE: the old image of economics is of a group of men pulling a wagon with the unproductive in the wagon. If it were only the rulers and bankers I’d be satisfied. However, Beyond these groups and their assorted attendents – the wagon I’m helping pull looks like one of those trains in India you see with…vibrancy crammed in it, on the sides of it, on top of it, and probably underneath it.
Hey Z, have you ever read or listened to the economist Richard Werner?
He wrote the book Princes of the Yen about Japan’s central bank, but he’s written a lot on banking in general. He’s also not a fan of the current arrangement. He has some interesting ideas on how the banking system should be comprised. One of his ideas is that lending should only be done for productive investments not consumption, though I haven’t read too deeply on that. He also prefers a system similar to Germany where local and regional banks control the lending to small and medium-sized firms while the big banks deal with monster corporations and leave the rest of the country alone.
Werner seems to be trying to cut out some of the middlemen that you rightly despise.
If you ban usury, it would have the effect Werner seeks. At least if history is any indication.
Define usury? At what point are interest rates “too high?”
We need a banking system, but we don’t need a banking system that takes over. It should serve the economy and the people, not the other way around.
There’s also the fact that banks can – and do – create money. In fact, banks for the main money creators in the economy, not the Fed. The banks need to be reigned in.
Traditional usury laws set a cap at 9%, if I recall correctly. Historically, anything over 5% per year is speculative, and compound interest is usually usury in disguise, and banned as well.
The Bank(sters) won’t be reined in anytime soon. In 2016 AND 2020 both parties had bringing back Glass-Steagall in their respective platforms and it never makes it to the floor. Wall Street banking has pretty much become a criminal enterprise at this point. Check out any “too-big-to-fail” enterprise on Violation Tracker (e.g., $JPM https://bit.ly/35tAATt) and ask yourself why people haven’t gone to jail.
Wot you need to know about the Economy.
The Banksters, of which I was one, are the only criminal enterprise, outside of government, bigger than big pharma.
The End.
The problem is that changing it would reveal all of the problems in the system. Ending lending for consumption might be good in the long term, but it would totally crash the current system. As was once famously said, “in the long run, we’re all dead”
Oh yeah, stopping banks from lending for consumption now would be a disaster. It would absolutely destroy the system and the economy.
I just thought that it was an interesting and good idea if you were starting a system from scratch.
But you definitely could move toward a system where different small and medium-sized banks were assigned regions where they serve small and medium-sized companies (a couple of banks per region to allow for competition) and not allowing the big banks to swallow up the small and medium-sized banks. The big banks work on a national and global level with large corporations.
This would allow small and medium-sized companies to get funding, something that can be hard when dealing with large banks who don’t know them. It would also reduce systemic risk due to having a lot more banks.
So, it would be a good thing. Yeah short term it would be disastrous but it would purge the economic and social systems of a lot of rot and insanity that has crept in over the last 40 or so years
A thought: What’s the best way to throw sand into the gears of this system? So as to hasten the needed corrections?
Should have said “this middleman system”.
Barter, FSBO, grey market maybe? Not sure how practical/possible in the US. Mediterraneans are champs in this stuff.
Soon enough participating in the system will be ruinous, and people will find ways around it. That’s when it’ll fall. Who knows, maybe throwing sand in the gears isn’t necessary at this point. Like accelerationism, anything that might be done is now being outdone by tptb. Remarkable.
Pay in cash to keep Visa and Mastercard away from their 2% to 3%.
Don’t have debt to keep interest from the bankers.
Keep cash in your bank or investment accounts as low as possible. Banks and brokerage firms use your cash as a float. That $5,000 in your IRA or brokerage account isn’t really there. It’s a promise to pay you $5,000, not $5,000. The $5,000 is actually being used by the bank or brokerage firm.
Barter when possible.
Help me out here. You say don’t keep cash in a bank or investment account. At that point, what’s left? Real estate, precious metals?
Cash in a safe. Metals as a hedge.
Cash in a safe seems like a good way to lose it all in an inflationary spiral.
3 months in cash, the rest in metals.
I have to agree with KGB. Stocks are the only way to grow your wealth above inflation. There are periods like now when the market is grossly overvalued and you have to cut your equity holdings way down, but in the long-term you have to be there. As for Visa and MC, I have a card that pays 2% in cash back. I realize that comes from the merchant, but I don’t see what I accomplish by foregoing that. I guess not letting the feds see your spending is a big plus for some.
Note wrt cash at home (or bank for that matter): if the SHTF, cash will be useful for a day or two, at which point no one sane will accept or trade goods for it. Barter is best, precious metals probably in second place.
Mattresses provide the ultimate liquidity.
Worrying about inflation is Cloud marketing: a few pennies per year as liquidity insurance, versus the ATM failing.
Outside of a regular bank account with FDIC guarantees, there is a counter-party risk. Someone mentioned the risk of inflation, which granted, is a risk, but there is also the risk of deflation, which is where that counter-party risk comes in.
They want a permanent small number inflation, like 5-8% a year which they can lie about as being 2% a year. But I think they will guard against higher rates and will fight any amount of deflation. Because you get a little bit of deflation, the whole system will start unraveling. But the deflationary spiral is a real risk.
I’m not saying to not have any savings or emergency money, I’m saying don’t just leave it in cash.
Say that you have $30,000 in emergency savings. Keep $5,000 in cash and have a credit for an emergency that goes above $5,000, which you would pay off immediately.
Put the other $25,000 in 3-month CDs or 12-month CDs. If need the money, just cash them in and take the very small penalty. Or you could just ladder them so buy $5,000 a month worth of 5-month CDs, so $5,000 rolls over each month.
You don’t have to buy gold or real estate.
With the CDs, the bank is paying you to use your money. If you leave the money as cash, the bank isn’t paying you to use your money.
For the big brokerage firms – Schwab, Fidelity, etc. – money earned on the float, i.e. using your cash as an interest-free loan – is a big part of their income. It’s why they started offering commission-free on security transactions. If was a way to get people to bring their accounts – and that loose cash – to them. They make more money on the float than commissions.
Thank you for the explanation. I always tend to have too much money in the bank and am open to any and all suggestions on growing/protecting it. I have two rental properties, which I own outright (paid cash for the houses), but adding more would tax my ability to keep up, as I do all the maintenance myself (barring a capital project like a new roof).
Real estate. Be a slumlord.
No matter what happens to the currency, people will always need a place to live, and will pay you with whatever the “real” currency of the day is.
Wish I’d started on it much younger; it’s like investing; keep rolling profits back into it and “suddenly” (after 30-40 years), you’re an instant multi-millionaire.
Plus you can burn it all to the ground if Uncle Sam decides to take it away and redistribute it.
Sell to neighbors, buy from neighbors. If you live in the Midwest, it’s extremely easy to find farm stands you can buy from. I happen to have Amish neighbors and I routinely buy fruit from them. I sell eggs and veggies to friends and neighbors. If you’re really lucky, you might be able to find a local meat processor that will let you buy a full cow, fully butchered for a couple grand. That’s a good start
Localizing one’s food supply is a huge plus going forward.
As the historical record shows, there’s nothing the Bolsheviks love more than starving plebes to death.
Bloated elites always lead to war. Past few decades have been an internal cold war between the clueless old elites and retarded new elites. The old elites lost and the bloated new elites can now focus on warring between each other. That war will eventually get hot.
The proliferation of Middlemen is the logical consequence of a hyper-financialized economy. Once everything is leveraged to the eyeballs, you need an army of “experts” to supervise all the leverage, insurance, warranty etc. because there is no equity in the system to absorb any shocks.
The original goal of mortgage interest deductibility and government-sponsored mortgage programs (Fannie, Freddie, FHA) was to encourage home ownership and stable communities. The expectation was that Harry and Helen Homeowner would eventually pay off the mortgage and help create a good community. Now, nobody really owns anything; the bank owns the house and the buyer puts only 5% down. The “Homeowner” owns an “at-the-money” call option on the home appreciation.
In financial capitalism, everything turns into a casino.
Yes, RE is particularly bad about avoiding ownership as opposed to taking ownership.
Its arbitrage and fees all the way down. Participants dont really own anything. Its just transitory positions in a stack of capital refracted into the capital markets where they are traded and re-traded.
Like so much in modern financialized markets the idea is to exact “value” without owning anything, especially risk, while the smartest guys are the ones who figure out how to navigate the legal and regulatory labyrinth to rehypothecate that little house a thousand times over while some sucker at Calpers buys all the risk because he has to but no worries because another middleman rated it risk free.
A Mississippi barge will have 10 different pilots in a 50 mile stretch because the river is so complex, each stretch unique and dynamic.
Those are a kind of middlemen but the difference is they take extreme ownership and responsibility through their expertise.
Value may not be created per se, as the barge of grain is still the barge of grain, but for their part of the river it belongs to them and they act accordingly.
The merchant mentality and his balance sheet antics have been a corrosive force on our people like none other. Buying a house now feels as greasy as a used car lot.
But then we have a generation of young girls eagerly selling their bodies on instagram for “free” makeup.
“The expectation was that Harry and Helen Homeowner would eventually pay off the mortgage and help create a good community.”
It is a shame that it didn’t work out. I’d quite like my neighbours (any of them) to be called Harry and Helen Homeowner. For most blocks around me it is often a case of Raj The Homeowner, Anwar The Renter (cousin of Raj) and then Ranjit, Afshar, Mahmoud and Vinod The Sub-Lettees (cousins of Anwar).
As I am baling on Londinium, I was explaining to my Pajeet neighbour the concept of Share of Freehold in the UK. He said “It is different in India” and I though “India will be here sooner than you think matey!”.
Anyway, got my woman, got my two boys, got The Lord (and Z’s blog) I’m off to whiter parts. Funny thing is that another English bloke in the block is doing the same. Good for him. He’ll make a tidy sum selling it at a ridiculously high price to people who aren’t his own. He seems to also be veering in the DR direction, asking me if black dysfunction was somehow “a Darwinian thing” – the message spreads!
I’m in Londinium suburbia and they creep in slowly. Another across the street last month.
A walk into the square reveals 3-4 semis in a row all owned by them.
Tis time to plan a move to somewhere less attractive to them.
Yes, it really is quite staggering in some places. If BloJo wants to welcome up to five million Hong Konger’s then maybe you’ll be lucky: jack up the price and flog it guilt free to the invaders… then take your London horror stories to whiter parts and warn people.
The sprawl of London is also quite horrible, slow but sure. Merging what were once small villages into the blob. Looking at an Ordnance Survey map from the 60s versus today will crush your soul. Of course, if you’re older you will of lived it.
1.5 billion Indians. 50 million Britons with an aging population, a fertility rate of 1.6, years of cuck propaganda, and an evil and sick government letting all the hostile non whites in. Billions more Sub-saharan Africans.
White brokers will sell to anybody. That old high trust habits. Indian brokers will only sell to Indians. Who do you think wins in this case?
It is not “time to run somewhere else”. I’ve watched all the “white flight” areas of Ontario also get turned into shit holes. Immigration needs to be stopped, at all costs.
You seem proud of your white flight. Is the plan to just keep running further and further away every generation?
I understand that with children, raising them in a good environment is important, so I never begrudge anybody for moving to somewhere better. However, unless you manage to prevent new development in your new area, or keep them out by other means (I hope you understand what I’m getting at – whites never seem to do this), it’s a repeating cycle and your new town WILL eventually be taken over too. Certain towns in Ontario understood this and have held out for a long time – even holding out today. Some have bad reputations that still scare Indians away. But one by one they fall as either the Camp of Saints flood, or developer money is too great.
The elites are evil and sick. They will keep letting them in until England has 100 billion people living across an island-wide slum. Same for every western nation.
Raj might even seem to be a decent guy. But once he moves in, you know that Anwar, then Ranjit, Afshar, Mahmood, and Vinod are moving in too. Anwar doesn’t cause problems but you wouldn’t want him in the same room as your daughter. Ranjit, Afshar, Mahmood and Vinod are straight up pedos, drug dealers, and generally nasty people.
We are different peoples and we need our own space, institutions, and governance.
Go easy on Orangefrog: there is no reason he needs to sacrifice his life and (more importantly) his children in an unwinnable battle against Londinistan. He and his family will make new friends in his new home. Clauswitz has a chapter on “Retreat After a Lost Battle” in his book, “On War”.
A big cause of the problem was the GI bill after World War II. If it had just trained many new engineers and scientists, great. Instead, it created armies of new sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, economists, liberal arts Ph.D.’s, etc., who plagued the country. The expanded universities are doing the same today, now churning out tens of millions of anti-White fanatics.
I had the same kind of thought about why Covid didn’t send us into a mega-depression…when 30 million people lose their jobs, and many more under-employed, you’d think that you’d be seeing a lot more poverty and neediness than we are. But at least in my neck of the woods, which is in a red state, and where poverty is higher than normal anyway, throughout 2020 I did not see any signs of economic devastation. (In fact the first time I did notice economic interruptions was this year, with shortages of stuff, caused by lack of workers of all things.)
My own take was that Covid hit the service jobs the most, which is the majority of the workforce, and those jobs were taken up mostly by part-timers, the low-skilled, and immigrants. In other words, people that were never going to amount much to our civilizational energy, and most likely pay no taxes either. Before Covid and during the very long economic expansion after the 2008 crash, I also wondered how in the world our local economies could justify so many restaurants, box stores, gas stations, and other chains. I’m no economist, but how many burger joints, for instance, can a city of 400K handle?
Turns out that all those businesses and service-industry workers were superfluous after all. They were simply dressing on the economy, the kinds of outward appearances that Chamber of Commerce Republicans salivate over. It is amazing how much our economy is full of this kind of fluff, as opposed to meaningful, productive activities.
Yes, and add to this a consideration of the utter stupidity of adding millions of low skilled immigrants to the mix. I do not take away from these guys that they actually do work, like landscaping, roofing, construction, etc. But in their vast numbers is a landmine of population overload, resource stress, the need for further expansion of “infrastructure” much of which is merely added to ageing, failing sewer, water, and transportation systems which have been inadequately maintained for decades. And why? Votes, jawbs, the surface appearance of material prosperity, all of which will nean nothing when the bill comes due.
In the worst black pill case (short of widespread war or other physical loss of life and property) a likely endgame preview is to be seen in what happened to all (?) post-colonial African nations. The White European colonists who were there for decades to centuries built up a certain amount of infrastructure that could not be taken away after they lowered the mother country’s flag. Of course the people left behind were incompetent to run things, so for the most part the physical plant has deteriorated. The natives knew little more than how to exploit, to use up, the old capital. You’ll get a rusted, unused railway along a potholed dirt track that once was a paved highway, before the Belgians or the English took their marbles and went home. Even the most recent colonists, the Chinese, will be lucky if they can actually harvest the natural resources for the likely high price of building the necessary infrastructures, importing temporary workers, and paying off host governments.
In the case of USA and Europe, the problem is that the White Europeans don’t have any clear home to go back to. 🙁
Where I live Landscaping used to be a desirable summer job for teenagers. Roofing was mostly Irish and Masonry was mostly Italians. They were locals and guaranteed their work. Now those industries go to the parking lot at the HD and hire illegals who they pay off the books. I don’t care how hard they work. They’re a resource suck and send their $ “home.”
Yeah it’s always 1985 in the DR crowd.
Try telling it to the steel mill operators or lumber yards who can’t workers or many other industries that are screaming for workers and can’t get them because of stimmy checks.
GM is screaming for workers and even Mikky Dees is paying good now.
Right now employers are paying through the nose to get decent workers and most workers would rather stay home and collect their stimmy checks.
And this has a added bonus of putting small businesses our of business because they can’t afford to pay to attract workers now. And those that can will pass it onto to you
Inflation baby, it’s whats for dinner.
“even Mikky Dees is paying good now”
Big Business has long used welfare to backfill the wages that they refused to pay their proles. This is why the Republicans’ only meaningful assault on the welfare state was to attach a “must work a job if possible” requirement. Whenever the Democrats offered more welfare in order to buy votes, Big-Corp Republicans lowered their wages accordingly. If a worker’s pay goes from 40% job, 60% welfare to 30% job, 70% welfare then win-win for the Powers That Be!
But this year, the “job” percentage just went negative. Now Republicans are crying that ‘people don’t want to work anymore’ because their workforce’s payroll is -10% pay, 110% welfare. They would creep it back up to 1% pay, 99% welfare, except that the new wave of Leftists like the idea of Universal Basic Income and therefore aren’t playing ball.
My old man told me when he bought his first house in the 1970’s it was him, the homeowners, and a trip to the bank for a mortgage. So, more or less three people.
When I bought my first house ten years ago it was me, my agent, the seller’s agent, the mortgage rep, the appraiser, the inspector, and five extraneous people who for some reason had to show up at the closing. So a room of about a dozen people were at closing.
They all got pissed off at me at the closing for actually reading the documents during closing, making them all sit still as I looked through them. Sorry, you guys with all the bullsh*t middlemen twiddlling their thumbs isn’t my problem. I’m not signing something I didn’t read.
From what I’ve heard, it’s only gotten more farcical in that time, with brokers turning into outright crooks at the home buyers they represent.
Don’t forget “the environmental”
You have to make sure there is no methane leaks from prehistoric times in the soil
And God forbid there is any lead paint!
It is all so tiresome.
I’m in the process of selling now, and the non-ending stream of useless middlemen is incredible. God damn solicitor charging £200 per hour for looking over some documents. The most problematic thing tends to be buyers who contact you directly and ask questions, then also ask the solicitors which then snowballs into a very confusing three way conversation in which nobody knows what’s happening. It really is make-work in many cases.
As Falcone mentions above, then you’ve got the environmental stuff on top: Has your site got too large a dose of Radon in the ground, Sir? Has your site ever been a tin mine, Sir? My goodness there are even more than this, each more tedious than the last. The worst of it is that you could actually do a lot of this stuff yourself, but nope, you must pay a middleman.
Make-work is important. But it must be make-work that permits no interference in practical matters. Maybe these guys can count traffic for the local council. Actually, picking up litter is a much better thing for them to do, it actually needs to be done and has a practical benefit. I’ll be more than happy to throw my beer bottle at them from my car as I’ll be helping the cause.
It is interesting that buying a house, along with so many other things, is now very painful. Cars are the next thing I can think of, but even a mobile phone isn’t simple. Haven’t bought a computer for years, but can imagine that’s turned into a make-work festival too.
People learn the hard way that when you sell for X you only take home or net .9x or .95x.
Even worse than that, try to make a change on one or more of the documents you are asked to sign!
Happened to me on first home purchase. One document was a release to the IRS to allow mortgage company(s) to examine *all* tax records filed under my SS#. I was told this was so they could verify financial info I had provided for home loan.
I responded that I was asked to verify financials for last fiscal year (just one year), however this document had no limiting timeframe written into it. In short, they could go back to my first ever filing and do checks on all future IRS filings.
The broker verbally claimed that the mortgage companies “don’t do this”. I said fine, then I took my black signature ink pen and begin changing the release form. I added start and termination dates and restricted the release to the last filing year. The broker was stunned and said, “we can’t change the form”. I said sure we can, we do it all the time at work. Here, I’ve initialed the change, here’s where whoever signs initials the change. Otherwise, we can stop the closing and reschedule when you’ve produced another release that is acceptable.
They accepted the changes. 😉
Z’s comment about bridges struck a nerve. Here on the Ohio River, the ruling class and safety patrol drones have been palavering for decades about building a replacement for the Brent Spence bridge,a vital piece of infrastructure on a major North/South artery carrying I-75 / I-71 traffic. To toll or not to toll, environmental impacts studies, traffic rerouting, taxes, eminent domain, American or foreign steel, competing designs, blah, blah bloviating blah.
All I know is that the Empire State building was built during the Great Depression in a little over one year in the heart of a already congested metropolis.
Let’s see, greed, lust, gluttony, sloth, envy….why most of the big 7 seem to be in play.
We’ve come a long way, baby.
There is a lot of bloviating on that, and I’ve actually complained about that very bridge in this very comment section before (full disclosure: I haven’t lived in the area for decades). Anyway, what they’d really like to do is build a new bridge while the old bridge is still in use, but that would require acquiring very expensive property on both sides of the river (which I’d imagine is where a lot of the “environmental” stuff is coming from) and on the Kentucky side the property (that they were looking at) goes right into the side of a hill which means taking the curve out of the hill…again (I mean it’s either that or acquiring even more expensive property and tearing up large tracts of Covington).
Now what they need to do is just say “screw it” and close the bridge down for however long it takes to get a new stretch up; but with that crew down there, there’s a chance it might not ever happen once the old bridge is torn down.
In the 1930s, it took a bit over 4 years to build the Golden Gate Bridge.
In the 1950s, it took a bit over 4 years to build the much longer Mackinac Bridge.
In today’s AINO, I doubt you could complete either project in under a decade.
Same w/ the Bourne bridge (Cape Cod) compared to the “Big Dig.” We used to be able to build things on time and on budget. That ended about the same time various gov’t agencies partnered with elements of organized crime. Then the “don’t kill the job” lobby prevailed.
It can’t go on forever, and it won’t. Something has got to give eventually, but predicting when is near impossible. The Soviet Politburo never saw their end coming, nor did the CIA. And there are lots of canaries-in-the-coalmine shrieking alarm these days, but my guess is that the collapse will happen fast and be a complete surprise to most everyone when it happens. Here’s the point however. If you enter the collapse with a fatalist attitude and whine for a rescue, then you’re part of the problem. If the enter the collapse with a can-do attitude and roll up your sleeves, you’re part of the solution. And here’s the hard part. During a famine, a lot of people die; some through starvation and some through necessity. And that’s been nature’s natural corrective mechanism for about a billion years.
The collapse IS the cure.
The Middle Ages used monasteries. I’m kidding, but I’m not really joking. Idle hands naturally turn to virtue signaling. That’s what at least 90% of The Current Year “culture” is – groups of layabouts hectoring other parasites about their insufficient moral purity. We used to cram these people into universities, but higher ed is way past its carrying capacity. The New Monasticism – they can sniff their own farts and bugger each other all day, and let the rest of us get on with life.
The difference is monastics added a lot of value while being intentionally secluded from society. Having a bunch of intelligent , communal men with no families and a vow of poverty pool their resources creates some massive wealth. There’s a reason the Vikings chose Monasteries to pillage, and it wasn’t because they hated God.
So yeah, new Monasteries would be a win.
And not to mention the preservation of knowledge through the efforts of focused scribes. I am sure that at least some of these people also added value to the past knowledge that they were passing on as the enterprise matured. The scholastics, for all the scorn heaped on stuff like how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, also laid a foundation for the growth of science and the technologies that flowed from this. Observational skills were germinating amongst some of these folks at the early universities in that they wished to understand better God’s creation.
Not so at today’s universities, rather the opposite, as these idiots beaver away at spreading lies, anarchy, and deracination.
We do have our monastic scribes. Every day more and more books and movies and music are banned or hidden, papers locked away from the public, oeuvres deleted, etc., but a few thousand weird nerds keep torrents seeded, archive, and re-up to “alt tech.” Similar personalities, probably.
We still lose a Library of Alexandria every few hours.
The function a university should serve has been subverted for political means. As intelligent, pro-social men left the university, the moronic and malevolent moved in.
We also need to bring back the lunatic asylums, Up the 1980’s we institutionalized our insane and crazed housewives.and it made for a pleasant society.
Having more electroshock clinics would be a good thing as well. It’s the perfect cure for Wokeism and the insane homeless. So many Wokerters are so miserable and unstable. Give them enough electro-shocks and they will better people for it. It’s a win win for the country.
Bringing back Victorian-era cures for female hysteria would massively improve Western societal contentment.
Sev,
I actually know some monks and something about monasteries, and they are often enough the Cream at least of American Catholics.
Does the name Dulles ring a bell?
Nor do I think it was that different before- although yes they provided social services de facto for the disabled. That they were the losers hostel is a nice Henry VIII type myth, a good Protestant myth that has all the credibility of “The Dark Ages” which only ended when Martin Luther (a monk BTW) bought the Enlightenment etc etc.
However…
However the notion that any SJW or even average uni turd are ready for a simple life that no matter what the religion or Gods or cause absolutely must have adherence to group communal rules …my God if that were possible the 60s communes would already be proto monastic orders. They are not. Rules? Social skills? Sacrifice for the good of the group? Even basic social skills?
These people want POWER or an easy grifter life, usually both.
That’s like suggesting you put the KGB and former Party members in Monasteries.
Our SJW- CHEKA belong in mass graves or insane asylums, no we aren’t safe until they are gone.
I can confirm the presence of middlemen in housing transactions. We refinanced a couple of months ago. I had email or phone communication with five different people at my online lender. It appeared the first one had the primary job of helping the extremely ignorant figure out what they are supposed to do and answer questions like “what is a W-2?” The next person couldn’t answer a question I had, not because she didn’t know the answer, but because she wasn’t licensed to answer it in my state. That meant passing me along to someone else. The process kept moving and was completely timely, but I kept thinking how unnecessary most of it was.
When I bought my car, I first dealt with the salesman. Then his manager. Once we had a deal, I talked to a business manager then the service manager and finally an inventory manager. All of these people had forms for me to sign. All of them thought they were an indispensable part of the transaction.
Ditto. When I bought my very first car, it was from an old family friend, in cash, on a handshake. I handed him the green, he hands me the pink, and it was done. When I bought my last car, it took four hours, despite the fact that I walked into the lot, pointed at the car, and said “I’ll take that one.” Russian novels have less paper than I was required to sign.
“Russian novels have less paper than I was required to sign.” That made me LOL. (Had a seminar on Russian Lit at Uni. I remember thinking that if I read 24/7 I’m still not getting through all these, let alone reflecting upon them. And I’m a fast reader.)
Well, the new car sales model, from the dealer’s perspective, is about making money on financing, extended warranty/insurance and service contracts. The dealer makes very little margin on just the car. If you think I’m wrong, walk into a showroom, offer to pay cash and see the reaction you get from the sales manager. The car is just the “life-support system” for the actual money-making product: the financial services related to the car.
I also traded in my car for a newer model used one this year. The margins seem pretty good in the used car market. They listed my trade in online at double what they gave me for it. They might put 10% of that difference into cleaning, fixing paint chips, etc., but that still gives them a lot of margin to work with.
Yes. Most dealers have very good margins on used cars. In fact, their profit centers are financial service, service and used cars. New car margins (outside of exotics like Ferrari and Porsche) are paper-tin.
Yep. New cars like new homes arent really owned by the dealers anyhow.
Thats the idea. Merchant builders and car dealers alike run off of carry.
Every cost is passed onto the consumer. As quickly as possible. For example: “Dealer handling fees”. Wtf?
Velocity and volume. The ultimate goal is to sell you what they dont yet even technically own. The hot potato.
Not surprisingly when looking under the covers, these industries are nothing but finance and marketing shells.
Pass through corporate structures designed to optimize margins through the accounting gauntlet.
On one hand its intellectually ‘interesting’. But when you have to deal with it as a consumer it is hard to not become cynical and distrustful of the various agents.
Like most things fake and gay I think our monkey brains signal to us that its dangerous. Intuition is often pretty good at seeing the empty shell.
Exactly.
You’ll get a similar reaction if you take your used, same-brand vehicle to the dealer’s maintenance department for simple repairs and maintenance.
They aren’t making any vig on your loan and there’s next to no margin on oil changes.
Don’t be surprised when they find all kind of things to fix or go ahead and fix stuff so they can stick you with a big bill.
Better to DIY the small stuff and find a good independent mechanic for the larger, more complex jobs.
Reminds me of General Electric in it’s Jack Welch hay-day. All the nonsense about six-sigma, and how their brands were number one or two in every market. Then it turned out all the profits were from GE Capital, it’s finance/leasing arm. When that gravy train flattened, so did the company.
I did that very thing. The only reason I didn’t get the spiel was that it was a standard transmission, previous year’s model. They just wanted it off the lot.
Was this at a traditional dealer?
I’m curious because my past two vehicle purchases were via Carmax and a Carmax clone.
In both situations I only dealt with two or three people during the entire process.
A short anecdote, if I may: last summer I bought a lightly used car. I got a loan with a third party lender, walked into the dealership, pointed at the car I wanted (I had already test drove it the week before and had it inspected), made my offer, and they accepted. I signed four dozen papers but walked out in an hour.
I had all my ducks in a row and made it clear I was not interested in any games or extended warranties, etc.
It was an all Hispanic shop, inluding the owners, and I’m white, female. I didn’t want to be taken advantage of or be intimidated (nonwhite males treat white women with such condescension. I dread interacting with them when I’m alone). I also dress well and I think they could see the self respect in that. I think that probably helped. In other words, I wasn’t some white chick dropping in to buy a car on impulse, between trips to Petco for catfood.
I wish I was in a position to purchase a car outright with cash, but my loan is only 3 years and I can drive this car for many more years.
Regarding the actual topic of this essay, I noticed that not much really changed in 2020 where I am (employment, that is) but I have always wondered about the middlemen issue. How did this become so integral to the system when it wasn’t before for my recent ancestors? Well, now I am seeing why. All the layers and layers of b.s.
RIP USA. And the sooner, the better. I want the next generation to be able to afford to purchase a car and a home–from whites–without the hassle or heartache.
To be fair, a car is a decent investment. Took me five years to pay mine off, but it is now something (after 12 years) that I actually own (until men with guns take it). Just make sure that your government isn’t going to outlaw IC in the years you expect to use it!
You never know which ‘crisis’ button they’ll hit next.
A car is a decent tool — a really valuable one — but not a decent investment in the financial sense.
Unless your car happens to attain classic status and is in cherry condition and a make and model that’s in demand, it’s worth far less now than it was when you bought it.
But its utility as a tool is unmatched. You don’t buy a hammer as an investment. You buy a hammer because you need a hammer.
In the more abstract sense, your tools are an investment in the future you build with those tools, so in that sense you’re right.
Vizzini, perhaps my wording was wrong – I really meant a practical investment. Not something that I will sell to a wealthy speculator based in the Bahamas in 10 years time.
Your third paragraph covers it!
Vizzini, I follow that “Bring aTrailer” site. If time travel were possible I’d buy land with a barn, buy certain cars and park them there. Some of it has to be money laundering, like Hunter Biden’s art work.
Much of the hassle with car buying is needing a loan. At that point they have you by the short hairs. Car buying at my age is now not even unpleasant. I can sit down, lay out the rules of engagement, and be out of there fairly fast—especially if the negotiations fail.
I suspect, this is because they take a quick look at my financials and age and they immediately stop playing games. Hell, the last several vehicles were driven off the lot with *no* payment and no financing. Just an agreement to drop of the check when the broker put the funds into my account. And no, the list price is never even a starting point of discussion—but I’m not fooling myself, they made money on the deal. My primary concern is leaving the dealership without a bad taste in my mouth. Too old for that crap.
“My primary concern is leaving the dealership without a bad taste in my mouth.”
Exactly. I laughed after watching many YouTube videos and reading webpages about cutting the best car deal and negotiating the terms and eliminating fees, etc. Since all of the car dealerships in my area are owned and staffed by non-whites, and the whole thing is a hussle as well as a hassle, I want in and out of there as fast as I can. Right now, that is more important than anything else, I’m sorry to say.
Perhaps in another time, I will prioritize differently. But something tells me that, in another day and in the coming age, these games won’t be necessary, or at least not as unpleasant. Anyway, it angers me to hand over money to guys that should be doing their business in Mexico.
Better times ahead.
Me three.
I tend to work out the numbers I can live with in terms of trade-in value, loan rates, down payment, monthly payment size, loan term, and total interest that I think the dealer will agree to around Kelly Blue Book and other commonly used valuations before I ever set foot in the dealership.
To me, my time is valuable enough to spend a couple hours doing that at home rather than endless haggling and back and forth with the dealer regarding this and that fee, rate, or what have you.
For people unwilling to do this who also value their time, there is always the Carmax model. Apparently there are enough folks like this to have grown Carmax into an enormous, nationwide used car dealer.
Apparently with car buying “your mileage may vary.” I bought in mid-April. Salesman took me on the test drive and worked up the deal; then, after taking my deposit check, turned me over to the finance gal. I hadn’t disclosed my intention to pay off the loan within a month; but I shut down her shenanigans with rates, terms and the “special” she managed for me on extended warranty and assorted crap. Drove off the lot in my new car in less than two hours. With luck, it’ll last me twenty years (only the second car I’ve bought since 1995). The internet has transformed the playing field for informed and motivated buyers.
Check out the closing statement
Perhaps 15 to 20 little add one and tack ons— fee for this, fees for that, escrow gets this, inspector. Etc
Incidentally the most useless guy is the inspector. In my mind at least. They just restate the obvious, it’s, however, women who find them essential. The husband can be pretty handy and inspect the house himself, but no, the wife will demand a professional. What is with women and all these demands for “licensed professionals”. Not just a professional, but licensed ! The word alone really gets them in the mood. I suppose it’s sorta the equivalent of “men in uniform”
Lol. Women. Gotta love them, but they’re positively insane maybe, hmmm, 90% of the time?
When we bought the house my impression was the primary purpose of the inspection was to sell us a home warranty. It did give us a couple of things we could go back and haggle with the sellers over, but he missed several others.
The home warranty is the other grift
I never understood how a house could be warrantied. It’s like warrantying a person to never get sick
Talking about false sense of security. But I guess I just answered my question. It gives a homebuyer a sense of security. Ahh, how sweet. Let’s cuddle!
I was reading how the the wife makes around 90% of the major purchasing decisions, be it the house or the car. Of course the appliances. When a woman gets a buzzword in her mind, by the way, no way she will ever let it go. Once women heard the phrase “open concept”…. before that “granite countertops”. Oh man lol
> Once women heard the phrase “open concept”…. before that “granite countertops”.
The dawning of Home Remodeling shows has ensured a woman will never be satisfied with the home a man provides.
I’ve bought or sold about three homes now (for living in). I make no claims to be sharp on real estate. However, there is a lot to be said for cutting out middle men when possible, and/or otherwise speeding the transaction. When I finally decide to sell my current home, I will consider at least, the following: Although it goes against all their advice, I may just sell it as is. It’s easy to deconstruct much of the agents’ advice, e.g. to have everything painted, clean and neat, and the smell of fresh bread. “It increases the appeal and thus the price you’ll get.” True up to a point. But what they really mean is “It’ll make an easier sale and more percentage for us.” Now there is some merit to that advice, but consider another view.
So the house has dingy twenty year old paint. Why should I spend $2000 contracting the work (I am not competent to do it myself) if the buyer was going to paint a custom shade anyway? Similarly, why must I install upgraded Formica countertops if the new owner will install Granite? Etc. Another “rule of thumb” I recall is that, on the average, home improvements do not recoup their costs. So my “fixer-up” home sells for $20,000 less. If I would have had to put that much into it before the sale, what have I lost? Nothing. But someone “lost” about 5% of what that improvement would have brought. I think we have found a potential conflict of interest, ladies and gentlemen.
So how might one short-circuit the middle man here? I expect I’ll need to use an agent. But why not incentivize them? A trick I read once, for a slow market, was simply to put a clause in the sales contract that the buyer’s agent was to receive (say) a flat payment of $5,000 cash at settlement, direct, not shared with his corproration or anyone else. The point was that on a sale, the agent’s commission would be effectively doubled. They would, in theory at least, work extra hard to sell YOUR home! And I see no reason that wouldn’t work just as well in a hot market.
Moral: you may not be able to cut out all the middlemen. But you can sometimes compensate the ones that actually work in your favor.
Oh you have no idea. Construction defect disputes are literally multimillion dollar fights over whether the weatherproofing flashing went 1/4″ too short, or this thing slopes 12% instead of 15%. If I had a dollar for every time i heard “code requires…,” i’d be Bezos-rich.
Yeesh. I got nuthin’. You?
I think a lot of this can solve itself by families taking on a more traditional role and men doing the work and women raising the kids.
If all of a sudden women left the workforce, men would obviously end up making more. Not that it would be an offset immediately, but in time.
Plus more white kids. Not bad deal.
We all know the expression, “the face only a mother could love.” Stands to reason, therefore, the more mothers the more love. And we could use more love in our lives.
Aside from that, yes, these middlemen will stand right in the way of our roads and bridges and airports ever being rebuilt. Is an infrastructure deal even possible anymore with all the middlemen and grifters?
Your final question almost answers itself 😀 You have named two of the multitude that are part of the giant self-licking ice cream cone. Those are the very entities that would profit on the “infrastructure bill.” Silly citizen! Government spending is first about funneling money to special interests, only secondarily about getting real-world results. You see, you can spend a lot of that money on the overhead, and perhaps never even lay a foot of sewer pipe nor build a single span of a bridge. We need another “study,” you see, and we want to insure that contractors will hire a diverse work force, and…
if anything a part of hte problem is the separation of home life from work life. Like in the old days – commuting to work wasn’t a thing because not only were cars not around but because people were self employed.
I will never understand how women got conned into believing spending 30+ years in a cubicle cranking out TPS reports is more fulfilling than raising children. I guess it was a bit of reverse psychology, that they weren’t allowed to do it, so they felt they were missing something.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the high-speed rail project in California, Gov. Moonbeam’s attempt to out legacy his dad Pat’s massive water project. It’s billions of dollars over budget (from $33B to $98B), the completion date is now pegged (optimistically and unrealistically) at 2033 for Phase 1 (LA to SF), and to date, not one mile of operational rail has been completed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail
A country that is down and brown like California simply can’t do infrastructure. This boondoggle is a harbinger of AINO’s future.
Curses!
I had a road that went straight from my house to Highway 99. 6 minutes, tops.
Now there’s a wall standing there, barricading the road. That’s all it’s done, for the last four years. (It was supposed to be a support column.) Naught but a checkerboard zigzag of small side roads to get around the wretched thing.
It stands there, silently, mocking me. Drat!!
Elaine’s Idle Mind provides some insight into how it all works:
The East Coast creates value through laws and restrictions that lead to artificial scarcity. Silicon Valley creates value by disintermediating the rent-seekers. The US economy is just a line of people digging up holes and filling them back in.
What my grandfather used to call “Chinese labor”
I have no idea where the expression comes from, but actually never tried to find out.
It’s endemic in the Third World. Since any shopkeeper has to provide for scads of extended family back home, buying anything involves going through three factotums, four gophers, at least a few guy Fridays, and a manager or two. That’s one reason why there’s no spirit of enterprise in a place like Africa (or African-adjacent) places – start a business, and sixteen friends and cousins and “ministers” and babymommas show up expecting handouts. What’s the point?
Very interesting. I wonder then if the Anglo idea of individuality, of breaking off on one’s one, saying by to family to pursue one’s goals, if that ethos both stemmed from and fed into the vitality of the Anglo economy?
Is the individualistic spirit part and parcel of a successful and, for lack of a better term, vibrant economy?
Falcone, I tend to agree with this perspective. I actually have a lot of confidence in European Whites and what we will do after the fall of USA. We will take that ball of vitality and run with it. It’s in our genes and in our spirit. We know no other way. (Yes, I am aware of the apparent contradiction in using the collective “our” when discussing the individualist spirit of Anglos!)
There are some very bad times ahead. But there is so much to look forward to, once the dust settles. We got this.
Moreover, we owe the future white generations the best we have to offer and to teach (the lessons of history as well as the past achievements). That is what will carry me through the hell that’s coming soon. Not just hope but CONFIDENCE.
I agree too, Desert Flower. I still feel optimistic for the future, for some reason.
Just don’t race mix, and instead have alot of white kids. As long as whites exist, the potential for solutions also exists.
” start a business, and sixteen friends and cousins and “ministers” and babymommas show up expecting handouts. What’s the point?”
In India this is called “IT” and it’s the one truly functional global enterprise. You see the West has unlimited money, and it’s not their money of course.
No, they’re not all geniuses, actually.
Most of them are average at best, and really most on the phone are going to be sub par, reading a script they don’t understand.
It wasn’t always a bullshit economy. Not to long ago we used to create and make everything we needed as a country.
But capture of the political class by Wall Street. destroyed that America when they figured out they could off-shore everything but the corporate offices to some 3rd world hell hole to maximize profits via labor arbitrage.
And that left most Americans to become little more than “quill driving babus” as one historian put it. Sure we have some industry left. But most workers today are just office drones who would not be missed if their jobb vanished.
It was labor arbitrage, salaries and working conditions, but also pollution arbitrage.
Yep, but it was “sold” by pin-head economists stating that “symbol manipulation”, i.e., banking, insurance, markets, could and should replace manufacturing. In other words, let the third world do the dirty work of manual labor while we sold/traded in our “knowledge”.
I always knew that was bullshit, and unfortunately have been proven correct. Now we have the worse of both worlds: we produce few hard goods and our knowledge is stolen faster than it can be patented.
True, when you can dump heavy metals into a river rather than EPA certified land fill it’s going to save a company a lot of money.
BTW some years back the MSM would do reports about rivers in China erupting in flames or giant toxic clouds from factories that forced people to flee by the 10’s of thousands. Or how about those shows about all the Chinese products laden with heavy metals and just plain unknown chemicals that were being sold abroad, They all vanished.