Throw Another Virgin Into the Volcano!

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Voting for communists because you’re poor is roughly akin to throwing virgins into a volcanic caldera to stop an eruption.

But then so are most of the things governments think they can do to improve the economy, from printing more money or less money, raising or dropping interest rates, regulating several aspects of the economy, or just about anything else.

I mean, all of those do something. They just rarely do what the government thinks its doing/wants them to do.

Sure, printing more money should bring about inflation, and sometimes, some governments use inflation to inflate away governmental debt. The problem is that sometimes as you know and have learned, a currency becomes — for reasons inexplicable except other economies suck more than ours — the world’s reserve. And then you print money and it goes into mattresses, drawers and someone’s socks overseas. Which means the inflation will not climb as you expect. Alternately, it will climb when people decide to get rid of your currency and you’ll never know how to control that.

Then there’s the interest rate game. It goes up, it goes down, and every time it does — unless the augur reads the signs very carefully and performs the traditional rituals… er…. I mean, unless the person deciding reads the signs very well — it breaks something different. Or say, truly outrageous violations of free humans ability to enter contracts like the minimum wage. Most of all it seems to be capable of distorting the employment market by making young and inexperienced people unemployable. Which in turn eventually makes middle aged and inexperienced people unemployable and swells the ranks of welfare….

Look, the truth is that economics is brutally simple: things are worth what someone is willing to pay for them. And among the things that are worth what people are willing to pay for them, is human labor as well as all the things labor creates. How do you know someone is willing to pay that price? Well, someone pays that price. How do you know who is willing to pay that price? You offer it for sale, and if you can get the right person to know it exists, he/she/critter pays for it. This is almost tragically simple in theory and in the individual case. (Why tragically? Well, I’m still trying to figure out how to tell people my product exists.) BUT it becomes unholy complicated when you multiply it by the number of people in the world, their moods and needs on any given day, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Or even the number of people in a country. Or a city. Or–

All of which brings us to the simple fact that the only thing government can do for the economy is to cut down on regulations and interference and get out of the way.

The free market, as rarely as it’s tried, always improves human life. In fact it creates near-magical prosperity, no matter how bad the odds.

Because it lets the people with the thing to sell — however imperfectly — make contact with the people who will pay to buy it with minimal interference.

Everything else a government can or does do just amounts to creating deviations and unnatural decisions in the economy. I.e. what the government does has some effect, but it is not the effect they think it will have.

Which is why communism is the worst of all systems, because it thinks it can “scientifically” and “top down” control all of economy from production to consumption.

And all it does, over and over again, is throw virgins in volcanos to stop the lava flow.

Only the promised wonderland of free stuff never arrives.

And you end up tragically short on virgins. And everything else, as well.

122 thoughts on “Throw Another Virgin Into the Volcano!”

  1. The only thing governments can do with regards to the economy, is make it worse. By that I mean the laws, rules, regulations, currency manipulation to include inflation, deflation, interest rates and whatnot.

    Governments need money. People make money, mostly by providing a product or service for sale. Governments then demand a piece of said money made when their people do that, with the implied threat of death, so that they can keep doing what governments do:

    Growing. Making more bureaucrats. More laws. More rules and regulations.

    Voting for commie scum is also like taking meth (probably. I wouldn’t know, having never felt the need or the desire). Feels good when you start, but kills you rather fast going into it, and then the dealer goes and finds another putz to sell to.

    Liked by 2 people

  2. And you end up tragically short on virgins.

    Can’t imagine why it’s hard to find virgins under a system which fucks over everyone and everything……

    Liked by 7 people

  5. Well, on a more positive note;

    I finally ‘pulled the trigger’ on No Mans Land. You had done a great job of letting me know it existed, and had an interesting back story, and then gave me those ‘free samples’ to get me hooked. But you DO have competition, and I was working through Larry’s Saga Of the Forgotten Warrior, and wanted to finish THAT. Except I had forgotten I hadn’t bought the WHOLE series; maybe the last two weren’t out when I got the first four; I don’t know why. So I spent Tuesday night searching my devices for the ‘lost’ files before checking on Baen to verify I had downloaded them. … OH. So LAST night I made time to get online and ACTUALLY buy them, and since I was doing that, hopped over and bought No Mans Land TOO. I hope I did it the ‘right’ way! (Started on your page and followed the link to Amazon.)

    So now I should have PLENTY to read through Christmas. In December the wife and I are going to get to AmericaFest in Phoenix. When they were talking about it on some show she was watching, I said that “Gee, if that was in our neighborhood, I would go!. She proceeded to convince me that (despite the fact she HATES flying) that, sure, Phoenix is ‘in our neighborhood’. Well, OK, compared to Dubai or Singapore! She had to cancel a different trip I was LESS interested in to free up time and money, but now we’re going.

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  6. Friendly reminder that you keep communism at bay by responding to the economic conditions of the young, and realizing that ever-widening wealth disparities are unsustainable. Job displacements via AI, importing “talent”, and outsourcing – doesn’t help.

    And there’s plenty of virgins in the US, only that they are young males. Probably due to the fact they don’t have enough economic clout to attract quality women from the small percentage of modern Western women that are still viable as decent mates, the few that aren’t voting for socialism and murder.

    But then again, the young males probably aren’t “True” virgins, since the system has F-ed them without the benefit of lube for the last three decades, so many of them have checked out.

    On the good side all the “conservative” governors are celebrating Diwili and our nations Judeo-Hindu heritage.

    Regulations, smegulations. Big AI wants to secure bailouts from the taxpayers when their bubble bursts. Yeah! corporate socialism rocks!

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      1. Hmm. That triggered a diverse thought.

        Citizenship, well, the responsible kind, entails a certain level of cost to the individual. Usually taxes, but also lost income opportunities due to time and resources participating in the representative process. That usually gets rolled into the agreed-on wage/price to whomever you’re selling your work.

        Illegal aliens don’t have that cost to the individual. That’s one reason why they will ALWAYS undercut citizens in the workplace. And it doesn’t really matter which country they’re invading; those citizens get screwed.

        Liked by 3 people

        1. Well, and the big cost of U.S. citizens of the male type being subject to military conscription. I’m betting military-age-male “migrants” will suddenly find urgent needs to go back to the village if such were to eventuate, pointing out that on the whole they are here to get stuff, not contribute.

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          1. My eldest came to the sudden realization last night that he’ll have to register for the draft on his next birthday. I told him not to worry, because it shouldn’t come to that—and if it does, his tactic should be to go apply first and they’ll put him on the technical side, because they’d be stupid not to.

            The military doesn’t want draftees. And current war strategies suggest that techies are going to be more in demand than half-trained boots on the ground by a long shot.

            Liked by 3 people

            1. He’ll still have to register. The thing is, they’re not drafting anyone at present, and barring a total attack by China on the U.S., unlikely we will see any new drafts. There’s plenty of young people with tech experience who would jump at the chance to play with a lot of the toys the military is being in. Still need boots to guard stuff though. That’s not about to change. Although you might start seeing a single guard controlling a squad of semi-autonomous armed guard bots patrolling facilities.

              There’s a lot of stuff in the tech news about various walking robots for equipment transport, search and rescue, armed interdiction, etc. They all have one significant limitation, how much power (stored electricity/fuel) they consume, limiting their periods of operation, especially in the field. Not like you can hand one an MRE and two quarts of water and have it continue for another 24 hours.

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              1. Based on all the fuel transport that the FOB strategy required in the recent unpleasantnesses across the territory of the Sassanid Persian Empire, the U.S. military is really hot for small, aspirationally container-volume, mini modular nuclear reactors to power standalone forward bases. Notably this is not just a “last war” thing, as it would also greatly help with Pacific Theater concepts of plopping little groups of extremely heavily armed Marines on lots of forward islands, reducing their logistic tail as well. Whether they can get there or not is the question, but taht tech would be great to have for a lot of other things.

                Liked by 1 person

      2. I’m blabbing employment opportunties to you, especially after having two neighbors get replaced by outsourcing this past month.

        No one is asking for handout, they just can’t compete with the increasingly corrupt race to the bottom. They weren’t let go for merit, they just didn’t originate from “The Subcontinent”.

        It’s a younger native citizen thing, older non-natives probably wouldn’t understand, especially if they aren’t in the corporate world or live near cities where the problems are a lot more obvious. It’s exceptionally bad in the IT world. Or Costco when shopping.

        It’s hard to live in the “melting pot” if the tribes don’t melt, especially the ones from low trust cultures.

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        1. I’m pretty sure Sarah gets the situation about outsourcing, but I do agree with you (and that’s a great line BTW) that the melting pot doesn’t work when some don’t melt. Also corporate socialism (aka companies get the profits, taxpayers absorb the risks).

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          1. I do know. I like the dig at my not having been born here, though. It’s cute! He should try more of those and see how well they work for him!
            As for not melting: Even people who want to and intend to HAVE TO FIGHT TO. Our institutions prevent it every step of the way. They kept trying to put my kids in SPANISH school, even though we only speak English at home (It’s all Dan speaks) and I had to fight to get them out. Then they’d quietly put them in again. Etc.

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              1. I’m aware of a school with 10+ home languages amongst the students, and nowhere near that many interpreters, so quite a few wound up in ‘Eh, close enough’ language instruction

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                1. Sure. BUT YOU’RE MISSING WHERE MY KIDS SPOKE ENGLISH FINE. (Better than the teachers, given how we talk.) And no foreign languages. They still don’t speak foreign languages.

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        2. Our son is one of those out of work. Company he worked for shutdown as they couldn’t get jobs they needed to keep open. The company he worked for before, which ships most their product to CA, did a massive layoff too. Luckily he does not have to worry about car payments, just insurance, as he paid of his car early. Nor does he need to worry about room and board. No we are not going to start charging him rent to “encourage” him to work faster finding a job. If he was a spend-thrift, yes. He isn’t. He is looking. He has filed applications (which are all online). Been out of the market myself for almost *10 years, well 22, since that was the last time I looked. Dad has been out of the market now for almost *16 years, 47 years since he’s looked.

          (*) Retired.

          Liked by 3 people

          1. Yeah, looking for jobs is weird these days. Two years ago I spent four months looking, applying to 10 jobs a day until I found my current job, and that was here in Utah where things have been growing. The guy we just hired spent a year after graduating working in retail until he found us, and he is still technically overqualified, since while the job officially only requires an associates degree, everyone under 40 has a bachelor’s degree.

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            1. He’s applied to retail. We do have locally a few, besides Costco, that are good retail to work for (not including the Kroger affiliates). Both BiMart (wags hands), and Jerry’s (local Home Depot/Lowes, without the appliances). He’d prefer working in a lab, Chemistry (BS degree), or doing what he was doing (custom woodworking *cabinets) working with his hands. Sales itself, not a chance. But he should be okay even in a public setting.

              (*) The companies last two major clients were the state, state capital renovation, and Portland airport renovations.

              Liked by 1 person

        3. Dude. My husband has been in computers for 42 years. And he’s as “native” as it comes. WTF?
          BUT that’s not inequality. That’s what we know the “elites” have been trying for. BUT it’s aided and abetted by corporate law that requires companies to make as much short term money as possible for their corporate masters.
          So, yes, that’s a problem. BUT has ZERO to do with “Wealth inequality” which is the cry of the left.

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          1. This.

            Any publicly traded company which does not take ruthless advantage of the H1B indentured servitude system to fill its technical ranks will find itself the target of the takeover hyenas. Leveraging a small stake and threats-by-press-release they get seats on the board, then at the first opportunity they take over and sell the company for parts, with the justification that they are better providing shareholder value because those old guys had something called “morals”.

            I have no idea how to fix all that (though obviously the whole H1B travesty, a prime example of a free market being massively distorted by central government interference, needs to be gutted), but it is valid to point out the problems even if I don’t know all the solutions.

            There’s currently no incentive to doing things that are better for the industry or the country as a whole. Just the endless myopic emphasis on quarterly profits.

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            1. The only way to get a handle on H1B employees is to make it prohibitively expensive. That is what the EU does. President Trump made a start (suggestion?, don’t know if it went through or is an executive order that has been challenged) with the $100k/H1B hire for companies. That is not enough. There should be a deposit against any medical expenses.

              That is what my cousin and her husband had to do for him to work as a physic professor at a university in the EU. Free national healthcare my assets. They, or the university, had to put down a hefty deposit for medical on each of them. I also know there were other requirements that the university had to comply with for him to teach there. It was NOT his credentials, along with multiple Phd’s, he is a major player in the various telescopes that have been launched over the last 35+ years (she’s 6 years younger than I am but I don’t know if he is her age or older. Comparison, youngest sister is 3 months shy of 5 years younger than I am, but her husband is my age, only 6 months younger than I am.)

              Liked by 3 people

            2. Reason #950765409573069587 of why on earth would you take your company public.

              Yay you get an immediate capital injection. Guess what; you can get capital injection from ESG funds too. Doesn’t mean it won’t destroy your entire business.

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          2. > as much short term money as possible

            Pet peeve – short-sighted corporate policy is all too common, but not required by law.

            Fiduciary duty and shareholder primacy are the relevant concepts – if you offer stock to the public, you have to act in a manner reasonably expected to make them money. Dodge v. Ford is a relevant case. But in general, the SEC is not likely to come after you for not outsourcing or making cancellation too easy.

            Activist investors and McKinsey consultants, however, are a completely different story.

            Liked by 1 person

          3. He must have missed all the broad IT H1B and “must have 3x experience in tools that have only been out for 1/2x” job postings so no one citizen with experience qualifies, and that discounts the “too old” euphemism anyone over 35, okay, 40, gets when they have to look for that next job. Not like that more than a few of us on this blog, including your husband, and sons, haven’t seen any of this close and personal.

            Excuse me. My eyes rolled out of my head, again. I have to find them before the cats hide them under the couch.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Not to mention how he grabbed those goalposts and set off to the horizon by going after things I’ve pounded on, like the fact kids can’t find jobs, when I stepped on his “wealth inequality” bs.

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              1. Our son will find a job. He has only been looking a few weeks. Once he has one, the job will not want to let him go if it is a decent place. If it isn’t. He stayed with his first out of college employer for 11 years, promoted to supervisor. Only left because he got head hunted by the second place, and chronically shorthanded in his group on his shift. Was affecting his health, even with the good money working 60+ hours/week (because supervisors do if the hours over 60 is paperwork); especially with shift differential. Made more money than his salaried manager, even with the difference in bonus money. New job had better hourly pay, even with out the supervisor pay bump, better hours (not late shift), but rarely had the overtime (this was good).

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                  1. Underpaid? Tell something I didn’t figure.

                    I took a job in 2004 that was less than what I was paid in 1990, right out of college for second career (yes, I had part time work during school, doesn’t everyone?) Immediate 2/3rds wipe out of 14 years of advancement. But that was better than unemployment, which was $0 because it’d ran out. We were a lot better off than most.

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        4. Not new. First round of post-dot-com-bubble layoffs at semiconductor employer twenty three or so years ago were pretty much across the board, but the moaning and wailing and gnashing about the poor horribly put upon H1B RIFs who had to move back home was enormously loud and sustained among the remaining subcontinental employees. Oddly, the second round of layoffs was quite a bit less subcontinental. I and my entire team of reports save two were included that second round, and the outplacement training sessions from that RIF were heavy on the native US and Asian mix.

          Second place I was layed off from during my semiconductor career about a decade later had a different entrenched protected culture, one a coRIFed Asian engineer termed the “Arab League”.

          So such has been a thing for a while

          Liked by 1 person

      3. Indeed, it is not wealth disparity between people that matters, but disparity between me today and me yesterday.

        As one of the young, the main problems I see are housing prices (driven by long standing and ongoing government intervention) and the fact the effect of government programs and taxes makes it so that you do not really start getting more disposable income from making more money until you get to about median income, which means that as young person it gets disheartening to work hard to get a better job and then be no better off in terms of what you can actually afford to do.

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        1. I’ve noted the problems with young people getting jobs, etc. And that’s government too, by and large driving H1Bs and the open border, not to mention the welfare bs.

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            2. And the really pernicious thing about minimum wage laws is that they do not have an obvious effect right away, so people can point to studies and claim they do not harm employment. When what really happens is they prevent new people from getting started in the workforce, which is much harder to measure.

              I mentioned the new guy at my work elsewhere in the thread, and I think his experience is a good lesson, even though we are a bit higher up the ladder. He was working while going to school for his engineering degree, and so when he graduated he was unable to get an engineering job, and I would guess part of the problem he had was having worked instead of getting an engineering internship. But because of the laws there is a gap between unpaid interns and minimum wage that is illegal to pay people, so you have a cohort of engineering students who need the money and cannot afford unpaid internships, but also are average, not so exceptional to be worth paying that much as interns. So you get this big cliff that messes up the young engineers who need to get experience.

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    2. And there’s plenty of virgins in the US, only that they are young males. 

      Will you quit buying into that “everybody is doing it, so sleep with me” BS already?

      30 years ago they were trying to claim our school survey had only one female virgin, when I knew that at least three other gals had answered they were virgins.

      They haven’t gotten more honest in the meantime.

      Stop looking at the sluts who trip you and beat you to the ground after paying for dinner, and you’ll get a better sample of “decent mates.”

      Liked by 1 person

      1. What, you hadn’t heard? The latest is that women always lie about their sexual experience so if a women says she’s a virgin, she isn’t, and you need to multiply her claimed number of sexual partners by 5 to get her actual body count.

        Men need to go overseas to find good women.

        /sneer

        And hearing that that’s what the men are being told by other men doesn’t really endear any of them to local women who might otherwise have given them the time of day…

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        1. It gets really interesting when you start digging into the studies for a claim and find out the ones giving exact sources are based on….

          Gay hook-up apps.

          Not even dating apps, but designed for anonymous sex with near you apps.

          Because that is going to get you a healthy snapshot of well-adjusted human beings.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Used to be you went to the Tall Oaks rest stop on the Garden State Parking Lot (ahem), and waited for one of the pay phones in the phone bank to ring to make your anonymous gay hookup. Only time we were ever asked by a cop to move on…..(We had stopped for a break coming home from an SCA event and it was obvious we were all straight).

            Liked by 1 person

            1. LOL

              The only time we got asked to “move on” by a patrol officer (CA state) was when we’d pulled off on a long pullout on the highway that crosses through Shasta county, national forest, south side of Shasta, from I-5, to the highway that heads south weaving in/out of Nevada to northeast Teton entrance (Tuolomone Pass). Long pullout because 40′ of xCab pickup and RV trailer. Pulled over because the dog needed a potty break. At dusk, no less. By the time the officer parked behind us it was full dark, both hubby, me, and the dog (hers was blinking), had flashlights on. Even got out of the car with his hand on his gun. Didn’t stay there once he realized he had two idiots pulled over to let the (leashed) dog out. We should have known better. In our defense it had been 40 years since we’d actually worked in the woods. We knew that illegal grows occurred off these highways, usually much further back than we were roaming, that they were dangerous. Not the last time we took that route. Last time we were ignorant and pulled over along sections of that route. He did stay until we loaded Taylor up and pulled out. Taylor got her patrol officer loves too.

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          2. … of course it is.

            Because why blame women for their own sexual foibles when you can blame them for gay men’s?

            This deserves all the facepalms.

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        2. Not overseas. Men need to go to better churches or hobbies to find good women.

          (I found mine at the gun range, of all places…)

          Liked by 2 people

            1. Hm. Vote for more range time. This time I pick the bay. Next to some 20 – 30 something that I might ask for help, with my son …. Hmmmmmmm

              Liked by 3 people

      2. 30 years ago they were trying to claim our school survey had only one female virgin, when I knew that at least three other gals had answered they were virgins.

        There probably only were a total of 4 virgin females, 30 years ago. LOL!

        (Maybe not, since the AIDS scare was still ongoing…)

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        2. No. She ONLY could swear to 4.
          Hint for you, sir, Odd females have even less “currency” in the sex market than Odd males. We also tend not to spread it around.
          Fortunately, just like the left, the right doesn’t consider us female, either. Cool beans.
          There are as many lonely females as lonely males. And this war between the sexes just keeps everyone lonely.
          Can you please stop echoing lefty propaganda?

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          1. Reminds me of the Big Drama my home schooling group in the Seattle blob had, though.

            One of the moms came in absolutely breathing fire because HALF THE GROUP had QUIT HOMESCHOOLING and NOT TOLD HER?!?!?!

            ….

            See, the school had stated that there were only three homeschooling families, and she’d managed to get in on the last day to fill the paperwork.

            There were six homeschooling families from that school in just our little group.

            Spoiler:
            the error in data was not in her having it conveyed.

            Liked by 1 person

              1. The biggest point of discussion was “are they incompetent, committing fraud, or lying to demoralize the competition? Or something we haven’t thought of yet?”

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          2. One thing I notice about this “male loneliness epidemic” was that the study that kicked it off wasn’t talking about romantic relationships, but about platonic male friendships. Now, an pretty solid argument can be made, IMO, that a lot of that can be laid at the feet of feminism. There is a decided lack of male-only places where men can hang out with other men without women interfering with the atmosphere. Such places would be exist and misogynistic, dontcha know, so you have to let women in.

            I wouldn’t say that’s the only reason, or even the primary reason, but I suspect it’s a significant part of the problem.

            (NB: I have no dog in that fight because I’d be every bit as uncomfortable in male-only venues as I am in mixed venues. But that’s on me.)

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            1. Now, an pretty solid argument can be made, IMO, that a lot of that can be laid at the feet of feminism. 

              Is it feminism that insists that every male relationship must be gay?

              I’d certainly find that off-putting if it were said about female relationships…

              Liked by 1 person

              3. That’s gay liberation. If you find it everywhere, including in people others respect, you can argue that it must be all right.

                (argumentum ad populum)

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            2. It does seem a bit (!) self centered for women hearing “male loneliness epidemic” to skip that pesky reading the study thing and immediately conclude “they are obviously all lonely for ME!!!”

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                1. Wait? I’m not the only one? Amen sister. Never once had the delusion that “all men want meeeeeee!!!!!” That my husband (mutual) still does after 47 years, come middle of *December, is something I cherish.

                  (*) Saturday at end of fall term finals week. Which gave us a few days for a honeymoon in San Diego …. SIL & BIL tiny RV trailer at their house in San Diego. Went, free, to San Diego Zoo, Wild Animal Park, and Sea World, curtsy of the family plan (SIL’s). Pretty sure inlaws paid for the fuel so we could drive down and back. I was still in school. Hubby hadn’t worked since early November (seasonal work) and not scheduled to work until spring. When I say we were “poor” starting out. We were poor. We had to borrow money, that had to be paid back, to be able to go to work. We’ve come a long ways since then. We worked for it.

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                2. Considering I spent most of my life having to convince myself not everyone in any given room HATED me, because most didn’t know me,* that would be PECULIAR illusion to have.
                  *I’m not better now. I just no longer care.

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              2. I mean… it could just be a case of gals thinking “Hey, an opportunity! I’m lonely too, and not the top of the heap in term of attractiveness, maybe if he’s lonely enough, he’ll lower his standards to include my level”

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                1. Except the response evident on the CCP Intelligence Directorate… err, I mean on TickTok appears to be for those females to record videos calling any male who is lonely a *L*O*S*E*R* who has no “emotional intelligence”, no six pack, is not at least six feet tall, and is not making six figures in income, otherwise they’d be dating HER and not be lonely.

                  The irony of a study saying males are lonely dealing with there being no more male spaces left due to females invading and appropriating them, being appropriated by females as evidence that males are all poopyheads, is apparently lost.

                  To quote William Shatner playing Buck Murdock in Airplane II The Sequel, “I guess irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.”

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            3. Yeah, but it’s not just feminism. We live in an age you can’t have a friend without people suspecting you are lovers. I’ve had that problem too, and contrary to rumors I’m not male. (Or Mormon, but that’s as may be.)

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              1. Yeah. Which is a real drag,—er, downer, um, pain? No, nuisance, there we go—unless you all agree to turn it into a huge joke, and confuse the daylights out of the overly nosey and/or foolish.

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              2. Where have I heard that before?

                Oh. Yea. Experience.

                One thing I learned is being naive, so that certain conversations evoke confusion (started as 100% truth, not so much later because keep hearing one gets a clue or two, if not experience to go with it, which was not happening) … Hint, they give up. Especially over the last 40 years when being too obvious gain them negative results. Only had to resort to a supervisor of “you deal with that, or I will”, once. Comments stopped. Last year I worked at that district, my choice. Also a problem was also housing. Plus a classmate helped the district he worked at recruit me to make a change.

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            4. I’m deeply skeptical of “The Male Loneliness Epidemic ” other than you the only time I’ve heard it referenced is when feminists mock it, or claim iys just deserts.

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              1. I’ve seen it used by the PsyOp folks to justify why we need to ban women from stuff.

                It is … “interesting”… to watch someone at the same time claim that there was never any attempt to keep women from being justly involved in governance, while at the same time it must be OK to run things from a male-only space because it’s so much better that way, everyone is so much more comfortable.

                The funniest one I’ve seen was the meltdown because a company “traditionally” had their meetings at a strip club, “because of the cheap food.” After a few of these after women got into management, it stopped.

                Because of the women, right? Darn gals, coming in and making Everyone Change.

                Turned out, nope, the gals were quite familiar with hazing, and just rolled their eyes. Not like the gals on stage had anything they hadn’t seen. The other management guys got uncomfortable interacting with coworker females in a stripclub, so they asked for it to stop….

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                1. If you go back you can find books like “Reviving Ophelia” that reflect an obscure feminist 90s fad about the belief that teenage girls were being silenced and crushed by the patriarchy and What We Can Do About It. It fizzled out and pretty much vanished from the public consciousness by the 2000s. I strongly suspect the “Male Lonliness Epidemic” was another one of those feminist fads about how “Patriarchy Hurts Men Too” until louder angry feminists misinterpreted and seized upon the phrase as a “Serves you right, you mysoginistic jerks, you don’t deserve the privilege of female company!”

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                  1. :wry: I grew up with that assurance about how I was just being repressed, I didn’t have to listen to old white men telling me how to think and behave.

                    …they didn’t like it when I pointed out the only old white men trying to order me around were the liberals insisting they owned me, and the standard progressive “if yo udon’t do what I want then you’re not authentic” nonsense.

                    Liked by 2 people

                2. If you go back you can find books like “Reviving Ophelia” that reflect an obscure feminist 90s fad about the belief that teenage girls were being silenced and crushed by the patriarchy and What We Can Do About It. It fizzled out and pretty much vanished from the public consciousness by the 2000s. I strongly suspect the “Male Lonliness Epidemic” was another one of those feminist fads about how “Patriarchy Hurts Men Too” until louder angry feminists misinterpreted and seized upon the phrase as a “Serves you right, you mysoginistic jerks, you don’t deserve the privilege of female company!”

                  Like

      3. Then there was the girl in High School who was rumored to have slept with every guy in the class. I knew that wasn’t true, because I remained a virgin throughout that particular period of my academic experience.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. I have ended up reading quite a few fanfics set in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe despite only having seen a total of 2 or 3 episodes of the actual show. One character, Cordelia, has a reputation for being the school bicycle — and yet, years later, it’s a plot point that her reputation is a pack of lies and she’s actually a virgin. In one fanfic, she explains a large part of her reputation as being sour grapes on the part of guys whom she went on one date with, didn’t like how handsy the guy was getting (with the girl he had thought would be “easy”), and walked out on the date half-way through. The guy would then tell everyone he’d slept with her, because he didn’t want the locker-room teasing that would come with having been turned down by the alleged school bicycle. Meanwhile, Cordelia was having trouble finding actually decent guys because they were staying away from her due to her reputation, and only had better luck in finding decent guys to date when she moved out of her small town to LA.

          I don’t know if canon ever went with the explanation that this fanfic gave, but that’s what occurred to me when you mentioned a girl reputed to have slept with the whole class. It’s possible it was true, it’s also possible it was completely false. Rumors like that are even MORE unreliable than most rumors, because they often (though not always) get spread maliciously.

          Liked by 1 person

        2. OK, WP just deleted most of what I had typed. Grrrr.

          Very short version; 20 some years ago, I was feeling down, there was an upcoming concert nearby by Fairport Convention. I find out Karen (who is widely rumored to be gay) is also a fan, so we meet at the work parking lot, and I drive to the concert due to limited parking there. GREAT concert at small venue. After returning to work parking lot, we talk about music for a good half hour, steaming up the windows thoroughly. By the NEXT day, the rumor had already spread that I had ‘turned Karen straight’ and by quitting time, some guy asks me in seriousness if we had actually been doing it on the asphalt ?!? I about choked. Then laughed. Never answered. Karen got a good laugh about it, I became less depressed. Still have no idea how ‘gay’ Karen might have been. She assured me she liked men fine, but, no was NOT hitting on me, and than totally cracked up again. I am fairly certain she was just another ‘ODD’ bird, so naturally we got along.

          [Some guy claimed to have witnessed the ‘doing it on the asphalt’, and other people apparently believed him. I guess there must have been ‘swamp gas’ involved?]

          Liked by 2 people

          1. Some guy claimed to have witnessed the ‘doing it on the asphalt’, and other people apparently believed him. 

            5-10 years ago, the perfect response would have been “Cell phone videos or it didn’t happen.”

            Nowadays, AI has a decent chance of producing one….. Won’t that be fun?

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    3. ‘Wealth disparity’. Sounds suspiciously like another commie slogan, ‘income inequality’.

      Tell me, you dumbass, do you really believe that your waiter should have ‘income equality’ with your doctor?

      ‘Income inequality’ is one of a free economy’s greatest strengths. The fact that you can study, and learn, and improve yourself, and make more money. Because without the reward of ‘income inequality’, who would go to all the trouble of learning all the complex and difficult skills necessary to build and maintain our industrial, technological civilization?

      One of the reasons everything goes to shit when the commies take over.
      ———————————
      Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Wealth Disparity is even nastier, because it’s just a big version of the teacher going “you saved your candy to enjoy it, Timmy didn’t, give him half of yours.”

        Gets even more “fun” when folks get to decide how much what you have is worth so they can redistribute it.

        Liked by 1 person

  7. It is not within the power of any government to increase the value of unskilled labor, only to raise its cost. Nor is it within the power of any government to compel employers to pay unskilled workers some arbitrary “minimum wage”, only to punish them for paying less.

    Governments can’t create prosperity; at best, they can refrain from destroying it.

    Government can’t turn failure into success, but it sure can turn success into failure.

    Printing money creates value like printing empty bread wrappers creates bread.

    There is no shortage of people convinced they can create the Perfect World. They just have to eliminate all those imperfect people who don’t fit in it.

    Capitalism is a reward system based on voluntary exchange of value for value. Socialism, fascism and communism are punishment systems based on taking value from people by force.

    Liked by 3 people

  8. In regard to the subject of this post, government shenanigans, I humbly suggest this podcast of Joe Rogan and Elon Musk.

    In it there is a very VERY interesting detail. The Redistricting law. Turns out that the Census counts -people- for purposes of redistricting and adding/subtracting seats in the House and Senate. Not citizens, not legal immigrants, not voters. People.

    Meaning that California gets more seats in the federal government if they allow ten million Mexicans to rush in and take welfare and jobs cutting grass.

    And that’s why you have an open border. And that’s also why an African #moose-limb Communist with the fakest, most sinister smile I’ve ever seen just won the mayor’s race in NYC. He even said so in his acceptance speech.

    There’s a few more beauty bits of information in there that I had never heard before. Elon Musk is a gift from the Heavens to us lowly hewers of wood and drawers of water.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. I told my beloved we would be hearing from women in NYC soon, wailing, “But I never voted for this!” when Mamdani begins showing his true colors.

      Well, I was wrong. It happened even faster than I expected, and it wasn’t a woman. It was Van Jones on CNN.

      Liked by 4 people

      2. “I told my beloved we would be hearing from women in NYC soon, wailing, “But I never voted for this!” when Mamdani begins showing his true colors.”

        I have had GREAT fun on social media with the favorite leftist line of “I didn’t think the leopard would eat my face!” and repeating towards them with Islamic Misogyny and Mamdani.

        Like

    2. Prior to the 16th Amendment, States with more people had to pay more to the Federal Government. That was the check-and-balance on States pumping up their populations for more power in Congress.

      Liked by 4 people

      1. IIRC The Constitution gave Congress the power to tax the States according to their population which is why slaves were counted as 3/5 persons. IE The Slave States wanted their slaves to count toward their representation in the House but did want their slaves to count in this “head-tax”.

        However, Congress never voted for this “head-tax” to become law.

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    3. Steps have already been taken to announce that the next census will only count *citizens* (or possibly legal residents). So this issue is being dealt with by Trump.

      The usual suspects are taking it to court, of course.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. https://www.npr.org/2025/08/07/nx-s1-5265650/new-census-trump-immigrants-counted

        Haven’t seen where President Trump has succeeded in adjusting the 2020 census or been able to redo it. Legally there is ongoing 2025 spot censuses going, which does ask the citizenship question.

        This is what I got out of google AI summary:

        Legislative and legal actions regarding citizenship in the census:

        • Congressional bills: Some U.S. House Republicans have proposed bills that would require the census to tally non-U.S. citizens and then subtract them from the population counts used for congressional apportionment.
        • Lawsuit: Republican state attorneys general have filed a federal lawsuit to ban the Census Bureau from including residents without legal status and those with visas in the numbers that determine congressional representation.
        • Presidential action: A recent presidential order directs the Census Bureau to count all U.S. residents for apportionment, but it also mandates a new study on how to improve the accuracy of census data

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      2. Tried to count only citizens in the last census, but they got court-decisioned out of it. I hope they can get it past all the kings in black robes this time.

        Liked by 2 people

  9. BTW, saw a 2026 campaign ad last night: Republican, veteran. Entire content was focused on lowering prices, increasing job growth. Pure economic message.

    Mind you, it’s a red state, but it seems somebody has a clue.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. Long ago, the Aztecs sacrificed thousands of children to their gods.

    The gods did not answer their prayers.

    Rather than admit that their gods were false, and they were lying charlatans, their priests insisted that they simply had not sacrificed enough children.

    Liked by 2 people

    2. The lesson of the Aztecs: There’s always the chance that your gods…or a pantheon more powerful than yours, maybe even the one and only true God…will answer, “I’ve seen enough. No more.”

      Liked by 4 people

    5. The real difference between the Aztecs and the Communists is that anyone can fall afoul of the Communists. There were actual requirements to qualify as a sacrifice.

      Liked by 2 people

  11. A succinct defense of markets. Little to quibble with.

    Not sure how we get closer to there from here, where people depend on SNAP, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, among many others, and vote accordingly.

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    1. First, we find out how many of those benefits recipients are 1) here legally, 2) citizens, 3) real people who are 4) alive. I suspect that the percentage of benefits voters will drop by a goodly sum if anyone who does not meet those criteria is removed from ALL government rolls.

      Second, we start putting more requirements on those receiving benefits of certain kinds (SNAP, Medicaid when appropriate, a few others), and weaning others off. It will probably take two generations to turn the programs back into safety nets from hammocks.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. There was/is a “meme” about SNAP beneficiaries now having to…

        – Use own money to buy food.
        – Not going out, so they could buy food
        – Thinking about price before loading grocery cart
        -using store brands and coupons

        “Millions have discovered adulting overnight.”

        WELL, KEEP DOING THAT!

        I suspect SNAP could be PERMANENTLY cut by about 90% with NO real damage to anyone.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. “Coupon” isn’t that hard. Heck I quit hitting all the coupon locations long ago, even with most stores no longer accepting other store coupons. Most everything is digital coupons and shopping on the right days. Okay, as an old senor I’d do better on somethings if I shopped Tuesday. Additional 10% off on Senor Tuesday … on Kroger products. Problem is, I don’t use a lot of the Kroger products. Would if had to (at a point, I don’t have to, so I get what we like). So I clip all the online coupons, especially the 4x fuel points, and shop on Friday. Four places I shop. Fred Meyers (Kroger), Costco, and Petsmart/Petmart. Lately taking advantage of the major extra points of Petsmart online coupons, Petsmart has been less than Petmart on the products both carry, that we use (dang picky animals). The only two pet products I get at Costco is kitty litter and the dog cosequin.

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  13. The core statement of capitalism/free markets: “I’m not allowed to take your stuff unless you agree, so I need to offer you something”

    The core statement of socialism: “Please to face wall, comrade”

    Liked by 1 person

  14. I just wanted to mention it’s somewhat unfair to blame the poor for Communism. I have to say “somewhat” because in this last election, the majority of the college-uneducated working class didn’t vote for Mamdani — “only” 40% did.

    His primary support came from well-off kids with Bachelor’s Degrees, many of whom struggle to find affordable homes and decent work — and who undoubtedly crave meaning in their lives, and between college and having a “rich-as-in-money” inflated IQ (that is, they mistake their success, or rather the success of their parents for superiority of their intellect — a problem that heavily and especially afflicts billionaires in general) has convinced them that Communism with them in control is the way to make the world a better place.

    His success also comes from “Yeoman Replacement Theory” — which is often termed “White Replacement Theory”, and often described as a “racist conspiracy theory” despite it obviously happening right before our eyes, and despite the occasional Democrat slipping up and saying the quiet part out loud — where a lot of violent ambivalent-or-outright-anti-freedom tribal thugs are invited en mass so they could neutralize the native population’s vote, and thus secure power for the “enlightened”.

    Both of these are important to remember — the first, because it shows us that Communism is really a rich man’s game, and always has been, and it’s a way for the rich to feel good about themselves to justify all the power they are sucking up and preserving for themselves — and the second, because it’s a reminder that we need to push back hard against the illegal immigration that Democrats crave and that useful idiot CEOs (which, come to think of it, may be Democrats too, at least in spirit) justify as making labor cheaper (at the cost of making native-born American labor cheaper or even nonexistent, too).

    Liked by 5 people

    1. “Everyone says I should be paid and have a nice house and stuff, and since no one is giving me what I deserve, I will vote for the government that will make everything ‘fair’ and take from the have-too-muches and give to me!”

      Ignore the fact that Everyone is a liar and has been since the Produce Incident in the Garden, and the voting pattern is justified. The female Mamdani voters of pallor probably also don’t understand basic economics, and still consider NYC to be the omphalos of all that is Good and True and Worth Doing and Having.

      Liked by 1 person

    2. According to the exit polls 60% of male NYC voters under age 30 voted for the commie Islamic radical antisemite candidate with stated key influencing factors “economic concern” and “public safety”, while 85% of female voters under 30 voted for him with key influencing factors “social issues” and “reproductive rights”.

      Heh.

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  15. This is almost tragically simple in theory and in the individual case. (Why tragically? Well, I’m still trying to figure out how to tell people my product exists.)

    Ay, there’s the rub, as someone once wrote.

    Almost ready to pull the trigger with our mutual acquaintance, but… what if the result is no sales? Guess that’s the chance you take in a free market. When the government and society’s gatekeepers dictate who sells and who is throttled, well nothing of value is created.

    Liked by 1 person

  16. “The Red Dust Calls”

    I signed my name at seventeen
    To serve beneath the Martian sky,
    They said we’d build a world of dreams,
    But first they taught us how to fight.

    Through Pavonis drills and morning dust,
    With rifle, pack, and armored frame,
    We learned to hold when others must,
    And earned the right to bear our name.

    So here’s to boots upon the dust!
    To those who stand when others run,
    We hold the line because we must,
    Until the terraform work is done.

    The red frontier calls out our name,
    For Mars belongs to those who stay —
    Not born to rights, but earned through flame,
    We plant our boots in dust today!

    They came from tunnels, dark and deep,
    With chitin black and silent screams,
    We learned that Mars don’t let you sleep,
    And warfare’s harder than it seems.

    From Lowell Base to Hargreaves Ridge,
    We paid the price in blood and bone,
    But held that vital, narrow bridge,
    And proved this world could be our own.

    So here’s to boots upon the dust!
    To those who stand when others run,
    We hold the line because we must,
    Until the terraform work is done.

    The red frontier calls out our name,
    For Mars belongs to those who stay —
    Not born to rights, but earned through flame,
    We plant our boots in dust today!

    From settler stock to citizen true,
    From private’s stripe to officer’s star,
    We fight not just for red or blue,
    But for the home that made us who we are!

    So here’s to boots upon the dust!
    To Sergeant Manzano’s final stand,
    To every soul who kept their trust,
    And held this wild and windswept land.
    The red frontier has marked our souls,
    The burrows taught us not to break —
    Mars belongs to those with goals,
    Who earn each breath that we take!

    We plant our boots in dust today,
    We plant our boots and we don’t run away!

    Liked by 2 people

  17. The difference between socialists and communists:

    Socialists think they’re working towards a just, beautiful utopia that is going to work this time because they know how to do it right, and not a murderous totalitarian oligarchy like all the other times the wrong people tried it.

    Communists know what’s coming is a murderous totalitarian oligarchy, and they’re looking forward to being in charge after they put all the unnecessary people in a ditch, especially those socialist clowns.

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      1. Communism and socialism are the same, and always arrive at the same disaster.

        Socialists are the ones that think it’s going to do something good in some nebulous scale of the future. That’s why they call the failures “communists”, so they can differentiate themselves (good socialists) from the evil communists and still conceive of themselves as good people. They are lying to themselves, of course.

        That is distinct from the propaganda: the communists will always call themselves the “good” socialists, as if they’re going to get to the beautiful just utopia any day now. There are stupid people that are desperate to believe that lie, and it is important to keep expressing that lie so communist can get a hand on their stuff. Communism has never, anywhere, anywhen, been able to survive without some stupid socialists in “capitalist” societies keeping the scam alive.

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