Choke Points In The Economy

 If you could get every American to send you a dollar, you'd have about $330 million overnight.

I made the above quote a long time ago to illustrate how it is possible to get very rich by taking a little money from a lot of people, as opposed to taking a large sum from one person.  In those "caper" movies, the thieves meticulously plan a bank job or casino heist, to get away with millions.  But, as illustrated in the sequel to Ocean's 11, the people with large amounts of money have large amounts of power - and will track you down and punish you.

The Police will go after a bank robber who steals a large amount of money from a storied American institution.  They will laugh in your face when you tell them that a telcom swiped a buck from your account.  The best you can hope for is a class-action lawsuit, and we know who wins those.  The lawyers make millions, while the victims get pennies.

"So," you ask, "how do I go about stealing a buck from every American?"  Good Question.  And the answer is to find a choke-point in the economy and exploit it, before the great unwashed masses figure out what you are up to and get regulations passed limiting your fun.

What sort of choke points?  Well, let's look at the historical record.  Transportation is one of these choke points.  You may have a field full of crops, and in the city 100 miles away are hungry customers.  How do you connect the two?  Roads was one way - and back in the 1800's, there were "Corduroy" roads made of logs, which you could drive a wagon on, provided you paid a toll.   Over time, governments got into the business of road-building, and indeed, politicians ran on platforms of "good roads."

Roads became free for the public, although the toll road still remained in part - and is seeing a resurgence in the last 20 years or so.  We even have private toll roads again - the "free market" people have won again.  But nothing is free in the free market.

Cornelius Vanderbilt made his first fortune in shipping, controlling enough of the market to control shipping prices.  Of course, while you might be able to control the ships, local governments control the ports, and port fees, taxes, and duties can add to the cost of shipping.  "Smuggling" as it first emerged, meant simply bypassing official ports to avoid paying duties.  Small boats could row ashore to "Smuggler's Cove" and bring in the goods at a lower price (and higher profit) than by going through official channels, if you'll pardon the pun.

Vanderbilt famously sold off all his shipping interests to amass vast holdings in railroads.  Railroads were the "Next Big Thing!" and allowed freight to be move vast distances in a short period of time.  As America expanded, railroads were key to economic growth.  Railroads were granted vast tracts of land out west, which they sold to farmers, who in turn used the railroads to ship crops to city markets.

Farmers did well, initially, until the railroads raised rates to the point the farmers were losing money.  Vanderbilt and others found a choke-point and exploited it.  Eventually, the government stepped in and regulated rates through the Interstate Commerce Act, to make rates just and fair. Those damn regulations!  Spoiling all the fun for would-be Millionaires.  What's next?  An income tax?

Of course, over time, new forms of transportation emerged.  Young people today romanticize train travel and the old trolleys, but my parent's generation couldn't wait to get their hands on an automobile and be free of high fares and limited schedules.  My Dad learned to drive on a Model-T - it was not that long ago!  Roads, including the Interstate Highway System, were paid for with tax dollars, and America took to the car, by choice.  Gas was cheap and the highway beckoned.  Air travel was the final nail in the coffin.  Passenger train service was now unprofitable and by the 1970s, the major railroads gave up their passenger services to the government to form money-losing AMTRAK.

It is a trend that goes on worldwide, too.  While our overseas friends have far more (and better) train service than we do, they are building more and more highways and closing more and more train lines. We saw this in Japan three decades ago, as well as in Europe.  They still rely on public transportation a lot, but car travel, worldwide, has ratcheted up.  China is the best example - only a few decades ago, bicycles crowded the streets.  Now it is the largest market for cars in the world.

I digress, but lighting is another example of a choke point.  In the colonial era, candles were the thing, often home-made by settlers boiling down bear fat to make tallow or some such.  Whale oil emerged as a bright and clean alternative and was in such a demand that whalers could make a fortune overnight with just one voyage - and entire species of whales were driven to near-extinction.

Crude oil was discovered in Pennsylvania and it was found it could be distilled down to kerosene, with nuisance byproducts like gasoline simply thrown away.  Some tried to dilute their wares with junk gasoline, which could cause a Dietz lantern to explode.  A young John D. Rockefeller came up with his "Standard Oil" which was guaranteed to be free of contaminants.  He bought up competing oil companies and formed a monopoly - a choke-point - in the kerosene lighting business.

It is interesting to note that his real fortune was created almost by accident.  Just as some laud Bill Gates or Elon Musk as visionaries who saw the future and invested accordingly, the reality is, people can get lucky by making the right choices without even realizing it.  The invention of the automobile could not have been envisioned in the kerosene lamp era.  The rise of the automobile caused gasoline to go from a nuisance byproduct to a highly valuable commodity.

Once again, regulators stepped in, and Standard Oil was "broken up" (but later reformed as Exxon/Mobil only a few decades later).  Needless to say, however, our reliance on oil is the new choke point in our economy - one that has been around for a long, long time.

The automobile infrastructure is largely open-sourced.  Roads are largely funded by tax dollars, not tolls.  Cars are bought by individuals in an open market, where competition keeps prices down and profits at a minimum.  Tesla was valued more than Ford for the simple reason that Tesla made more money per car (and more money with emissions credits) that Ford did.  On a good day at General Motors, we would be ecstatic with a 5% profit margin.  GM went bankrupt since then, Chrysler did, twice, and Ford nearly went under.

No, the choke point in transportation today is in the fuel.  In 1973, we had our first oil shock as OPEC cut production.  We came to realize that we had become dependent on cheap oil, using it for everything, even power generation and home heating.  One of my professors at GMI pointed out that, at the time, it would take a half-a-cup of crude oil to produce a cup of milk.  Between the energy needed to run the farm (from a oil-fired power plant to a diesel-burning tractor) to the transportation costs (diesel fuel for trucks and trains) to refrigeration for storage and so on, a lot of energy is needed to make even one cup of milk appear at your grocery store.  And at the time, most of that energy came from oil.

Some things have changed since then, others have not.  We use a lot more natural gas these days - supplanting or converting coal or oil-fired electric plants.  Other, renewable energy sources have come online.  And today, our country produces more oil than it consumes - so we should be insulated from overseas disruptions in supply, right?

Well, not exactly.  The oil market is a world market, and when supplies are cut off, everyone bids up the price of oil, worldwide, to try to get a share.   American producers aren't going to sell to America for far less than what they could get overseas, so the price of oil in America goes up with the rest of the world.

More than a half-century since the Arab Oil Embargo, they still got us by the balls.  The Strait of Hormuz is the new choke-point, or should I say, has been a choke-point for a long time.  Periodic attacks on ships in this region have been going on for some time, now.  Maybe those were just test runs.   Attacks on Oil infrastructure in the Middle-East as well as in Russia (and sanctions) mean the supply of oil, worldwide, might be cut in half - or worse.

Meanwhile, Americans, once again, were lured into buying large, gas-hog vehicles, by the siren song of low gas prices.  To make things worse, the rest of the world is catching up with the American standard of living.  As I noted before, China is now the world's largest car market, and even  our European and Japanese friends are embracing the car.  Meanwhile, Germany is rethinking its decision to shut down all its nuclear plants.  Say, do you think they fell victim to a Russian disinformation campaign?

But I digress.

There are, of course, other choke-points in the economy, and the Internet has become one.  Early on, the Internet was a free-for-all, with no one group, company, or person really controlling the whole thing.  I remember when "browsers" became a thing - no more dialing up in "terminal mode" to type in ASCII characters on a CRT monochrome terminal.  It was an advance, yes, but I sensed we were losing something at the same time.

Today, Google controls a huge part of the Internet, and initially, it wasn't such a bad thing.  But then they decided to "enshittify" everything, by putting ads all over the place and making search results one big ad or AI-slop responses.  And there ain't much we can do about it, as we are pretty embedded at this point.  The Blogsite I am typing on is, of course, owned by Google.  Damn your eyes, Google!  I love you!  I hate you!

Our European friends are wisely looking for ways to "de-google" themselves, but it ain't easy.  I can understand their concerns - their entire communications network is dependent on companies headquartered in a country which has shown to be an erratic, untrustworthy ally.  Maybe it is time to move on - to Internet X.0

Speaking of silicon valley, that is nothing more than a host of choke-points today, or choke-point wanna-bes.  Want to take a taxi somewhere?  Uber has pretty much sewn up that market, and even taxi services in far-flung foreign countries, pay tithes to silicon valley firms.  But for how long?  Eventually, people go looking for lower-cost alternatives, and if you tighten the screws too much, people will jump ship eventually - or demand the government step in.

And the government has stepped in, time and time again.  We have regulated utilities today, simply because we realize that the anarchy of the "free market" isn't going to work for something that everyone relies upon, 24/7.   I noted how the ICC regulated railroads, but they also regulated trucking lines at one time.  And of course, during the glory days of airline regulation, you could pay as much for an airline ticket as you would for a good used car - and fly almost alone on a 727 jet from Syracuse to Hartford,, as I did once as a teenager.

Deregulation of trucking and airlines changed all that.  Flying is more affordable today, of course, but a lot less pleasant, to be sure.  Truckers are no longer the "Knights of the Road" as Anne Landers once described them, but quite likely to be texting-while-driving or engaging in road-rage with a 50,000-lb battering ram.  There are pluses and minuses, here.

If it is any consolation, these choke-points don't exist for long, at least not on a cosmic scale.  "The Market Abhors a Monopoly" Economists chant, and to some extent, they are right.  Either the people get pissed-off and demand the government take action, or the price increases force people to seek out lower-cost alternatives.

Despite his bitter hatred of wind farms and solar cells, Trump's ill-advised war will raise oil prices - for some time - to the point where solar and wind and other alternatives (nuclear, hydro, gas) seem far more attractive.  Rather than stamping out alternative energy, Trump has supercharged it.

Of course, the war in Iran could go both ways.  After all, after 20 years, trillions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of deaths, we brought Democracy and Peace to both Iraq and Afghanistan, and finally eliminated the scourge of the Taliban, once and for all.

I am, of course, being sarcastic.  But the record of these interventionist wars - going back as far as Vietnam, is that after a couple of decades of insurgency, death, and debt, we declare victory and go home, with our tail between our legs.  And it ain't just us!  Afghanistan bankrupted the Soviet Union more than a decade before we stepped into that bear trap.

It's not that Iran is a bad actor on the world stage or that they treat their own people badly, but that the idea that we can defeat them easily might be flawed  - at least based on our own track record.

Recall that one reason we stopped going to the moon and scrapped billions of Apollo hardware was that the US Government was being bled to death by the costs of the Vietnam war.

I doubt that will be different this time around.

ClearCheckbook - A First Look

If you want a basic program to balance your accounts and log purchases, well, it's free.

I have tried this "ClearCheckbook" app on my Chromebook for the last few days and it seems to work OK.  It is pretty basic, as in it looks like it was programmed in BASIC on an Altair 880 computer in 1978,  Not that there is anything wrong with that!

PLUSES:  It's free, in its basic form.  You can upgrade to "Premium" for a one-time fee of $4.99.  No monthly subscription required, no staggering costs.  It is simple and basic.  You can enter checks, payments, deposits, withdrawals, and transfers and then "clear" transactions to balance the account with your statement balance or even the running balance on your bank's website.  You can set up recurring bills, but have to manually click on them to enter them.  No ads - or promotions for credit card deals. No offers to check your credit score.  Just basic accounting.

MINUSES:  It's a little primitive and clunky to use.  Not a lot of pull-down menus in the traditional sense, but icons you click on.  It takes a while and some trial-and-error to figure out the best way to enter a transaction.  Then again, this is true for a lot of programs - I am still learning the nuances of Quickbooks 2002!  Memorized transactions include only bills, not deposits or transfers.  The latter can be set as "reminders" and entered with one click later on.  All data is stored on the web, so they see what your finances are like and if you have slow or no internet service, well, you are stuck.

I have not tried the "Premium" version yet, but will probably do so, once I am comfortable with the base version.  There is also apparently a full version that runs "on the web" which provides even more features.  The image above appears to be of that version.  So apparently, there are three versions: The app, the premium app, and the website versions.

Basic accounting software shouldn't need to change over time.  Basic checkbook balancing programs were some of the first software packages sold for nascent PCs - even before the IBM PC came out.  They have not changed much since then.

Quickbooks is a powerful tool - or can be - as you can create invoices, generate reports and charts, and do all sorts of fun things with it.  Over time, however, they keep adding functions to the program to the point where it is almost an e-commerce site, if in fact is already is.  But as a retiree, I have no need to generate invoices or reports.  I just need to make sure the payments I make don't bounce and the statement balance on my credit card is paid off before the due date.

ClearCheckbook, in all three forms, has a "Budget" feature, but I am not sure budgets are of much use.  Our government has a budget office and they set up budgets for every department of government.  In most cases, departments go over budgets, as things happen that can't be anticipated.  For example, starting a war.

Recently, I had to pay our homeowner's/hurricane insurance bill, which was $4000 this year, up over $500 from last year, and another $500 from the year before.  15 years ago, the bill was a little over $1000 and stayed pretty flat for a decade.  Not now.

Then there are medical expenses.  Mine are small, but Mark has had three teeth implants this year, and each costs a few thousand dollars.  Hard to budget for that.  Plus, since we are retired, we basically spend what we need, and if we don't need, we don't spend.

For working people, who can accurately predict their income on a monthly basis, I guess a budget is a good thing and a good way to think about money.  Myself, I found them maddeningly difficult to set up and nearly impossible to follow.

But maybe it is time to start thinking about it again.

SIMPlifi is worse than worthless!

This "app" is useless!  They got the SIMP part right!

I realized, years ago, that I needed to start treating my personal financial life like my business life.  And getting my business life in order was a real daunting challenge.  Engineers and Lawyers are not taught about accounting methods, and Calculus students in high school don't learn "business math" that the vocational students get to study.  Guess which is more useful in running a business?

So, years (decades!) ago, I bought my first copy of Quickbooks and took an "Adult Education" class in Arlington on how to use the program.  I learned about accounts payable and accounts receivable and how to log charges and checks and create invoices.  Since I had an old tractor-feed dot-matrix printer (Panasonic KXP-1184!) and tractor-feed check stock, every check I mailed out was automatically logged in Quickbooks and every invoice accounted for. I quickly realized I had one client who was seriously past due.  I also never had an overdraft, ever again, for the rest of my life.

Of course, today, everything is online and I rarely ever write a check anymore.  But I still log everything in Quickbooks, so I know not just what my bank balance is, but what my real available balance is, at all times.  It does no good to log onto your bank's website or app and see that your balance is $250 if you just wrote a check for $300 or have a car payment or utility bill set to auto-debit in two days for over that amount.  You are overdrawn but just don't know it yet.

Yes, the bank website or app (and e-mail and text messages) are very helpful in keeping track of things, but unless you have an independent accounting of your own, you have no real idea of what is going on.  It is akin to judging the speed of your car by waiting to pass one of those radar speed signs to tell you.  Sure, you know you are going 55 MPH when you pass that sign (because it flashes your speed) but what about the rest of the time?

In the mid-2000's, some "financial" apps came out, such as MINT, which claimed to help people manage their finances.  I looked into it and realized it was junk.  They asked you for usernames and passwords for your bank accounts so they could report your data "all in one place!" for convenience.  Then, they would generate gibberish pie charts based on the credit card spending codes (which are rarely accurate) so you could see "where all your money goes!"  And of course, they would pepper you with ads for credit card deals and loans and the like.

At best, it provided a rear-view mirror of where you went.  But again, using the driving a car analogy, it helps to be able to see where you are going, rather than what happened in the past.  In finances, money spent is water over-the-dam, and there is little to be gained naval-gazing about things that can't be undone.  Meanwhile, it might help to see the truck you are about to rear-end so you can take action.

Quickbooks 2002 is almost 25 years old, but it still works and is paid-for.  And quite frankly, the later versions provide little improvement, but of course, they changed the file formatting, so your accountant needs you to upgrade to the latest version, so you can download your data to them.  I upgraded three times, stopping at 2002, simply because they would not covert my 2002 data file to a version that was more than two upgrades later.  So Quickbooks talked themselves out of a sale.  Also, it turns out, my accountant really didn't need access to ALL of my data, just the income and expenses, which Quickbooks 2002 can generate easily with its report feature.

But as a full-blown accounting software, it is clunky to use and requires a Windows platform - and it will be a cold day in hell before I "upgrade" to an AI-assisted ad-laden Windows 11, thank you very much.   So I thought, since our life is simplifying, that maybe I could dust off my rarely used chromebook and run some sort of accounting "app" that would let me balance my checkbook and credit card accounts.  I don't need to create invoices or log expenses for tax reasons anymore, just a simple account balancing program.

Well, Google suggested Quicken Simplifi, which sounded appealing and runs as an app on a phone or tablet - or Chromebook.  And that's all a Chromebook is, a tablet with a keyboard.  And all a tablet is, is a phone with a big screen.  They offered a 50% off deal (first year only) for $35.99 so I thought I would give it a try.

Big mistake.  It is just MINT under a different name.  They ask to link to your bank accounts, which takes a leap of faith.  Then, if the linking works, they will display your balances and charges (and checks) which is just what you can get from your bank's own website or app.  That is, provided the linking works, which over a period of several days, never did.  Google "Simplifi won't link with my bank" and  you'll see a plethora of hits.  The app is flaky to say the least.

But even the parts that work are worthless.  Your home page is a number of "cards" with lots of spending graphs, "savings goals", your credit score, and worst of all, "medals" you can earn as you achieve different goals - as if your finances were some sort of video game or your karma score on Reddit.

Banking information?  Just your overall balance from all of your accounts.  No way to reconcile accounts or enter pending charges or checks.  Well, you can, sort of do the latter, if you want to set up a manual account (which I had to do, since the sync feature simply didn't work) but it was clunky.   You enter the charges or checks and then..... see them nowhere.  No line-item listing with a running balance like in Quickbooks.  It is dumbed-down for the debt-ridden 20-something who thinks of finances in terms of their almighty credit score and how much available credit they have.

But I could find no way to reconcile accounts with the bank statements (or even running balances) so even the manual account entry was sort of useless.  It was just another useless MINT app for people who want to think they are being financially savvy by buying their shoes on sale - when they don't need a new pair of shoes and have a closet full.

So, I'll keep looking.  And I'll keep looking for a real use for the Chromebook - other than playing Youtube videos in the camper I guess.

What it reminded me of, was, that the powers-that-be don't want you to be financially literate.  You go on Reddit and see the 20-something generation-Z complaining that the banks are ripping them off with overdraft charges.  When I was that age, so did I.  After all, I just wrote $50 in checks over the weekend to buy beer and score some pot and my bank balance was only $30.  Mean old banks!  It took me a long time to literally "sober up" and realize the problem wasn't the banks, but my inability to say "No" to wants that were not needs, particularly when I could not afford them.

It wasn't a matter of "making more money" - indeed, at the time, I was delivering pizzas while going to night school.  It was more a matter of taking money more seriously and keeping track of bank balances.  Years later, when I was indeed "making more money" I lost that financial discipline and once again overdrafted my accounts - a pretty stupid thing to do.  But I realized then, it wasn't the bank's fault, but mine, and as I noted, got religion and Quickbooks and the rest is history.

The 20-somethings (of all eras) are indeed right that the system is stacked against them, but not in the way they think.  The evil is not the bank bounce charge, but the blaring ads on the television enticing them to buy a new car, obsess about their credit score, apply for loan after loan, and live in debt for the rest of their lives.  Their demon isn't Sallie Mae demanding repayment of their student loans, but the sweet lies told to them that a degree in communications will make them the next Dan Rather - or whatever.

I see it online all the time today. On Youtube or whatever ad-based streaming service, the ads are all for sports betting, online casinos, or for-profit online colleges.  Do people really still fall for this crap?  The for-profit college scam has been known about for decades - does no one listen?  And so many of these ads seemed to be aimed at minorities, much as the ads for various fragrances, whether they be air fresheners, body sprays, or detergents.  Do minorities obsess more than others about being stank?

I digress, but that is the real evil in the world - and people swallow those pitches hook, line, and sinker.  Brand-name soaps sell more to the poor than to the middle-class.  The poor obsess about the appearance of wealth, whether it is in hairstyles. clothing, accessories, or the car they drive.  It is a trap, plain and simple.  And once trapped, the television offers a way out - through the online casino or the worthless online degree.

Or by "getting your finances in order" by paying money for a worthless "app" that tells you nothing.

I cancelled the subscription on "Google Play" (itself a scam, which promotes pointless online games and casinos) and requested a refund of my $35.99.  We'll see where that goes.  In the meantime, I guess I am stuck with Quickbooks 2002 for another decade or so....  We'll see.

UPDATE:  Clear Checkbook seems promising.  It started as a register type app for balancing accounts (which is what I wanted) but has added MINT-type features over time.   I'll look into it.  They offer a free version which is pretty basic, but allows you to try out the app before spending money.

Parkinsons is Annoying, at First

"I'm Still Here"

(Video link here, if it doesn't load)

The fun never stops, but I have no reason to complain.  Parkinson's, so far, is just annoying.   I noticed it early on when my gait changed - usually the first symptom that people bother seeing a doctor about.  But other things happened before - and since.

I wrote before about Seborrhoeic Dermititis.  It is not painful, just annoying.  The "oil-producing regions" of your skin produce more oil, because the dopamine shortage means your brain's autonomous functions are no longer controlling the body properly.  So you get this Frank Zappa Beard-like oily spots on your face, which then turn into dry skin which flakes off.  You may get it on your scalp as well.

Oil-producing regions!  My skin can now join OPEC.  Great.  Now Trump will invade my skin.

It goes on.  Hair follicles get clogged with this oil and yeast can form - or a streptococcal bacterial infection.  It itches like poison ivy.  Annoying as fuck.  But at the same time, not enough to complain about.   Washing with Hibiclens surgical soap, twice a day, with super-hot water, seems to keep it in check.  I was never one for hot, hot showers or scrub brushes, but now, twice a day, I have to abrade my dermis with a scrub brush in scalding water.  Amazon sells quart bottles of the surgical soap in bulk.

The nose runs.  The articles I read online say this is not a real problem, other than "social embarrassment."  I have tissues in my pocket like an old lady, constantly dabbing at my nose as it waters.  Parkinson's just wants to slowly annoy you to death.

Again, these seem like trivial matters, particularly compared to the later symptoms, such as dementia.  Then again, once you are in dementia, do you really notice it, or just annoy everyone else?

But speaking of social embarrassment, what is really fascinating is how other people interact with you.  It feels like they project a kind of hostility sometimes, as if you are the enemy - or is this just paranoia?  Others, meaning well, treat you like you are already dead, or a retarded teenager.  "I'm still here" is the rallying cry.  Sure, my short-term memory is shot and I have no business climbing ladders anymore (but I still do).  Things are getting harder to do, and I am trying to simplify my life as much as possible.

Dramatic constipation was another side-effect, this time of the medication.  It seems to have tapered off, after a few months, as my body adjusted to this new normal.  Sadly, none of the doctors I talked to mentioned that Carbidopa can cause this.  I had to find out myself by searching online.

Doctors cheerfully tell me I could live with this for 20 years or more.  That's the good news?

On another note, I notice that medicine today has changed since I was a youth.  Back then, a checkup involved the doctor grabbing your nuts and saying, "look to the left and cough!" to check you for hernia.  Then, they would stick their finger up your ass to check for prostate problems.  Well, the "hands-on" approach is long gone, replaced by blood tests.

I recounted before how I went to a "doc-in-a-box" for a checkup and he printed out the results of the blood test and read them to me, noting which numbers were high or low.  I read along with him, and it was almost comical.

I think doctors are obsessed with these numbers and getting you into a "perfect score" so to speak.  So, if your cholesterol is a little high, they put you on a statin to lower it.  The problem for me is that statins cause shooting leg pains at night which stop only when I stop taking the statin.  My cholesterol numbers are only a few points over the suggested "good" range, so I don't see the point.  It is like getting a speeding ticket for going 57 in a 55 zone.

Just my gut interpretation, but I think people vary (hence the range of numbers) and being a little over the line isn't a serious issue, particularly when someone might have more serious issues - like Parkinson's, for example.  I have finally completed all these tests at the Mayo clinic - CAT scans, MRIs, stress test, etc.  The good news is, all my organs are in excellent shape, except one.  And sadly, brain transplants aren't a thing just yet.  I would make a good organ donor, though.

My heart has been tested twice now and found to be in good shape for a man my age.  Despite my best efforts, my body has held up well.  The liver news was surprising - I could have been drinking a whole lot more!  As one wag noted, "you've found the perfect balance between fatty liver disease and cirrosis!"  Or something like that.

The cost of all this is staggering.  Mayo charges $14,000 just for a colonoscopy.  Other tests run into the thousands.  Easily, we've run up a bill of fifty to a hundred grand so far - of which I was on the hook for less than a thousand dollars.  The billing is a mystery - massive amounts are shown as being written-off, while insurance and medicare covers other parts. It makes no sense.

But as I noted before, if you can live to 65, they will rebuild you, piece by piece, so you can live another 20-30 years.   And they will find something wrong with you.  Can't make money fixing a car, unless it is broken.

Speaking of which, we are taking "Aunt Helga" our 2015 Mercedes Sprinter 3500 extended wheelbase to the Mercedes dealer in Jacksonville at the end of the month.  They sent me a coupon for the "Service A" which includes an oil change and "injector cleaning" for "only" $399 (A $550 value!).  I have been warned by other Sprinter owners of the "$900 oil change" so we'll see how it goes.  The van was serviced by Mercedes every year since new, so I thought at least initially, to take it in.  It takes 11 quarts of prescription motor oil (Mercedes brand, or Mobil-1) and they recommend changes every 10,000 to 20,000 miles.

Oh, brave new world.

Anyway, after dropping off the van, I have one more appointment at Mayo - with a Psychiatrist.  I suspect he'll want to put me on anti-depressants.  Gotta stay within the numbers!

The Russian Pivot - Inflaming the Left This Time!

Radicalization comes in all forms - Left and Right.

Over the last few years, we have seen a concerted effort online to influence public opinion, worldwide, through social media postings.  And it has been working.  Given the anonymous nature of the online experience, it isn't hard to set up numerous fake accounts and post opinions and make it seem like what you are saying resonates with a lot of people.  With bot accounts and now AI, this will only get worse - and a lot of people are talking about (but not actually doing) going offline.

Our European friends are scrambling to find more Euro-centric alternatives to American "tech" (that is not really tech per se, but more of a psy-ops operation) and I don't blame them.  I noted before that when I used to fly out to Silicon Valley every month for Patent work, we actually made silicon, hence the name.  Then, it was realized that software, particularly operating systems, was where the real money was, and silicon became a commodity item.  Computers got cheap, operating systems stayed the same price or got even more expensive.

Operating systems became commodity items as well, and Silicon Valley made its last transformation into Bullshit Valley.  It became a big advertising and propaganda agency - buying and selling eyeballs by tracking people through their web browsers and social media sites (now called "apps") and the smart phone made sure we were plugged-in 24/7.  Back in the 1970s, people wasted 4.6 hours a day watching television, today they waste more than that on their smart phones.  It is the new television.

The real money isn't in selling computers or operating systems or software, but in accumulating data about people and manipulating people into doing things.  More than one person has noted how it seems the smart phone "listens" to what we are saying and then promotes products in response.  Maybe this is not literally true, but I suspect they do read your e-mails and texts and of course try to track what sites you visit and then sell this information to retailers.

So Amazon sells you a widget after you texted Grandma about it.  What's the harm in that?  Maybe you even got a good price on it - or maybe not, as it seems flexible pricing is now the norm online (looking at you, Wayfair!).  But early on, some bad actors on the world stage realized that public opinion could be altered through social media and individuals could be targeted for radicalization.

We're not just talking ISIS here, either.  Remember the whole Qanon conspiracy?  It seems quaint now, in retrospect, but it was supplanted or perhaps morphed into Pizzagate, Gamergate, and eventually the J6 insurrection (ahem! I meant to say, guided tour of the Capitol Building).

We watched in horror as Russian trolls and their paid allies trolled America with a lot of nonsense.  The CoVid epidemic added to the pile - convincing Americans of government over-reach and vast conspiracies at work.   That sort of thinking still goes on today.

Of course, not everyone was convinced.  People on the left dismissed Qanon et al as utter nonsense and put up signs saying (unironically) "We believe the science."

But it seems lately, the online troll army has pivoted.  Having driven Republicans clinically insane, they now turn their efforts to Democrats.  Why not?  After all, the GOP is firmly in power and firmly under the influence of Putin, whose portrait adorns the Oval Office today.  Why propagandize them further?  It is a self-sustaining ecosystem at this point.

Before the 2016 and 2020 elections, if you logged onto Reddit r/all, you would be bombarded with messages from r/conservative or r/the_donald (the latter started as a parody site lampooning Trump before morphing into a cheerleading section).  You might come away with the impression that the entire world was enamored of Trump, even though he was elected twice by a minority of the population (and in one instance, a minority of the voters).

Today, well, Reddit has flipped.  Conspiracy theories like Qanon are banned and r/the_donald is gone as well.  In its place are just as radical left-wing discussion groups promoting everything from "guaranteed annual income" to communism, etc.  The drumbeat is that America is rotten, we need to tax billionaires, we need free healthcare, free college, free money, and free jobs.  Not all of these ideas are without any merit - the tax system is skewed to favor the wealthy of course.  And our healthcare system is a weird patchwork of Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, private (unaffordable) insurance, and no insurance - and a billing system that makes no sense whatsoever.

My latest "bill" from Medicare is a case in point. An "office visit" is billed at $743 for a half-hour consultation,  "Patient Savings" (a discount) is listed at $606.21.  The balance is divided to $109.13 paid by Medicare and $27.66 by my supplemental insurance.   I owe nothing.  But an uninsured patient would owe $743!  It makes no sense whatsoever.  And talk about paperwork!

But I digress.  We can have rational discussions about these things, but not online, of course.

Enter the Epstein files.  The whole Epstein thing has been floating around for literally decades.   Like any clickbait news article about Trump, we are told that "soon" there will be damning revelations and people will go to jail!  But days pass and either the "startling revelations" fail to materialize or fail to be startling.  Or maybe nothing ends up happening because the news media has the attention span of a toddler.

Heard any news about Gaza lately?  Yea, me neither.  Glad that is all wrapped up!  /s

What is annoying to me is that there is some meat in those files.   For example, the whole Bill Gates thing is very embarrassing to him and explains why he and his wife inexplicably divorced a few years back.  Melinda Gates has very carefully commented while not confirming, saying only that it brings up painful memories about her divorce and she is concerned for trafficked girls.  She confirmed without confirming.

But other stuff online puts Qanon to shame.  Posters on Reddit claim that people on Epstein island were eating babies based on some very weird notebook entries in the files apparently from a young woman or girl who had (one might infer) a late-term abortion.  She does not come right out and say this, but instead wrote poems about a lost infant, in between pages of obscure codes and pasted-in excerpts from newspaper articles.  I had a girlfriend who went to Smith College back in the day who kept a similar notebook - she was batshit crazy, schizophrenic.  These meandering writings are hardly proof of anything, much less a smoking gun.   And she never said anything about anyone eating babies.

On Reddit, though, some posters - no doubt agents of the Russian Internet Research Agency, treat this as gospel, along with a host of other crimes that are at best, hinted at in the documents, but for the most part seem to be fabricated from whole cloth.  I get the impression that we are being trolled here.  Tired of toying with the emotions of Republicans, these bad actors are trying their games on Democrats - trying to get people riled up to the point where they can't think straight.

There may be another explanation as well.  You can discredit damning evidence by lumping it in with stupidly fake "evidence" and then saying, "Well, this part is obviously false, so the rest must be false as well!"  The GOP did this with the Bush "National Guard" controversy.  There was some real question as to whether Bush Jr. ducked out of service in Vietnam by joining the National Guard and then maybe not showing up consistently.  There was also the issue of his opponent, John Kerry, had actually served in Vietnam.  How do you defuse such a situation?

Well, just prior to the election, a "document" surfaced which appeared to implicate Bush.  But it was such a laughably poor forgery (clearly drafted in MS-WORD, which did not exist at the time the document was purported to have been written) that it was easy to use this to discredit any critique of Bush's "war record."  Meanwhile, Kerry was roasted over the coals by the "Swiftboat Controversy" which was a Carl Rove operation and basically fabricated from whole cloth.

Maybe the same thing is happening here - by making extreme accusations, such as baby cannibalism - one can discredit the entire Epstein scandal as overstated.

Perhaps.

But I think it is also being used to further radicalize the far-Left and influence elections.  Another drum beat you hear on Reddit is that "centrist" Democrats are no good and unless a far-left radical candidate is on the ballot, one shouldn't vote.  It is the same argument made in 2020 about "Killer Kamala" that convinced many young people to not vote at all, and hand the election to Trump.

Which is why I am not out on the streets protesting ICE as they round-up illegals who are often Trump supporters.  The people protesting are often the same ones who sat out the last election or chanted "Killer Kamala" or whatever.  Like the soon-to-be deported Trumper, they got what they wanted, only it turned  out to be a horrible mistake.

And yes, some on the far-Left actually wanted Trump to win, hoping that everything would go to hell in a handbasket and usher in a new era of Communist paradise.

You know what? Fuck radicals on both sides.