During the Age of Oil, vehicles allowed us to live in many places, with distance between us and our neighbors, because we could drive to the job we wanted to do, and live near the people we liked or could stand to live near. Post Oil living shows that to be one of the great losses to our lifestyle. It has a huge impact on happiness, and on crime. Everyone is taking a step down in happiness in a big way. We either get to live near people we tolerate OR have the job we like, not both. The ever increasing costs of survival in the modern times have whittled down the Middle Class to nearly gone. The Optimists, being Insane, keep insisting that everything is okay, everything will be okay, and stop saying its not okay.
Its not okay. Our society is fragmented, poisoned, violent, and rebellious. We are not okay.
This is why I am obsessed with new culture, with the evolution into something that is trying to start something new, based on the limited resources of today, not fantasy flying cars and robots. New Culture is about finding some kind of happiness and style despite enduring poverty. The whole nation is turning into West Virginia. And Detroit. Ruins, death, decay, collapse. We're the end result of a Jared Diamond book.
Unfortunately, those who remain in power hate everyone, and they make life ever harder for those of us trying to adapt. They mostly attack us through cruel laws, meant to limit us, to turn us into Peasants with no option but slavery or suicide. Mobility remains the safest way to dodge the evil, since laws are usually enacted and enforced in locations, voting with your feet is a viable method of escaping exploitation. Until such time as an outside force topples the corruption ruining America we can only pay and pay and run away. Run away and try and stay off the radar of the latest oppressor and exploiter seeking bribes, profits, or selling their company on to the next sucker.
We're all trying to survive, hopefully with some small comforts and style rather than throwing our resources and time at vicious corporations that see us like a shark sees a seal: as lunch. I spend most of my time trying to find a niche which will support me before the collapse and still remain viable afterwards. As best I can tell, it needs to be mobile. This is frustrating because most of the valid post-oil careers require expensive equipment that shouldn't be moved, like machining. Machining of parts, especially parts of things currently only made in China, itself set for Bloody Revolution in a war between the growing industrial capitalist class and the Old Commies who still hold the guns and murder camps, this is a good reason to look at what they're doing and see if we can do it more honorably here. The cost of the equipment, and wear and tear, and supplies to enable it to work means flexibility costs even more, and takes longer to pay off, impossible as long as China keeps exporting and undercuts your contracts. You can be infinitely cheap when your labor force are literal slaves in China. Once in a shipping container, its 12 days of travel, plus customs inspection and delivery time before it gets here. Not long at all.
Modern industrial contracting in California is vicious and destructive and could be fixed if they followed Staged Approval rather than All or Nothing as they currently do it. As long as they use primitive contracts, they cause bankruptcies, and risk is unshared. You put a company under contract desperate to stay in business and make money when they had to underbid to get it in the first place. You get cheaters, and the result is the Bay Bridge (the new one) rusting apart before the first year of use. When you do business with Chinese contractors, you get shoddy work because they follow the exactly LETTER of the written contract, not the intent. Screwing people costs you. Unfortunately, our entire economy is unbalanced thanks to Chinese imports being cheaper than we can make it here, so there's no manufacturing jobs here. Except food. And ironically, drugs. Though most of those get imported from Mexico. Mexican drug smugglers are big fans of ATF/DEA enforcement. Cuts down on competition.
I'd be more positive about this only I've seen decades of people committing, financially, to a predicted outcome that doesn't happen due to unforeseen circumstances, and we end up with disappointed broke people, often heavily armed, eating spoiled food, who go nuts. Predicting the future is best left to stock traders. When they're wrong, they just lose money they could afford to lose. If they're right, they get rich. Sad world when becoming a stock broker is the sane answer to disaster?
Between contracting, investing, and the legal attacks on competitors through corrupt politicians, where does this leave you and me? Searching for a sane place to live, even for a little while. Maybe times will be settled enough to get rid of furniture and extra clothes and various media and get it down to fitting into a small trailer you can pull behind your car. Most people are too sold on the idea of Big Stuff to be able to do that, of Furniture as an Investment in the Future. Its not. Its furniture. It holds your clothes or your dinner plate or keeps your ass of the floor. We like nice stuff, but in the future of extreme Poverty, nice stuff is for Rich People and the foreclosure experts seizing it on their deaths. Nice stuff goes on E-bay to pay for the next tank of gasoline. Poverty is reaching its dirty fingers towards you.
As long as California is a destination for retirement, being Sunbelt, it will be too expensive to live in on minimum wage. Rich spoiled baby boomers move here because its warm so their arthritis hurts less in the winter. Its like a 24 hour party for the rest of their lives. They'll pay everything to enjoy that, dying in bankruptcy because who cares about the kids, right?
This state doesn't need poor people anymore, thanks to all these retirees moving here. Poor people need to accept that their value decreases the more of them there are. They are not important beyond their votes, and once they vote consistently, not important at all. This is why Black People are ignored by politicians. They ALWAYS vote democrat. Same with Jewish people and Catholics and Mexicans. They are all Democrat voting blocks, so their party don't need to do anything to appease them and keep them loyally voting for any Yellow Dog put in front of them. This is why California is a ripoff. It always votes Democrat. Politicians barely even visit here, send little funding, and steal from us. This means that if you live here, you pay more for everything, get less in return, and pay multiple times for the same things other state's residents get free. Like Civil Rights. Or roads. They get tornadoes and sometimes blizzards, but they get the to keep more of their taxes and freedoms than we do. States where Minimum Wage is a living wage, not like here. The upshot is California is bad for business and bad if you're poor and don't qualify for "programs", most of which are aimed at Minorities, which you don't qualify for. Almost always.
The other problem is the world is full of Con Men, pretending to be Business Men, but are really after either your money as an "Investment" (in their vacation or lunch or hobby) or your Time to provide cover as they prep for a bailout bag full of stolen bearer bonds or cash to a non-extradition country, or worse, to sell the business you build out from under you to a bigger investor, who then fires you (because that's legal here), not realizing there IS NO BUSINESS without you running it because the con-man was just the big evil smile everyone believes, not the nitty-gritty paperwork where the money comes from. And this is when there's a real business behind it. This isn't always so.
Pyramid Schemes always have honest people in their ranks, honest gullible people who can't believe they were fooled all along. These are the folks who eventually discover to their horror they got conned. It isn't nice, but it is how things work. How are you going to avoid con men when they're everywhere, and you're already gullible to start with?
Never invest your own money in a business owned and controlled by someone with the power to decide how you spend your day. Never work for someone you can't identify having some kind of work ethic of their own. Never work for someone (or date someone) who breaks their word. That sort of thing just escalates, and is a very bad sign. They are breaking their word because they don't think you matter enough to bother keeping it. When I encounter that in a vendor, I find another vendor. When I encounter that in a workplace? I find a new job. When I find that in a woman? I find a new woman. This is the right answer to liars. Learn to recognize the liars, and discard them as the trash they are. They won't try to keep their word. They'll try harder not to get caught lying. These are not the same thing. A lie of Omission is a Lie. Don't fool yourself.
Between evil laws and con men exploiting you, where do you go? I wish I knew. All Western States have crap economies. The South is crap. The Southwest has always been crap except during the Building Boom, no over.
It looks like the right answer is still Mobility. Leave the bastards behind. They'll hurt someone else after you go, but they won't be hurting YOU anymore, which is the right answer for your own safety at least. As nice a town as this is to die in, or even grow up in, its a bad place to make a living. The Central Valley has similar problems, only lots more crime and heat. I just don't know. This is one of those times where Mobility is the answer because not having a destination leaves you with a Method, at least.
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