In 2022, I was fully expecting to move out of state in 2023, so I went to my barber for what I thought would be the last time, and left him a rather large tip to thank him for being a great barber for the past 8 years. One month passed, and it became clear […]
Category: Economics
Wasting Your Life Learning the Wrong Things
Today, I finally fixed my network homelab so that one of my servers can host web applications using the Django framework. Mind you, my professional experience has been more along the lines of the .Net framework, and I even spent about 4 years building a fairly complex open source web application using it. As I […]
Imbalances in Power: You vs. Insurance, Warranties, and Property Management Companies
People often think they can get something for nothing, and while this can be true on rare and isolated occasions, it is not true in the long run, and it is not true reliably. This is nowhere better illustrated, perhaps, then in how people often relate to insurance, warranties, and property management companies. Insurance As […]
The Perfect Boiling Pot (and Other Consumer Woes)
Several months ago, when I started making major dietary changes, one of the key changes I made involved replacing the frozen cheese pitas I used to eat for breakfast with boiled eggs from pasture-raised chickens. A week or two ago, I tried those cheese pitas for the first time in over a month, and I […]
The Struggle to Find and Afford Healthy Food
I’ve spent an ungodly amount of money on groceries this past month. Without going into too much detail, I finally went to a gastroenterologist last month to talk about some of the heartburn issues I’ve had for a long time, which got much worse this past year, and when she explained to me some of […]
Giving Up on the Straight Razor – Thoughts on Low-ROI Skills
Sometime in the early 2010s, I was introduced to the double-edged safety razor, which consists of a solid handle, razor head, and extremely cheap double-sided razor blades. The hype was real, and although it took me awhile to find the right brand of blades to work with my skin, the shave is absolutely superior to […]
Types of Possessions
Most of our possessions can be categorized based on several generic types. These types can tell us a lot about whether our possessions are working for us or against us. I’m sure one could come up with additional categories, but I think these account for the vast majority.
Poverty as a Pretense for Hoarding
This title might not be accurate, but I think it gets the message across. I realized the other day that the only reason I keep video games I don’t want to play is that I don’t want to pay for them again if I change my mind. When I bought my Switch, I made the […]
Structural Demand and Exploitation
I don’t believe in grand conspiracies, but I do think that the various people in power employ similar tactics to maintain their power, and the collective effect of these tactics over millions of people can easily create an unofficial alliance of opinion. For example, it is rare for society to endorse a high savings rate. […]
Excessive Professionalism
Some people really have a heart for business, worker conditions, training, and education, and that’s something the world needs. However, there is a widespread disease of excessive professionalism that has invaded everything. For whatever reasons, this seems to be very prominent in Asian countries. In China, the “996” lifestyle means working from 9am to 9pm, […]