The new economic normal?

I started this post off about a week ago, and then let it set as I was traveling for work.  In the meantime OPEC had their meeting, and I've just posted on that. This post came back to mind at that time.  According to the Tribune, Wyoming's economy is now flat.  With the OPEC failure to put in place caps, I'm worried that it won't remain flat for long, however, which is what I had originally addressed here (i.e., a flat economy, although I thought that analysis somewhat flawed even prior to the OPEC story).

Founder of the House of Saud. Who would have guessed that the Saudi kingdom would prove so critical to the economy of a Rocky Mountain state?

Unemployment isn't increasing, and employment isn't increasing in the state either.  A state employee terms it the "new normal".

Except, it's flat in part because of construction jobs.

And those jobs have been a largely fueled by school construction.

 

 A series of major school construction projects has been keeping the state's unemployment figures from rising.  They won't go on forever.

Which is provided for by coal severance taxes, a dropping revenue.

And by tourism. Tourism is apparently up.  Which isn't surprising really, as with fuel prices in the basement, we should see more traveling, although apparently there  hasn't been much of an increase in fuel consumption nationally.  However, with gasoline now down below $2.00/gallon, we'll see if that holds.

$2.00 per gallon, by the way, is something I was frankly stunned to see.

Now, in the week or so that I've delayed on this story, I've actually seen gasoline at $1.87.  It'd dropping like a rock.

And I'm going on record right now that its my prediction that we'll see it go as low as $1.00 in the next two years.

Even as it is, right now, in real terms, it has to be as low as its ever been, and I'd think that should make air travel and ground travel much cheaper. We oddly haven't been seeing an increase in fuel consumption as the price first stabilized, and then fell, but I'm guess that we will now somewhat.  Or at least it'll begin to have a nationwide deflationary effect which will make the American dollar much stronger and create a real rise in earning power in everyone's bank accounts.  Unless, of course, you were working in a state, like I am, where we depend on the coal and petroleum industries for our economy.

Anyhow, this news time line is very familiar to those of us who lived through the early 1980s here. As before, there was denial, as in "this is only temporary", which ultimately yields to "oh, it won't be that bad", and followed by where we now are, which is "tourism will save us".

Tourism is important to the local economy, but it has problems as a n economic sector, not the least of which is that the wages it generates tend to be low. An added problem, rarely addressed, is that tourism and the mineral industry can be at odds which each other, at least to some degree. And the fact that the mineral industry is the high paying end of the economy makes quite a difference in the local impact of the various types of employment.

 

World War Two era poster discouraging vacation travel.  We're in the opposite position.

That the boom would end was something that those with a sense of history always knew.  A belief was out there that it was going to last decades, but that has never proven to be the case. What is unusual, however, is that the end of this boom was caused by a pricing determination from overseas, with Saudi Arabia seeking to keep its market share.  A boom had been fueled by OPEC oil policies in the past, but never a bust.  Whether the Saudi gamble will pay off for them isn't yet know, so the ultimately impact on the local economy isn't either.  But it is scary.

Petroleum and coal, it should be noted, have been part of the state's economic engine since the 1890s, but agriculture was the main sector of the economy for over half the 20th Century.  Petroleum only took that place in the 1960s.  This is significant as agriculture has actually lead the economic boom in some US states, and its proven to be an industry that not only has remarkable staying power, but staying power in a modern economy.  But it's really dwindled as a sector of the Wyoming economy in recent decades, all while remaining the romantic sector of the state's image.  In some ways, agriculture is really the reason for our tourism industry, whether that's realized or not, as range cattle production is the reason for the range being what it is.  That's something that the state should remember, and perhaps taking a second look at agriculture and what it can, and does, for the state, should be done.  It certainly can play a bigger role than it currently does, and its proven to have real staying power.

 

The cow, fabled in our cultural story, but often undersold in the post World War Two economic story of the state. Time to consider agriculture's position once again?

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Pennington County Courthouse, Rapid City, South Dakota

Courthouses of the West: Pennington County Courthouse, Rapid City, South Dakota

Blog Mirror: Lansing State Journal: Uncovering the history of Army Jeep #1

Lansing State Journal:  Seventy-five years after it wowed the U.S. Army, the oldest known Jeep is getting its due as a symbol of the Greatest Generation’s fight and Detroit’s role in what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called “the Arsenal of Democracy” — the manufacturing might that helped the Allies win World War II.

And the oil price war goes nuclear. . . or maybe solar.

Given that so much attention has been focused on other things, many may have missed that Friday OPEC, lead by Saudi Arabia, failed to set caps on oil production by it members.

We are now in an uncontrolled oil market for the first time since the early 1970s, and the production trend is up. I wrote earlier on the Saudi boost on production, and what it might be about, but what seems fairly clear now is that part of it was designed to put a stop to increased US and Russian production.  The Saudi effort did at least slow the upward US trend but it didn't return Saudi market share to the pre US boom level and US production, if not exploration, has remained surprisingly high.  The Saudis may simply have missed their chance to achieve their goal without it taking a long time, and without it ultimately being pretty costly. 

 Prices have been going down, and given this development, they're going to keep going down. My guess is that they could go down quite a bit.  I saw gasoline for sale for $1.87 today for the first time in years. It's hard to imagine. This has to start having some sort of deflationary effect on prices in general at some point.  And its  hard to imagine that it doesn't result in an increase in domestic consumption, although this doesn't really seem to be occurring.

Indeed, the question would seem to be now if we are about to enter a deflationary period. We haven't, but with this particular cost going down, some impact has to occur.  It will not stand to be a disastrous one, like the deflationary period of the Great Depression, and in fact it would appear that except for the US energy sector, it will likely be a positive one for most of the world's economy, assuming that the price continues to go down or that it stabilizes.  It will be hard, however, on the US energy industry, although the irony is that with so much new production in North America having done on line, the US now has the ability basically to absorb increases in price which in turn might keep the Saudis from allowing that to occur.

Some energy analysts have been claiming that we're now in a new environment in terms of oil production. This seems to be becoming very much the case.  The Saudis are maintaining a dedicated effort to keep their share of the world market, but at a great loss to themselves.  Global production has reached the point where they don't have much choice, if that's what they want to do.

Playing Games with Names and Burying Heads in the Sand. Mischaracterizing violence and ignoring its nature at the same time.

Quite some time ago I published this thread, and then later came in to update it:

Lex Anteinternet: Peculiarized violence and American society. Looki...: Because of the horrific senseless tragedy in Newton Connecticut, every pundit and commentator in the US is writing on the topic of what cau...

In light of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and in San Bernadino California it seems time to update this to speak about something else.  One being the characterization of criminal acts in a misleading fashion, the second ignoring a real and very worrisome phenomenon. 

The first item has to deal with "mass shooting".  The press, somehow, has decided that a mass shooting is one in that results in four deaths. That's absurd.

The reason that's its absurd is that a shooting involving that many people, while horrific in every fashion is a different type of crime, and probably more than one different type of crime, entirely.  Quite a few family crimes of passion, again, horrific, involve four deaths.  So do a lot of robberies, and so do a lot of inter-criminal warfare killings.

This isn't to say that these should be ignored, but they are different in character from true mass shootings.  A family that erupts in violence has something totally different going on than some other types of killings.  Likewise, a gang assassination is quite a bit different from nearly any other kind as well.  Pretending that there's a one size fits all solution to these different types of homicides is absurd.  Murders by gangs, for instance, aren't done by the mentally ill nor is any type of prohibition in implements going to prevent them.

The second, and truly bizarre, item is the absolute refusal on the part of some to recognize that what happened in Paris not only can happen here, it has been happening here.  Nobody seems ready to admit it, but we not only are subject to attacks by radicalized Islamic terrorists, including homegrown ones, but we have been enduring this for years now.  We just keep pretending that this doesn't happen, and except in rare instances, when they do, we pretend that's not what occurred.

By all objective standards, the killings in California earlier this week were perpetrated by Islamic terrorists.   Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Mali were just that.  Maybe they had mental problems as well and maybe Farook hated his employer or co-workers for some reason, but then maybe the attackers in Paris weren't mentally balanced either and maybe they hated crappy American music and Muslims who deigned to be fans of it.  The critical element of it is the adherence to the Islamic State view of things.  In other words, just because Heinrich Himmler was a creep who makes your skin crawl doesn't mean that he wasn't a Nazi official who authorized killings for Nazi aims.  

This isn't the first such event by any means.  Obviously the attack by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev in Boston fits this definition, but probably only the fact that they didn't use firearms but instead chose a bomb kept the analysis on that point from being really baffled by their motivations.  We should note that Farook and Mali also had bombs, they apparently just didn't get around to using them.The attack by Major Nidal Hasan at Ft. Hood, officially characterized by the government as an instance of "workplace violence" was also a terrorist attack of this character.  Thirteen people died, not because he was a deranged discontent, but rather because he was motivated by his faith to carry out an act of war.  The attack by Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez upon a Marine Corps recruiting station, resulting in four Marine Corps deaths, earlier this year also fits this mold.  Perhaps even the attack by Michael Zehaf-Bibeau upon the  Canadian parliament had elements of this, although more than the rest also seems to have been mentally ill.  Having said that, mental illness and terrorist attacks are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and a person can be motivated by a belief and mental illness simultaneously, with the primarily motivation perhaps sometimes being a bit of a sliding scale.

Why is this so hard to understand for us?  Probably because we haven't thought of domestic terrorism much, in spite of Oklahoma City, since the 1970s, when we had left wing domestic terrorism about which we've completely forgot.  But we shouldn't have forgotten it.  In the 70s we had the Weathermen. The English had the Irish Republican Army and the Provisional Irish Republican Army and had them for decades.  The Spanish have had violent Basque Separatists, the French dealt with Algerian terrorist, and had their own counter terrorist, in their war in Algeria.  So such things are hardly knew, and aren't even to us, although we just don't want to believe it.

We are now in a war, and this is going to be a feature of it for a long time.  Just as all Irishmen in Ulster (or anywhere else) weren't members of the IRA, and all Basque aren't members of ETA, and all Algerians weren't adherent to the FLN, it's the case that not all Muslims in the United States, or elsewhere in the Western world, are terrorist.  Not even close.   But combating these sorts of killings requires acknowledging that some members of some demographics will be attracted to radical movements within their demographic and we can't really pretend that this doesn't occur.  It's just a fact.  Some will in fact be unbalanced as well, which leads them to don the mantle of a movement to rationalize their violence, but not all of them will be by any means.  Merely being a terrorists doesn't make a person a nut.  And indeed people are often attracted to such extreme actions for reasons that are pretty idealistic, even if wholly wrong.

So, then, what of all of this?

Well, for one thing the Press, including the international press, does a pathetic job of this.  The BBC the other day came out with a semi snarky article on this which general blames the event on American laws on firearms ownership.  But it would not have done the same thing a few years back when violence by the Provisional IRA was common, regarding its own laws.  European gun restrictions didn't keep the attacks in Paris from occurring either.  All the press, and indeed the American public and leadership in general, seems to completely fail to grasp that we are in a war, and its a type of war that we haven't been in ever before.  They are at war with us, and we are at war with them (if you are dropping bombs in some region, you are at war).  A guerrilla war involves war with guerrillas, and sometimes those guerrillas are in your own country.  

We need to recognize also that in such guerrilla wars, the number of guerrillas is infinitesimally small.  Part of the reason guerrillas fight in this fashion is that their small numbers require it, but part is also because the fact that they will be identified with a demographic causes that entire demographic to become suspect, and tends therefore to result in prejudice and push it towards the extremist as a result.  That needs to be kept in mind too.

But so to does it need to be kept in mind that the current war is between hard core Islamist views and everything else.  The demographic, therefore, where recruits come from is in fact somewhat identifiable, if less  and less so due to the recruiting ability of the Internet.

And we need to keep in mind that just because four or more people are killed in a singular event doesn't mean all of their deaths were equally motivated, and therefore addressing that doesn't mean that there's one single social avenue to do so. A politically motivated killing is not the same as one motivated by mental illness, nor is it the same as a criminal killing, or one that's some sort of terrible crime of passion.

All of this means that singular solutions, such as "we ought to do something about guns" or "everyone ought to carry a gun" really don't address this situation in any meaningful fashion.  This post isn't really on either of those topics, but that's a simple fact.  This years' big mass killings, it should be noted, have been terrorist acts in France (assuming we exclude the same in the Middle East, which we probably ought not to).  And fairly strict gun control laws did nothing to prevent those from occurring, nor should we think that they would.  On the other hand, given that we're dealing with warfare, the fact that individuals on the no fly list for  being terrorist are not prevented from obtaining firearms is strange.  The point is, however, that those who seem to think that this has a simplistic legal solution should rethink it.  We've never been able to simply outlaw certain types of killings anywhere, just because we wish they didn't occur, and if simply passing a law would address people motivated by a cause to stop, the South Vietnamese would have won the Vietnam War.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Oregon Trail State Veteran's Cemetary Chapel, Natrona County, Wyoming

Churches of the West: Oregon Trail State Veteran's Cemetary Chapel, Natrona County, Wyoming

This is the chapel at the Oregon Trail Veteran's Cemetery in Natrona County, Wyoming.

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Authenticity In Early Western Vehicles

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Authenticity In Early Western Vehicles: Earlier this year , I addressed the term “all-original” as it’s sometimes applied to early wagons and western vehicles.  This week, we’ll c...

Friday Farming: Lex Anteinternet: The Poster Gallery: Posters from World War Two.

Lex Anteinternet: The Poster Gallery: Posters from World War Two.:

 

British poster, World War Two.

Mid Week at Work: Uncle Sam needs that extra shovelful.

The Kitchen Stove

Moravian kitchen stove, late 20th Century

Ranch kitchen stove, 1940s.

Cow flop fueled kitchen stove, Montana, 1937.

Kitchen stove, Vermont, 1939.

Gas stove, Arizona, 1940.

Gas stove, Texas. 1940.

Minnesota, 1940.

North Dakota, 1940.

Girl reading by kitchen stove, New Mexico, winter 1943.

Colorado, 1938.

Gas stove, 1924.

Electric stove, California farm, 1944.

SEMA 2015: Classic Restoration Pickups Photo Gallery - PickupTrucks.com News

SEMA 2015: Classic Restoration Pickups Photo Gallery - PickupTrucks.com News

Age and filing homestead claims

Offhand, does anyone know the youngest age a person could file a homestead claim, back in the day?

21?  18?

Eh? Oh Cyber Monday

I'd forgotten that Black Friday is followed by Cyber Monday.

As I don't pay much attention to such things, I'd sort of dimly recalled that there was a computer sales hootenanny, but I didn't remember when. I sort of thought it was Saturday.

It's today, Monday, as people return to work, and shop with their work computers. Seriously.  Makes sense, I guess.

So there you have it.  Thanksgiving, with Black Friday creeping into Thursday night of Thanksgiving.  Black Friday.  Then Small Business Saturday, followed by Cyber Monday.  Black Friday seems to have been a disappointment, I guess, and so there's big hopes pinned on Cyber Monday.  I guess it's the equivalent of what catalogs were, with much more ease of purchase, back when I was young.

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Washakie County Courthouse, Worland Wyoming

Courthouses of the West: Washakie County Courthouse, Worland Wyoming:

 

This is the Washakie County Courthouse in Worland, Wyoming.  The Courthouse dates from the early 1950s (1954, I think).  It's a classically styled courthouse, with a single large courtroom.  I've tried one case in this courthouse, some years ago.

 Entrance to the adjoining jail, which is a substantial structure, mostly from the same era, itself.

  

A somewhat visually jarring feature of this courthouse is the small Chamber of Commerce building on the corner.  That structure oddly has the appearance of a 1950s vintage drive in restaurant, and its my suspicion that it was.  I wonder if it might have predated the building of the courthouse which, together with the jail, takes up the entire block.

 Large American Indian monument, carved from a substantial block of Douglas fir, on courthouse grounds.

Sunday Morning Scene: The Last General Absolution of the Munsters

The Last General Absolution of the Munsters

The famous painting by Fortunino Matania which commemorated the granting of general absolution on May 9, 1915, to the Muster Fusiliers by Father Francis Gleeson.  The Irish unit of the British Army would suffer devastating casualties on that day, having lost over 50% of is strength.

Bass Pro Shop to gobble Cabelas? I hope not

And following, not entirely appropriately, on this being National Small Business Saturday, there's news floating about that Bass Pro Shops may buy out its competitor Cabela'ss.

I really hope not.

Cabela's is an excellent store, and it's really a model of local enterprise. Based in the small town of Sidney Nebraska, it built a small local store into a giant via its catalog.  It isn't that its' cheaper than its competitors.  It often is not.  But it has a fanstastic assortment of items, and better yet, for somebody from this region, it's a regional store and has things that apply to this region.

I first went to the Sidney store so long ago that it was actually still in downtown Sidney, and not all that big. That store, in my view, had more charm than than the giant store by the Interstate Highway.  And I wasn't all that happy, even way back when, when the store began to build additional physical stores in other localities, although I've been to three of them (Billings, Denver and Rapid City).  I usually stop in the Denver store when I drive by it.

I've never been in a Bass Pro Shop but I have received their cataglogs from time to time, which has never inspired me to buy anything from one. They strike me as defined by their name, in some ways, that being "Bass".  There aren't any bass here and a store that defines bass as a significant game species is unlikely to interest me much.  If it had "trout", or even "salmon", in the name, it'd interest me a bit more.

But the big reason I hope that this doesn't go through is that this sort of conglomeration in these specialized industries, and in retail in general, just doesn't seem to have a good result.  At some point it's already the case that the big outfits crowd out the smaller ones.  From time to time, for example, its been rumored that a Cabelas would come in here, and people will sometimes pose it in "I wish a Cabela's would come in here".  I don't.  I like the Wyoming regional store, Rocky Mountain Discount Sports and I trust the people who work there.  I don't want to have to force them to compete with a Cabela's.  

Indeed, I wasn't super happy when Sportsman's Warehouse came in, but so far it hasn't been much of a threat, in so far as I can see, to the regional Rocky Mountain, even though its a multi state (and indeed multi national, as it's also in Canada) chain.  Quite a few people will go to Rocky Mountain over Sportsman's if they feel Rocky Mountain has an item.  And for that same reason I also worried when Dick's Sporting Goods came in, but again I've found Dick's to be pretty disappointing in the outdoor items department, save for kayaks, so my worry was perhaps misplaced.  Cabela's, on the other hand, might crush them all, assuming that Bass doesn't gobble Cabela's and then crush everyone.

Just recently a fellow opened a new, locally owned, sporting goods store catering to outdoorsmen, that being a store called Wagner's.  I hope it does well.  I've only been in it once, but it did have an assortment of interesting things and it went into the location of a small sporting goods store that had managed to hold on for decades.  I like the fact that an enterprising man can still open one and I hope the best for it.  By opening it, we sort of retain the historical norm here in that there's always been a local store catering to outdoorsmen (Dean's Sporting Goods, Timberline) and a somewhat larger semi chain store (Coast to Coast, Rocky Mountain).  They respond to us locals, stocking stuff that we use, and avoiding things we don't (bass lures, tree stands).  Cabela's had become a giant example of the regional store, and while it has been threatening to become much more than that, it's a great store.  I hope that Bass Pro Shops doesn't take over it.

Lex Anteinternet: Distributist of the world unite! National Small Business Saturday

This year, Small Business Saturday is November 28, today.

This is an event that's sponsored by American Express, hardly a small business, but still, it should draw our attention to small businessees, I hope.  Last year, I ran this post on the day: Lex Anteinternet: Distributist of the world unite! National Small Business Saturday

Distributist of the world unite! National Small Business Saturday.

Repeating what I wrote there would be, of course, pointless, so I'll forgo that. But I wonder, how many folks followed American Expresses' suggestion, because they made it, and what sort of impact that had. And if this is a growing movement at all.

And are you going to visit some small businesses this Holiday Season yourself?

Music, like tastes in other things, is truly individual.

The other day, President Obama bestowed a series of Presidential Medals of Freedom. The medal is supposed to honor the following: 

Section 1. Medal established

The Medal of Freedom is hereby reestablished as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, with accompanying ribbons and appurtenances. The Presidential Medal of Freedom, hereinafter referred to as the Medal, shall be in two degrees. 

Sec. 2. Award of the Medal.

(a) The Medal may be awarded by the President as provided in this order to any person who has made an especially meritorious contribution to (1), the security or national interests of the United States, or (2) world peace, or (3) cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.

(b) The President may select for award of the Medal any person nominated by the Board referred to in Section 3(a) of this Order, any person otherwise recommended to the President for award of the Medal, or any person selected by the President upon his own initiative.

(c) The principal announcement of awards of the Medal shall normally be made annually, on or about July 4 of each year; but such awards may be made at other times, as the President may deem appropriate.

(d) Subject to the provisions of this Order, the Medal may be awarded posthumously. 

Originally it was for the following.

By virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States and as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, it is hereby ordered as follows:

1. There is hereby established a medal to be known as the Medal of Freedom with accompanying ribbons and appurtenances for award to any person, not hereinafter specifically excluded, who, on or after December 7, 1941, has performed a meritorious act or service which has aided the United States in the prosecution of a war against an enemy or enemies and for which an award of another United States medal or decoration is considered inappropriate.
2. The Medal of Freedom may also be awarded to any person, not hereinafter specifically excluded, who, on or after December 7, 1941, has similarly aided any nation engaged with the United States in the prosecution of a war against a common enemy or enemies.
3. The Medal of Freedom shall not be awarded to a citizen of the United States for any act or service performed within the continental limits of the United States or to a member of the armed forces of the United States.
4. The Medal of Freedom and appurtenances thereto shall be of appropriate design, approved by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, and the Secretary of the Navy, and may be awarded by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, or the Secretary of the Navy, or by such officers as the said Secretaries may respectively designate. Awards shall be made under such regulations as the said Secretaries shall severally prescribe and such regulations shall, insofar as practicable, be of uniform application.
5. No more than one Medal of Freedom shall be awarded to any one person, but for a subsequent act or service justifying such an award a suitable device may be awarded to be worn with the medal.
6. The Medal of Freedom may be awarded posthumously.

I don't have a problem with the medal, which is basically a high civilian honorific, but I sometimes and a bit surprised by the winners, which is not to criticize them.

One winner this year was James Taylor.

Taylor is a musician I don't think much about, as he bores the stuffing out of me.  After he won, I was discussing him with my son, who knows a lot about music, and is a good musician himself, but he had  never heard of him.  Probably not something a younger generation follows much.  Indeed, he strikes me as part of the music scene of the 1970s, and that being the part that I myself prefer not to ponder.

So, I found him on you tube.

My gosh, the comments on his videos are just gushing.

One comment, and I can't find it now, was something like "How can anyone not love this music?"

Well, I don't. 

I can't stand Taylor's music. It's really dull in my view.  I frankly can't get through one of his songs if it comes on the radio, I just move on.

Am I right?  Probably not, as a lot of people do love him.  But I find his music insufferably dull.  When he was here in town a while back a lot of people I knew went to hear him, and they all commented on how great he was.  I didn't go. I"d have been napping and checking my watch.

Oh well, tastes in music, likely beauty, or even more so, truly are in the eye, or in this case the ear, of the listener.

Oh, why did he win?  Well, the President's statement provided:

 As a recording and touring artist, James Taylor has touched people with his warm baritone voice and distinctive style of guitar-playing for more than 40 years, while setting a precedent to which countless young musicians have aspired.  Over the course of his celebrated songwriting and performing career, Taylor has sold more than 100 million albums, earning gold, platinum and multi-platinum awards for classics ranging from Sweet Baby James in 1970 to October Road in 2002.  In 2015 Taylor released Before This World, his first new studio album in thirteen years, which earned him his first ever #1 album.  He has won multiple Grammy awards and has been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the prestigious Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Eh?  You get a medal for that?

Oh well.  I'm sure all those statements are very true.

Australian Government nixes sale of largest cattle ranch to foreign investors

Of note to some here, the Australian government said no to the sale of the nation's largest cattle ranch, called in Australia a "station", to foreign bidders.

Not really an act of Distributism, the sale was apparently given the no go as part of the ranch includes the world's largest missile range.  So it was more of a matter of national defense considerations as opposed to anything else.

Still, it's interesting.  If it had been an American ranch, I doubt that a similar result would have occurred, or if we'd even have thought that there should be one.

Absolute freedom of land sales, or even use of land, isn't really a given, the way Americans tend to think it is.  And perhaps it shouldn't be really, in all circumstances.

Funding Failure (or rather not funding it), part 4. A Distributist consideration.

 

 Engineering building, University of Wyoming.

I just posted the third comment on the blog about our current system of funding college educations, taking on a bit the current system, which isn't working well in my view, but also taking on the current somewhat popular suggestion that the nation ought to provide a "free" college education to everyone.

Here I look at that a bit differently, and note that the entire conversation is a bit out of whack, on the left and the right.

The current left wing popular idea is that you ought to give every American a free college education.  There is no such thing as a "free" anything, of course, so what that really means is that the public fund college educations for American high school graduates.  The right criticizes this vociferously on economic grounds, and for some good reasons, but there are other reasons beyond that to take it on. For one, the commonly cited "the Europeans" do it isn't a good claim, because. . . .

over 40% of Americans have a college degree, while only 30% of the Swiss do.  Are the Swiss international slackers?  Probably not.  Indeed, we have more people with college degrees than the United Kingdom, Denmark Belgium, Australia, Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, South Korean and Finland do.  We are on par with New Zealand and Japan and really only Russia and Canada have a true statistically greater percentage of their populations that are college educated.   So it sure isn't the case that we aren't sending people to college.

Therefore, if measured in terms of the sheer number of people in the population who have degrees, we beat out every country except for Canada and Russia, which is pretty impressive on some level.

In other words, maybe European kids ought to be protesting that something in their system is keeping people from getting degrees.

I don't know what that is, quite frankly, but what I wonder is if those degrees are just flat out harder to get because they're real degrees.  I don't know that, but right now American universities are churning out a lot of baloney and have become refugees for people with master degrees granted following dissertations like " "It’s ‘a good thing’: The Commodification of Femininity, Affluence, and Whiteness in the Martha Stewart Phenomenon", a title so absurd I couldn't have made it up if I'd tried.  There's no harm i studying that, if that's what makes you happy, but there is harm in funding that as a nation which seeks to be a world leader in science and technology benefits not one darned bit from that.  I'm not saying, of course, we funded that dissertation with a loan, but we do fund others like it and we of course now have a self perpetuating system of employing people who  have an academic interest in such things, which serves the nation very little.

But that's not my point here either.

My point is, when we look at other nations, we fail to consider that the nations we point to are tiny little things.

A nation like Germany, or France, can't be compared to the United States. Large sections of their populations are relatively homogeneous and their populations, while densely packed, sure don't match ours and haven't for a really long time.  Germans living in rural Geramny are still Germans and still of the same culture from Germans living in big German cities, which are all right next door by American standards.  That's a far cry from the situation the United States has.

So, when a "fund free university education" cry goes up, it suggests imposing on a huge country a national system that probably doesn't work very darned well at a local level.

Indeed, consider that Canada, often cited for having a publicly funded higher education system, has about the same population as California.  And the economy of California is simply enormous.  And it has its own needs.  So, if we're going to look at a public system, why not just leave it to the states?

Oh, I hear, the states won't do it.

Oh yes they will, and one already does. Wyoming.  And I'll bet it isn't the only one.

Wyoming, which has always been concerned about Wyomingites, has created a funding system that does indeed pay for a lot of the education of students who show an inclination and ability to go on.  It isn't a "congratulations, you slithered through high school and now we'll fund four years of napping at a university system", but it does carry most of the burden for those students who are really going on, as long as they go on here.

This is a public funding of based, whether we realize it or not, on the Distributist principal of subsidiarity.  We're taking care of our own, for our own needs, locally.  And others can do this to if they wish to, and I'll be they are.

This makes a great deal more sense than a nationwide system, and indeed a nationwide system would pretty much destroy our system.  Our local university and colleges have programs that are focused on our states and the graduates from them serve the state's interest in ways that other institutions don't.  A nationwide system would in fact tend to counter that.  If the funding is nationwide and we fund a bachelor's  level program in "The Commodification of Femininity, Affluence, and Whiteness in the Martha Stewart Phenomenon" at the University of the Left Bank and suck people into that, the state isn't going to benefit at all, or at least not to the same degree that something from the UW School of Energy Resources will.  So, basically, an economic model, not surprisingly, works better at a local level.

It's said, of course, that all politics is local, but in national elections that doesn't seem to be true.  Just listening to the debates suggest that no local considerations really play much in the national platforms, which isn't too surprising in a Presidential campaign.  But perhaps they should.  So perhaps the answer to a "do you support the public funding of college educations" should be answered by "what's your state doing and why aren't you looking there".  They can do it, and I'll be they do more often than people realize.

Classroom in the S. H. Knight building, University of Wyoming, early 1980s.

Lex Anteinternet: Funding Failure, part three

Something to ponder while you are watching those Thanksgiving university football games, which I wholly hope to avoid if at all possible.

I ran this item in 2011, last time we were having a major election; Lex Anteinternet: Funding Failure:

One of the topics that's been kicking around the GOP Presidential race is that of student loans.  At least one candidate, Ron Paul, says he wants to phase them out altogether.

I wouldn't be in favor of that, but I really do think that the entire topic needs to be revisited, as it's helping to fund failure, and has a weird impact on our economy.  This is the reason why.

Generally, student loans are a government backed system in which private young individuals receive funding for university or college irrespective of the needs of the economy, or the wisdom of their choice.  I'm not suggesting, of course, that we should override the choices of individuals who make study choices that are not likely to advance our collective economic well-being, but I do feel that it's a bad economic choice to fund them.

Students of the history of student loans often point out that they've been a boost to the American economy, which is somewhat true, but which really confuses the loans with the GI Bill, which was an outright grant.  At any rate, what they fail to note is that the early post World War Two American economy was such that that the student population

(largely male) was unlikely to be study something that wasn't directly usable in the work sphere, and that having a college degree in the 1945 to 1975 time frame was rare enough that nearly any college degree could translate into business utility.  Neither of those factors is true today.  Indeed, at this point in time college degrees have become so

common that a lot of them have no economic value to their holders at all.

This is not to say that pursing a college degree is worthless. That would hardly be true.  But if the government is to back the study of something, it ought to be something useful to the nation as a whole.  Not something that's likely to have no use to the nation, and which moreover is likely to have no real value to the holder in later economic terms.

As an example of this, which I've already noted here, one of the protesters at the Wall Street occupation was reported to have a $90,000 student loan for the study of art.  Why would the nation help fund this.  If she wants to study art, the more power to her, I just don't want to help.  In economic terms, this isn't going to help the nation at all, and frankly she'll be really lucky if she ever fines a job.  By funding her, we've made ourselves poorer and, chances are, her too.

What I'd propose to do is to restrict funding to areas where we really feel we need to boost the nation's educated populace.  If we're weak in the sciences or engineering, that's what I'd fund.  Other areas where we need new workers, who need an education to obtain it, would likewise be eligible for loans.  I wouldn't bother funding art students, or literature students. That doesn't mean their studies are unimportant culturally, or personally, but rather if they are important, it's in a manner that cannot be economically judged, and therefore people shouldn't be taxed to help fund it.  Law is the same way.  The nation has a vast oversupply of lawyers and I can't see any good reason to give a person a loan to study that.

I don't think that this would mean these other fields would dry up by any means.  But it probably would mean that a lot of people who don't qualify for private scholarships and who don't otherwise have the means of obtaining such a degree would do something else. Frankly, however, that would be a good thing, as by funding the non economic, we're fueling the hopes of a lot of people who aren't going to be able to find employment later.

And, no, I didn't have any student loans, thanks to the National Guard and my parents.

 And I followed that post up with this one;  Lex Anteinternet: Funding Failure II: 

 A very interesting NPR Talk of the Nation episode on Student Loans.

What is so interesting about this, I think, is that there's at least one caller who emails in with complaints about how the burden of loans caused her to take a career she didn't want, Wildlife Management, over one she did, Veterinary school, as she couldn't afford the loans.  She then goes on to blame the burden of servicing her loans for living far from her family, and for not having any children.

The other thing that is is interesting is that a few callers have no sympathy at all with those complaining about their loans.

I'm afraid I'm in that camp, the one without sympathy. Choosing a career you don't want, just because the loans are cheaper, is stupid.  Beyond that, avoiding real life, to service loans, is as well.

This probably says something, however, about the current nature of our societal view towards education. Why must we go this route?  We don't have to, we're choosing too.  And now, a large section of the population views paying for the loans they obtained for their education as unfair, when nobody asked them to get the loans in the first place.

Not that society cannot be blamed to some degree.  We've created a culture where we now view manual labor as demeaning, and teach our middle class children that.  The grandsons of machinist and tool and die makers feel they must go to college, and indeed they must as we sent the tool and die work to China, more or less intentionally.  So we're now all over-educated, and can't pay for it with the jobs we retained. And we encourage this to continue on by giving loans for educational pursuits we know will never pay off.

Since I posted these items, this has been more in the news than ever.  And a lot of that has to do with the combined impact of student protests as well as Democratic Senator Bernie Saunders suggesting that he cause their to be free college for all.

Before we go back to the main point of this, let's take up that free college for all topic. Truth be known more Americans are college educated than ever before, so it isn't as if we're failing to get people to college.  Granted, student debt is a big problem, but by and large we are getting a lot of students there.

We're also quite frankly generating a lot of junk degrees that are worthless.  This is a popular conservative point about higher education, and it's frankly true. While we are graduating more degreed people than ever, a college degree of 2015 doesn't mean the same thing as a college degree from 1965 meant, or 1945, or 1915.  A student graduating in 1915, while their were far fewer of them, was quite frankly far better educated than many are today, depending upon their major.

College level educators, unfortunately, have a vested interest in this, which explains more than a little about the current level of dissent and rank idiocy on college campuses today. The recent series of demonstrations at the University of Missouri should be pointing this out.  Take, for example, University of Missouri professor Melissa Click, who infamously asked for "some muscle" to eject those recording the demonstration.

Click is the Department of Communications, an ironic post for somebody seeking "muscle" to prevent the recordation of an event, but I'll note that communications are a legitimate field of study.  But consider her master dissertation, which is "It’s ‘a good thing’: The Commodification of Femininity, Affluence, and Whiteness in the Martha Stewart Phenomenon.".  This is a thesis that did not need to be written and perhaps one that an institution of higher learning should have rejected.  Click, as George F. Will points out in a recent article, also "has a graduate certificate in “advanced feminist studies.”". That's baloney packaged up between two thick slices of baloney, and is the type of certificate only useful in a fake, highly left wing, purely academic, world.

Indeed Will's article points out a whole host of similar absurd academic behaviors, and even the University of Wyoming has become a little guilty of some institutionalized nonsense.  The net impact is to reduce the seriousness of the situation the students are about to be ejected into combined with a probably temporary political radicalization of them.  In other words, they're separated from their cash, or probably their parents cash, or the public's cash, not really educated, save for a career in university level academia, and then booted out into the real world with diminished job prospects.

That is, in part, because there are a lot of worthless majors now crated by this system and the social and economic atmosphere that created it.  Somehow the number of degrees has vastly exploded, and not in a good way, if for some the application of those degrees is marginal.  People who would have had fairly rigorous Liberal Arts degrees 40 years and back now sometimes have specialized degrees with no practical application at all.

That's why the "free college for all" (which of course would not be free) is a bit of a farce in real terms.  A "free education" isn't free if you spend four years of your life on it, and the net results is that you are not educated in real or practical terms.

This is why comparing our educational system at the college level to that of other nations, by which we really mean European nations, is quite questionable.  While European degrees are presently in a state of evolution, European university degrees have generally been fairly hard to obtain.  I don't know the current situation, but when comparing the public funding for them, that can make quite a difference.

For instance, over 40% of Americans have a college degree, while only 30% of the Swiss do.  Are the Swiss international slackers?  Probably not.  Indeed, we have more people with college degrees than the United Kingdom, Denmark Belgium, Australia, Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, South Korean and Finland do.  We are on par with New Zealand and Japan and really only Russia and Canada have a true statistically greater percentage of their populations that are college educated.   So it sure isn't the case that we aren't sending people to college.

Therefore, if measured in terms of the sheer number of people in the population who have degrees, we beat out every country except for Canada and Russia, which is pretty impressive on some level.

But that's only impressive it it really means something, which gets back to the main point.

What college students are really complaining about now is that a college education doesn't pay off the way it once did. If you had to invest $100,000 in something but were almost sure to get it back, you wouldn't worry much about the loans to obtain it.  Now, that's quite uncertain. And as it's quite uncertain, those doing it are hoping for somebody else to pick up the risk, that being the taxpayer.

That's not a good idea for a lot of reasons, the foremost being that if the public is going to pick up the risk, it ought to reap some sort of a reward. And that is where our system is really messed up.

In a country where about 30% of the population is obtaining a degree it stands to reason that its likely the degree is worth more, and its probably in an area with application.  But the American system has sort of evolved to where many college degrees are nothing much more than High School Degrees +.

When I was younger, it was emphasized quite correctly that if a person had any hope of economic success at all, they needed to have a high school degree. That's still true, but our economy has evolved to the point where you need a college degree for that now.  And that is, quite frankly, completely absurd.

There's no earthly reason whatsoever that many former areas of employment that only required a high school degree should not require a college degree, and the concept that they do is deeply flawed.  It's commonly stated that he world is more complicated, but it frankly isn't.  The global level of complication has changed very little, and computerization of things has served to simplify, not complicate, many things.  The ability to operate a computer is something that every kid coming out of high school is well versed with, so the sometimes heard excuse that people need to learn the technology is baloney, they know it.

And the fact that degrees have become available for everything means that they have become debased in value.  There are entire fields that are not really of the type that should require post high school education, if high school was done well.

What this means, in part, is that colleges and universities ought to dump a lot of the academic degrees they have that are of little value, and that would mean dumping the vested interests that maintain them.  It also means that university needs to toughen back up, academically.

Indeed one of the real shocks for people who obtained "hard" degrees from decades ago is the level of frivolity that is now so deeply associated with universities.  University as a four year party seems to be both commonly experienced and accepted. That's nonsense, particularly if its on the public dime.  This was not always the nature of university, in spite of the popular image to the contrary.

The biggest reform that could be done for the system, and to the advantage of the students, would be to change the funding system we presently have to one, as noted above, that funded a real demonstrable public need.  That doesn't force anyone to do anything, but it does mean that if the public is funding an education, even through a loan, it ought to be in an area where the public derives a benefit.  What fields, that is, does the US benefit from in terms of producing college graduates?

I fully acknowledge that this means I'm completely discounting the cultural benefit argument.  Some would argue, and probably validly, that the nation enjoys a richer cultural life if it produces artists, etc., in addition to engineers. Well, tough.

Or more accurately, to the extent the nation benefits from people in those categories, it benefits and should encourage them in the way that has been done with all former cultures, in the stuff we publicly procure. Btu we've done a poor job of that recently as well.  By that, I'd note, churches and public buildings fueled the arts, but on their terms.  Not through loans.  That's a better process as its market based, the way the real world ultimately works.  If a person desires to be an artist, be one.  But being one probably means suffering for your art at some point, which doesn't require the public to fund the suffering at he university level.

A day in the life: Thanksgiving 1915

People leaving a Thanksgiving Day Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, 1915.

Thanksgiving Day "Maskers", approximately 1915.  I have absolutely no idea what this tradition was.

Straus Clothing Store in Fargo closes its doors.

After, we should note, being open for 135 years.

The family owned store closed as its owners are retiring.

A remarkable run, and one that can't help but make a person a little sad. We don't see that many business of this type still open really, and this one seems to have done well for a very long time.

Return of the Willys MB

U.S. Army convoy in Iran during World War Two, with Jeep lead vehicle in convoy.  The Jeep is either a Willys MB or a Ford GPW, the two trucks being identical.  Now, the Iranians are making essentially the same vehicle.

We've discussed Jeeps here a fair amount.  As noted, I've owned three, the first being a 1946 CJ2A.

The CJ2A was a Willys post war variant of the MB, the most mass produced Jeep of the Second World War.  Willys was one of the original competitors for the 1/4 ton truck contract, and its the one that basically won it.  That Jeep, the World War Two Jeep, established the brand, basically. 

I won't go into the Jeep history, as I've already done that.  But what I will note is that the next military model was the M38.  The M38 was an improved MB.  It basically takes a Jeep fan to be able to tell the difference, although their are real differences.  They looked virtually identical.

The M38 gave way to the M38A1, which wasn't identical. That Jeep is the originator of the CJ5 style Jeep.  I've owned a M38A1 as well.  

My M38A1, back when I owned it.

The M38A1 yielded to the M151, a really good, but very dangerous Jeep, with independent wheel suspension.  After that, the Army phased the 1/4 ton truck out.

But not every Army did.  There's probably a few 1/4 US Jeeps still in use by some Army. And many European Armies use a truck of about that size.

Well, now Iran is making one, the Safir.

And not only are they making one, it's apparently pretty much a copy of the M38.  It's body style isn't identical, but it's pretty close, and otherwise it's pretty much a copy of the M38.

And they're getting quite a bit of use in the war in Iraq, in the hands if Shia militias.

All sorts of rocket launchers and recoiless rifles are mounted on them, probably taxing their capabilities, as these vehicles are small.

Now,  note, I'm noting this as I like Jeeps in general, but I'm amazed that the little tiny MB is back.  They were really very small, and various Jeep developments since then have made for much better Jeeps.  But back they are, and like the M38 and M38A1, they're packing some pretty stout weapons.  Engine wise, they use a modern Nissan engine, and they appear to have torsion bars for their front suspension. But they retain a solid front axle, as of course current American civilian Jeeps do.

Interesting that the old type would be back, and in this peculiar fashion.

Killing people and breaking things. . . and women in the service.

 The Women's Mounted Emergency Corps.  "A mounted emergency corps of women has been organized as an auxiliary to the Second Field Artillery, of Brooklyn. The women wear a military uniform and are trained in giving aid. They learn to mount and dismount quickly, to help a wounded soldier who needs first aid, and to assist one who Is not totally disabled into the saddle. There is no plan yet for taking women to France in any but nursing capacity but it may be that the Women s Emergency Corps will get to the fighting line before the war is over."  The Oregonian, 1917.

Recently, a dear cousin of mine "liked" a photo that appears in Stars and Stripes of a collection of female soldiers all feeding their babies in the traditional, i.e., the original, way.  She posted something along the lines of "how beautiful".

And it is.

But its not a good thing for our Army, which touches on something I've avoided, but given as I'm getting older by the day, and shy away less from controversial topics more and more, I'll go ahead and post on it.

In the Army, at least at one time, you used to hear in training "What is the spirit of the bayonet?"

The answer is "To kill!"

And that's because an army, and by extension its soldiers, exist to kill people and break things.

Not for feeding babies.

A society that has lost sight of that, is fooling itself. 

Warfare has traditionally been a male thing since day one, literally, no matter what our society may think of that today.  It's in our DNA.  This is not to state that no woman never participated in combat in prior eras or antiquity, but frankly, that's a massive exception to the rule usually indicating a level of desperation that equates with an enemy being on the verge of killing the babies and taking the women.  Truly.

Even some of the most frequently cited examples of female deployments turn out to be spotty at best.  The Soviets used very few women in combat during World War Two, contrary to what is sometimes imagined, and the entire Red Army was pretty much a violent, ignorant mob anyhow, which engaged in activities outside of Russia that have legitimately brought shame upon its reputation in that war ever since. The Israelis don't actually deploy women into combat either, contrary to what is commonly noted, instead using them in support and training roles.  Only Western armies use women in combat, as those armies are heavily influenced by societal thought that requires a degree of un=realistism here, and which further benefit from technology so advanced that they can afford to cut corners on this sort of thing to a certain degree.

Part of the reason that this evolution is a bad one is that it simply doesn't reflect the hard physical nature of being a combat soldier.  Like it or not, the simple fact of the matter is that warfare remains one of the few areas where the ancient male advantage in strength is highly applicable.  Even test results in areas where the military trains hard shows this.  Women generally have a very hard time passing military courses that remain traditionally tough, while generally men do not.  An added real fear here is that the courses will be adjusted to allow for women to pass them, which at some point will catch up with the service in terms of combat results.

A second, and just as applicable reason not to welcome this tread, however, is that there are real and established psychological differences between men and women.  Men generally peak more rapidly in anger than women, and trail off more quickly as well.  This seems to hearken back to the era when every man was a combatant of a type, and it serves men well in combat.  It doesn't serve women well, and indeed that doesn't serve the service well either.  In part, slow to anger women remain angry thereafter, which is a dangerous thing for military order.

But another psychological aspect of this is that it doesn't take into account the relationship between men and women that is also in our DNA.  Like it or not, that attraction is going to exist as well as deeply ingrained urges. It is already the case, even in peacetime, that a frighteningly high percentage of servicewomen become pregnant during their service, note the item that we started off with here in this entry. That makes them, effectively, a casualty in a combat situation.  

And, at their best, men will tend to protect women, which creates a bond other than that which exists between male combatants. The "brotherhood" nature of men at war is often noted, but less well noted is that soldiers are trained to, and do, leave men behind when it served their larger goal.  Leaving women behind, which would be a military requirement, would be, I suspect, much more difficult.  And by leave behind, I mean leave behind to die.  Men are left behind to die at crossroads and in buildings, to allow the escape of the whole.  Leaving a young woman behind would not be as easy.

At their worst, and their worst frequently occurs in a combat scenario, men in uniform are violent to women in the very worst way.  Without going into detail on it, if anyone doubts this they should read the books written by Max Hastings that deal with the end of World War Two. Some armies in that conflict were horrific in these regards, but it happened in all of them. And it happens in ours now, which is another story that frequently hits the news but seemingly not in this context.  The number of female servicewomen who are assaulted while in the service is frighteningly high, and introducing them into combat units where the worst things humans do is routine stands to only make this worse.

Finally, there's something really indecent about putting women in this role.  That sounds chauvinistic, and perhaps it is, but its true.  On the average, quite frankly, women are better than men in every deep and meaningful way.  Making them combat solders, and ignoring their feminine aspects, makes this worse. There's no reason to convert women into men, even though our society seems to have forgotten that there are two genders, and only two, and they have very real natural attributes.

I have no doubt that views like mine are not doing to carry the day, at least right now. But I also suspect, as I write this, that we're about to get into a ground war against a group that believes women captured in war make fine slaves, suitable for any purpose.  We're not going in a sane, and dignified, directly.

Lex Anteinternet: Toyota Landcruiser: The Prime Mover of the Third ...

Lex Anteinternet: Toyota Landcruiser: The Prime Mover of the Third ...:  Moroccan troops with some sort of Toyota, United States Marine Corps photograph. Americans may have invented the  Jeep , but based o...

And now, it appears, there's a little competition in this category.

At least, anyone, in Iraq.  The Iranian built Safir Jeep sized vehicle, a real throw back that's the size of the original Willys MB (if that big) and which retains a solid front axle (but which appears to have torsion bars rather than springs) is seeing use in the ongoing war in Iraq.  The Safir is typically decked out with a rocket launcher or a recoiless rifle, something we stopped doing way back when we were still using the M38A1.

But, in the conditions in which they're fighting, it's probably pretty darned effective.

Election comparison and contrasts

 The Republican National Convention, opening prayer, 1904.

As folks here know, Canada just had an election.

And we're having ours.

I can't help but be envious of the Canadian election practices a bit, although the reason they exist is that they have a parliament, not a congress like we do, and that means that their chief executive is simply a member of the party that takes the majority of the House.  So, that means that their election is a nationwide house election, rather than a sort of single purpose election to a degree, like our Presidential election. You can't really vote, that is, for the Prime Minister unless you live in that "riding".

And that naturally makes for a fast election.

In contrast, ours now last for over a year, which is not really a good thing. And the staggered primaries man that some states have truly unnatural influence over a nationwide process.

This is something that could be fixed, and it probably really ought to be.  Spending millions of dollars over the course of a year in a staggered series of elections is fatiguing in the extreme and it seems mostly to just wear the voters out, as well as giving undue influence to a few states, and the real die hard faithful of each party that live in those states.

Or, alternatively, we could go back to the old "smoke filled room" days when parties basically picked their candidates in the convention, without a lot of nationwide politicking (although there was certainly some).  The candidates we got in those days were certainly no worse than the ones we get now.

Looking at house size, from Lex Anteinternet: More of the Stone Ranch

 

Following up on this, the comments added by Neil on the Stone Ranch brings up a really interesting point.  We posted our link in to that thread just below, here:

Lex Anteinternet: More of the Stone Ranch: This is posted over on our photo site, as Holscher's Hub: More of the Stone Ranch. It is an historic structure, but its the very astut...

The original post appears here.

Neil made this comment:

Thanks, I have long been fascinated by how little space was needed only a few generations ago. Stage travelers probably were in a corner cot behind a curtain. Today a 1,200 sq foot home is sold as small, or as a starter home. Would have been more than spacious in the 1880s.

To which I replied:

That's very true.

I know that the original occupants of the house had a family and raised several children there. At least one of their children went on to marry and raise another family there, after the stage days were over. As time went on the outbuildings and what not were put in, but they continued to live in the small house. I don't know when the house ceased to be occupied, but I think it was in the 1940s or 1950s.

This house is smaller then modern apartments today. But, on the other hand, it was stone, cut by an itinerant Italian stone mason, and it was probably really easy to heat in the winter with its small size. Likewise, the windows and stone construction probably would have made it tolerable during the summer.

It is a very interesting observation.  And very true.  Even a "large" house by pre 1960s standards isn't really that large today, at least to some degree.  Young couples that have no children buy houses of a size that would have been regarded as very large by families that had several children just 50 years ago.  This isn't universally true, but it's at least significantly true.

Also, of interest, the phenomenon of  purchasing new houses over time is fairly new. This is not to say, as people sometimes claim, that people bought one house when they first married (although that's sometimes the case) and stuck with it the rest of their lives, assuming they didn't relocate from one town to another. But, rather, people tended to buy a new house much less often, and if they did, there was often a practical reason for it related to family size.  Now, people buy new homes fairly frequently, at least in the middle class, to this has been a real change over time.

Having said all of that, my wife and I still live in the only house we've ever owned, and it's actually smaller than my parent's home. So obviously we aren't with the program are a statistical exception.

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Fergus County Montana Courthouse, Lewistown Montana

Courthouses of the West: Fergus County Montana Courthouse, Lewistown Montana

They aren't dogs

I'll be very frank, my view of the War with the Islamic State varies considerably from most of the fairly muddled thinking that I hear out there regarding this. Indeed, I think the commentary that ponders in angst why this is happening, and what the Islamic State wants, is dense.

 

Or perhaps a blistering combination of extremely naive combined with historically inept.

Simply put, the Islamic State seeks to establish a global Whabbi Sunni Caliphate that will truck no compromise with any force counter to it.  No other religion is to be allowed to stand and Muslims who are not strictly and purely observant are to be regarded as apostates.  It's willing to use violence to achieve this goal, it has no shorter goal, and its backed up in goals and thinking by its organic document, the Koran.  We might like to pretend that in the 21st Century we don't fight religious wars, but we're in one.  And frankly, we're not doing very darned well in it.  Our enemy is winning on the battlefield and its winning the propaganda war amongst its demographic.  Its even winning non Islamic Europeans as converts to its cause, in an era when Christian churches have tended to reduce their message to something like "it's nice to be nice to the nice".

So, that being my view, it may come as a surprise that I'm fairly disturbed by the recent political efforts to restrict the very small number of Syrian refugees we were going to take in to probably nothing.

My view probably varies as well from the liberal commentators on this, who seem to put their comments in the context of not letting in the refugees is a victory for the Islamic State.  I doubt that's their view at all.  Being devout hardcore Wahhabi Sunnis, they're no doubt fully convinced that they will win, and would prefer to have large bodies of Muslims in Western nations, from whom they no doubt believe they can recruit when the call comes. And they are being successful in recruiting a few.

But that's not what matters here. What matters is that Western values, which no matter what secular humanists may think of them, are based on the Christian concepts of humanity and charity, and that requires us to relieve suffering where we can, and here we can help.  It's the classic Christian situation.  Yes, a few of these people, albeit a very few, may be dangerous.  Nonetheless, they are all suffering in one way or another, so we should help.  That stands to defeat the barbarous nature of the Islamic State more than anything else does.

Now, I'm not advocating pacifism here either, and I'm certainly not a pacifist.  While I was very much opposed to trying to support any faction in the Syrian civil war early on, now the situation is too far gone and we have no choice but to fight the Islamic State.  And, in my view, not in the slow motion air campaign we're doing now.  

But at the same time, and until we can solve this matter, we have to recognize that a lot of desperate innocent people, and a few desperate guilty people, are on the move, and we need to do what we can. That humanity shows the difference between them and us, and between inherent and inherited Christian values and Islamic extremism.