Jacques Ellul
As regular readers know I am not Ant-fragile. I am destitute. Employers are uninterested in enabling me to remain in place by work. I engaged the City help program last week and now proudly hold a voucher that if a kind company offers me steady stable employment the wages will be partly paid for two months. Wonderful. So what. I cannot even substitute teach! Here the problem is the California idiocy requiring vaccinated staff, students, bedbugs and lice and sanitized textbooks filled with communist and gay ideology. And the racial identification, and sexual orientation of teachers.
And the $72 fingerprint reimbursed after first day of work. If no job why fingerprint?
This morning an interesting article on Populism and the shift globally to ant-Globalism rouzed my ire with the pitch at the end. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023-07-08/did-globalization-drive-far-right-electoral-success-european-states-1990-2020
His pitch?
My Plan B Blueprint to Become Anti-fragile
The US and US dollar are clearly deteriorating. And there is a lot of danger in having too much exposure to a crumbling empire.
That is why I have a Plan B, which has allowed me to:
Cut my tax rate to 4%
Use that savings to invest in real assets, precious metals, and crypto
Gain a second residency and apply for a second passport
Diversify internationally
The above Phyance writer is deluded. Most investors are. Money is manna. Jack Benny in his skit as a miser is their idol. A real asset is a human being.
I read finance papers out of habit. I have only me to invest in. I am pleased really with the rate of return as my investment has grown larger than the sum invested in thinking and reading. Give me 5, I’m still alive, no money, no injection, so little necessary, even in the scope of the monetary, to keep on thinking and talking about what I read and no asset manager takes anything off the top. Of course in re-balancing my book portfolio I find no takers. My used philosophy books though unmarked are read and not pristine. My novels from unpopular and known writers hold no interest. Even my more mainstream books hold no interest-gardening books, large bird books, small bird books, political science and lit crit, Jung, no buyers on or off line.
“The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief.” Ellul
If man--if each one of us--abdicates his responsibilities with regard to values; if each one of us limits himself to leading a trivial existence in a technological civilization, with greater adaptation and increasing success as his sole objectives; if we do not even consider the possibility of making a stand against these determinants, then everything will happen as I have described it, and the determinates will be transformed into inevitabilities.
Ellul
https://ko-fi.com/thejournaloflingeringsanity
Yeah that is the trouble. No one reads them books today. Thus I debate time and hassle of posting. 20 boxes left to sort for Saturday. I aim to tomorrow to take the bus at 10:15 AM go to beach arrive at 1:05 and veg out in 77 degree heat and 15 mph wind until 4:30 and las bus home.. Treat myself to a light lunch I'll pack or buy at the market by the beach. Have not visited in over 1 year.
I note NZ now rations health care so minorities come first. And I read that Sydney's main hospital is jammed. In California, in SF, hard to know why everything is for rent and thrift store donations do not appear greatly impacted. I go to elite thrift stores that donate to Symphony hoping for cheap expensive dress clothing. Not so cheap and not so much.