Category: Business

A Second Industrial Revolution?

Economics, Good News, Manufacturing

Perhaps, just possibly, we may be starting to turn a corner.  From this:

Where did all that creativity come from? Largely from physical suburbs, neighborhoods of the middle and working classes, and nuclear families – all seen as contemptible by globalist/Marxists – where the father had a good job. Who have almost all been reduced to desperation. Why? Because globalism effectively shipped tens of millions of jobs overseas, and the environmental movement, backed by globalists, cleared tens of millions rural dwellers into the mega-cities, where they languish in matchbox apartments beside super highways. A manufacturing job has a multiplier of five and a resource job a multiplier of 7. Where, I ask you, do people think money comes from? Production? The Fed? To globalists the Central Banks print money to pay their mounting liabilities, thank you very much.

To this:

Now both Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, who put all their eggs into globalism, are sneering, but this is what is happening in the real world, the physical world, where actual people make actual things.

And what follows is a long list of developments that should make one feel a little more hopeful, in that they are reversing the effects of “off-shoring” our manufacturing capacity and the shuttering of energy development.  Then:

None of these depend on green energy. Why? Because green energy is a boutique operation for rich globalist virtue signalers meant to steal subsidy from the taxpayer.

The investments from the private sector into the physical economy are equally huge, as the big houses diversify away from globalism and carbon capture and alternative energy as profit. Trillions are moving into the marketplace.

Oh, and Trump just CRUSHED the trade deficit, slashing it from $136B to $29.4B, the lowest in 20 years. America has been subsidizing the rest of the world long enough. Time all those broken countries stood on their own two feet.

Time to grow.

I think we can do it.  The rest of the world?  I’m not so sure.

This New Thing

Marketing / Advertising, Morons & Idiots

Probably the modern word I hate the most is this “influencer” tag.  Fuck me, every totty with some kind of EeewwwChoob / TikTwat channel is now suddenly an “influencer” because her views of makeup / clothing / (whatever fad the younger audience of today are obsessed with) seem to cause advertisers to swoon with delight, according to the number of “followers” they are supposed to have according to some impenetrable measurement method.

There’s nothing wrong with the latter, of course:  the Nielsen ratings were once the yardstick whereby advertisers could approportion their spending among the various TV stations and shows according to the shows’ audience size.

Or maybe it’s just sour grapes on my part, because these (mostly-brainless) girls are raking in the cash with their “content” — the latter being nothing but opinion (largely shaped, I assume, by the brands’ sponsorship of such).  And apparently, being beautiful with large breasts increases their allure (no idea why).

I find it interesting that male “influencers” tend to have more actual content on their shows;  the wonderfully-low-class Mat Armstrong, for example, has made hundreds of thousands of dollars (okay, pounds sterling) out of repairing crashed supercars — he’s just bought a house in England and another in Miami, so we can safely assume that his business is profitable —  while stalwarts like Garand Thumb (two guys with actual expertise, being former SpecFor and Ranger operators) skimp along, apparently, with sponsorships from various gunny-type companies (but have a lot of fun along the way).

I suppose that even I could call myself an influencer, judging by the number of (tongue-in-cheek) complaints from people over the years, wailing about how they were perfectly happy with their firearms until they came to this website and were compelled — forced, even — to buy yet another gun they didn’t know they needed until I spoke glowingly about its allure and excellent qualities.

Did I get any kind of remuneration from this “influencing”?  Don’t be ridiculous.

So yes, maybe I am jealous that today’s influencers make money hand over fist each week while I have made, at a rough guess, a few thousand dollars — over twenty years — from my type of influencing.

Of course, my own cussedness hasn’t helped, in that I refuse to take on advertising (I did, once, very briefly for a few months during the NoR days, until an advertiser complained that I’d said Bad Things about his industry and I told him to fuck off and pulled the plug on the whole thing).  Ditto sponsorships, mostly because gun companies don’t need me when they have “gun writers” to pimp their products via the various gun magazines, but also because I absolutely refuse to be tied to any kind of influence over my opinions on, well, anything.

It also doesn’t help that my “likes” are confined to a really small list of products and such, either.

So I guess I am and have been my own worst enemy in this regard.

Oh well.

Here’s an unsolicited (and unpaid-for) recommendation (link in pic):

It’s a pre-WWII Sempert & Krieghoff tube-fed semi-auto chambered in 8x60mm, and it’s so beautiful it makes me swoon like a schoolgirl groupie.   Okay, at $17,500 it’s not the cheapest gun you could buy, and good luck finding the obscure 8x60mm S ammo anywhere, which means it’s strictly for reloaders.

And its performance is pretty much on a par with its smaller 8x57mm Mauser cousin, which is plentiful and can be fired far more cheaply from rifles like this mil-surp K98k:

…which are sold everywhere and can be had for under $1,000.

But you have to admit, that one-of-a-kind Sempert sure is pretty.  If you do decide to buy it, mention my name to the folks at Collectors, which will result in nothing more than a “who?” from them and not a single penny of kickback to me.

Par for the course, really.

Adding Profit

Corporate Fuckery, Travels

If ever we needed more proof that Big Air (not Congress, that’s a rant for another time) are a bunch of chiseling bastards, here’s the latest:

American Airlines announced Tuesday that it plans to add seatback screens to its aircraft and to increase the number of premium and extra-legroom seating in some aircraft.

I don’t care about the screens because I seldom if ever use them unless it’s to follow the flight’s progress on that little map thingy.

I really care about the seat issue because lest we forget, some twenty or so years ago airlines began reducing seat sizes and cramming the smaller seats into ever-smaller spaces within the planes.  Yeah, the feeling went in Big Air Finance, that’s fine, especially as that enabled them to buy smaller-and-yet-smaller aircraft without losing passenger count.

Now, of course, to ride in their cramped aluminum tubes you have to have the approximate body shape of Victoria Hervey to fit in the seats, coupled with the approximate height of Peter Dinklage to have any kind of legroom.


(photos not drawn to scale;  Dinklage actually comes up
to just above Hervey’s navel)

Now, as customer discontent has grown to a fever pitch — most especially, of course by those poor souls (i.e. everyone who can’t afford the bloated fares of first- and business class) thus cramped into a fetal position for a lengthy flight — American is now installing “premium” seats with “extra legroom”.  (The “premium” refers to the prices they’ll be charging, and the “extra” is how much more you’ll have to pay.)

How much extra?  Here’s an example:

Note that the departure times are different — i.e. different flights — because the earlier flight had sold out of Premium Economy seats.

If the above doesn’t give you the Warm & Fuzzies, then you obviously aren’t an American Airlines accountant.

For the rest of us, however:

At this point, I need to warn y’all that at some time next year I have to fly to the Old Racist Republic — details unimportant, because personal — and I’ll be raffling off several guns to be able to afford the Economy fare (don’t even think about Premium, of course).


(Delta because I refuse to fly on any Muslim airline, fukkem)

Wheeee… eighteen hours in steerage:  I can hardly wait.

Please set your budgets accordingly.

Manufacturing Boom

Bureaucracy, Business

Well, yeah:

Both overseas and domestic business leaders recognize that investing domestically in the U.S. makes sense under a restrained regulatory environment that encourages innovation and allows America’s entrepreneurial spirit to thrive. That legal and compliance framework is also now bolstered by an aggressive energy agenda that unleashes the full potential of America’s resources to power industry well into the future with plentiful, reliable U.S. energy.

Good.  Now do the same for agriculture.

Sneaky Stuff

Corporate Fuckery

From Reader Steve S. via email:

“This is the next step with the ‘add a tip’ option on the kiosks & checkout pads. Shake Shack’s kiosk demonstrates what happens when you don’t have a printed menu, but instead the kiosk displays what the computer is programmed to do. It asks for a ‘tip’, and if you chose ‘zero’, it increases the price of every item ordered by $0.50. As he notes, the kiosk in this case put up a pop-up noting the ‘price adjustment’, but how many kiosks are programmed to do it in the background where you will only see the total?

“I note it is Shake Shack, but have to believe that other vendors will do the same thing as long as they feel they can get away with it.”

I know a basic response to this bullshit.

Pay cash instead of using a card.

This, by the way, will actually have two effects.  Firstly, you won’t be caught up in this little bit of highway robbery.  Secondly, paying cash — actual cash — will remind you just how expensive so-called “convenience” food has become, which may result in you visiting these places on fewer occasions.

Just another way that “convenience” + “technology” = “ripoff”.

Oh, and one last thing:  for most retailers, the extended cost of handling cash is actually higher than paying the card transaction fee.

Yer welcome.

On a personal note, I have to say that I last bought a burger from Shake Shack about four years ago, and was thoroughly unimpressed.  Never again.

Our local BBQ joint has a menu item called a “French Fries Plate”, which consists of a hearty portion of pulled pork, mixed with cheesy fries, for about $14.  That may sound like a lot;  but when I say the portion is “hearty”, I mean that it’s enough to feed both New Wife and me — and $7 each for a takeout meal is not all that bad.  Plus, the food quality is excellent, something few people can say about takeout burgers, from any establishment.

Executive Advice

Corporate Wokism, Men & Women

I had to laugh at the news that the WNBA is going to need “weeks and months” to decide (in essence) the definition of a “woman”, which will decide once and for all (or probably not, see below) who qualifies to play in their stupid little league.

Here’s the problem.  Women are by nature accommodationist.  They seek to make decisions based on consensus, something that takes all viewpoints and attitudes into account, and finally arrive at such decisions with the implicit (and sometimes explicit) understanding that the decisions may be altered at some point — even when the decision may be critical and a matter of foundation principle, as is the case here.

In this case, that approach is not only wrong, but completely wrong.

At the risk of sounding all mansplainy, allow me to offer some advice to the WNBA chicks.

  1. Whenever an executive decision is made, somebody’s going to get upset about it.
  2. The key to making the best decision is to decide whether that aggrieved person (or group) represents a significant obstacle or even threat to the future of your organization.
  3. If you are convinced that your decision is the right one for both the short-term and long-term viability of your organization, and that the opposition’s position isn’t, make sure you set up guardrails to ensure the decision’s permanency.

That’s the 200,000-ft perspective.  Here’s the nitty gritty:

Decide that the definition of a woman is someone identified as such on their birth certificate.  Period, end of statement, end of discussion.

Yes, I know there is a percentage of the population who were born female but turned out to be male, either by physiology or inclination — and vice versa.  And yes, I know that it’s a tragic circumstance for them.

Here’s what I also know:  decisions have to be made — especially in a corporate environment — that benefit both the organization and a significant majority of their employees.

Let me mansplain that further.

Allowing biological men to play in the WNBA will do two things, both fatal to the organization and to the game.

Whether you like it or not, a huge percentage of your already-tiny audience is going to react negatively to the spectacle of “cocks in frocks” taking over the game and rendering the contest meaningless.  With the disappearance of spectators — live or on TV — this is going to mean reduced interest from your advertisers, and a concomitant loss of revenue for your already-cash-poor organization.  That’s the corporate outcome.

As far as the sport is concerned, that dominance is going to subtract the entire essence of sport — of equals competing against each other.  Thus, adding the aforesaid cocks in frocks is just going to end up with teams recruiting more and more of them, which is going to harm your (actual) female performers both physically and in terms of their competitiveness.

Yes, that means that the gender-confused will be forever denied a chance to play in your competition.  It’s sad, but in real life, tiny minorities often get the short end of the stick.  It’s just the way of the world, and has been so forever.  All the good intentions aren’t going to change that, and most probably, such intentions are going to be very counterproductive to your corporate wellbeing.

So, if I may be permitted to use a very masculine term, the WNBA has to bite the bullet, and make the above — and correct — decision.

They won’t.  And the WNBA will begin its slide into oblivion.

You read it here first.