Exposition

There are several individuals whom I will be referencing over the course of this blog. One is James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency and World Made By Hand. Kunstler's books and speeches are highly critical of the petroleum-based, suburban-sprawl-and-service-economy life our country leads. While I admit that such a life has enabled me to enjoy comforts and luxuries rare in history, I do realize that the life is in a precarious position, to say the least. Embedded is a 2005 talk by Kunstler.

The Future and What Became Of It

One of the essays I wrote when applying to college was on where I saw myself in the future. I wrote about how I would help America close the trade gap with Japan by automating domestic car factories and retraining line people to be analysts. I would get U.S. workers making VCR's (this was before DVD's) for Sony stateside, much the way Huntsville builds Toyota engines. From replacing Styrofoam with biodegradable foam to curbing unnecessary water use in Arizona, no challenge would be a match for me.

The essay did put me working with Congress to make much of this happen, but mainly using private-sector incentives. What actually happened is the U. S. Treasury owning 61% of General Motors and the Department of Transportation giving incentives directly to people.

The First Example

During the previously mentioned Bush 41 recession, a UNLV professor named Murray Rothbard was explaining "why the economics profession, once revered as a seer and scientifc guide to wealth prosperity, has been sinking rapidly in the esteem of the American public." In his book Making Economic Sense, Rothbard called onto the carpet the National Bureau of Economic Research for being "trapped in its own methodology," depending too much on finding peaks and troughs in data cycles and not enough on common-sense observation (Rothbard, p. 258-259.)

Later the professor blasts pundits who claim that since inventory is not accumulating, a recession can't be taking place. Rothbard counters that "malinvestments caused by inflationary bank credit don't necessarily have to take place in inventory form" and that these pundits are confusing symptom with cause (Ibid, p. 260.)

By The Numbers

There are many things I have enjoyed about my career so far. Planning material availability and scheduling production capacity to meet aggressive customer demand. Analyzing usage trends to give suppliers long-term forecasts. Gathering data to find where the waste in an operation is, and where the value is.

Some of my relatives and friends have suggested I get a Masters in Statistics. If I do, it will be my mission to use numbers to make the world more, not less, understandable. Too often I see news reports or books where someone uses fancy equations to justify something that would make no sense otherwise. Examples of that to come.

Writing Myself

In the decade before this, when I was working for the second of six companies which have employed me in some production planning capacity, I started getting that dream which often comes to those struggling for meaning in their occupations. I had an idea for a book based on me. It would have gone something like this:

A young man goes to work for a manufacturing company, partially because he thinks he can revive our nation's industrial capacity from the bottom up, also because he saw his father lose a business to the Carter downturn and a job to the Bush 41 sequel. Our hero battles co-workers who want things to stay the same, suppliers with similar problems, and general corporate nonsense in the name of serving customers. Eventually he sees that all his efforts, indeed his whole life, has been making sure everyone gets what they want, but not him. So now he asks, how can I fill my "personal shortages?"

No third act came to mind, but I face it now.