kaizen
what's
been floating my boat lately:
"How fortunate for governments
that the people they administer don't think."
-Hitler-
"Only two things are
infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the
former."
-Albert Einstein-
ARCHIVES HERE
1/25/23 (15:13)
I get a lot of requests for information from the government (and other
entities) these days. The County Assessor called me today to ask about
the new property we bought. "What are your plans?" "I went by today, but
the gate was closed so I couldn't get a good look inside." "Did you buy
it off market?" "Are you going to demolish part of the building?" I also
get myriad forms from various government agencies asking me for information
about how much money I make or recent projects I've worked on and what
the estimated time for completion is, etc. With all of these I pretty much
assume they are asking questions in order to find a way to take more of
my money or screw me over somehow. This is maybe not entirely fair, but
I don't think it's a paranoid assumption either. I try to be as vague as
possible. I get different economic surveys and economic census questionnaires.
I generally ignore these because the upside of my answering the questions
is zero and the downside is that they decide that the business isn't classified
correctly or something and then I owe back taxes or my property tax assessment
increases or the warehouse isn't zoned properly for the way we're using
it or whatever. Better to just fly under the radar than be the subject
of some government official's investigation.
I get the same audits from my insurance companies and with them it's definitely
them trying to see if I owe more money. Workers' comp audits are great
fun and they find new ways of screwing me every year. They redefine who
needs to be covered by workers' comp so that it's as broad as possible.
California is not a great place to do business.
Of course it's possible that the government just wants better data so they
can help businesses thrive and grow the economy or share the (anonymized)
data with academics so they can study economic trends, etc. This would
be a great world to live in, but I don't think it's reality so I ignore
and deflect as much as possible.
Not sure if I mentioned this one, but our Oakland warehouse, where all
the staging stuff is located, is in a pretty ghetto area. There's always
dumping on the corner and the garbage guys pick up the trash regularly....which
is nice, but it just feeds the perception that it's a legal dumping ground.
I've stopped people from dumping and they literally think that the city
condones dumping on this corner. We've talked with the city and gotten
a sign to put up. We gave them permission to put up a camera, but didn't
get any follow-up on that one.
At any rate, the newest development is that there's a guy camping right
in front of the warehouse. He has a tow trailer camper and he's set up
shop with traffic cones and everything. Now he has taken over about 75%
of the sidewalk with an awning and his belongings. He tied the awning to
our building as well. The whole thing is just hilarious. It's funny to
see a society where there are fewer and fewer rules that are enforced in
any meaningful way. We're either regressing to the wild west or progressing
to Road Warrior. I asked him and the other camper around the corner to
not tie their shit to our building and both of them complied with that,
so that's good. Lately, though, the guy is acting more wacky and starting
fires at night (a neighbor keeps us abreast of the happenings) so it's
not a very safe situation. I've put in several requests with the city app
designed for reporting this. Yesterday we spoke with a police officer about
it and he said he'd have a chat with the guy. Today was street cleaning
and the guy was still there (I've been ticketed there before, but I'm guessing
he won't suffer the same fate).
All this stuff is the natural result of this cock-eyed "thinking" that
we have in this city. It's not just wokeness, though that's part of it
- it's also the near disregard for authority and common sense. There's
an elevation of ideas like equity and other woke buzz words over the basic
needs of a society like rule of law and fiscal responsibility. In the fitness
community there is a saying that you don't want to "major in the minors."
In that context it means the guy who is all about getting the right amino
acid supplements and buying the perfect kettle bell and wearing the best
gear. Meanwhile he only works out once a week and eats too much dessert.
Our city has done the same thing. They have a lot of extracurricular activities
that sound great to them because they check the DEI (diversity, equity,
inclusion)/woke buzz word checklists, but they don't know how to keep costs
under control, pave the roads, and keep their citizens (and their property)
safe. You gotta do the first thing before you can do the other stuff.
At this point I have zero hope that Oakland will do any of the basic stuff
well any time soon. There seem to be too many systemic issues. Too many
entrenched interests. Too much overspending and debt for too long. And
the worst part is that so few of the people in power (or even candidates
to be in power) are even aware of the ball that they should be keeping
their eye on. They're totally oblivious.
Definitely been seeing an exodus taking place. The data supposedly doesn't
support the CA exodus, but there's a lot of "anecdata" to the point where
I have to invoke the Grouch Marx line: "Who are you going to believe -
me or your own eyes?" It's clear that this is a shitty place to be in a
lot of ways and a lot of people who can choose to leave are doing so. The
people who are choosing to stay are generally in very nice areas and have
good security systems. That's basically where we are. 20 years ago I'd
watch videos from Russia and South Africa and Brazil on liveleak.com and
so often they were of crazy road rage incidents or people attempting to
defraud an insurance company by getting themselves purposely hit by a car
or you'd see ambushes at people's homes and they'd pull into their gated
driveway only to have two guys with guns on a motorcycle follow them into
their property and there would be a shoot out or whatever. The ubiquity
of dash cams and security cameras (because of a lack of social trust).
The ubiquity of fraud and robbery...The extent to which people had to secure
themselves and their property...Those were things that I was thankful we
didn't have to deal with here. At least I didn't take it for granted, I
guess. Unfortunately, here in Oakland, I think we're now closer to that
than we are closer to how things were when I was growing up. Sad to have
regressed as a society.
The steel man argument against this is that I'm just seeing this stuff
more and it's gotten a bit worse, but not much. I see it more because I'm
older and out and about more. NextDoor and the media play it up more. Seeing
notifications from the Citizen app or NextDoor just amplify the perception
that things are bad, but if I had the police scanner on when I was 10,
then I would have had the same feeling back then. The FBI crime numbers
are actually better now than they were in the 90s. I only care more now
because I have multiple properties and I'm paying taxes, so it stings more,
but quality of life issues are basically the same as before. And if I were
a black man then I'd realize that things are a lot better now than they
were before because the BLM movement has shifted awareness for the better
in so many ways. It's only because I'm a white property owner that I think
things are worse. And even if things are a little worse for white property
owners, isn't that worth a bit more dignity for the unhoused? Property
crimes against the rich are a sort of progressive taxation that occurs
when society fails to do right by its poorest (actual argument I've heard).
Some truth in those arguments, but overall, I think things are getting
worse.
1/12/23 (15:46)
At this point I've spent more time responding to the allegations and emails
and complaints from the guy who won't pay us, than I would have spent fixing
any of the problems he brought up and won't allow us to fix. As long as
the problems aren't addressed, he can claim (in his head) that we don't
need to be paid. Awesome.
1/10/23 (20:35)
I'm not a climate change denier. I think that it's real and it's caused
mostly by humans. That said, it's not near the top of my list when it comes
to problems I'm worried about society dealing with. I think we need to
consider it and take some actions towards ameliorating the problem, but
I don't think it will cause half the world's population to die in the next
100 years (a prediction I've heard from smart people). I don't think it's
as important an environmental issue as clean water. I don't think it's
as important an issue as the threats to democracy we're seeing around the
world.
There are a few reasons I'm not an alarmist about global warming, while
being an alarmist about other issues. Firstly, the models all assume that
nothing changes (and things always do) and I'm always pretty skeptical
of long-term models anyway. That's pretty straightforward. Long-term predictions
tend to be quite wrong and I don't think this will be an exception, especially
since so many people are aware of the issue.
The second reason is that I think we're relatively incapable of fixing
issues of a political or social nature, but we're fairly capable of fixing
engineering problems. So, if a problem can be solved by technological progress,
then I'm much more optimistic about the problem being solved. But, if a
problem is political (not technological) in nature, then I'm more worried
about it being solved. So, our ability to discern between real and fake
news? Worried. Our ability to engineer a fusion power future that dramatically
decreases the impact of global warming? Less worried. There's a profit
motive to fix this issue so I'm even further optimistic that it will be
solved. There's a profit motive to continue with the status quo also, but
I think that will decrease relative to the motive for new solutions as
time goes on. Either because of people worrying so much, or because of
the impact of global warming increasing the cost of the old way.
I haven't created a list of greatest problems facing humanity, but my impression
is that many in the intelligentsia would place global warming in the top
3. I'm not sure it would crack my top 10.
Our new house/warehouse property is still waiting for people to do their
job. We were waiting on the architect, then the city, and now the engineer.
After that it will be the architect again and then the city and probably
the architect and then the city and back and forth a while until we get
an approval. In the meantime we've done some demo to gut the main building
and I plan on getting some trash out of there this week. I sent a few of
the guys there this afternoon to continue with demo and they told me the
locks were broken. Apparently someone broke in and stole whatever they
could. Luckily I didn't leave anything of great value behind so they only
got away with a few hundred bucks worth of extension cords and some hand
tools. I fucking hate this place. Meryl thought it would be good to give
the Alameda cops a chance so we called them and they were very responsive.
That's good news. Hopefully the cops doing their job in Alameda means we're
less likely to have this stuff happen at the new place, but it's still
the bay area and it's just a part of living here.
Can't recall if I told the story of my neighbor who was a high school student
and had his prized Ford Mustang stolen from outside his house a few months
back. Reported it to the cops and they didn't do anything. Someone on tik-tok
said they found it a couple miles away so he went there and, sure enough,
there it was just sitting parked on the street. He called the cops and
they said they would send a cop over. 6 hours later he called them again
and said they still had 160+ calls ahead of him so he should probably just
go ahead and take the car back himself. So he did that and drove it home.
At 3am the next morning, the cops knocked on his door to clear the case
for him. Hilarious.
This isn't a one of a kind incident, either. Carlos, who works for me,
said the same thing happened to his brother in law. He found his truck
on the street after it had been stolen - and he just stole it back himself.
My electrician had two vans stolen in the same week just a few months ago.
A guy I used to have install flooring for us had his truck stolen a few
weeks ago. There are countless local news stories about thefts from contractors.
The new wrinkle is that the thieves are doing it in broad daylight and
sometimes doing it with a gun.
Copyright
1998,
1999,
2000,
2001,
2002,
2003,
2004,
2005,
2006,
2007,
2008,
2009,
2010,
2011,
2012,
2013,
2014,
2015,
2016,
2017,
2018,
2019,
2020,
& 2021 by me.
everything
on here is my opinion, so don't sue me.