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She named the boy Ichabod, saying, “The Glory has departed from Israel”—because of the capture of the ark of God and the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband.
— 1 Samuel 4:21, Daughter-in-law of Eli, Israel’s High Priest

The glory has departed – the whole world.

“What’s up Doc?” said Bugs Bunny.

“Bugs, sad to say, things ain’t that peachy keen, all over the globe, it has simply become Ichabod’s world!” replied Elmer Fudd.

Sadly, we are forced to live in a real world; the cartoon financial fantasies of the twentieth century have forced us to look at the twenty-first. To take off the rose colored glasses and not only look at a real three dimensional world, but for the first time, in a very long time, to question some of the assumptions that have guided our make-believe world of that epoch.

I realize that this rather a stark way to look at the world and the nation, especially this week when the nation celebrates its Thanksgiving Holiday. But when you seriously look at what is happening Ichabod seems like a just description. This week besides tomorrows thanksgiving feast, we are marketed the hype that this will be “Turkey Day and Professional Football,” the nation’s pseudo religion. That followed by Black Friday when it has become the practice of feeding the god of consumer gluttony.

Lest we forget today was the day when the American Congress, Democrats and Republicans, were supposed to begin to act like adults and make a true token gesture in beginning to reign in some of the federal government’s excessive spending, in a somewhat controlled environment.

The $1.2 trillion in savings, however was really way less than a token, the real work would have been to make those savings on an annual basis. A real functioning republic would have seen it within reason, to make those cut to one percent of GDP, so that we could have seriously begun to restructure and rethink the role of government, so that it represented the vast majority of our people; not those just on the conservative and liberal extremes of their political parties.

Tags: Ichabod, Thanksgiving, economics, finance, compound interest, Laissez Faire Scoundrels, Collectivist Elitists, Babylon

Tags: Thanksgiving

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I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it has to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
— Henry David Thoreau, Author, Naturalist, Philosopher, 1817-1862

This week’s title reference to wildness is perhaps Thoreau’s most well known quotation: “In Wildness is the Preservation of the World.” This quotation however does not come from his many books and essays published during his life but from a booklet called Walking published after his death in 1862. We have a PDF copy of Walking in our Resources Section. For context the wildness preservation reference occurs on page 13 of that document.

However Walden, Thoreau’s most famous book, is looked upon by many in the environmental movement as a natural Bible. While not a scientific survey, it is not uncommon for backpackers and hikers to pull out of their packs a copy of Walden to provide their daily devotions.

Free copies of Walden, in a number of formats are found at Project Gutenberg, as well on Amazon where a search for “Walden Thoreau” returns 2,801 results. Top on the list is a pre-order release, this week, of a new paperback that features a log cabin and a side fireplace, not at all similar to Thoreau’s 10 foot by 15 foot shingled cape cod structure.

Thoreau began his stay on Walden Pond on July 4, 1846 and continued there for just 2 years, 2 months and 2 days, at which time he moved back to the city to house sit for fellow Transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is stated that it took Thoreau longer to write Walden than the time he actually spent living in the woods.

In that enlighten vision I thought that this introduction would serve as a great segue into my announcement that I too am in the process of leaving my hut in the woods, and returning somewhat to civilization. While I have made numerous excursions into the outside world during this time in the Boulder Creek Canyon of the Kettle River, it would not be difficult to say that my time would be double Thoreau’s stay; essentially 4 years, 4 months, and 4 days.

Tags: Thoreau, 2nd Great Awakening, fear, Christianity, Amoeba Theory, Native Americans

Tags: Veterans Day

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On more than one occasion you have offended me, but in my qualities both as Christian and philosopher I have always forgiven you and only pitied you for your errors.
— Nicola Tesla, Inventor, Engineer, Philosopher, 1856-1943

Last week, October jobs numbers were reported. The net numbers were 100,000, a number below those required to keep up with population growth.

So where are all the jobs?

There really is a common sense reason for the lack of jobs. You won’t hear it from the politicians, the financial gurus, or the economists. Actually the chance of you reading it anywhere other than right here at the Wonder Springs Chronicle is slim to none!

Simply the reason there are no jobs is the fact that job creation throughout the history of mankind has been totally asset based. In a faux world, in which it is believed that universal debt financing is the basis for economic growth — is simply wrong.

Furthermore the simple reason the debt-myth-lie is continually broadcast ad nauseam is that “them that pitches this hype don’t know no better.” As an example the first rule of educating an industrial age specialist is to throw common sense out the window, because the world is too complex to be understood beyond the simple part we all play in the production of goods and services game. Hence we all need to specialize; that is the current universal jobs paradigm.

As we have continually pitched on these pages for at least a year and a half, jobs are created by startup, entrepreneurial enterprises. These startup job creators cannot afford to hire specialists, except as outside contractors. In a startup business, whether it is a copy shop, or farm, or repair business, or professional service you need people who are ready willing and able to perform a number of diverse tasks and do them all well.

All prosperous enterprise endeavors do not need an educational system that teaches potential employees to believe they deserve rewards for just showing up, but never finishing anything, who have absolutely no concept of true excellence, or the competitive nature of the real world, are not needed, and they only get in the way. This is even more reality in a startup.

Tags: Third Opening of the West, jobs, Nicola Tesla, startup jobs, Richard Nixon, compound interest, Greece, Entrepreneurial Pioneer Area, Industrial Age

Tags: Eurozone

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Those who think small subsistence farming is a great way to live; haven’t tried it. All individual farming and ranching is subsistence.
Twenty-first century rendition of a twentieth century proverb.

Last week at this time, equity markets around the world were elated because it was believed that finally European leaders were close to working out a deal that would save Greece from financial default and the whole world would again be on the wide superhighway to the continual Industrial Age global shining city on the consumptive hill.

What we have learned in the meantime is that the hill has turned out to be a mound of garbage and the deal that finally immerged was just another can kicked upon the heap.

There is no free lunch. But when we move to the world of agriculture, the reality is that our lunch is as close to free as possible. Because of government supports of industrialized agriculture in this country, we have so altered natural equilibriums of markets around the world, that when, not if, we finally deal with the end of this portion of the global debt supercycle, we will be forced to close the free lunch counter.

That only constant change, will eventually lead to opportunities to redefine farming and ranching into an opportunity that really can be a great way to live, because it will reshape rural life into something beyond industrial factory farms and ranches.

This year we have spent a great deal of time trying to draw a distinction between the twentieth century and the end of the Industrial Age and a twenty-first century Individual Age. We see the germinating seeds of these global changes in the Tea Party, the Arab Spring and the current Occupy movement in this country. What all these common natural human community functions demonstrate is a diversity of human needs and capacities beyond the Industrial model of humans as specialized production-consumptive machines.

As these changes move forward, a new reality will begin to emerge in which the dinosaurs, behemoths and leviathans of the Industrial Age will not be able to adapt to these opportunities, because even though they have access to capital, their inherited size, simplistic thinking, and the inability to adapt to the unintended consequences of their actions, will not allow them to utilize the energetic new efficiencies of flexible developmental scales and the opportunities these innovative changes create.

Tags: Industrial Age, Individual Age, agriculture, Greece, GDP, World War I