Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat Sep 12, 2026 2:49 pm In these recent posts, I'm spelling out what makes my mind work differently and I have at times brought these things up sporadically, pointing out that fundamental building blocks of Western Civilization are being dismantled (I will find and repost one of these discussions).

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat Oct 14, 2017 4:02 pm Next, I will discuss a company called Appliance Warehouse of America that I rented a washer/dryer from.

Like State Farm and Dell, the overall experience was positive but it still showed that an understanding of the basic principles upon which Western Civilization was founded and built is now seriously lacking. This provides continuing confirmation to me that we have entered a Dark Age, even though day to day things are still functioning.

I called the company to schedule a pickup. The woman who answered the phone was very professional and had a great telephone voice. I complimented her on that and she greatly appreciated it.

The pickup was scheduled and the driver called me during the scheduled two hour time slot, which was posted on their website as promised. When the driver showed up, it was evident that he was an African man (born in Africa). He handed me a piece of paper to sign. He was in an unmarked truck that did not bear the name of the company. I signed the form and handed it back to him.

I was aware that the company should have provided me with a receipt verifying the serial numbers of the appliances being the same ones I rented, but I didn't bother asking for it. The reason I didn't is I knew there was nothing they could do if he hauled the appliances off and never returned them to the company.

A few days later I got a bill in the mail that was printed up 3 days before the pickup. In the next 3 weeks, I got no other correspondence from the company indicating the appliances were received or the account was closed. I called to ask if we were square and got the same woman. She said their records showed the appliances were returned and my account was closed.

I kind of doubt most Millennials would have any thought that this transaction was not done according to the basic business principles upon which Western Civilization was founded and thrived for 5 centuries because they have probably never seen a transaction like this done correctly.

aedens wrote: Sat Sep 12, 2026 2:30 pm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUH3BPQ5fTo
Pulse Credit Cracks as discussed. Repayment can or delay move down.

Higgenbotham wrote: Fri Sep 11, 2026 10:49 pm The only reason I want to study this list a bit is to have a filter to better understand, as current events unfold, what the forces of destruction that have already been unleashed will target further to undermine the foundations of the industrial revolution...as the new dark age tightens its grip.

In addition to the Magna Carta, gunpowder revolution and printing press, list the pre year 1500 foundational social technologies that made the industrial revolution possible

Double-entry bookkeeping: Developed in 14th-century Italy and formalized by Luca Pacioli in 1494, this system allowed businesses to accurately track profits, debts, and capital, forming the bedrock of modern corporate accounting.

Higgenbotham wrote: Tue May 19, 2026 12:29 am

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Apr 16, 2026 5:47 pm As for what I am doing in the stock market. I have been in the S&P double inverse fund, SDS, for 4 years (approximately). With interest rates up, an SDS account with reinvested dividends has gained a little when the market is steady, about 4%. That's based on the volatility that has actually been experienced; due to volatility it doesn't gain as much as the advertised dividend.

When the market was going down or sometimes even when it dipped hard, I would take profits and withdraw them. That hasn't happened much since late 2023. Since late 2023, I've been almost 100% in SDS and only traded it a little last year. In that time since late 2023, my account has lost about half.

Now for the reason I am talking about this today. In the past day, I have added to my account for the first time in 4 years. Tomorrow morning I will be adding again. In all, I will be adding about 25% to my account this week and all of it will go into SDS. If the market stays steady or rises, I will continue adding, but less than this week. 5-10% per month, something like that.

The S&P has risen about 400 points since this was posted. I've been adding to my account on the way up and used up all my spare cash as of last week. The SDS is a double inverse fund. Today I started converting my account from double inverse to triple inverse. I will do this in 5-7 pieces over the next few days provided the market doesn't collapse.

aedens wrote: Fri Sep 11, 2026 10:46 pm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gMNJ9IGlNo&t=438s
Its been over.

Higgenbotham wrote: Fri Dec 02, 2011 12:02 am

Barbara Tuchman wrote:
If the sixty years seemed full of brilliance and adventure to a few at the top, to most they were a succession of wayward dangers; of the three galloping evils, pillage, plague, and taxes; of fierce and tragic conflicts, bizarre fates, capricious money, sorcery, betrayals, insurrections, murder, madness, and the downfall of princes; of dwindling labor for the fields, of cleared land reverting to waste; and always the recurring black shadow of pestilence carrying its message of guilt and sin and the hostility of God.

Mankind was not improved by the message. Consciousness of wickedness made behavior worse. Violence threw off restraints. It was a time of default. Rules crumbled, institutions failed in their functions. Knighthood did not protect; the Church, more worldly than spiritual, did not guide the way to God; the towns, once agents of progress and the commonweal, were absorbed in mutual hostilities and divided by class war; the population, depleted by the Black Death, did not recover. The war of England and France and the brigandage it spawned revealed the emptiness of chivalry's military pretensions and the falsity of its moral ones. The schism shook the foundations of the central institution, spreading a deep and pervasive uneasiness. People felt subject to events beyond their control, swept like flotsam at sea, hither and yon in a universe without reason or purpose. They lived through a period which suffered and struggled without visible advance. They longed for remedy, for a revival of faith, for stability and order that never came.

The times were not static. Loss of confidence in the guarantors of order opened the way to demands for change, and miseria gave force to the impulse. The oppressed were no longer enduring but rebelling, although, like the bourgeois who tried to compel reform, they were inadequate, unready, and unequipped for the task. Marcel could not impose good government, neither could the Good Parliament. The Jacques could not overthrow the nobles, the popolo minuto of Florence could not advance their status, the English peasants were betrayed by their King; every working-class insurrection was crushed.

Yet change, as always, was taking place. Wyclif and the protestant movement were the natural consequence of default by the church. Monarchy, centralized government, the national state gained in strength, whether for good or bad. Seaborne enterprise, liberated by the compass, was reaching toward the voyages of discovery that were to burst the confines of Europe and find the New World. Literature from Dante to Chaucer was expressing itself in national languages, ready for the great leap forward in print. In the year Enguerrand de Coucy died, Johan Gutenberg was born, although that in itself marked no turn of the tide. The ills and disorders of the 14th Centruy could not be without consequence. Times were to grow worse over the next fifty-odd years, until at some imperceptible moment, by some mysterious chemistry, energies were refreshed, ideas broke out of the mold of the Middle Ages into new realms, and humanity found itself redirected.

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
1978

In addition to the Magna Carta, gunpowder revolution and printing press, list the pre year 1500 foundational social technologies that made the industrial revolution possible

AI Overview

The Industrial Revolution was built on deep changes in how humans organized information, money, and labor. Beyond the technologies you mentioned, several pre-1500 social technologies—the systems, laws, and organizational frameworks of society—laid the groundwork for industrialization:

Financial & Commercial Infrastructure

Double-entry bookkeeping: Developed in 14th-century Italy and formalized by Luca Pacioli in 1494, this system allowed businesses to accurately track profits, debts, and capital, forming the bedrock of modern corporate accounting.
Fractional-reserve banking and bills of exchange: Medieval Italian and Dutch merchants created credit networks and paper bills to transfer money without moving heavy physical gold. This vastly increased the fluidity of global capital.
Marine insurance: Standardized in 14th-century Genoa, the ability to pool and distribute maritime trade risk encouraged high-stakes, long-distance investments that funded early global supply chains.

Legal & Institutional Frameworks

The corporate legal form: Evolving from medieval monasteries, guilds, and towns, the concept of a "corporation" as a legal entity separate from the individuals running it allowed for perpetual existence and aggregated capital.
Patent and intellectual property concepts: The Venetian Patent Statute of 1474 was the first formal system to legally protect inventors' ideas, creating an economic incentive for technological innovation.
Property rights and common law: The gradual erosion of absolute feudal power in England established clearer private property rights, giving individuals the confidence to invest in land and capital improvements.

Labor & Knowledge Systems

The craft guild system: While sometimes restrictive, medieval guilds standardized technical training through apprenticeships, preserving and refining high-level engineering and metallurgical skills over generations.
The university system: Established in Europe during the 11th to 13th centuries, universities created an institutional framework for systemic learning, debate, and the preservation of scientific knowledge separate from religious oversight.

Time & Spatial Management

The mechanical clock and standard time: Invented in the late 13th century, public clock towers shifted society away from natural "sun time" to abstract, measured time. This synchronized human labor, which was essential for future factory shifts.

Higgenbotham wrote: Wed Sep 09, 2026 12:09 pm In dark age theory, I've said many times that late 2011 represented a cut point where the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bankers established the certainty of a new dark age by their actions.

Fractional-reserve banking and bills of exchange: Medieval Italian and Dutch merchants created credit networks and paper bills to transfer money without moving heavy physical gold. This vastly increased the fluidity of global capital.

Higgenbotham wrote: Sun Aug 25, 2013 1:49 am

And he was talking about the appearance on the world stage of individuals, and he was speaking to the growth of the population and the appearance of new individuals coming into the mass of humanity, and these individuals evidently are barbarians. They came too suddenly to be educated and for the knowledge of how to keep the Western way of life alive. And so these people have increased and now they have taken over power and so now we're in the hands of barbarians. They have no idea of how our society came to be and what is necessary to keep it going. And they're fiddling with the controls. You might think of a monkey flying a 747. They have no idea what they are doing and this is not going to end well with the barbarians at the controls.

We don't have people with a true background of education in history and economics and politics. They're all working on the spur of the moment. They're experimenting to see if this works and see if that works and I really have very serious doubts about the survival of our civilization under such people. I rather expect that a great crisis is coming when the grain will be sifted from the chaff. We're going to see a great separation. Some people are just not going to make it and the old truths are going to come back into fashion because of the need for survival.

--Hugo Salinas Price (transcribed from the link above)

"In 1987 Ricardo succeeded his father Hugo Salinas Price as CEO of Grupo Elektra. He is the fourth richest person in Mexico behind Carlos Slim Helu and the 34th richest person in the world with a wealth of around US $17.4 billion in 2012."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Salinas_Pliego

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2026 11:28 pm Once the job was secured, your rent would be roughly one week's gross pay. That was the rule of thumb.

In the 1950s and 1960s was rent roughly one week's gross pay as a rule of thumb? For how many decades did this rule of thumb hold?

AI Overview

Yes, in the 1950s and 1960s, spending roughly one week’s gross pay on a month’s rent was a standard rule of thumb. Historically referred to as the "week's wages for a month's rent" guideline, it dates back to late 19th-century studies of working-class family budgets. Because a week's pay represents about 23% to 25% of a monthly income, this formula eventually evolved into the modern personal finance staple known as the 30% rule.

This rule of thumb effectively held true for roughly six decades, remaining a mathematically accurate reflection of real-world housing costs from the 1920s through the late 1970s.

In the 1950s and 1960s how many days of work did it take for a recent college graduate to pay their monthly mortgage payment?

AI Overview

In the 1950s and 1960s, it took a recent college graduate an average of 3 to 4 days of work to pay their entire monthly mortgage payment. During this post-war era, entry-level salaries for individuals with a bachelor's degree were exceptionally strong relative to the cost of real estate, with median home prices hovering at just 2 to 2.5 times the average annual income.