Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[FullMoon]

There's farm houses with small plots divided off the main farmland already for sale. But the prices were driven sky high during the pandemic and out of reach of most. They've been coming down and that's what I'm hoping to find. This year had a significant spring price bump and it's softening but we'll see about next spring. My worry is that it's a crazy year already shaping up like '20 with pandemic potential and election chaos except now we have the war cycle ramping up. Even if it takes years to really get bad, it might be better to be well situated and settled in for the long haul. It takes time to relearn the ways of simple living and self sufficiency whereas unlike times past.

This is the type of situation where there are a lot of moving parts when it comes to trying to figure out what prices will do. Typically there will be a time when the market caves but I can't be confident that will happen this time.

Yes, that's why I'm going to take the best thing I can get until I get scared enough and then whatever is available and easily taken. Not the best financial tactic but it's a practical issue.
The previous quoted member about it all coming crashing down in a short time period together with Navigator's description of what post-collapse travel will entail are the source of my fear. Getting situated comfortably enough is prudent given the near certain outcome well anticipate. It's not if but when, and when is breathing hot in our faces. It's getting a bit too hot for me even if it keeps going for some more seasons.

[aeden]

Three years of firewood and we do not mind the snow. As we suggested from 2019 we are building soil, and the protein is supplied to likeminded thinking people. For these times it makes more sense than the inner-city serfs and feral unchecked marauders. Locally our Sheriff is no nonsense so far.

Biden folly on energy is now legendary.
September 2019 - "I guarantee you we are going to end fossil fuels"
The guy is bat shit crazy as is the majority.

Tom has a staggering figure on demographics on Thu Jan 10, 2019 1:50 pm
78% live paycheck to paycheck, 70% in debt:
Indeed past the dark ages since equity position price to equity yields spreads.
Nothing over one year is on our radar in bonds and equity is only for rent as swing trades.

[Higgenbotham]

Some old posts. I'll comment on them later, mostly on the policing aspect.

In the rental business, I was close to the gangs and saw how they operated. I had brief discussions with some (two) top level gang members out of Chicago when evicting one of their drug dealers. I found it interesting that they were controlling operations 100 miles from their home base. At the time, they operated in a very efficient and proficient manner, and I had great respect for them; they were more efficent and proficient than most managers in large corporations. They were true to their word and respectful whereas most top level white managers in large corporations are not, based also on brief discussions with them. I can say this by direct experience whereas few can. Which I suppose might explain in part why they have been able to take over some urban areas in zones where law and order has broken down. The insurance companies identified those areas and would not insure in them. They couldn't flat out say that but would make a lame excuse. I owned some rentals one block away from an area where insurance could not be obtained through my regular insurance companies. Insurance could be obtained through an expensive state fund as I recall, but the cost was prohibitive unless I then went to above market subsidized Section 8. That was the only viable business model in the areas where law and order had broken down. There was a house one block up that needed renovations but materials would be left out overnight at your own risk, as well as the empty house itself of course. That describes part of the mechanism by which a city like Detroit can collapse block by block. When large swaths of the cities collapse and the transfer payments stop, then I'm really unsure how things will work as far as rentals go. I can imagine a situation where the gangs will take properties and the existing rule of law will basically be revoked, along with recordkeeping and taxation. Once cities (like San Bernardino) are bankrupt and dissolved this is what I think can happen, over time, as the Baby Boomers die off. When city officials say load your guns and lock your doors (as recently did happen in San Bernardino) because we are broke, the gangs have a void to step into.

I got a phone call similar to that from a guy known to be the state governor's right hand man. Before I got the call, a colleague called and told me this guy had been out to a job site to ask him some questions about me, and he told me what was asked and what his responses were. This phone call from the right hand man started by him asking me if I had given certain information to EPA about a large polluter in the state. I told him no, which I hadn't, and asked if there would be a problem if I had. He said oh, no. Then he asked if I was married and had any kids. I don't remember any of the rest of the conversation.

My basic conclusion at the time was that I'd been threatened less in the streets by the top levels of a Chicago gang (for something I did do) than I had by the top levels of my own state government (for something I didn't do). And these incidents I have discussed here are not the only experiences forming the basis for that conclusion.

Having said that, I'm not optimistic about what may happen if America's cities collapse, transfer payments stop, and the power shifts in favor of the street gangs. I'm also not optimistic about what those who run our government may decide to do in that situation.

As poverty extends into more areas of the US, I think the government will abandon some areas they previously subsidized. This will also mean the government will abandon tax collection and services in those areas and they will be truly left on their own. There was a blog post 'a' linked which talked about going to zero government and how zero government is already starting to happen in Detroit.

If unrest spills over into the wealthy areas or the mobs come out of the abandoned areas and attack the wealthy areas, I think that unrest will be vigorously put down.

I saw that dividing line already take place 25 years ago. When gangs took control of certain blocks, the police stopped patrolling them. I think I already talked about that in more detail. As police capability is reduced nationwide, it will be natural to see cities abandon certain areas completely of city services with the unspoken agreement that no property taxes need be paid and no tax foreclosures will take place because the properties are essentially worthless for the purpose of tax collections. That implies they will also be worthless for the purpose of rent collections and anyone who wants to squat can do so rent free and tax free. It will be a very free but also a very dangerous time.

Orlov talks about the protection rackets from minutes 51 through 59. This is something I have witnessed so will make some comments.

I had rentals in an area the gangs took over. What do I mean by "the gangs took over"? First the neighbors told me the police no longer patrol this street, they were patrolling it and now they have stopped. Next, I did an eviction and the sheriff had to come to make sure the tenant was out. He came. The tenant was not out. The sheriff said you can take care of the rest and he got out of there. He was there maybe 90 seconds. Last, a neighbor saw someone go into the house and suggested I call the police. So I did and met the cop over there. He said you go in first. He's not supposed to do that. After I went in he admitted to me that he was afraid of the people who had lived there. This is the sort of thing that happens when government loses control of an area and the gangs take over.

There was another effect I saw. Some of the insurance companies won't insure. One of the main companies still did, but I had a lot of other properties with them and maybe that's why they did. I don't know.

Lastly, I see a lot of talk about militarization of the police. My thought is if the gangs have taken over an area and the police challenge that, there is going to be trouble. Policemen are people too and they live in the area when they are off duty and everyone knows where. It may not go the way people seem to think. The police vacated LA during the riots. Granted, that was then and this is now.

Overall, I think Orlov makes some good points about how the protection rackets work when government breaks down. Also, I would say if government becomes too oppressive generally that opens the door to cheaper alternatives, which are already available in the form of gangs in most cities in the US. I doubt the government fully understands how this works but I have seen how it works, and it does actually work OK.

This thing in Baltimore is getting interesting. Now they're going to try (or pretend) to sacrifice 6 cops, 3 white and 3 black. I wonder if the cops (meaning the whole force) are going to fight back or what they will do. Notice how the Mayor used the divide and conquer tactic on the force in her speech.

When talking about this earlier this week, I mentioned the idea that there's an issue the media and the authorities don't want to discuss re Baltimore and other slums. That is, little known to most people, the gangs have already taken over areas that the police are unable to patrol. There are probably certain areas the gangs are butting up on now that they cannot lose for strategic reasons. Therefore, violence is going to be inevitable.

Charging the cops sends the message that the soldiers that are maintaining the boundaries of the empire are being sacrificed. That may embolden the gangs for the time being. Then we'll have to see if they convict the cops or quietly drop the charges.

There was a guy on a video talking about the fact that a few Baltimore cops killed a guy several months ago and no charges were filed. Now all of a sudden it is important to file charges as the population gets restive. The hypocrisy and corruption is clearly evident.

This has to do with the fact that the authorities have illegitimately grown population levels for personal gain in the manner previously described.

I think Limits to Growth can also mean: How much can you let the dependent population multiply before they lose control of the cities as appears to be happening in Baltimore? Got any Harvard or Johns Hopkins graduates having babies in Baltimore? That is funny. It is such a preposterous thought as to be funny.

Dangerfield cruises his domain on rent day in a midnight-blue Rolls Royce touring sedan, shadowed by a squad of armed bodyguards in a white Humvee military vehicle. He points his finger, and a private army springs to do his bidding.

"Don't tell me about the law," witnesses recalled Dangerfield telling one tenant as his troops smashed the man's furniture and threw it into an alley. "As far as you're concerned, I am the law."

In June 1997, two of Dangerfield's tenants complained that he had refused to fix a broken-down rowhouse at 1943 N. Patterson Park Ave., where they were renting a room for $55 a week. The plumbing leaked. Wires hung out of the walls. Gas hissed from the broken stove. Rats and roaches teemed in the basement. Perusing the long list of deficiencies, a housing court judge ordered the landlord to fix the property and barred him from evicting his renters in the meantime. Two weeks later, on a hot July night, Dangerfield eased his Rolls Royce onto Patterson Park Avenue, parked it under a street light and watched in a pinstriped suit as five of his men tore the door off its hinges and herded the occupants into the street, witnesses later testified. "I felt like less than a man that night," recalls Eric Holmes, a 41-year-old disabled Army veteran who lived there with his wife. "But there was nothing I could do. They dragged us out of bed. One guy had a gun in his belt. The rest of them were all crowding around us, knocking stuff over and yelling. You ever seen a barroom brawl? That's what it was like. "Next thing I knew, I was on the sidewalk in my underwear. And George was laughing at us. They all were laughing at us. "As his troops shoved Holmes' belongings out a rear window into a garbage-strewn alley full of chained guard dogs, Dangerfield leaned on the gleaming hood of his Rolls out front, holding court for his many tenants on the block of rowhouse shells, court records show. Dangerfield owns four houses there, partitioned into tenement flats for three families, all sharing the same kitchen and bathroom and paying their rent week-to-week. Called into court for violating the judge's order, he pleaded guilty to wrongful eviction and received a $500 fine -- small consolation to Holmes and his wife. "It's like something out of a Charles Dickens novel," says Kenneth M. Walden, a poverty lawyer with the Public Justice Center who is now suing Dangerfield for assault and trespass in the incident. "We deal with some fairly desperate clients, so we're used to seeing bad conditions. But this is a new low. "That Mr. Dangerfield can get away with using tactics like these is a sign of how bad things are out there."

http://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-housing ... tml#page=1

My observation is it depends on where you own your properties.

I knew a guy who was a retired cop. He kept it a bit simpler. If the tenant didn't pay the rent or he wanted them out he just went over to the house and took the doors off.

He could get away with that because law and order had broken down in the area he operated in. That can happen for various combinations of the below:

1. The tenants don't want to get the cops involved because there are existing warrants out on them. I was told at one time that area had 5,000 warrants out on 35,000 people. Probably the worst of it had over half of the population with outstanding warrants out on them. The reason for the high percentage of warrants is that if you stay inside the areas the cops stay out of you can't get arrested.
2. The cops don't go into those neighborhoods because the gangs have ordered hits on any cop seen in that area.
3. The tenants can't read or write.
4. The cops just don't go into those areas because they don't want to or there are not enough resources to take care of everything so they ignore certain areas and let them rot.
5. A few other reasons I don't know or have forgotten.

I think the reason Dangerfield got into trouble was he became so brazen that what he was doing got broadcast to a wider audience and they felt they had to do something. If he had just stuck to something like taking doors off he probably would have been OK.

[aeden]

The other bear this week and the wheat market.
The wheat market is just imploding as corn right now is unfortunately tied to the hip of the wheat.
As we noted from the 400 - 4000 - 40000 acre implosions as before.
From the first seed to bankruptcy court noted in the forums followed.
The Cantillon grifters in FX political will not allow the locals acreage.
The ruling was back in production as soon as possible as we do not even pretend to think on the bankruptcy Bench.
The consortium was basically impossible to pierce the veil of actual ownership.
This as the 40000-acre bankruptcy's over and over for the decades appear to be moving in.

water wheat weather

[Higgenbotham]

Speaking of what people refuse to talk about or don't want to believe, as mentioned recently, I was a landlord in a low income area during the 1980s and 1990s (Beloit, Wisconsin). When I moved 70 miles northeast from there to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, it was like an entirely different world. Right away, in my neighborhood, I met a guy from Green Bay who had just started working for the phone company and, because he was new, was assigned to the worst area of Milwaukee. When we would get home from work, he would tell me about things he had seen that day and I, in turn, would tell him about things I had seen that were similar. One evening, he confided in me that I was the only person he could talk to about this because nobody else, not even his girlfriend or his family, wanted to hear about it. He didn't say they didn't believe it, just that they didn't want to hear it.

Having those discussions prompted me to repeat some of them to a friend at work who, like most white people in America, came from a sheltered background. His response was that he didn't believe any of it. I thought he was joking. He wanted to hear more, but he would always conclude that he didn't believe it. Finally, I came to the conclusion that he really didn't believe what I was telling him and stopped talking about it. With the advent of the Internet, however, some of it could finally be verified. The story that could be verified most conclusively was about a girl I had met in one of the neighborhoods where I had owned a house. She was homeless and bounced from house to house. One of the places she stayed at was owned by a retired teacher across the street from one of my rentals. Her parents had named her Marijuana Pepsi Jackson during the hazy lazy 1960s protests and, contrary to what her name might suggest, she had made high honor roll every time I looked through the list in the paper. The reason I looked at things like that in the paper was so that when prospective tenants came to one of my rentals, I would know what to ask. For example, if someone with the last name of Jackson came by, I might ask if they have a daughter named Marijuana Pepsi, or, if applicable, whether they were the person who had gotten caught shoplifting from K-Mart. When I showed him what was on the Internet he said, well, yeah, that might be true but I still don't believe all that other stuff.

After quoting this a couple times recently, I tried to recall more about what this guy didn't believe. He had recently broken up with his girlfriend and was telling me about his problems with her and his dating problems in the big city. It sounded like I was in a foreign country or, as stated above, "an entirely different world." I couldn't imagine anything so screwed up, but soon discovered all that he was saying was now mainstream.

I told him that where I had been living the past few years he wouldn't have any of those problems, but an entirely different set of problems. I began telling him about this, giving him example after example. He couldn't get enough of it but, like I said, couldn't believe it.

The story he was most fascinated with was about an 18 year old girl who lived next to the house I had renovated the previous year. She lived with her mother, age 36, and two brothers, ages 15 and 21. She had 2 kids, a 3 year old and a 1 year old, and was collecting welfare. In most of these cases, I at least saw a father or heard about him but, in this case, I don't recall either except for a mention of his name. She was white. She was an absolute knockout and the boys and men could not stay away from her and she couldn't stay away from them. I was working on the side of the house facing hers when she came out to meet me. One of the first things she told me was that the state had required her to get Norplant inplanted in her arm "because I was having too much sex" and she showed me the scar inside her upper arm where it had been removed. There was a slew of teens that entered and left the house with many staying overnight. The kid I remember best was named Jeremy and he was about 18 too. One day, he came over and confided in me that he was "in love with Deb," her 36 year old mother. The kids were into seances, reading Tarot cards, and The Grateful Dead. The 15 year old didn't go to school and the 21 year old was in and out of jail. One night after getting her welfare check she came over with a friend. She was pretty depressed because she had wasted a lot or most of her welfare check already. She told me she had written a letter to her brother in jail and that whenever she dotted an i that would be covered with acid (LSD) she had bought that day with her welfare money. She told me that's how people who are in jail and prison can be there and still get high.

I almost forgot to add the main punch line to this story. So one day I was out on that side of the house working when I heard the 18 year old arguing with her 36 year old mother. It went like this:
18 year old daughter: You steal all my boyfriends!
36 year old mother: Which ones?
18 year old daughter: Quickly names 6 first names.
36 year old mother: Which ones were my fault?

As I would tell these stories, to me, they were pretty typical and believable (well, except for the punch line above - that one stood out like no other). But they weren't to him at all. Another one I told him was about somebody pimping his sister from the county jail using the pay phone. A neighbor of mine who was in jail for domestic violence saw it from that end while I saw the customers coming over to the house at the other end.

[aeden]

They are not going to listen as they apply the toe tags early and often now.
The ferals own the streets. From two in the head looted and burned out cars from
drug robbery's and drug deluded lunatics zombies wavering from stupors.
We called it the snow wars in the day. The blizzard of apathy and stone cold stupid
liberals being wiped clean from derivative's also. They already belong to the streets its over for some.
For others Jude 1 explains some are going to pull out of it and cast off the affairs that bind them.

[Higgenbotham]

The above fascinated him, and there was another part I recall that may have too. It was how you could talk to attractive women where I had been living versus how you could talk to the nasty whatever wave feminists he was dealing with.

The guy who had lost the house to the bank was still there and I hadn't closed yet. I knew him from a class at the local technical college and asked if I could start working on the outside before the closing. He said sure. Years before, he had power washed the house, then done nothing with it, so the paint was peeling badly and the wood had turned grey. He was going to be moving up north with his girlfriend and dog. He drank hard liquor out of a flask off and on all day while she sunned herself in her bikini. She was awesome too. Instead of calling her Crystal, which I only think I heard once, he referred to her as Helmet. Several times while I worked, he offered me some of his liquor, saying, "It puts lead in your pencil." I declined his offer. My last memory of them was the truck driving away with the dog crate hanging over the sides of the truck.

Once I had possession of the house, he had left a large old-fashioned gas stove in it that was infested with mice. In the evening, I would sit in the kitchen eating, and the mice would make their appearance on top of the stove watching me eat. They acted as if they were well established. I had already put every bit of food in the refrigerator, which was normal precautions. Therefore, I was going to need help getting that heavy old stove out of the house immediately, and my new 18 year old friend next door was my obvious go-to. Her 36 year old mother had already told me I could date her daughter, but I didn't yet know why she may have been keen on that.



I don't know how much it weighed but it may have been over 300 pounds and wasn't sure she could do it. She picked up her end and we carried it out of the kitchen and down the steps out back all in one move with no hesitation. The damn thing was really heavy. When she put it down, I let her know of my surprise that she could get that done so well, saying, "Thanks...a lot!" She replied, "For what?" I said, "For helping me move the stove, you idiot." A few weeks later, she told me that when I had said "Thanks...a lot!" she thought she had screwed something up and that I was being sarcastic. She said she had felt stupid about it ever since it happened.

[aeden]

https://www.keglawyers.com/castle-doctr ... code-198-5
ferals broke in
https://www.yahoo.com/news/lapd-respond ... 03335.html

[aeden]

Police arrested perp early AM - Dog back tracking for weapons and contraband.
Hope the perp will see daylight in 20 years.
Will recheck on derp report.
Anyways.

10 year bond moving down to 200 ma as 20 year bond moving up to 200 ma
Dry powder into event should be instructive H.
Seasonality move up for equity appears valid for now.
March sweeps appear benign as we indicated no reason to adjust YCC.
Senate Eunuchs need to put the Grifter King Biden in a cage on a Church spire to rot
like the Tailor King.

As the minutes of the June FOMC meeting noted, the lessons from these three episodes suggest that a YCC policy can be implemented in such a way as to avoid a significant expansion in the central bank’s balance sheet—assuming the absence of an explicit exit strategy designed to reduce the size of the balance sheet.

[Higgenbotham]

Your indications match the variations seen. In 1979 it was the dark ages as CNC came in.

Yes, that was part of what sent Michigan and Rockford, Illinois over the cliff. I think Rockford was the machine tool capital of the US prior to that and its economy and social fabric got blown to smithereens.

The area referred to above was just north of Rockford and affected similarly. The stories told in the mid to late 1980s were about a manufacturing complex a mile or so away that employed 5,000 in the 1960s. People walked to work. The neighborhoods were law abiding and well maintained.

When 5,000 jobs leave an area where most of the former employees live within, best guess, a 3 mile radius that may encompass a population of 20,000, that left a void that got filled in various ways, some as described.

In this case, if there was a tenant who was doing small time drug dealing to supplement their income...
(At this point, a break for an aside. The vernacular on the street at that time for discussing income from drug dealing or perhaps other illegal activities was for a prospective tenant to show their income on the application, then to say to me, "But I have other income." My answer was, "I'm not interested in that kind of income." Most people knew I wasn't anyway, but that was how it was clarified that they were small time drug dealers or what have you and they did not want to rent from me.)
...then I wanted to eventually get around to doing an eviction. That fact would not be discussed in that way. It might be that I would let them get behind in their rent.

City Hall was still open, the Courthouse was still open, etc. Maybe the police were no longer patrolling that block and that sort of sent a message. There wasn't really much incentive for them to do so. Industry had abandoned that area, most of the income was from transfer payments and there was still a bit of income coming in to workers and retirees who had not yet left the neighborhood and whose employers had not left the city. Taxes were at a low level as were city services. And now there was a drug house on the block being run by a family with a history of being in trouble with the law. But the Courthouse was still open and it seemed like it was expected that someone would go there and get an eviction order signed by the judge and pay the fee (most importantly) even though in that area getting it enforced was a joke. Once an order was signed, there were 3 parties involved besides the tenant - the official law, the gang that had the drug house, and the landlord - and they began to blindly divvy up the job of law enforcement amongst each other. I rarely interacted with the police, but one police officer told me that it was good that I had evicted a drug dealer because, "We knew they were dealing, but we couldn't catch them." Well, when he said that, that was about the time that one of the neighbors told me the police were doing regular patrols of the street again. That allowed me to peek through the blindfold a little bit. But there was another aspect to that story. When the stragglers came by, I would say, "Up to the corner, two blocks over (while pointing), northwest corner." Typical reply was, "Thanks, man." I wasn't eradicating anything, just moving it around and making it some other landlord's problem for profit. And making sure I didn't get eradicated myself. That allowed the gang to peek through their blindfold a little. I learned that the sheriff's office 20 miles up the road at the county seat would let me handle the details of getting the tenant out and when I heard that they didn't hear any more from me or anybody else. We could all see a little better.

I can imagine a lot of different scenarios as the factors of municipalities going broke, corporations going bankrupt, police getting defunded, prisons getting emptied, transfer payments stopping and a drug dependent population interact with each other, and what I saw on a very small scale happens on a much bigger scale.