More phone calls?

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Incoming!

Yeah, well, it seems I stirred up a hornets nest. Calls back, requiring other outgoing calls, phone tag, and... If I did do a lot, it still feels like I did nothing. Too late to even drive into town as everything will be closed. While these calls were necessary, and while I might be a bit of a prude for not even considering trying to drive, talk on a phone, and take down dates, that is just the way of it. I still have a bunch of business to do, of course. I don't know how people who do this sort of thing for a living stay sane! Even with a smart phone, which I have and use, note pads and pens always right here, phone numbers and contact information readily available... between people calling over people, people not understanding what you are saying and doing whatever it is they think they should or shouldn't do anyway, people not calling back when they should, and... Then again, most people who do this for a living don't have a personal stake in the things being done, so long as they can show they did their part, for their part.

You know what? That actually wore me out more than my bike rides do. A day of phone call business is like an all day drive into, around, and back from SLC on a heavy traffic day in high heat! It's insane.

Since I didn't end up having the time to get to town, and while I was taking care of business, I decided to look around for a book list, again. Vox didn't respond to a query and I really didn't see a list of books at his blog (main blog?). I went to Glen Becks, but too didn't see a definitive list. Instead I just went to Amz dot com and typed in at least one title I could remember, then following a list from there. I ended up with about ten books, mostly economic, mostly in line with my understands, though there are a few potentially merely philosophical books and a black sheep too.

I went with "Capitalism and Freedom" by Milton Friedman; "The Road to Serfdom" and "The Fatal Conceit" by F.A. Hayek; "Economy in one Lesson" by H. Hazlit; "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith; "Second Treatise of Government" by J. Locke; "The Theory of Money and Credit" by Ludwig von Mises; "The Politics" by Aristotle; "The Republic" and "Four Texts on Socrates" by Plato, and finally "The Communist Manifesto" by K. Marx. Some of these are going to be a bear to get through, others shouldn't be a problem. While not a true wizard of the mind, philosophy, economics, or anything else, I do have a decent mind and ability to consume, and spit out, data. I don't honestly know what I am looking for in the books. And, to be honest, even if I found and understood the truth, somehow, from reading... it doesn't matter, save academically. The world will do what it does regardless of the truth. Much like religion, even if you know God, Christ, The Holy Spirit, no matter if you have and hold hope, faith, and charity... you might still be crucified. As a fact, if the bible holds truth and that truth has some literal correlation, expect to be killed for the truth (unless you consider yourself lucky and are willing to live by hiding away... or... fibbing about God).

No, I have no idea what I will find, learn, end up believing, or being able to do more than chatter about it. These things, even if you found the truth, will not bring one man to prosperity. As with all things, there are better and worse general paths to success. But for every success there are more failures, it is only the ratio that is tweaked by wiser governance. As well, these notions simply and often do not concern themselves with personal behaviors, more into theory relative to how to govern large groups of people.

As for people saying they saw the crash coming? Well, I won't say they saw the crash coming so much as they understood (if they did indeed understand, which is a debate to itself) that certain cause and effect relationships would lead to such situations. A man who sees a fool under a hoisted wrecking ball, who notices that the man is about to release the wrecking ball above him might shout a warning, might warn the man, but he doesn't necessarily need to know a thing about the mechanics of a crane, physics and higher mathematics, or any damn thing. An introduction to empirical evidence would lead him to the conclusion. Same with economics. Just because you notice something going wrong doesn't mean you did so because you know what IS true. If you truly understood economics, you would be a trillionaire and keep getting richer, while staying quiet, on your newly purchased island, say... Australia. No one actually knows, and to my mind most extremely wealthy people have simply learned to fuck everyone around them (who don't really care as long as their needs are met, sheep are neither brave nor full of forethought, they just want to be owned and cared for and ignore the whole slaughterhouse thing).

Well. I am blathering again. Time for a nap, the first one in weeks... stupid calls. Oh, by the way, no, I don't hate the rich. I just don't see them as being necessarily laudable, either. They are what they are, a necessary evil no less so than government itself. Nor do I care all that much for sheeple. I just... think what I think, say what I say, and move on to the next fight. *Zzz!*

Later.