Wandering off, The story of 2021

Unknown Screenwriter said:
What you really mean is that we'll all just have to get USED to it. LOL.
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Some things? Yes. Others will - I believe - improve with time.

1. We need to stop using plastic bags and move to re-usable bags. Our stores in NJ no longer give them out & it's time for that to expand nationwide. It's easy once it becomes a habit. Does it solve the pollution problem? Of course not. Is it a step in the right direction? Definitely.

2. Putin. Ukraine. Major oil producer invaded one of the world's major grain & fertilizer producers. Definitely pushing prices higher as well as killing thousands. Hopefully this ends in the foreseeable future although I think it will get worse before it gets better.

3. Increases in worker wages + increased unionization are over-due. Yes, this is inflationary but it's part of moving (slowly) toward giving people a living wage and a sense of hope for the future.

4. The U.S. budget deficit is expected to decline to $1 trillion this year from $2.7 trillion last year. Yes, more needs to be done but it's a step in the right direction.

5. We definitely need more & better mental health resources and better insurance coverage for it. The issue of national health insurance is a separate but very important topic.
 
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Yeah, the war on drugs. What a joke. We don't need a war on drugs. We need to understand why so many people want to take them, and I include alcohol. What is it about altering one's mind that is so appealing? I've had my fair share of booze and a couple other things in my 20s but I know why I was doing it; I wanted to release my inhibitions so I could act like an ass with full impunity. You know how it is, the next morning when people tell you that you were swinging from the ceiling fan and you picked a fight with a bunch of nuns. You look at them and say "oh man, was I drunk..." Hahaha! Seriously though. We blame drug smugglers and dealers but nobody really asks why so many people want these drugs. It isn't necessarily a socioeconomic thing since rich people with status and power take drugs too. The very reason prohibition ended was because everyone was drinking. Now, if so many people are smoking dope, shouldn't it be legal too? I say yes. Go ahead and tax it, and control it. I know the issue is much more complicated than that but my point is that the war on drugs is a tremendous failure that only served to put people in jail who need treatment, not jail time,, and it makes organized crime so powerful you might as well say the cartel runs Mexico and much of South America.
 
Blumkin said:
Yeah, the war on drugs. What a joke. We don't need a war on drugs. We need to understand why so many people want to take them, and I include alcohol. What is it about altering one's mind that is so appealing? I've had my fair share of booze and a couple other things in my 20s but I know why I was doing it; I wanted to release my inhibitions so I could act like an ass with full impunity. You know how it is, the next morning when people tell you that you were swinging from the ceiling fan and you picked a fight with a bunch of nuns. You look at them and say "oh man, was I drunk..." Hahaha! Seriously though. We blame drug smugglers and dealers but nobody really asks why so many people want these drugs. It isn't necessarily a socioeconomic thing since rich people with status and power take drugs too. The very reason prohibition ended was because everyone was drinking. Now, if so many people are smoking dope, shouldn't it be legal too? I say yes. Go ahead and tax it, and control it. I know the issue is much more complicated than that but my point is that the war on drugs is a tremendous failure that only served to put people in jail who need treatment, not jail time,, and it makes organized crime so powerful you might as well say the cartel runs Mexico and much of South America.
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They DO.
 
mlesemann said:
1. We need to stop using plastic bags and move to re-usable bags. Our stores in NJ no longer give them out & it's time for that to expand nationwide. It's easy once it becomes a habit. Does it solve the pollution problem? Of course not. Is it a step in the right direction? Definitely.

2. Putin. Ukraine. Major oil producer invaded one of the world's major grain & fertilizer producers. Definitely pushing prices higher as well as killing thousands. Hopefully this ends in the foreseeable future although I think it will get worse before it gets better.

3. Increases in worker wages + increased unionization are over-due. Yes, this is inflationary but it's part of moving (slowly) toward giving people a living wage and a sense of hope for the future.

4. The U.S. budget deficit is expected to decline to $1 trillion this year from $2.7 trillion last year. Yes, more needs to be done but it's a step in the right direction.

5. We definitely need more & better mental health resources and better insurance coverage for it. The issue of national health insurance is a separate but very important topic.
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YES! I'm with you on the plastics thing. My wife and I re-use plastics or we find substitutes, like using cloth shopping bags to bring our groceries home.

The problem with unions is the corruption. It seems that whenever a human is in charge of anything that offers another human an opportunity to sway their opinion with money and favor, corruption will occur. Look at the biggest union there was, the Teamsters. Need I say more.

About our budget deficit, all I can say as a math person is that you can manipulate numbers to look good or bad depending on your goal. With the way Biden is printing money, I don't see how our deficit could possibly be shrinking. It would be easy to sample portions of a past quarterly report then sample portions of a current quarterly report then extrapolate the data to make it look like things are better now than before, but are they? Well, from what I've seen and read, I think our country is going over a cliff and the current administration is tying led weights around our waists.... and they are doing it on purpose.
 
Blumkin said:
It seems that whenever a human is in charge of anything that offers another human an opportunity to sway their opinion with money and favor, corruption will occur.
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Does corruption in unions exist/occur? Yes. But I'm still a big supporter of them in general because I think it's the only possible way for people to get negotiating power with large companies - we simply can't do that on an individual basis.

I prefer to strive to make unions better (like everything else) rather than say that they're all bad because problems exist.
 
I agree that unions SHOULD be a good thing, and I'm sure that in many cases they are. Read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, published in 1905. It was a long time ago and it is extreme but it shows the meat packing industry at that time and how workers were treated worst than concentration camp prisoners. Those poor people could definitely have used a union..
 
Unknown Screenwriter said:
I've always felt I was born a hundred years too late... I'd rather be in the mountains living off the land but again... You can't do that today unless you have enough money to buy 20,000 acres... LOL.
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20,000 :eek: How many children and dependent adults are you catering for that you need 20,000 acres! In this year of 2021, I'm "living off the land" with only 5000m² to work with. That's about one acre of your dimensions, and although I'm hoping to convince my neighbour to sell me about as much again, it's as much as I can manage at the moment for the reasons mentionned earlier. That said, there are plenty of larger mountain "retreats" available in this part of the world where wanabee mountainymen can go to get away from the world (but still have 4G internet!) Running water, indoor plumbing and electricity may or may not be included; usually not - but if you want to turn the clock back one hundred years ... :P
 
That's not it at all... I wouldn't want to just live and stay in one area. It's difficult in this country to just go be a mountain man anymore... LOL. The country isn't just OPEN for you to do that for any real length of time. Too many fences... Too much private land. You can't just go squat on BLM land or land managed by the Forest Service. The only way to guarantee it is to own it and I have a friend with 20K acres in New Mexico and with 20K acres? You could get lost for the rest of your life.

I don't want to MANAGE it... LOL.

Like I said... I was born a hundred years too late.
 
I've heard about people doing the cruise ship thing, living on the ship. I'd definitely consider it if I knew I only had a year to live...

My wife and I took a cruise a few years ago and let me tell ya, if you've never gone on one, do yourself a favor and do it. If you have a significant other, do them a favor too and take them along. It's so inexpensive that it's hard to believe they actually make money. When we retire we plan on going on a cruise at least once a year. Here's the thing; the cruise is fantastic and all you could hope for, but there is more! There are excursions for you to go on if you want to. They cost extra but there are many of them to choose from. When you hit dock, you can get off the ship and just walk around and shop or you can sign up to go dune buggy racing on a beautiful beach, or kayaking and snorkeling. We rode horses along the coast line in Belize plus another 3 excursions in the 3 other countries we stopped in. Lot's of fun, and the ship had a HUGE outdoor digital screen that showed movies under the stars at night. We were floating in a pool, looking up and watching a movie. I can't say enough about our experience on the ship. Our friends are the ones who convinced up and we thought they must be exaggerating. I mean, how can anything be that wonderful,, but it was.. We took an 8 day Carnival cruise but there are many others to choose from. .. and from what I could tell, the younger people were having a blast too. Parties every night. Live music, dancing, comedy shows, activities,, and I'm sure one or two of them hooked up. LOL!
 
Unknown Screenwriter said:
That's not it at all... I wouldn't want to just live and stay in one area. It's difficult in this country to just go be a mountain man anymore... LOL. The country isn't just OPEN for you to do that for any real length of time. Too many fences... Too much private land. You can't just go squat on BLM land or land managed by the Forest Service. The only way to guarantee it is to own it and I have a friend with 20K acres in New Mexico and with 20K acres? You could get lost for the rest of your life.

I don't want to MANAGE it...
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But that takes us back to @mlesemann 's point about the good old days: you can't have a carefree life and not manage your resources, and a hundred years ago, there were many communities (and individuals) who paid a high price for not managing their land, whether through disease or sudden and unexpected poverty or being the victim of a "hostile take-over". There were, also, plenty of non-physical fences back then too, and woe betide you if you were caught setting up your bivouac in someone's sacred space. :grrr:

It is always easier to make a secure life for yourself in one place; but these days, the nomadic lifestyle is a completely reasonable - and realistic - lifestyle choice, helped in no small part by those damnable screens with the awesome computing power buried behind them. I have a motorhome, and use a website that collates and shares the location of discrete locations where I can park it. That gives me the freedom to wander off :cool: at unseasonable times of the year to places where I can "get lost" for as long as I want, and yet retain the option of enjoying refrigerated foodstuffs and modern medicine, if I feel so inclined.

Somewhat paradoxically, though, if I want to retreat from the world, I have more of a guarantee of not meeting anyone for days (or weeks) at a time on my little patch of partially landscaped, partially cultivated ground than traipsing around the Black Forest or the Swiss Alps or the French Jura - those places seem to be overrun with single white females out for a hike, alone, with no concern for the psychopaths waiting to rape and murder them. :eek:
 
CelticRambler said:
But that takes us back to @mlesemann 's point about the good old days: you can't have a carefree life and not manage your resources, and a hundred years ago, there were many communities (and individuals) who paid a high price for not managing their land, whether through disease or sudden and unexpected poverty or being the victim of a "hostile take-over". There were, also, plenty of non-physical fences back then too, and woe betide you if you were caught setting up your bivouac in someone's sacred space. :grrr:

It is always easier to make a secure life for yourself in one place; but these days, the nomadic lifestyle is a completely reasonable - and realistic - lifestyle choice, helped in no small part by those damnable screens with the awesome computing power buried behind them. I have a motorhome, and use a website that collates and shares the location of discrete locations where I can park it. That gives me the freedom to wander off :cool: at unseasonable times of the year to places where I can "get lost" for as long as I want, and yet retain the option of enjoying refrigerated foodstuffs and modern medicine, if I feel so inclined.

Somewhat paradoxically, though, if I want to retreat from the world, I have more of a guarantee of not meeting anyone for days (or weeks) at a time on my little patch of partially landscaped, partially cultivated ground than traipsing around the Black Forest or the Swiss Alps or the French Jura - those places seem to be overrun with single white females out for a hike, alone, with no concern for the psychopaths waiting to rape and murder them. :eek:
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When I mean I was born a hundred years too late? I'm talking about just having a horse, a rifle, a few knives and tools to live off the land. I'm not talking about owning it or running it or managing it. I'd simply drift from mountain to mountain with what I could carry.

As for non-physical fences? LOL. Fine. I'd cross that bridge when it came time to cross it.

I too own a motorhome... And it's fine for awhile. But I'd trade it ALL for being on a horse with a rifle on top of a mountain in a heartbeat but NOT in this modern society. Living like that in a modern society is just asking for trouble. I don't think you'd last too long unless you were away and looking over your shoulder.
 
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