Were GenX, and some of the "Oregon Trail" micro-generation, the last independent youth?

I think back to my original college freshman orientation. It was literally "no parents allowed." You stayed in some crappy, tiny dorm room with some other incoming freshman as your roommate. Some over-protective parents would get motel rooms (there were no hotels in college towns back then), to hover over their kids, but I remember them being turned away from the freshman orientation session and even the course registration stuff with the professors who served to help students build their schedules. There were no "family days" or "family weekends" that I recall. If you wanted your family to come visit you during a fall football weekend, you just arranged that on your own, usually during homecoming or some patsy game where your parents could get tickets cheap. Honestly the first time my dad stepped foot on my campus was for my graduation. My brother found a mobile home that he lived in then I lived in. I had friends who went and found their own apartments.

Once my brother moved on, I had to find a roommate to defray the costs of the mobile home, and I did that more than once. But we were such a high-trust society it was pretty easy. To my knowledge there was no contract.

I remember my best friend told me his parents were coming into town, and I asked what for? He said "My older brother is graduating." Parents just didn't come and visit. I had a friend who went to the Naval Academy. His parents dropped him off and didn't see him again until Christmas. Now I see parents of kids in the service academies and they have been back two or three times since dropping their kids off.

Why? What is the difference? The difference is this. For my generation, adulthood started at your 18th birthday, or graduating high school, or being dropped off at college. At some point after that, it got moved to graduating college, or more likely, starting your first job, or even something later. I mean, my generation would graduate college, interview, get a job, move to a new town, find an apartment, and start life, with maybe the parents helping them physically move. Almost everyone operated this way. Even without an internet. You went to the new town, stayed in a motel, went and got one of those "Apartment finder" publications, found a potential apartment complex within your budget, went to a pay phone, called them, and made an appointment. You brought your offer letter with you. Before that you went into a local bank and set up an account.

It is weird. When I completed college I had set up my own bank accounts, had transferred my car insurance to my name, sold that mobile home (of course my dad owned it so he had to be involved), etc. And we did this over the phone (there was no Internet).

So when I see people like Jonathan Haidt push for early childhood independence, to include pushing a 7 or 8 year old (or even younger) to go into a fast foot restaurant and order takeout food and pay for it, while mom waits outside in the car, I agree with it. I took my 10 year old to a toy convention today, and watched as more than one vendor gave him lessons in how to bargain. I used to hold some disrespect for the generation that followed mine, but as I have gotten to know more and more early Millennials, (the "Oregon Trail" micro-generation), I have found many of them are more like my generation, who preceded them by, in some cases, 15 years. 

We must instill independence into our kids. They are smarter than us, and more capable than us.

Darkness on the Edge of Town

I recently stumbled across Smashing Pumpkins music video for "1979." The song was released in January, 1996, and by then I just wasn't watching MTV or VH1 any more. I own the two CD "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" album, but had never seen the video. The video shows teenagers doing teenage things in 1979. It is really well done. It reminded me of those GenX days of the late 1970s and early 1980s. I turned 13 years old during the summer of 1979. Billy Corgan, who wrote the song, was 12 years old in the summer of 1979. We were not as old as the 15 to 16 year old kids in the video, but for those with older siblings, or who had older kids in the neighborhood, the scenes made sense. And for those who were 12 and 13 in 1979, not much changed between then and 1982 or 1983. For some reason, I remember 1979 well. That summer was the summer between my 7th and 8th grade years. Over the previous couple of years, I had started getting interested in music. I listened to the radio a lot, and to this day I think the period between around 1978 and 1982 produced some of the best rock and pop music of my life.

My parents divorced in the summer between my 3rd and 4th grades. Neither of my parents made much money. After several years of financial struggle, in 1979, my mom could afford to take me and my soon to be 16 year old brother on a real vacation trip. It would be our first trip to Disney World. This was back when you got a ticket book, with lettered tickets A through E. A tickets were for the least popular rides, and E tickets were for the most popular rides. The ticket book contained a number of lower grade tickets, but only one E ticket. You needed an E ticket to ride Space Mountain. There used to be a colloquial phrase "E Ticket Ride", which referred to a top-notch or exciting experience. We drove all day to Orlando, stayed in a cheap motel in Orlando that night, and spend the day at Disney World. I think we stayed at the same motel that night. The next day we drove to a booming suburb of Orlando called Altamonte Springs. Altamonte Springs is not "on the edge of town" from Orlando, but I thought of Bruce Springsteen's song, and the idea of suburbia. Suburbia is a theme of many of my generation's cultural media. "Valley Girl", "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", and "The Breakfast Club", all depicted GenX suburban life, beyond the "edge of town" which used to refer to lower income areas back when middle class and upper middle class neighborhoods were in town.

My best friend from 3rd grade, and my brother's best friend from 6th grade, who were themselves brothers, had moved to the Orlando area from Jackson Tennessee where we had lived during my 2nd and 3rd grade years. We planned to stay with our friends for three nights as I recall. Then we were going to go to the Kennedy Space Center, then the next day we would drive home. This was early August, and school would be starting in a few weeks for me and my brother. For both me and my brother, within minutes of reuniting with our old friends (we all had been pen pals of sorts after my parents divorced and we moved to Alabama from Tennessee), the brothers asked us if we smoked pot. I knew about pot, because I was in a grades 7 through 12 high school, and some students in the upper grades would occasionally get busted. And of course, Cheech and Chong were a thing. But the experience for both me and my brother was the potheads we knew were losers. They dropped out, got crappy jobs, etc. My still 12 year old friend (he would turn 13 in a few weeks) was obsessed with pot and pot culture. He unscrewed the top part of his record player so he could lift up the turntable and stash his pot inside the record player. He demonstrated, in a fumbling way, rolling a joint. His older brother was much more skilled. I don't recall ever seeing either boy light a joint, but I do recall watching them roll them.

That evening, at dinner, we learned that Altamonte Springs had grown so fast, they had two shifts at the school for each grade. One group of students went from 7am to 12 noon, then had lunch, then got on the bus and were home by 1pm, the other got on the bus at 11am, went to school, had lunch, then started classes at noon and went until 5pm. To allow for enough hours of instruction, they went to school through the end of June, and started back in mid-August, the Monday after our visit. Of course most students wanted the early shift so they would have all afternoon off. This was the GenX era of two working parents and latchkey kids, or divorced single mother homes where the mom worked full time. These kids had a lot of unsupervised, unobserved free time outside of school. They were "next-level" latchkey, and the proverb "the idle mind is the devil's workshop" certainly applied.

The next day, my friend introduced me to some of his friends, and we wandered over to the school, which was a short walk, and around the neighborhood. We ended up at one boy's house, a classic, one story three bedroom house. His parents were divorced, and his mom worked. It was just him and his mom. The master bedroom was his mom's, he had a bedroom, and there was a spare bedroom. He showed us the spare bedroom, which was on the south facing side. It had sheer curtains which let in most of the blazing August Florida Sun. The floor was covered in plastic planter pots with, well pot plants. And there was an ironing board with a row of potted pot plants. It was a grow room, a term I would not learn for at least fifteen years. My friend shouted "Score!" His friend said "Don't touch them. These are my mom's. She'll kill me if I took any of them." Obviously, his mom was a heavy pot user, and likely dealer. At this point, this place had become a dystopia. These were not the visibly loser 15 year-olds behind the gym counting down the days until they were 16 and could drop out, these were 12 and 13 year-olds who appeared mainstream. I wanted out. Now. Fast.

That evening my brother and I both came to the conclusion we needed to leave the next day. We had planned to possibly stop at some other tourist location if we had time. If I recall, it was an alligator exhibit we had seen a sign for on our drive down, and it was in Jacksonville or some place in northern Florida. So we begged our mom: Let's go to the space center tomorrow. Change the motel reservation. And then we can go to the alligator place, and if needed, spend the night in Jacksonville.

To this day, my memories of that experience are dark. Not the bright August Florida sun, but a filtered, hazy memory. Like an old, faded, yellowed Polaroid. Every memory is gauzy, and claustrophobic. What should have been bright, fun, and idyllic, is instead blurry, frightening, and dystopic.

I never spoke to my then soon to be 13 year old friend again after that trip in 1979. He went from pot to cocaine to heroin. By the time he was 15 he was in rehab. The next few years he was in and out of rehab, got into crazy occult rituals and Satan worship. His family eventually gave up on him and estranged him. I assumed he had probably died of an overdose, or was in prison. I got curious about six months ago and started aggressively searching for him online. I found him. He is married and apparently has a son and a step-daughter. I found his older brother too, and by just look at their Facebook friends, I guessed he is still estranged from his family. I didn't reach out to him. Maybe I should. But he served as a warning to me.

I remember my best friend from college telling me when he was 13 he had a friend who had emigrated to the U.S. from Central America. The boy would spend his summers with his grandparents. My friend flew down and spent a week with him in Central America. He was introduced to marijuana there. He was a year younger than me, so this would have been the summer of 1980. He never smoked it again, it was just a one-off.

Now, 45 years later, I serve in my church's middle school ministry as a small group leader of a dozen now 7th grade boys I have been with since June of 2023. In a few weeks, they will start their summer vacation between their 7th and 8th grade years. Last summer, we did a service event at a local nonprofit that provides rehabilitation for men who are suffering addiction. They run some thrift stores and we worked for several hours sorting donated clothing. The woman who manages the volunteers asked me if I wanted her to give the unfiltered story or the edited version they use for younger volunteers. I told her about my friend who became an addict at about the same age as most of my groups kids, and said "Give them the full version." About six months later, we gently covered the topic of substance abuse in our regular Sunday middle school session. Then I told the boys about my friend. And my high school co-leader told them about a middle school friend he had that started with alcohol and marijuana at 13 and got addicted to stronger drugs, but was now at 16 was sober and following Christ. That was kind of a "Scared Straight!" (another GenX reference) moment for the group.

Despite this, I think I have rose colored glasses on. This is still the thing that happens elsewhere, right? Not in the "Alpharetta Bubble", right? Not in schools where 50% of the kids are from high performing immigrant households, with the pressures to go to the best colleges, right? Probably not. Back in 2016, a local television news organization did an analysis of heroin overdoses in the metro Atlanta area and found they were centered on "The Triangle", the affluent norther suburbs of Atlanta, mostly white male teenagers and young adults, where the pressures to perform in high school alongside highly driven children of immigrants created extreme pressure, leading to the escapism of opioids, and addiction, and overdose, and death.

I have a fellow church middle school leader who is just finishing up with his group of 8th graders, but his youngest is his 9th grade daughter. Her peers are pressuring her to drink alcohol and smoke pot. Her father plans to transfer her to a different school this fall.

No, times have not changed. And as parents, teachers, coaches, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and yes, church youth group leaders, we need to be honest. Some of us, including me, are in denial. We were in denial. No more.

When did pessimism become a virtue?

Pessimism and worry have become virtues. Too often the pessimist is a pessimist because he or she feels being pessimistic represents clear-eyed, honest, realist, and educated conclusions. The pessimist looks at the optimist and assumes the optimist is naïve, deluded, ignorant, or worse they just don't care. The kids have come up with a term for this: The "doomer".

"Doomer" Wojak meme

This is not ideological. It happens on the left and the right. Some on the left are pessimistic about the future due to climate change. Some on the right are pessimistic about the future due to crime, or morality.

Related, somehow we got to a point that equated worry with care. We reached a point where the more concern someone has for a problem, the more worry a problem causes them, it must be because they care more. And those who are not worried, those who are ... carefree ... must be so because they do not care about this important thing that we all should worry about.

He is not a crank, he just cares more than you do.

The problem with this is worry leads to pessimism leads to apocalyptic worry. Environmentalists like Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion, and the Sunrise Movement all represent apocalyptic movements. They literally believe the world is ending. In that sense, they are not very different from the apocalyptic movements of Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple or the Heaven’s Gate movement of Comet Hale-Bopp fame. And we know how those two ended.

Apocalyptic movements are dangerous. Moral calculus changes when you think your remaining time on Earth is measured in a short period of time. That is why eco-terrorism is a thing. That is why Earth First! literally tried to kill people.

Likewise, on the socially conservative right, we see people who think the decline in morality portends the end of times. Increasing sexual liberation, starting with the sexual revolution, the legalization of abortion, continuing with the gay rights movement, and now the transgender rights movement, triggers more concern. In the past there has been nihilistic right-wing terrorism such as Timothy McVeigh bombing the Murrah Federal Building. We have seen right-wing terrorism in the form of attacks on abortion clinics and assaults and murders of abortion providers. It may actually be a positive that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade because it may defuse some of the more violent tendencies of the most extreme elements of the socially conservative right. But at the same time, it now incites elements of the political left.

Of course there is worry that is purposeful, just like fear (worry is a form of fear). Worry is why we strap our children into car seats, put safety caps on electrical plugs when we have toddlers, make sure our smoke detectors in our homes work, express concern when our children struggle in school, and polish our resumes when our employer has severe economic struggles. This is not the healthy worry I am speaking to. I am talking about existential worry the future is lost.

Similarly, Abrahamic theology suggests worry is a negative emotion, which while not directly a sin, leads to sin because it reduces faith in God. Even a secular person should realize worry is corrosive.

And don't get me wrong. I probably have more concern about the future than most. I am concerned about a looming energy crisis and a grain shortage that together might cause a depression in Europe and famine in the developing world. But that to me is concern, not worry. I get more worried about missing a flight than $1,000 a month energy bills. At least for now. Come back in January, 2023 and maybe I will be worried.

What led to me writing this? It was the last few episodes of the the All-In Podcast. Co-host and venture capitalist David Friedberg lamented the continuing topics of inflation, gloom, and doom. Friedberg is the eternal optimist on the podcast, and his optimism is both refreshing and motivating.

Optimism is a virtue. Pessimism is not. Nor is worry.

Friedberg is interested in things like nuclear fusion, carbon capture, new food growing technologies, etc. Just today I saw an article on another breakthrough in manufacturing milk from precision fermentation. This is not "nut milk" or other substitutes. This is a molecule for molecule equivalent beverage, where a fermentation process replaces biological processes. These kinds of breakthroughs, along with other bioreactor technology, may be the very thing that solves the agricultural greenhouse gas problem. These are the technologies that interest Friedburg.

Likewise, I read a story where some people working on geothermal energy are looking at using the powerful lasers used in nuclear fusion to improve their drilling capability. The big deal here is this would allow deep drilling everywhere, so you could literally drill under an existing coal fired power plant and turn it into a geothermal plant. Cheap and plentiful geothermal made possible by laser-enhanced drilling. Nuclear fusion research dollars paying off with clean energy from another source.

Then there is carbon capture, or more accurately carbon-dioxide capture. This would be game-changing, because not only would it solve the CO2 problem, it would provide a source of CO2 that could be used to make renewable synthetic fuel.

There are many reasons to be optimistic. There are more reasons to be optimistic than pessimistic. Riva Tez noted "If you convey an optimistic idea about how the world can be, you’re also suggesting that there’s a responsibility for us to be able to get there", and that pessimism "reduce[s] people's agency to solve problems because there's no point."

This is why we should default to optimism. Even if pessimistic, one should "fake it until they make it" with optimism, if only to motivate the best out of others. That is virtue.

UPDATE, March 2023

Two excellent Substacks have been published in the last month which also speak to this. The first is by Noah Smith on February 22nd:

Don't be a doomer

The second is by Sanjana Friedman on March 3rd, posted at Mike Solana's Pirate Wires Substack:

Collapse Support: The Doomsday Prophets of Reddit

There will not be a "Return to Normalcy" anytime soon

I wrote these thoughts on Facebook in response to a post endorsing Yascha Mounk's Atlantic article advocating voting for Joe Biden as a means of reigning in the "Illiberal Left".

I think the original poster's analysis was correct. People can be defined by, motivated by, and empowered by what or who they hate, and a Trump reelection would further motivate the illiberal left. However, remember the abhorrent 1998 add that said a vote for the GOP meant another church would burn? People like Mounk appear to be saying, in part, a vote for Trump means another federal building will burn. This is like "giving in" to hostage taking and threats of terrorism.

Furthermore, the only way a vote for Biden avoids increasing the power of the illiberal left is if part of the plan is to vote to create a divided government. In other words, if the goal is to avoiding an emboldened Illiberal Left by voting for an arguably centrist Democrat president, the best way to ensure the Democrat president does not stray from the reservation is to preserve Republican control of the Senate, perhaps also the House, and state and municipal offices. Therefore, those who propose Biden as a firewall or bulwark against the illiberal left should not only endorse Biden, but also endorse voting exclusively GOP down-ticket. If those promoting Biden as a bulwark did that, they would add far more credibility to their argument.

With respect to Biden, the idea he is a centrist firewall against illiberalism does not hold up if you read his campaign web page, consider his planned policies (reinstate the Title IX "Dear Colleague" letter, rescind Trump's anti-CRT EO, pass the Equality Act), or consider many of his comments, such as ones around youth transgenderism. 2020 Biden is not the Biden from the 1980s and 1990s. In some ways he was to the left of Obama during that administration.

Many are voting for Biden because they believe Biden will usher in a "Return to Normalcy". By that, most are thinking the Obama-Biden era of 2015 (the year before Trump declared his candidacy). Others think it will be a return to February 2020 (before the pandemic hit the U.S.). This is naive thinking.

Regardless of who wins, the Successor Ideology (Wesley Yang's term) marches on. Either more peacefully with Biden, or more violently with Trump.

Human nature suggests a critical mass of people will need to feel impacted by something before they push back. The Successor Ideology eventually will impact enough people that there will be a backlash. That will be the inflection point—not the 2020 election. Somebody is going to lose a job. Somebody is going to be conflicted enough to quit a job. Somebody is not going to get a job. Some divorced mom is going to see her aspiring teenage athlete daughter lose an athletic scholarship, and see her hopes and dreams for her daughter crushed. Someone is going to be called a racist one too many times. Someone is going to have to declare themselves a racist one too many times. Eventually a pushback begins. Eventually people organize to pushback.

Rod Dreher writes about the possibility of China's "social credit" system coming to the U.S. Some have written that the Internet Archive has been pressured to remove items from its Wayback Machine web site. What happens when not even your social media posts can get you fired or prevent you from being hired, but even long deleted social media posts are available, because of archiving sites? What happens when others (those who belong to the right group) are able to scrub their pasts including any archives? What happens when the general public has access to some people's social media, but others social media is restricted from public view? We have seen prospective and current college students held to task for social media posts made when they were 14 or 15 years old. We has seen other people held to task for who they choose to follow on social media, with motive assigned to the reason for following. It is reasonable to assume social media follows have been used against someone in an employment situation. We are not far from the ability to gather someone's Twitter follows and assign an ideological and personality profile to the person based on it.

I think we are in what we might call a "Long War". One measured in decades. I believe the start of this global populist/anti-globalist left+right movement goes back to the 1999 WTO protests (perhaps further back to Ross Perot's anti-NAFTA independent/Reform Party run in 1992). I think we have another decade to run. Wokeness and a claimed "democratic socialism" is the endgame of this "New Left". The "Great Reset" is the endgame of the new neoliberal centrists. A "New Right" has not yet fully defined itself. It may be socially reactionary against wokeness. It might be a further evolution of the anti-globalist somewhat socially conservative populism of Ross Perot and Donald Trump.

Another way to look at this is through the lens of the Strauss–Howe generational theory, or "Fourth Turning". In this model, the entire cycle is about 80-years, divided into four roughly 20-year "Turnings". The Third Turning is an "Unraveling." The Fourth Turning is a "Crisis." Per Strauss and Howe, the Third Turning started in the early to mid 1980s, which puts is in a Fourth Turning now. The problem is, I am not so sure. In some ways things still feel like an unraveling., and it is hard to believe we are approaching the end of a Crisis turning. However, that depends on when the Crisis started. Did it start in 1999 (WTO protests), 2000 (contested election), 2001 (9/11 attacks), or did it start in 2008 (financial crisis)? 2008 makes more sense, and fits with my theory the current Fourth Turning will not see resolution until the second half of the decade of the 2020s at the soonest, but probably more towards the end of this decade.

The idea we have another decade of angst to live through is too much for many to accept. They want a return to normalcy as soon as possible. A different president. A vaccine for COVID-19.  A reliable, compounding increase in the S&P 500 index funds in their 401ks driven by continued cost optimization from the globalization of supply chains and labor markets. Their comforting property tax deduction returned, even if the tax cuts meant their total taxes went down. Readily available cheap, but questionably documented day laborers to handle repainting and landscaping. The costs of all of this put in a can and kicked down the road for future generations or Modern Monetary Theory to deal with. They want ideological and financial comfort food—tonight. This desire leads to a false hope that the resolution is near. It leads to a form of Magical Thinking: This just can't go on any longer. It is like the person who posted on Facebook in mid-March at the start of the lockdown: "We are only going have to do this for two or three weeks until we get a vaccine." Yeah, tell me how the SARS vaccine is going, now, eighteen years after that pandemic started.

I believe the 2020s are going to be another 1960s. People think the current chaos is wrapping up, or that this can be wrapped up, with a Biden win, as if changing the president changes our reality—a sort of quantum superposition. The truth is, it is just starting, regardless of who wins. There is no way out, there is only a way through, and with apologies to Robert Frost, both roads are rough, and neither will make any real difference.

Wake me up in 2030.

The Post Police State, or the rise of the Private Surveillance State

It finally dawned on me what the outcome of, and exit strategy for, the “Defund/Abolish the Police” movement will be. First, there will be no wholesale defunding or abolishing of municipal police. There will be significant funding cuts, like we have seen in Austin, Texas. What has to be understood is, if you cut a police department’s funding by say, 30%, you cut its effectiveness by significantly more than 30%. One only has to look at the effect of sequestration on the military. A police department cannot magically reduce its capital infrastructure by 30%. Instead, it must carry the costs of that infrastructure for a significant amount of time, in some cases in perpetuity. A precinct building designed to support 50 precinct officers cannot magically be reduced in square footage, lease/amortization/bond interest, utility costs, etc., by 30%. The only variable cost is the labor expense of employees. What it means is instead of 35 officers, you get 25. The 30% budget cut results in a 50% cut in policing.

The first assumption is: “This is great, because now we can get rid of the bad/dumb cops and retain/hire only good/smart cops.” But the reality is, when the cuts come, the good/smart cops will voluntarily leave first. We saw this with the Cold War drawdown’s voluntary VSB/SSI programs. I recall a squadron commander in 1992 lamenting the voluntary separation programs because the only ones who took them were those who were talented enough to be confident they could quickly find employment elsewhere.

Net-net, we will end up with a much smaller police force comprised of less intelligent, less competent, officers.

How will this affect society?

The first, most obvious is, simple math. Fewer police equal less response, and a longer time to response. Those two things create conditions which will result in an increase in crime. Don’t believe me? When was the last time a police precinct was successfully robbed?

As crime rates increase, there will be a societal response to protect itself. And I am not talking about people buying guns. Guns are a “last ditch maneuver” when it comes to layered home defense.

The first response will be an increase in monitored home security systems, among the middle class.

For those who cannot afford the cost of a home security system, I expect a return to the use of “burglar bars”. These were all the rage in the second half of the 1970s. I remember ads on TV for them. I also remember the news stories about little old ladies dying in house fires because they could not get out of their windows. Burglar bars became controversial. I remember a TV commercial for a politician either running for governor or attorney general. It showed a close-up on his hands, gripping what appear to be prison bars. Then it zoomed out, and you saw the politician standing in the window of a house window with burglar bars. The politician said if he was elected, his crackdown on crime would mean “People would no longer be prisoners in their own homes.” Despite the debate, burglar bars are cheap security, and are likely to find their way back into popular use in low-income areas.

In the early 2000s I was in San Juan, Puerto Rico on Air Force Reserve duty, and we went to lunch at a local sandwich shop located in an upper middle-class area. There were many small, detached homes on tiny lots. Each home was surrounded by what I would describe as a “medieval” spiked fence. These were about eight feet tall. Some were decorative black wrought iron, with long, sharp, pointed spikes. Others were more modern, shiny steel that curved outward at the top, where they came to a razer sharp edge. The fences included a gate at the driveway, but these were manual, not automatic gates. While it is hard to imagine such fencing in the continental U.S., I do believe we will see more fencing and driveway gates. I see some larger older homes with elaborate fences and automated gates in the suburbs of Atlanta, and in neighborhoods like Buckhead. I could easily see these fences upgraded to the “decorative, but deadly” spiked fences seen in places like San Juan.

In December of 2005, I traveled to Johannesburg South Africa on business. I stayed in a hotel downtown (the old tower of the Intercontinental Hotel), but our event was at a resort on the edge of the city. I had to take a cab through and out of the city to the event. As we were driving through obviously middle-class neighborhoods, I noticed these homes reminded me of the ones I saw in San Juan. Same small lots, though many homes were two story, compared to the one-story homes in San Juan. The same medieval fences. But something else. Most of these homes had signs for ADT Security. No big deal, many homes in America have the same, blue, hexagonal signs. But these were different. They didn’t say “This Home Secured by ADT”, they said “This Home Secured by ADT Armed Response”. ADT Armed Response. Private policing, in a municipal neighborhood. Not a private gated community, but right off of a city street. This was the frontier. Because the police were not adequate nor reliable. That picture has stuck with me for 15 years because it was so unusual. It was like the edge of an old map, which said “Beyond this point lie dragons”. This was not America, where on the remote edge of available law enforcement, people rely on guard dogs and guns. This was literally a private company filling a vacuum. Don’t think it can’t or won’t happen here. I bet ADT is planning such offerings right now for cities that defund and reduce police.

The last example is one out of Hollywood. In “Grosse Point Blank”, one of the John Cusack character, Martin Q. Blank's high school classmates, Terry Rostand (played by Steve Pink, who, along with Cusack, was one of the movie's co-writers), is an armed private security guard for a gated community. The character talks about when he is authorized to use deadly force:

Terry Rostand: Oh no, I'm not a peace officer. Yeah, this badge isn't a meaningful symbol. We don't enforce the law, we just execute company policy for homeowners.

Martin Q. Blank: When are you authorized to use deadly force?

Terry Rostand: Oh well, you know, taxes provide your basic services, you know, police and whatnot, but our customers, they need a little bit more than that, so we catch you on the property, we do what we have to do.

I don’t know how real that concept is, but it seems a likely growth area if municipal policing is weakened.

The idea of iron bars, spiked fences, and private police may appear dystopian. I only offer them as examples because they are real. But what else might occur?

More gated neighborhoods. There will be a move to develop more upscale gated townhome communities and gated detached home neighborhoods. There will be moves to install gates at existing neighborhoods. This will be made possible by technology to reduce the need for staffed gates by using remote camera technology. One staffed gate house controlling two remote camera based gates.

Private security. Some of these gated neighborhoods will have their own dedicated private security patrols. But I expect security companies to provide both the gate guards and regional private security patrol/response forces. Such a regional approach could get economies of scale to make them more cost-competitive.

For those not in traditional neighborhoods, but with poor policing, the ADT South Africa armed response model could happen. There are some very expensive homes in Atlanta, on very large lots. The owners of these homes could probably afford very sophisticated, and very capable security.

Where will these companies get qualified, trained applicants? Something tells me there will be a number of recently retired, and recently laid-off former police officers to choose from. Over the long-term, a hiring pipeline and ab-initio training could be a challenge.

But what about those who cannot afford private police solutions? This is where I see the emergence of what I call the “Private Surveillance State”. You may have heard about how local police departments partner with Ring and other smart doorbell systems to access their data to assist in policing. There is an understandable privacy concern, however these devices not only surveil the owner’s property, they also surveil the public area beyond the owner’s property (street and sidewalk). On a cul-de-sac, it is possible to get almost a 360 degree view of a suspicious vehicle and person if each home has a smart doorbell. One of the guiding principles of how “big data” works is many low resolution data points are better than one or a few high resolution data points.

What I anticipate is the smart doorbell service providers providing a subscription access to their data to private security companies like ADT. The biggest problem right now is every security provider is a walled garden. ADT wants to sell you their hardware. Meanwhile someone else sells some other hardware. And then there are DIY systems where there is no monitoring company. But imagine if your local security system monitoring company also has access to you DIY wireless cameras and not only your Ring doorbell but can pull the video from neighboring homes? Imagine if it is augmented by real-time AI?

When it comes to limited policing, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. If you walk into a police department and sit down with a detective with gigabytes of video showing the make, model, and license plate of the car, video of the theft of property as it happened in your home, and high resolution photography of the perpetrators, you are more likely to get the police to take action than if you come in with one grainy video clip and nothing else.

If a home security company can taut it gets agreement from the police to pursue 80% of robberies and of those 75% are apprehended, that will sell. If a neighborhood is able to promote that crime in its neighborhood has dropped because of a higher arrest rate than other neighborhoods, it will command a premium in home values. If the metric is outcome based, it sells.

If people are fearful, they will be less concerned with the privacy aspects of opting in on sharing their video doorbell footage. It is human nature that an increased fear for personal safety will motivate people to trade a perceived increase in safety for a perceived decrease in freedom. If people really don’t care if an across the street neighbor sharing doorbell video, which includes footage of their house, with a security organization, if the perceived loss of freedom is small or insignificant, in exchange for a measured increase in safety, people will make that trade.

Already, many upper middle-class neighborhoods which are not gated are using a photo-based monitoring system to record pictures of every vehicle which enters the neighborhood. This system has a high enough resolution to discern the license plate, as well as the make and model of the vehicle. These images are stored and are only accessed at police request. But such a system, by incorporating AI, along with a database of vehicle registrations of neighborhood residents, could provide real-time information to a private security organization to know when non-residents enter a neighborhood.

It is not unlikely to see some neighborhoods incorporating their neighborhood entry surveillance with individual home security monitoring, through discounts, or even through an HOA requirement, not unlike a garbage collection service.

Ultimately, what this is likely to result in is an inequity of public safety, not unlike what existed in the later 1970s. Poor people will have burglar bars, and guns. Rich people will live in gated communities with private security guards, augmented by the private security state. The difference will be in the middle class. The upper middle class will also live in gated communities. And the lower middle class will live in neighborhoods primarily protected by the Private Surveillance State.

Even today, the police disproportionately protect the lower socio-economic classes, because more crimes are committed in lower socio-economic areas. Defunding and/or abolishing police is more likely to negatively impact these areas. Higher socio-economic areas, like wealthy suburbs, are more likely to keep higher levels of police funding. The Private Surveillance State is not likely to be needed in a wealthier suburb. However, in the places in between is where the Private Surveillance State will bloom. In-town luxury apartments, townhome communities, gated neighborhoods, old, wealthy neighborhoods, etc. And the highly virtual Private Surveillance State will create virtual gated neighborhoods in average middle class and even lower middle-class neighborhoods.

Technology will drive down the cost significantly over the next decade. However, it will never drive the cost down to a level to allow it to benefit the working poor, and the non-working poor. Which means they will become a relatively less defended target, and therefore, more targeted. Inequity will increase.

Of course, it is likely the progressive state, in its cargo cult thinking, will seek to place similar virtual security in place in lower socio-economic areas. We will hear stories about government contracts to outfit subsidized housing with this technology. Then will be the stories of failure and cost over-runs.

Then what? The impoverished will demand more policing. Not better policing, not more and better policing, just more. Now. They can worry about the better part later. We have seen this story play out repeatedly in urban areas. What then? The conservatives will not want to increase government spending, and the progressives will. The conservatives will be more libertarian, and the progressives will become more law and order. But in between this cycle, there will be lost property, lost opportunity, and lost lives.

Human nature is a roller-coaster. For some, it is an unusually cruel roller coaster, because they only seem to catch the downhill parts. For some, when they reach a peak, they are able to see ahead, and understand there will be ups and downs. Some will anticipate and take advantage of the thrill ride, profiting from the variations, buying low, and selling high. For others, disorientation, nausea, and just wanting to get off.

Urbanization, or a Return to Rural

MIT Sloan Management Review offered its "Nine Megatrends to Watch" for the next decade.

One of these proposed Megatrends is "Urbanization". Sloan says:

Urbanization: Two-thirds of us will live in cities. The urbanization of our populations will increase, creating more megacities as well as small- and medium-size metropolises. Countervailing forces will include a rising cost of living in the most desirable cities. The effects will include the need for more big buildings with better management technologies (big data and AI that makes buildings much more efficient), and we will need more food moved in from where we grow it to where we eat it — or rapidly expand urban agriculture.

"Urban agriculture". Whenever I see this phrase I throw up in my mouth a little bit. We are able to support the food needs of 8 million people in New York City because of scale agriculture in rural areas as well as foot imported from the southern hemisphere. The idea of hydroponic organic rooftop farms, encased in greenhouses to deal with New York's climate, and providing a steady supply of year round fresh vegetables to the local city street corner bodega is just fantasy. This, along with the fact that some cities are collapsing under load as we speak, in 2019, with an inability to house people, no ability to support the working class a city requires (plumbers, electricians, firefighters, cops, etc.), and serious hygiene issues is why I think every urban center has a maximum load. And many are near it, and some have exceeded it.

The corollary is I read over at the Financial Samurai blog. He is looking at various commercial real estate investments in secondary cities. Including crowdsourced REITs focused on this market. So someone is putting money on the idea the major metropolises are reaching their limit in terms of crowding and cost, and businesses will expand into secondary cities.

Living in the Atlanta, and reading about businesses moving from Atlanta to Nashville and Charlotte to escape the crowding and traffic of Atlanta suggests there is a trend to build the next great secondary city, the kind of place Dallas, Denver, Atlanta, and Orlando were in the late 1970s and early 1980s. And I also believe there will be a rise of tertiary cities. Hip small cities not too far from major metropolises.

My Megatrend to watch for is the rise of these new secondary and tertiary places.

Humility

I recently saw the new documentary, “Apollo 11”. As the film approached its conclusion there were two scenes that stood out. The first was the last television broadcast from Apollo 11 prior to its reentry. 

But rewind a moment. Neil Armstrong was the coolest of cucumbers. A quiet, introverted man, he barely even smiled in candid photographs. Look at this picture of him. This is Neil Armstrong upon his return from his historic walk on the moon:

Look at the radiance, the glow emanating from him. The weight of a nation, the world, lifted off of his shoulders. This was the first time the man had relaxed in years. What should be elation was mere satisfaction. The man had made history to a level beyond any human being in modern history. The gravity of the moment was much more than 1/6th G.

Keep that in mind as we leap forward two days to that final broadcast. You can see the original video here:

The film really cleaned up the video, but the content comes through well on the YouTube video.

Listen to Mike Collins. List to how me makes his role, as Command Module Pilot, seem small compared to the complexity of the Apollo Command Module. Collins, as a Command Module Pilot, knew every inch of the Apollo Command and Service Modules—none of it which he had any role in designing or building:

“All of it made possible, by the blood, sweat, and tears of a number of people. The American workman, who put these pieces of machinery together in the factory.”

Collins goes on to thank many others including all of the people in Mission Control.

A side note. As I continue to reflect on Apollo (which I have done for 47 odd years), I have come to respect the Command Module Pilots immensely. Rendezvous and docking is one of the most difficult spacecraft maneuvers, and it was critical to the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous technique of Apollo. The CM pilots were the unsung heroes of Apollo.

Buzz Aldrin speaks next, with his undeniably way of seeing the profoundness of larger picture:

“We have come to the conclusion that this has been far more than three men, on a voyage to the moon. More still, than the efforts of a government and industry team. More even than the efforts of one nation. We feel, this stands as a symbol, of the insatiable curiosity of all mankind to explore the unknown.”

Aldrin at the time was deeply religious, and celebrated Holy Communion, complete with wine and wafer, on the moon after the landing.

Finally Neil speaks. He looks different now. He has shaved, his hair looks well combed even in Zero G. The euphoria is gone now, and he is almost somber in his reflection. But it does not change the fact he is not headed for splashdown, he is headed for the history books.

Neil knows he is standing on the shoulders of giants. Galileo, Newton. Then he thanks the American people, not for paying for this whole thing, but for “their will”. Neil specifically calls out the spacesuit manufacturer. If you know the story of the Apollo EVA spacesuit, you know it was sewn by seamstresses from the same company that made Playtex girdles and bras.

In the film, the filmmakers interpose the broadcast with pictures of the many workers who were associated with Apollo. It damn near brought me to tears.

But they didn’t stop there. When the Apollo 11 crew was finally released from quarantine, they left the Airstream trailer to applauding crowds of NASA workers. The film catches Neil stopping, and taking a step back to a microphone. He thanks those workers for all they did. Neil had to celebrate his 39th birthday as the “boy in the bubble”, but he stopped to thank those NASA folks for keeping him prisoner. That is just outstanding leadership. And a key component to outstanding leadership is humility.

Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Armstrong might be the most humble people in American history. They had every right to not be humble, but they were, and have been.

Which brings me to my larger point. Humility used to be a core value of being a human being in modern society. Bragging, or being audacious was seen as bad behavior. At one time, young people knew and understood their place: they may have youthful ambition but they lacked experience and wisdom so they deferred to their elders. This was an important component of the mentor/apprentice relationship which defined work for centuries. This deference to humility, this idea the young or the new are in an apprentice role, a probationary position, has changed in modern society. Instead the young and the new demand and are expected to be full members of an organization, complete with the right their opinions and ideas have equal weight to those from more experienced members. In some case the young and the new are granted veto authority. This philosophy now pervades politics.

It is interesting to watch an amazing IMAX documentary, where people who literally wrote their names into the history of the human race show incredible humility, and in the same week watch freshman members of Congress act with zero humility. Congress , like most legislative and parliamentary systems, operates under the ultimate seniority system. If you have ever known anyone who has served on a city council to U.S. Senate you understand this. Senator  Ben Sasse of Nebraska famously waited 10 months before he even made a speech to the Senate. To watch these freshman members of Congress act with arrogance was simply, disturbing. One was born in 1976, one in 1981, and one in 1989. One is a “Xennial”, the other two are Millennials. Unlike those born before them, they do not have respect for authority or elders. They do not have respect for experience. They do not have respect for wisdom. They do not have humility in any form whatsoever--in a role where humility should be paramount.

Humility is like empathy. It is necessary. A person devoid of empathy has a term to describe them: sociopath. A person devoid of humility has a term to describe them: narcissist.

This is bad. There can be no good that comes from someone devoid of humility.

But instead, this lack of humility is being championed by some.

Humility used to be “table stakes” of polite society. No more. This should be a worry. This should be a concern. This should be frightening.

If anyone earned the right to be braggadocios, it was the crew of Apollo 11. There is a lesson there. We all can all learn from it.

Three types of people

I have come to a conclusion there are three types of people in the world:

Process people.

Idea people.

People people.

Random House commits an "Honor Killing"

In a world where all to often people love to establish moral equivalence between western and third-world cultures, permit me to add one.

Random House's decision to kill Sherry Jones' new novel "The Jewel of Medina", about Muhammad's wife A'isha is the literary moral equivalent of an Honor Killing.

University of Texas' history professor Denise Spellberg, according to Random House's Jane Garrett, advised strongly against publishing. I cannot help but wonder what Dr. Spellberg teaches about Islam in her classes. Does she teach it is includes a significant element of unstable, easy to anger, medieval, barbaric, and terroristic sects, which are so influential, as to preclude the entirety of Islam from being subject to popular fiction, avant-garde art, political cartoons, or comic routine, unlike every other other major religion and culture, which often are the subject of critical or tasteless speech or expression.

I think Dr. Spellberg, based on her comments, strongly believes Islam, due to its extremist component, is not compatible with the secular, post-Enlightenment, western world. I just wonder if she teaches this in her classes.

More:

You Still Can't Write About Muhammad

Free Speech Jilted by Muhammad Romance Novel 'Warpath'

And some worthy background reading:

Victor Davis Hanson: Traitors to the Enlightenment

Anarchists Flock to Join Rioters

Shouldn't somebody have predicted this?

European anarchists flock to join rioters in Copenhagen

I originally saw this story in a local paper with a similar headline.

Of course, I personally don't believe anarchists "flock". A flock is far too organized for anarchists.

And do European anarchists live in Europe? It seems too organized for them. If anarchists like anarchy, it seems they would be more comfortable in a place in anarchy, maybe Lebanon, Somalia, or Iraq.

"When he woke up [he] had a huge headache"

After five bottles of vodka "one straight after the other", I would think so. It hurts my head just reading this story:

The father of all hangovers

Where on Earth do the British get off ...

... in any way criticizing any kind of food?

Prince Charles says ban McDonald's food

Am I the only one to see the humor in this? Okay, I get that Prince Charles was concerned about the health aspects of McDonalds, but please, ask the Italians to take up this fight.

YRH, go back to your bangers and mash, and leave food commentary to the continentals.

Two Helicopters Down

Two helicopters down in three days! Baghdad? No, Atlanta:

Helicopter crash kills two men

Pilot on first solo flight injured in helicopter crash

From our "Masters of the Obvious" file

Glad it's not just me noticing this:

Study: College students more narcissistic