I find traditions very instructive concerning how things have been, are, and probably will be.
The American Heritage dictionary has three definitions of tradition that I want to investigate today. The first definition is “The passing down of elements of a culture from generation to generation, especially by oral communication.”
This one has stood the test of time, lots of time. I first think of Aesop’s fables which were a bit earlier than internet memes as he lived about 600BC. You might be saying what are you talking about C Thomas how old? But I bet you have heard of the fox and the hare. That is one of his more famous fables, but he wrote a lot of them and many more were attributed to him. This storyteller relied strictly on oral traditions of telling his stories and down through the years his stories lived on and on. I find it highly doubtful that this yarn teller expected his stories to be remembered 2600 years later. Generation after generation these fables with truths and life lessons were passed down. They likely changed a bit here and there and no doubt embellished, but they have stood the test of time. That is what tradition does, it stands out and gets remembered. Aesop was remembered because of the content of his stories were valuable enough to be repeated again and again and again.
The brothers Grimm were among the first to take these oral stories and pass them down as written tradition. Many of us know the story of Cinderella, Snow White, or Little Red Riding Hood. It seems Walt Disney’s empire was based on making cartoon versions of many of these stories. When you consider that Walt Disney keeps releasing these hits over and over and over in new formats, it seems likely that these stories will last many generations as well. Often in these stories there is a moral undertone of good versus evil, right versus wrong, and through these fables there are teachable and learning moments for elders to pass on wisdom to children.
This brings us to our second definition. “A mode of thought or behavior followed by a people continuously from generation to generation; a custom or usage.” The first followed down the path of culture a bit more than this definition as this definition is a bit more nuanced to thoughts or behaviors repeated by children learned from parents who learned from grandparents etc. It could be something as simple as a holiday recipe or a profession. There are many law firms that have marked their corner of the office complex by having Jr, the III or even the IV follow in the patriarch’s footsteps. An entire ranch saga called Yellowstone has build a series around it, then another series, and yet another. This is an example of just doing things as they have been done. In lawyering, they write briefs, file divorces, and sue for damages. In Yellowstone, they drink whiskey, punch cows, and take people to the train station.
Lastly, we get to this definition, “A set of such customs and usages viewed as a coherent body of precedents influencing the present.”
I interpret this definition as we are doing what we have always done. This is tradition. The past influences the present, in fact the past has created the present. We can look at things like the two party system of politics in America and we realize that this is how we have elected officials for almost 250 years. There have been third parties, but they are fleeting and highly ineffective. We can look at other countries that have multiple parties like France, Germany, and the UK and although we share a lot of overlap in our societies, we are very binary in our politics.
We have institutions like the Federal Reserve, you knew I was eventually going to turn this to finance, didn’t you? The Fed has a short tradition compared to golf or even the two-party system, but once set in motion inertia tends to lead to a system of retrenchment. Retrenchment has been set on its head in the last few years. Traditions have been broken as a new breed of precedents have been set.
This is the disruptor who does things differently. We don’t have to take taxi cabs, we can take an Uber. We can get around paying people proper wages, we can make them contractors and we will be cheaper because all we have to do is pay off politicians and make the experience more enjoyable for the user who votes for those same politicians. The tradition was looking for a yellow car, raising your arm and maybe whistling. They would transport you from place to place, they would likely be unfriendly as someone in a repetitive task is prone to be, and the person would pay and get from B to A.
Now you pull out your phone and you can see how many rides the driver has given, what his vehicle is like, and whether other people like the experience of riding in the vehicle. The Uber ride came on the scene as about 60% cheaper than a cab ride. This created interest as the experience was better, cheaper, and cleaner. It has also caused hundreds of lawsuits as breaking tradition leads to tradition fighting back. The taxis paid large amounts of money to have a medallion that allowed them to be able to earn a living. They are not going to see that ability taken away and so Uber is facing challenges, but they seem to be winning for now. A tradition seems to have been broken.
What tradition do I want to disrupt? I want to disrupt the spending before you earn tradition. This is actually a disruptor from the not so recent past. The funny thing about changing traditions is that once they get changed they stay changed. We used to have high productivity and low debt in this country. We used to make a lot of things and export our things to the world. Now we have low productivity and high debt and we import a bunch of cheap foreign goods. Men used to support families on one income and now both parents are working, and families are smaller but falling further behind. These are the new traditions. We will be forced to have a tradition change. The question that lies ahead is how. Are we going to have a civil war? California is $70 billion in debt and they can’t print money like the Federal government so are they going to go hat in hand to the government for another handout? How is Texas going to take that? We talked about how Texas gave the Heisman pose to the Feds on the border ruling, what if the little rules that everyone is breaking these days, smoking marijuana, speeding, rolling through stop signs turn into big laws that states decide they aren’t going to follow. Could Texas be a disruptor? 26 states signed up to support them in 24 hours, how long will a nation divided stand?
Traditions have been around to teach us how to live. Respect your elders, be the tortoise not the hare, live within your means, save for a rainy day, all these are good ways to live a life. These are being thrown out while kids choose their gender, everyone is seemingly swimming in debt, and no one seems to know how to secure a border. Kids need to be taught lessons, not brain washed with liberal leaning ideology that debt doesn’t matter, live for today not tomorrow, and you can be whatever you want to be. What you will be is broke, hungry, and homeless at the end of this fable.
It gives me no joy to describe this, but history doesn’t repeat but people do. At their fundamental core, people haven’t changed in centuries. The problems we have today are the exact same ones they had during Aesop’s time. He was writing fables trying to educate the masses that there are serious consequences for living recklessly. Warren Buffet, the world’s greatest investor, learned at an early age the power of compounding and he used it brilliantly to augment his life with everything he would need and more. He is just an example of how to do it. Live under your means, save, invest safely etc. We talked about how the compounding power is now working against us at the federal level with the debt cranking higher and higher meaning the interest expense would be higher and higher. The state, local, company, and family level is no different. The debt is everywhere and when you are in debt you can be controlled. Most people don’t know that debt stands for don’t even be there.
When there is abundant debt there must be growth to meet the debt obligations. So what happens when the growth stops? The growth beyond AI has damn near stopped, like a fat kid at a Stone Cold Creamery, the brakes have been slammed. Apple just closed their buy now pay later program, credit card delinquencies are the highest since the great financial crisis, and companies are starting to file bankruptcy because they can’t get any more financing. Almost 40% of the Russell stock index is a zombie company now so if credit tightens further the impact will be catastrophic. I talk to people and they simply aren’t worried about it. It will rise again, buy the dip, it always comes back.
They are anchored by their traditions. One fo the things we do here at the C Thomas Printer Cooperative is be open and try to evaluate all scenarios. I am certain that we will have a large financial crisis. I don’t have any idea of the timing. Next week, next month, next year? I don’t know and when you don’t know it can cause doubt to begin to simmer. That is why learning about history is so damn important. Some writer in 1924 was warning about the biggest bubble you have ever seen, but no one knows his name because he didn’t get the timing right. He was right though, and that’s all that matters. He saved for a rainy day, most likely, he did try to warn others, and he probably came out of the Depression better than most. That is the tradition that I want the CTPC readers and listeners to carry on. There were people who built an ark when they saw the rain clouds gathering. Let the others party, spend foolishly, and make bad decisions. This is why we have learned to be gracious. We will be very hated because we will not be feeling the same intensity of pain. That is also a tradition. When things don’t go your way to cry, whine, complain, and ask for someone usually the government to do something about it. Here is the news flash. They can’t help you this time. The money is all spent. If they help, they make it worse. They can’t help you, they can only hurt you because they are the problem. Do you see the tradition?
We have done this episode where the reserve currency changes hands because the cycle of humanity has run its course and America has run its course. Portugal, Spain, the Dutch, the French, the English, and now the US will join the ranks of the ridiculous that thought they weren’t. Incorrectly, I might add. The good news is that those countries are still intact today. They are shells of themselves as we will be, but those countries needed leaders, they needed people that could think, and we will too. We unfortunately can’t hide and take our ball and go home. We must function as a society, we must rebuild, we must pay off debts owed, or like the case of Weimar Germany we must start over without losing our souls. We must be grounded in reality, not fiction. We must value profit because only by earning a profit can employees be paid, vendors supported, and owners getting a return on invested capital to compensate them for taking a risk and being able to provide that for their community.
In short, we must dust off the old fables and traditions and learn those lessons and be prepared to teach others because we will have to because no one else has managed to teach them. They aren’t to be found hiding behind the yarn in a cat video, they aren’t found while paying one month’s rent for a Taylor Swift ticket when you have one half month’s rent in the bank, and they aren’t found sucking on the government teat. Those are government boobsuckers or shortened down goobsuckers or better yet, goobers. That’s right the goobers are out there, and they are disrupting age old traditions with ridiculously stupid ones of their own. It is time that it stops.
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
On this date in history… 157 years ago to be exact, the Mexican emperor Maximillian was executed by firing squad.
Also born on this date … one of the greatest mathematicians of all time Frenchman Blaise Pascal.
Thank you for listening today and you can find all of our articles and more on our website cthomasprinter.com.