Last Sunday I went to Macy's to return some 501 jeans. I'm not sure if the jeans I bought were defective or if they are just making them weird now, but they were not the 501s I remember. I don't know what happened to jeans. I got frustrated with jeans 10 years ago and bought some Lucky Brand jeans, which I thought were outrageously priced at the time, now they are not made well either and they are still outrageously priced.
Anyway, I thought it was safe to go to the mall by the Sunday after Thanksgiving and I was almost the only one on the road at quarter to 10 in the morning and I was the first person in Macy's. Do you know Macy's does not keep dimes? The obviously extra help cashier that waited on me told someone that she opened the register, but there were no dimes and the manager type said they do not keep dimes. Both the cashier and I were baffled. What's wrong with dimes?
After Macy's I went to PetCo and bought a new cat scratcher. I bought one more than a month ago that was on sale, but it was so light that Spit kept pulling it over on herself, so I returned it. I saw another heavier one on sale, so I went back and bought it. Spit is really destroying the stairs and a scratcher became a necessary item. If I had known how hard it would be to find another one, I would have moved the last one I had in So Cal. It took Spit a few days to get over the trauma from the last scratcher that kept falling over on her and start using the new one, but she knows what to use now and is leaving the stairs alone. The scratcher has a round house part in the middle with an opening to climb in and Spit already likes to get inside with her little head poking out, which is pretty cute.
My year is up with Cable One and they jacked up the price of my cable, internet, and phone by $50. I called once and apparently got the owner of Cable One, since she had no supervisor, and I called the local office and was put on hold and no one ever came back, so I am on to internet and phone with Centurylink. I don't know what moron decided that luring people with a cheap price and then jacking it up after a year or two so that they will leave was a way to stay in business.
Since I was about to give up TV, I stayed up and watched the last two episodes of The Walking Dead last Sunday night. The Walking Dead includes some really bad acting and dialog, but I am hooked, and last week they introduced a great moral dilemma and the finale was awesome. If I ever teach an ethics class, I would use the conflict they brought up last week, are there exceptions to, thou shalt not kill? If someone you loved died and came back as a zombie, would you kill them? Would the more moral thing be to kill them, or are they still a human being and it is not up to you to take a life? I won't ruin it for you, but this was the second season and I think it is a super series.
Now that Thanksgiving is over, I am on to my usual hard time with Christmas. I don't have any trouble with Thanksgiving as long as I get to make my apple pie, but Christmas is different and I cannot exactly describe why. This will be Christmas number eight without my daughter, not even a card or a phone call, and it does not get easier. Every Christmas I do not expect to see or hear from her, but at the end of the day every Christmas day there is a moment when I realize that she did not call. I suppose Christmas now makes me think about unanswered prayers.
The defective jeans, unusable cat scratchers, misinformed Occupiers, and mace carrying shoppers made me think about Capitalism lately.
Capitalism is the free exchange of goods and services based on the value to the buyer and the seller. This is not complicated, but hasn't been taught in school since 1980, so most people under 50 confuse Capitalism with greed, materialism, conspicuous consumption, and even cronyism. The latest term, crony capitalism, makes no sense at all. If there is cronyism, there is no free exchange, and therefor, no capitalism. People said the election of Obama was the end of capitalism, but the truth is that capitalism has been dying since the 1930s, with a few death blows from JFK and Johnson. In the US, we have back end communism, where rather than take over business, government allows business to operate and takes as many pieces of it along the way as it can via regulation and taxes.
Levis does what they can to lower their costs so they can sell a pair of jeans and still make a profit and now they make a product that has no value to the buyer. Cable One has not figured out that their product did not go up in value after a year. If the US had capitalism, Solindra would never have existed and all of the incandescent light bulb and furniture manufacturing companies that government regulation drove out of business would still be employing people.
When I was a kid, there was lay away for Christmas. You would use that because what you wanted might be sold out before Christmas and you paid to have the store set it aside for you. Today using lay away would be crazy because the price is probably going to go down between when you lay it away and when you pay it off. Now people kill each other over an after Thanksgiving deal. What happened to the value, the value of the product? Is the reporting a high amount of sales on that day more significant, more valuable, than the product? What is the psychology behind a woman who brings mace to a sale where she may buy something that valuable to her as if it represents her self-esteem? Regardless, the after Thanksgiving sale starting at midnight Thanksgiving night and the mace-carrier are not capitalism, they are result of a complete absence of spirituality, or any sense of purpose or meaning. I have a hard time resisting over-shopping at Christmastime, but that is about trying to avoid feelings and attach my self-esteem to things like a new sweater.
The Occupiers are half paid protesters by Communist groups and other unsavory characters, paid to wail whenever the camera is rolling, the rest are unemployed people with nothing else to do that were educated after 1980. Not one of them appears capable of explaining why they are there or what they are protesting. If they are recent college graduates that cannot get a job, they have a right to be pissed off, but Wall Street did not create their problem and none of them seem to be able to comprehend that concept. Government, by trying to make an education available to everyone, lowered the value of an education, and government offered higher and higher loans so that the buyer would not consider the real value of the education. I bet not one of those Occupiers can define capitalism.
On a scarier note, China is now developing vaccines for the mass market and African children are being immunized at gunpoint. Now you have to check if your shot was made in China, and if someone wants to give me a shot made in China, they will have to shoot me first.
On a brighter note, I now have only one metal filling left and a short haircut for winter. Short hair cut for winter? Isn't that backwards? Too much hair gets messed up in the hat and in the way of the scarf and the coat hood. My replacing metal fillings cannot be considered a free exchange, since there is insurance in the middle, but the dental coverage does increase the value of my job to me. My haircut is a free exchange, though, I probably pay higher than average for Boise, but that is because a good haircut has a higher value to me, and it is also cheaper than I was paying in So Cal.
It is awfully cold here, but still no snow.
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