So I just cooked up a batch of two slideshow videos. But um I had one final string of thoughts that I wanted to flush out before I get back to writing for the day, do a little burst of videos. Um So the theme here is that as things continue to change, we're going to see differences in value. So one manifestation
of these differences is that things, there will be some things that just aren't worth it anymore. So let me give you a practical example. Let's say that every year you go on vacation and you do the same thing every year. It's like a family tradition and it costs a certain amount of money and, and what
you're paying for, it's, it's a, it's a, a well fleshed out experience that you've come to expect. And then all of a sudden you go this year and you see that to get there, it costs 50% more than it did before. The actual uh vacation itself costs 50% more than it did before. And the experience, whatever
it might be, things you do, things you eat, things you watch, whatever it is. Um It's, it's degraded in some significant way. So at some point, you have to ask yourself, when are we gonna w how long are we gonna keep doing this for? How much can things change? And this can still be worthwhile? What you'll
find is that most people, this is called the normalcy bias. Most humans will keep doing something that they're used to doing. Even when situations change, the situation changes to the point where they would not do it. They would not see it as rational if this were the first time they were doing it. So
they have a bias towards continuing something that they wouldn't start under the same conditions. So what we're seeing now throughout society is uh the proliferation of examples of this bias. So let me give you some examples of things that have either experienced the exploding cost or a shrinking benefit
that people still do like they've always done. Um Before I get into the examples, I just wanna pre empt this by saying if you were to go back a few generations and talk to folks who are dead now, you'd find that normal life is very different than what we think normal life is today. And so the living
memory, the generations that are still alive today, the life they have experienced is worlds apart from everyone that came before them. So coming to a better understanding of those differences can enable you to have a more accurate expectation of what will change and where things are going, which will
help you make better decisions today to position you for when they change. And also maybe more importantly to extract greater value from what you still have. So let's go through a few examples, single family homes have exploded in the cost recently. It's now outside of the reach of most people to be
able to afford a home. So that's sad because that's something that are giving memory. You know, it's part of the American dream, the so called American dream in your own home. Plenty of people don't. But the opportunity was there. If, if there was something they wanted to do, there was a path of decisions
they could make to get there. And now for most people, anything they would do would be insufficient to reach that outcome. You have to be an exceptional person in your earnings, potential to be able to afford a home, whether there's going to be a housing market collapse or not. There's, there's support
for other outcome. It would not be a surprise if this just got worse instead of better. So what does that mean as far as what changes could occur and what changes should occur if the price of houses just keeps going up? And you have to look at the larger picture including fancy new taxes that are disguised
as some sort of equal opportunity thing or um increased interest rates or decreased availability for a mortgage payment because of the increased cost of living with everything else. Or a shatter one that most people haven't realized yet. Homeowners insurance is going through the roof because the cost
to replace is going through the roof. So all of a sudden, you know, buying a house used to be thought of as a good tax posture, I guess, uh, because you could write off your interest paid. But with the increase to the standard deduction and the increase in homeowners insurance, it's a much less lucrative
, um, benefit than it used to be effectively. It drastically increases the cost of buying a home with a mortgage. And if you're buying it with cash, good luck with that. So the number of people that can do that is really tight. But if you, if you can, you'll save even more than you would historically
because you save the 7% interest or whatever your current mortgage is going to be. You avoid that fancy tax, you avoid PM I, uh, you avoid, which itself was in addition, after 2008, that didn't used to be there and you avoid homeowners because you, you don't have to have homeowners insurance if you haven't
paid off home and you could self insure, meaning you save your money, you invest it elsewhere and then you could use that. If anything ever happened, you just pay for it out of pocket because it's an astronomically low probability that you'll ever be in a situation that, that would require more than
you just had to pay. So, with deductibles and things you're still looking at, um, a lot of out of pocket expense if, if something minor happens. So, basically, homeowners insurance is for a total loss, essentially anyway, wearing the weeds. But all of that has to do with the exploding costs and also
why normal people don't get because who has thought about all the things that I just said? So, um what about cars? This is an interesting one because again, there are things that are obvious and things that are non obvious. So there's some weird fluctuation happening uh during and after COVID in terms
of used car prices, auto loans have skyrocketed in the interest that's charged for them and all sorts of difficult to meet emissions regulations are filtering through the federal government right now. Meanwhile, sea changes in demand and profitability have caused major car companies to stop making certain
cars. So Chevy doesn't make cars at all anymore. They only make suvs and trucks or electric. I guess the bolt is technically a car, but they don't make things like the cruise anymore or Malibu or any of that stuff. So um all of these changes uh increase the the cost of labor difficulties, labor demands
um and material cost that cost me a new car is skyrocketing, skyrocketing over a very short period of time. So that is going to filter into the used car market eventually. But right now you probably noticed that the average age of the car on the road has increased and they're more messed up looking because
people are holding on to them for longer. Now, an interesting side effect of all this. Um, every state has different taxation policies for cars in Montana where I live, you're, you're taxed every year on the market value of your car. So, guess what happens is the market value goes up. What used to be
a um and essentially fixed cost for that. Um It, it's going to accelerate significantly as, as the market value of new cars increases. So your incentive for having an older car financial incentive will increase, which means that you're driving a car that um is gonna need more repairs and costs more money
that way because labor costs more and parts cost more. So it it becomes this much more complicated landscape and to navigate that landscape in a way where you're extracting the greatest value in life from the lowest dollar value, it becomes something that you need more capacity to navigate. So for example
, and, and I mean, intellectually, financially, whatever the case may be in terms of resources. So in Montana, again, if you have a car that's 10 years old, you can make a one time tax payment to get a permanent registration. But the problem with 10 year old cars is that they're falling apart. So the
way to navigate all that is to buy a car you don't need and store, it, just drive it once a month or something. Don't insure it because that costs a fortune to drive it once a month or something. And then it qualifies for the 10 year exemption, but it still has low miles and, uh, you've taken care of
it the whole time. So that's obviously enormous overhead compared to a normal life. And what kind of person would do that sort of thing. So everyone else is just gonna get hosed. What about living in a city that used to be considered a good thing by many people. And the, the size the set of people are
considered a good thing shrinking very quickly. People are fleeing from cities like Chicago, San Francisco, Portland and Baltimore. I was shocked the other day, I grew up in Baltimore and I saw a news article about Harbor Place which has long been a crime ridden area where the local hoodlums realized
that they could scalp tourists and that the cops aren't really gonna do anything. And, um, they fought that for a while and, and now it seems like they've just given up, but there's a mall down there that I've been to many times. I remember going to this mall as a little kid and it's vacant. Uh, they
actually have entrances shut down because I think there are only two stores in the whole mall. The rest is just make up real estate because the criminals keep going down there and young people shaking, shaking down folks and, uh, robbing them, beating them are so mixed of the two. So people are fleeing
the city. It's not seen as a valuable thing anymore. Um, some unusual things, some weird things like restaurants. How expensive can a meal out become before you stop going? Interestingly, the one restaurant we would ever frequent, I mean, that's still a relative term but where I would take my wife and
kids, uh, was Red Robin here in Missoula and it was kind of a special occasion, but because they had all you could eat fries and my kids can put it down. That was a cost effective thing. And then we also gained the system further by, um, buying gift cards when they went on sale once a year, we buy a
year supply of Red Robin gift cards. So we'd go there and, and uh have an affordable meal out and, you know, debatable quality of food, which was also going downhill noticeably, but they ended up closing the restaurant because they couldn't cover costs. So, I mean, when mainstream chains start going
out of business, that's kind of a, an omen of things to come. So what about things that have a shrinking benefit? So the cost isn't necessarily going up. But what if you get out of it goes down? So, cable TV, for example, I know that there are people out there who used to watch this channel or that channel
. And now they have a dwindling list of reasons to pay for cable TV. And then the younger generations, it's, it's sort of unheard of people are streaming services, but even that is sort of an ebb and flow depending on what show is on that people like. So I hear so as that value begins to or continues
to diminish fewer people will use those things and they'll just go away. And with all of these things, there's not really, uh, an equivalent replacement, it's just a downgrade. So what about things that, um, well, here's another one, a shrinking benefit. I'm, I'm saving the more controversial things
for the end. So let's say to you, what about appliances? So my family really wears out appliances just like I really wear out jeans. I, I just wear out jeans like nobody's business. And, uh, for whatever reason, we just have a lot of appliances that break and what I found over the years of buying appliances
is a game I've been in since we bought our first home in 2000 and something. Um, it's been a while, a long while anyway. Um, yeah, we've had a lot of appliances break and the quality has definitely gotten noticeably worse over, I don't know, 15 or so years that I've been in the game and like I said,
I've, I've dabbled in this a lot because my kids break stuff a lot. Um, uh, it's just, it's wear and tear. Um, so what happens with these is historically, you pay someone to come out to your house and fix your appliance and because labor costs got so high that it became more cost effective to just buy
a new appliance because you run the risk of between parts and labor and maybe you're looking at half the cost of a new one and then, um there's no, no guarantee necessarily that something else isn't gonna break. And all these things are designed for planned obsolescence, they actually engineer them to
break. It's varying le levels of intentionality like light bulbs are actually intentionally designed to break at a certain interval. So they can predict how many light bulbs are gonna sell over time to maximize that number. They have it tuned to the exact balance between what people will tolerate and
making the most money. I think it's less intentional and more complex than machine, but they don't engineer things to last forever, that's for sure. And they, they mark up replacement parts ridiculously knowing full well that people are doing this math and deciding whether to replace the whole thing
they're made so cheaply. Now, though this, these are appliances from mainstream brands that it's actually becoming cost efficient to upgrade to a commercial appliance just because they are actually built with quality and minds to a minimal extent, at least. And so maybe it makes more sense to spend twice
as much as you would on a dishwasher or a stove and it will actually last a reasonable amount of time. So the cost per year to own it is much less. But again, who thinks about these things? Because a normal person doesn't even know if they have led s in their house or not as far as light bulbs go. I
saw a survey that came out recently and II, I was in my house for our present house for about five minutes. We have tons of drop lights all over the ceilings. Um, I was in my house for approximately five minutes before I realized that our house was full of incandescent bulbs. And I went to the box store
and replaced them all with led S and our electric bill immediately dropped by a significant amount and it paid for itself in like three seconds. But a normal person has not even thought about whether they have incandescence or led s they don't know, they've never paid attention to that. And according
to surveys. So, um, my point is as life gets more complicated, normal people are gonna be swept up and hosed by the fact that just sort of floating through life isn't good enough anymore. The way things used to be, it's not that way anymore. You have to be better to actually get by just to get by, not
to flourish, to get by. Ok. So let's get into more controversial areas. So we talked about decreasing benefit and increasing cost. Here's the example, both college, college. So it used to be a good idea for almost everybody and now it's a bad idea for almost everybody will change. Well, first off, lucrative
careers increasingly couldn't care less if you have a degree or not. Like, uh, programming. For example, uh, surveys I've conducted with pretty much every high tech leader in the state of Montana, which you might think is all cows. We do have more elk than people. But um there are more tech start ups
per capita than most states in the country in Montana if I remember that statistically. But anyway, uh exactly zero, high tech leaders said they cared about the degree. They all said, well, it's nice to a degree but I don't really care. We subject everyone to a technical exam and if they can do the job
, we don't care how they learn. So that was an interesting thing to learn. But people are picking this up and it's not just uh programming jobs for which this is true. So the kinds of jobs that would arbitrarily require a degree are going away. They're either being replaced by automation in some form
or they are just evaporating because those industries don't exist anymore. So um the, the skilled jobs that are open and vacant today that are in demand tend to require skills where they don't care where they came from or skills that require apprenticeship like trades. There are outliers. You can't be
a lawyer. If you don't go to law school, you can't be a doctor if you don't go to medical school. But those careers don't really have openings anyway, especially if you're a white male and, um, especially if you actually want to make some money because they're so overcrowded and so regulated, so overregulated
that it's very hard to have a career that's, that's worth it worth all the costs and time and money and debt. Um, ok, so two more controversial examples. 13, two more. What about in terms of exploding costs and reduced benefits? What about marriage and Children? The other one that's on the list that's
highly related is dating. This is something that no one's gonna wanna hear, but I'm gonna say it anyway. There are two changes in these categories. One set of these changes has already occurred. The other set of the change is for people to realize it that has not yet occurred. It's in progress but it
hasn't happened. So this is, this is the nugget of what I want to share with you. We have already reached the point. We're backing up at half a star with another example of the same principle. The principle is the way things used to be is no longer worth it. So it used to be career wise, a normal approach
to career would yield a result that was worth it. That is not the case anymore. I'm not sure how many people realize it, but it is not the case anymore. If you do the average thing for a career, you will not reach an outcome that's worth the cost. So I think young people know this, which is why they're
basically dropping out of the ecosystem living with their parents who are enabling them, which is very bad. By the way, if you're doing that, you shouldn't um you're not helping them, you're hurting them and you're doing it for selfish reasons. So please don't do that if you're doing that. I know a lot
of people who watch this channel are older than me. So kick them out, charge them rent, whatever you need to do. It's nice to partially insulate people from consequences, but you're harming them by fully taking those consequences away. You're not helping anybody by letting someone live life without any
responsibility. So charge him rent to kick him out. The world is how it is. The United States is how it is today because of people like you. That's how bad it is, what you do. Ok. So that's step number one. But outside of careers, the same principle applies to a lot of other things. For example, relationships
, dating marriage and kids. If you're doing it in the same old way, it is not worth it today. Nothing has to change for that to be true. It's been true for a while. It, it happened slowly and then all at once, if you are dating people the old fashioned way or the modern way, which is even worse, that's
not worth it anymore. Why there are a whole lot of reasons, a whole lot of reasons. But you, but the bottom line is you're not gonna find somebody that you're looking for that way. What about, uh, marriage? If you are looking for an average person, you will only find people who are not worth marrying
. It doesn't matter if you're looking from the guy perspective or the gal's perspective, the average person is no longer worth marrying, period, period, no exceptions. So if you are an average person, you do not qualify for a person who's worth marrying. And if you're an above average person, you don't
want a person who's average, you will be very, very, very, very unhappy with that person. You will be happier alone. And I mean, happy in the most gospel centric, highest sense of the word, not just a worldly pleasure kind of way. So what a woman needs from a husband, she can only find today with an
exceptional man and the bar will only increase from here on out and what a man can provide to a woman, an exceptional man can provide to a woman, he can only provide to an exceptional moment and the bar will only increase from this point out. And this is extraordinarily unpopular, but it's very important
if you're a parent and you're generating kids who are normal, you're failing in your duty today in the modern time you're guaranteeing they're gonna be miserable people. Miser guarantee it. So, is that unfortunate? Well, not really, I mean, it's not all a bad thing to be better. Right. Obviously it's
good to be better. It's better to be better. But there's not really an alternative these days. It used to be, well, you know, somebody flos up either the individual or their parents or both and you know, society can still function. They'll still have relatively functional lives. It's just, they won't
be exceptionally good lives. It won't be an abundant life, but, you know, they can still be happy whatever. They, they won't necessarily hurt anyone. Not today, not today, either above the line or below the line. And it's just going to get worse. That division will continue to exacerbate. So, what about
kids? Well, the cost of kids has exponentially exploited, just like the cost of marriage and the cost of dating it used to be. You could go on like convenience dates, people you happen to meet while you're out about whatever and meet a decent person. It's worth marrying just at school or work or whatever
, friend, group, church, whatever, not anymore. You're looking for a needle in a haystack folks. The first step is to become a needle in a haystack. So the benefit for the normal is no longer worth the cost of the normal, the cost has increased because even folks who aren't interested in dating, they
go on tons and tons and tons of dates nowadays because most people are garbage. So that ratio will continue to get worse. And if you're gonna pay that increased price, you better get something out of it. And people are waking up to the fact that the juice is not worth the squeeze. And that pattern is
recurring in many, many facets of life. And the only place the juice is worth the squeeze is when you're getting the best juice. So normal juice is not good enough anymore to be able to get the exceptional outcome. And the only way to get an exceptional outcome is with an exceptional input. So with marriage
, same deal, the risk in marriage today for a quality man, any man is enormous because almost all marriages end in divorce and almost all divorces are initiated by the woman, a woman today has every incentive financially to break apart her marriage. She would be rewarded for it for the rest of her life
, at least as long as kids remain under 18. And if you're in an alimony state, you'll get that. But also whatever the assets are at the time of divorce, you'll get half of that. So she gets, she makes out like a bandit in almost every case, it's, it's dramatically stacked against the man. So for a man
, why would you get married, what's, what's the expected cost and the expected benefit. Meanwhile, even men who are married, most of them are miserable, most of them are miserable. So, uh what's, what's the use? What's the benefit? So the only way you could rationally justify that is to say, I have found
a woman that is above measure exception. She is different than everybody else. She is better than everybody else. How many women can you say that for just s sta statistically alone before you even deal with the probability of knowing that person? You know, just in the population at large. What percentage
of people can fit that description? 125, 10. Now look at that same thing in the opposite direction for women. Uh It cost a fortune to have kids today. What percentage of men fit the bill? That's before you get into the very deep and important, much more important gospel facets of the fact that a woman
ought to be looking for the man who is most like Jesus, that she knows who happens to be s that's her criteria for finding a wise woman. That's her criteria for men. So that's kind of a high bar. How many men could fulfill that standard, but just leaving it at the financial standard, we're talking 10%
men and that's all men. Married and old and fat and ugly filter out all the folks that the lady would never go for. What are you dealing with? As a percentage. It is tiny, it is tiny. And if you can't find one of those and persuade them to marry you, you're better off being alone. Now, what about kids
? Said this? The cause of kids is exploded. What about the outcomes of kids? Have you seen any kids lately? Unless you have exceptional kids, you're better off not having kids today because they will just make your life a living hell. So that one's a little different because the outcome of your kids
is mostly just dependent on you. You don't have control over that. But if you're doing everything you can, if all parents were doing everything they could, this wouldn't be a problem with kids. We just leave it at dating and marriage so you can't do what normal parents do and have decent kids. That's
a better way of putting it. You can't do what normal parents do and have kids worth having. You're just contributing to making the world a worse place for your having been here because your kids will be rotten the other day. I'll end it with this delightful note if you're still here and I haven't offended
you enough. Let me give it one more shot the other day. Uh We were, my wife was teaching the kids, uh some things about the kingdom of God and the mustard seed and all that. And the conversation turned into, we use some experience from the property here. We've grown quinoa here before and then we had
this disaster because there's this weed that looks a lot like quinoa. It's a distant relative, which is kind of cool because quinoa came from South America and we're here in Montana and distant cousins, but very similar. It's interesting. But, um, it's, it's really hard to tell the difference visually
until the seeds fra, so that's kind of a weak and tear situation and we brought that up. But then my mind dove into this because it's a little deeper with the quinoa. And I think it's amaranth. That's the cousin I can't remember, but it has the same shape leaves. It looks very similar. You can only tell
when it's full. Si I can only tell the difference. So it's full size because the seeds are much smaller for the Aarin than the quinoa, whatever plant it is. The problem is if you wait until the seeds have grown, you've already cross pollinated all of your quinoa and you can't grow it again because you'll
grow the hydrate. That's how similar they are is they'll reproduce. And this got me to thinking about the flood in no time. And this is a very appropriate topic. What, why did God send the flood? Uh The short answer is because the people tried to kill. No, that was the last straw. You couldn't tolerate
that because it uh contradicted his purposes with Noah on the other side of the flood. But the longer answer and this is in Genesis is that uh the people have become so wicked that those born to those parents did not, would not have a fair trial in mortality that the chips were stacked so strongly against
them that they didn't have a fair shot. And we are approaching that in our society today. The question to answer is how I've used this word too many times already in this presentation. But video, I mean, how exceptional would a kid have to be to overcome what normal kids would encounter in their family
in school, in their peer groups, online and so forth and come out of that at the full stature of what a human being can be. How exceptional would they have to be? Because if you think 50% of humans could achieve that, I'd like whatever you're smoking. Um, if you think 25% of people could achieve that
, I'd still like whatever you're smoking. In fact, you've got a lucrative business on your hands with whatever you're smoking. 10%. I would still strongly disagree with you. 5% still fighting you. 1%. Maybe I would agree with you. Maybe, or at least I wouldn't fight with you. I wouldn't argue at 1%.
I'd be like, well, ok, I think it's far, far, far, far, far, far less than that. I think one in 100 kids still has no chance in an average circumstance today. No chance another way of thinking about this is how big of a miracle would it be if you met someone that got through all that? And was anything
close to the full stature of human potential? If, maybe that bar is too high? Maybe that's why you're arguing that it's, it's, uh, it's impossible because the bar is too high and it'd be impossible even for a kid born in 1983 well, or 1950 for that matter what if we adjusted the criteria to say. Um Turns
out as well as half the people born in 1970. That's a way lower bar. What percent of kids do you think stand any chance of that? So in other way, phrasing, how much lower than 50% are we talking today? What is the cultural degradation quantified in that way? I would be shocked if 5% of kids today turn
out as well as the upper half of kids born in 1970. I don't care what metric you pick, you can decide 5% tops. So when you get into a terminal situation, culturally, that's when God activates his terminal situation and that is what's coming and that's why it's coming. Anyway, the point of the video getting
back to close this out is to start thinking about what changes need to be made so that you can make the most of the situations that are changing very quickly around you and thinking actively avoid fighting that. Um oh What did I just call it, um, the normalcy bias, finding the normalcy bias to actively
think about whether things are worth it or not. It did not do things just because everyone used to do it that way to really think about the cost and benefit and stay away from those things that are no longer worth it. My church buying a single family home, getting married or having kids, it's not to
say that any of those things are inherently bad. It's just if you're going to do them, you better find a situation that's extremely abnormal because otherwise it's irrational because the cost is much higher than the benefit. So leave that with. You have a good one.