Phat Unplugged

You are so bipolar! Why is it that if I bring up anyone with a conservative position (which is as valid as any "liberal position" when it comes to investing or planning you jump on the argument, label a guy you never met as an idiot and accuse us of othering other people. Isn't that what you yourself do?Jay Martin has a podcast with some well read guests...more intelligent than you or I.Just because you and your ideology disagree in no way settles our discussion.

I hope you will understand if we don't take your word for it.I also find your lack of self awareness to be entertaining, and educational. Here is a quote from your previous post:

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I listen to a social commentator named Jay Martin. Recently, he had a column on his website titled I Steal Only What I Can't Afford In his essay, Jay describes the history of his own family and the struggles which they had to endure to preserve their own lives. He makes a valid point concerning the government-sponsored "Think Tank" which in his opinion is fostering division between the young and the mature. I tend to agree. I see conflict every day at my job and it concerns me that this latest generation is being trained up in what I consider to be bad ideology.

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You listen to a podcast because you need to feel like you are a victim, based off some claimed ideology found in younger people. This feigned persecution of Phat (or conservatives in general) is found in a lot of your posts.

Who are these guests? List some? What evidence does this yahoo present to support his ideas? Anything? Why should I believe anything he claims? Why is his opinion more valid than mine?
I do not label him an idiot because he is conservative. I label him as an idiot because he is making unevidenced assertions. Manipulating people like you is so easy an idiot could and does do it.
You have no idea what mine or the guests intelligence is. You have never met any of us.

No. I listen to Jay Martin because I am entertained and informed by his guests. (Many of them, anyway.) My gripe is not so much in some imagined "persecution" of conservatives or myself. My gripe is that the liberal/moderate form of government lets so many people get away with so much that there should be laws and in some cases punishments against them. Young people are being taught that conservative values are not as popular nor informative as liberal values. A case in point that I have brought up (and ranted about) before is the allowance of shoplifting and petty theft that I see on a *daily basis* at my work. It used to be that society taught their young people not to steal and to lead by example. Now it seems as if society is breaking down. Everyone wants what they once had and what they perceive that others have that they don't. Some people simply don't care about the harm that they cause to others as they satiate their needs and wants.

I believe the USA has laws about theft? I imagine they precede "liberals"?

From Jays website

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My content is inspired by two goals:

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1. Question the common narrative and think with ruthless independence.

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2. Retain financial sovereignty by spotting and investing in early stage, asymmetric opportunities.
(...)Yesterday, I released an interview with Richard Wolff, a renowned economist and author. We debated the outcomes of USA/China competitiveness — a fascinating and nuanced subject that is often overly simplified - or massively sensationalized.

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My biggest takeaway from studying this topic over the past year is how little exposure we in the West have to Chinese history. This is curious, given that China has led the world in innovation and sophisticated governance for most of the last 3,000 years.

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It seems like a worthy area of study.

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Other guests:

The Origin of the War on Terror? Guest:

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Last week, I interviewed former Navy Seal Sniper and Special Teams Operator Jack Carr. After retiring from the military, Carr has become a six-time New York Times Best-Selling Author.

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I can hear Theo now. "Why should I be impressed with these guests?" The reason being they have experience in teaching and/or geopolitics.

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Who is really in charge?(9/8/24) This week on the podcast, I was joined by Professor Warwick Powell, a Senior Fellow at the Taihe Institute in Beijing and an Adjunct Professor at the Queensland University of Technology.

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Other guests and recent shows:

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I'm not evil. But it’s a pickle. (In which Jay is brutally honest about his worldview and the recognition of his soul.)

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So what's my point? My point is that one can learn as much from businessmen as one can learn from political leaders. Not everyone is trying to profit off of us.

There has been shoplifting and crime since beginning of humanity. Conservatives seem to have no problem with violent crime.
Why are liberals responsible for shoplifting? Give us actual data and arguments not anecdotal bullshit or your feelings.
Let's see what the FBI says.
Oh gee look at that, they released the 2023 crime statistics today> Hmm, larceny(theft) is down 4.4%. I don't. My friends don't. Tell me who these "everyone" are. Are you projecting again? [qs]Some people simply don't care about the harm that they cause to others as they satiate their needs and wants.[/qs
This is different from any other time in history, how?

Why would a retired Navy Seal be an expert on the origins of 'the war on terror"? Jack Carr has no experience in geopolitics or teaching. Then why is he trying to push listeners to his news letter and from there to his "private" newsletter. He is trying to sell you something.The point is this guy is not an expert on anything. Except maybe Canadian mining stocks.

Where are they being taught that? Who is teaching them that? Who is allowing shoplifting?It looks to me as if it is store management that allows shoplifting. And store management tends to be conservative, not liberal.Yes, it's true that liberal government could set up stricter requirements for stores, so as to discourage shoplifting. But that would regulation. And it is the conservatives who are opposed to regulation.Businesses take many steps to reduce the number of employees. And those steps make it easier for shoplifters. Stop blaming the liberal governments when a good part of the fault is with the conservative business owners.

We don't study Chinese history in the West because China didn't have much of an impact on Western culture. We can see echoes of Hellenistic Greece in our governments today, partially because of how their culture was passed on to us by the Romans. Not so with Chinese history and past governmental systems. Jack Carr writes fictions novels. I've heard him speak a few times, and he's an intelligent guy, but I would never call him an expert in geopolitics. That sounds more like an insult for businesspeople.

The facts, as always, don't support your bullshit.Shrink does not equal shoplifting. In one of my careers, I was in retail management. I was the General Manager of a small convenience store chain in NC and I was District Manager for a software chain. We always kept on eye open for shoplifting. The major part of our shrink was always from paperwork errors and employee theft.My little brother is an asset protection manager for a large hardware chain. His time is best spent checking paperwork and combatting employee theft. They do have shoplifting and it is a problem. Also, the stealing of high-ticket items like a DeWalt power tool is very high profile. But at the end of the day paperwork errors and employee theft account for more shrink. America’s stores are winning the war on shopliftingThe US shoplifting scourge is a lot of hype with little evidence

Having worked in retail as a much younger man, I can confirm this. One of the guys I worked with would regularly bury merchandise in the trash and then come back at night to fish it out of the dumpster. Also had a coworker who was convicted of grand larceny for charging back customers' returns on her own credit card (which was idiotic because it was easy to trace).At the same time, when municipalities like San Francisco stated they would no longer charge people for theft under $900 they opened the flood gates.

Not true.
It is a state wide law. Prop 47, passed by a majority of voters in 2014.

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Prop 47, which became a law in 2014, reclassifies certain theft and drug possession offenses from felonies to misdemeanors. Shoplifting offenses of property valued under $950 are punishable by up to six months in county jail....

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It should also be noted that California is not the only state that has raised the bar for felony convictions. Since 2000, at least 37 states have enacted laws that raised the threshold for what constitutes felony theft. In 2017, Pew Charitable Trusts examined how these laws impacted the crime rate and found that "raising the felony theft threshold has no impact on overall property crime or larceny rates.

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Did Prop 47 Legalize Theft Under $950 in California? | Snopes.com

I worked in a large rare metal refinery (in the 1970s, ~3000 employees) and employee thievery was a major problem there. Everything from gloves to things as large as diesel engines and some of the metals and alloys we produced had high value too (zirconium, hafnium titanium, tantalum and niobium and all sorts of alloys), but were difficult sell. I remember when a pure copper ingot (not a normal product, made from scrapped copper melting pots), about 15000 pounds, disappeared without a trace and $30000 worth of platinum crucibles and foil disappeared from the analytical lab where I worked. Neither ever showed up in known markets in North America as far as I know. They could have probably been identified by their specific impurity profile that could be matched to our prior analysis.The plant was high security because we had lots of government contracts and there was a single gate with gate guards and there were periodic random checks of vehicles and if big items went missing sometimes the was a long line waiting to leave because they were searching every car. Allowing searches was a condition of employment. Lots of stuff walked off despite the security. I reported thefts every time I witnessed them.ABE: Oh I forgot, we also had a funny thing happen where a ~$30000 roll of platinum foil disappeared enroute from our vendor and the bill was being disputed when one of our supervisors heard a story on Paul Harvey during lunch about an airline employee who was somehow found with a roll of platinum foil (maybe trying to sell it or something...I can't remember) and no one could figure out where it came from. And we managed to get it back. It turned out the vendor shipped it in a flimsy carboard box. ( I wonder if anyone got fired over that screwup?)

Ahh, thanks for the correction. Definitely got that one wrong. It is interesting to see that other jurisdictions had similar policies but didn't see an increase in theft.It is interesting to see how the same policy plays out in different regions. If one sees an increase in theft but no strict punishment then it can snowball, especially when combined with higher rates of homelessness.