Note: Not actual family vehicle. Too new, for starters.
My father is technically a "Baby Boomer," but was born in rural northern Michigan to parents who had struggled through the Depression. None of that hippie crap for him.
What happened is that he acquired scrounging skills necessary to survive in a part of the country that hasn't seen a boom since logging was a thing.
Also, my wife thinks Dad's a Jedi with persuasive powers beyond those of normal mortals.
The short of it is, I will be able to get the 5000 pound paperweight's transmission replaced for $1100, parts and labor included.
"Those labor costs are too high. You want to charge less."
Family and good neighbors--now more than ever, we need each other. And I thank God for having both.
I have been screaming for years now that far more important than money or anything else, is "social capital" to a person. All the money in the world is a poor substitute for it, and the poorest man with plenty of it is rich indeed. I mean it's literally the whole point of "It's a Wonderful Life."
ReplyDeleteWhat really annoys people is that there is NO shortcut or quick way to acquire it. Elsewhere I wrote that the current SJW madness is an attempt to apply marxism to social capital. And because it is more valuable and useful than actual capital, the marxism applied to it is more wicked and dangerous than the classic variety.
(A lot of God's law really boils down to wise investment advice on social capital.)
I concur.
ReplyDeleteOrganically-built trust and connections between people are the capillaries of society. It can't live without them. Identity politics severs those capillaries and tries to replace them with perpendicular stents that attempt to reorganize society in a purely artificial manner. All it will do is kill the body over time--and there will be blood all over the place.
Oh you're absolutely right, Dale, but I mean to go further than that.
ReplyDeleteIt's indeed what bugs me about so many charity efforts nowadays - they believe you can just throw money at the problem when, at best, it's just a quick band-aid. True, actual help would be helping the poor grow their social capital. Jesus outright talked about this with His parable of the shrewd manager (which is just about using monetary capital to gain social capital).
This is absolutely where the church - all churches - should shine. After all it's how cults operate. They just find someone who is low in social capital at the moment (like someone who has recently moved or is going through a troublesome patch in their life) and then "invests" social connections in the person for a period until eventually, the target is a full fledged cult member because any attempt to leave the cult results in losing all their social capital again (and like we said - that's worse than losing all your money). That's also why cults recommend cutting out people in your life that disagree - they want to be the sole bank possessing all of your social capital for this very reason.
Because the government absolutely cannot do this in any way. It's as impossible as commanding the tide. Which is why all of those who try to use the government to cure poverty always fail.
And of course, we are born just as poor in social capital as we are in monetary capital. Thus the best chance any person has, is two parents investing in them, helping them develop SC over time - and if you have grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins all connected as well, your social investment opportunities grow. Thus why the worst thing for ANY community (of any time and any color and anywhere in the world) is to shatter and break families.
But you don't hear it talked about much because it's all hard. There's no quick fix or easy solution.