Four Pines

Rural Ways was atop Noah's Ark this week, where it found a curious collection of pines. In a single location there were ponderosa (Pinus ponderosa), pinyon (P. edulis), bristlecone (P. aristata), and limber (P. flexilis) pines. It is not rare to see ponderosa and pinyon intermingled on lower and mid elevation slopes. (It is, in fact, not rare to see ponderosa or pinyon anywhere in Utah.) It is a little rarer to find both limber and bristlecone together along a windy ridgeline, but to find all four in one spot has got to be worth noting. At least to us. Though even we realize that most well adjusted people living normal lives have more interesting things to think about.

Living Off the Land

Rural Ways was hiking in First Left Hand Canyon the other day. Many of the south and west facing slopes were covered with Oregon grape (Mahonia repens). Some of the patches were producing good fruit this year and Valerie mentioned that it would be nice to pick some for jam. Unfortunately, the berries are very small and it would take hours (days?) to find enough ripe fruits for even one batch of jam.

This is the problem with living off the land today. Thanks to the hyper-specialization of the global labor market, as well as the super-efficiency of big agriculture, it is best to work in the office and let someone else produce jam. In one hour of specialized office work, Rural Ways can earn enough to fund a week's worth of calories; in one week of picking berries, Rural Ways can probably produce one hour's worth of calories.

I'm not really complaining. I mean, the level of physical comfort (not to mention luxury) afforded by labor specialization and industrial farming is phenomenal. It has produced wealth (and obesity) for hundreds of millions of people. Rural Ways surely benefits from this. But, on the other hand, it probably hasn't produced much Oregon grape jam, and I'm not sure where to find it at the supermarket.

Can It Last the Season?

At Rural Ways we are often presented with the dilemma of "repair or replace." On the one hand, we are philosophically predisposed to maintaining our equipment over the long term. On the other hand, it can sometimes be more costly to repair something than it is to replace it. As a recent example of the latter, we had the chainsaw in the shop recently because the gas line was cracked and leaking. It cost $60 to repair the gas line. Yikes. At that rate, it would only take four or five repairs to exceed the value of a new saw. It must be some kind of Keynesian plot to stimulate consumer spending or something.

In any case, when a piece of our equipment becomes used and abused to the point that it seems unwise to continue spending on repairs, we start to plan for replacement. Part of that planning is to ask the question in the title above. That is, can we limp the broken one along for another year? Why spend our money now for something that we can live with for another week, another season, another year?

Right now, besides the saw, our lawn mower has reached the replacement point. One problem is that the air filter mounting bolt, which screws directly into the carburetor, has stripped out and no longer holds the air filter in place. I have remounted the filter using baling wire, but it isn't pretty. The motor also burns oil more quickly than it burns gas and stalls out periodically for no apparent reason. Hopefully we can make it last the season.

Three Trillion in Consumer Debt

At the end of June, The Economist ran a special section on debt. The section is entitled Repent at Leisure and is by Philip Coggan. The whole thing is worth reading. In discussing consumer debt, however, Mr. Coggan makes a point that Rural Ways finds troubling. It is asserted that, in contrast to the not too distant past, lenders today are just as much (if not more) responsible for consumer over-borrowing than the consumer himself. Mr. Coggan puts it this way: “Nowadays it is the lender as much as the borrower who is perceived to be at fault for extending credit to those who should never have been granted it.” Foolish, yes, but at fault? I’m not buying it (or borrowing it, either).

Not to launch into a speech about personal responsibility, but c’mon . . . it isn’t the banker that will have his car repossessed; it isn’t the mortgage company that will have her house foreclosed; it isn’t Mr. VISA that will have his cable TV shut-off. The consumer is the one who is a) in the best position to know what he or she can afford; b) going to suffer the consequences of his or her failure to repay; and c) a completely voluntary participant in the whole mess. We’ve been hearing it for a couple of years in the pop media: It is big business, predatory lenders, short sellers, and the rest of the bad people who are causing poor ol’ Mom and Pop to spend more than they can afford. Do Mom and Pop really want to claim that they don’t know what just happened?

Apparently so. Mr. Coggan illustrates his article by telling the story of a young gentleman who got in over his head by many tens of thousands of dollars and needed help from a credit counselor to come up with a plan “before the bailiffs arrived.” What was the man’s reason for the series of decisions that lead to his situation: “’[I]f they are going to give it to me, I must be able to afford it.’” This is nonsensical. “They” are not in a position to know and “they” are not going to suffer if “they” are wrong. I’ll admit that loan officers can be very smooth operators and they can act like your loving savior, but have we all given up our bullpoop meters? And wouldn’t it be better to say, “I got talked into something that was against my better judgment,” than to claim that I don’t have the ability (not to mention the responsibility) to just say, “no?”

(It would be like saying to the local grocer, “I don’t have the capability to select my food, please just give me whatever you think I should eat.” Pretty soon you are sick on spoiled dairy, moldy bread, and rotted vegetables. What? Are you going to say, “I figured that if Albertsons sent it over, it must be good for me?” That is right, you can’t possibly be expected to take responsibility for feeding yourself.)