Adversarial Capitalism

 I woke up at 4. I guess I needed the sleep. Last night I had a lot of fun messing around on the shinobue. I guess I spent over $50 on the two flute books and between those two books and the shellac sticks I ordered, it's closer to $75.  So assuming I don't spend any more, it's a bit over $50 going into the bank account for this week. 

I had coffee etc. and realized I really needed to get going if I'm going to carry out my plan for the week, so I left here at a bit after 6. I dropped off two bags of trash in a can and went to Nijiya. "Blondie" was there and I gave him the copy of "Pau Hana" and he was really thankful. I told him the author was of Japanese descent so it's going to talk about the Japanese plantation workers but the Chinese workers were right in there with them. I told him about how, when I was in high school, there was the yearly mandatory visit to the sugar mill because if you got good grades, you might get a job there. 

I just got a can of coffee as a reason to have stopped by, and had a sit-down and drank that. I'd made the mistake of riding onto the sidewalk to park my bike up the ramp that's a bit closer, which was a huge mistake as there's a little "canyon" designed to trap a bike or a wheelchair, etc., and I'd damn near wiped out. A lively stream of cussing later, I'd locked up the bike OK and after my coffee, riding away, I realized that I was lucky I didn't wreck the front wheel. It was probably that I'd finally put a good tire on it so now both wheels have the same tires as the rental electric bikes have. That tire protected the wheel. If I'd had the old tire on there still, I'd probably have pinch flatted and messed up the wheel also and had to limp home. It's a good thing I've got a spare front wheel here because if I'm going to wreck a wheel chances are it will be the front. 

I dropped off gallon Ziploc bags full of OTC medications at the little free libraries and then rode down to Wal-Mart. I had $45 in cash on me and added up prices carefully as I shopped. I was able to get all sorts of things and had $4 left over so that worked out perfectly. 

I noticed the CoinStar was in use so I pretended to be very interested in the display case full of computer mice, cables, burner phones, etc until they left. Then I wheeled my cart right over there and Lo and behold, the little hopper was full of coins the CoinStar had refused. I scooped them up quickly, stuffing them into my pocket and waltzed on out of there. 

I rode back with my goodies, both bought and found, to the light rail station by Paseo de San Antonio and was there just in time for a train. It was windy as hell and a bit cold, and I got on a train to ride up to Karina station to ride back down here, downwind. The train was full of bums and derelicts, and one "square" guy who looked like he's from Asia, who got in, sat down quietly near the front of the train, and was probably terrified. Welcome to America, sucker. 

We had to get off and change cars at Civic Center, then went on up to Karina. I rode over to Tom's to see if he was in and he was so we shot the bull for a while. I'm trying to convince him to move to the Big Island. Land's cheap there and there are a lot of Alaskans who gravitate to Hawaii. I told him there's land even I could afford, and that I'd seriously thought about it although Oahu's the only place for me, I'd decided. But I have an old friend who's on the Big Island... 

We talked about finances in general and I described how I'd realized, back in 2003, that the only way to get out from under the debt I had was to go completely off-grid, as in street homeless, for 7 years. That, back in Hawaii, would have been ugly and I realized I had a chance to work my way out of debt if I returned to the mainland. And I was; I was working my way out of debt. I started monitoring all money going in and out, paid high-interest things first, and I really was working my way out of debt, as well as working on the very beginning of having busking skills. 

What had changed everything was the crash of 2008. But until that scrambled everything for almost everyone, I really was working my way down out of debt and now, I'm working toward being able to move home and have some security. 

Tom offered me dinner and to watch the Twilight Zone marathon and that was nice but I said I have something big to cook for dinner and he said Yeah he's about to call it a night too, and he asked me about some things I was able to answer, so all in all it was a good visit. 

It was getting dark so I didn't even put the bike lights on but just rode down Rogers Avenue, going with the wind so I could go really fast. One zombie, messing around with his zombie car, made some remark as I zoomed by, giving a wide berth, no doubt something about being disappointed that I'd come up and gone by so fast he didn't have a chance to attack. Do I ever hate the undead. 

I got in here, buttoned things up, and that's that for the day. I don't plan to go anywhere tomorrow. I went through the coins and besides two 5 pence coins, a Singaporean dime, a 1955 wheat penny, a car wash token, and a "coin" battery, it was all normal change. It was still about $2 though. 

Reading Reddit last night, I came across an interesting term. Adversarial capitalism. The writer talked about being in Korea and seeing the reactions of Americans who came to work there. After they realized they were in an economic regime that "wasn't trying to eat them" they didn't want to leave. American society operates under adversarial capitalism, where everyone is everyone else's adversary. That's certainly how Ebay handles things between buyers and sellers, and before I went into business myself, that's how I thought businesses are with each other. Instead, it's largely cooperative, as business owners find ways to "step around" each other instead of confronting each other head-on, and there's a lot of referring customers to each others' businesses if you don't have what they need but one of your competitors might. This shows that this modern capitalism isn't human nature but is artificially imposed on us.