I know you are but what am I?

[pyesetz]

Fred Pohl is ninety years old.  When he was half his current age, he wrote:

Like many of my colleagues, I regret to say that as a kid I was always something of an intellectual snob.  (I do not wish to discuss what I am now.)

He also wrote about what it was like to live in 1933 New York City:

Men were selling apples in the streets.  The unemployed stood in bread lines and prayed for snow — that meant there would be work shoveling it off the sidewalks.  Roosevelt had just been elected President but hadn’t yet taken office — Inauguration Day, still geared to the stagecoach schedules of 1789, had not yet been moved up from March 4.  Banks were going broke.

The economy in the USA is now heading past the Great Depression (very bad 1929-1937, still bad until 1941) and towards the Long Depression (very bad 1873-79, still bad until 1896).

So why aren't more banks going broke during this depression?  Here is a somewhat-amusing Marxist explanation.  Don't miss the poop joke at position 5:10!

Comments

[shiver-raccoon.livejournal.com]

But he's saying "get out of real estate" and you're getting in!

But I'm getting in to cheap acreage, not overpriced condos in Vancouver, where the asking prices are dropping $10k each month. Further, owning land would save me camping fees, so even if the price drops slightly, I'm still ahead.

The local situation in K-W is rather different from the national averages.

Does this mean that KW has finally transitioned from a manufacturing town to a technology town? I guess so!

What will kill Canadian real estate?

Overpriced Vancouver condos? I doubt that "kill" is the right word here; Canada seems to be in a much better economic state than the US.

Any chance you could get cable or DSL routed to your new clearing-in-the-woods?

Both have distance limitations; we'll see if I even have electricity! Besides, satellite is fairly good; it's just cellular that sucks in rural areas.

[pyesetz]

Does this mean that KW has finally transitioned from a manufacturing town to a technology town? I guess so!
Well, it's incomplete, but the transition is clearly in progress.  In Waterloo, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a RIM office.  Elliot Fung is running for mayor in Wilmot—he was born on a farm but now he works at RIM.  It seems to be the RIM workers who are driving up real estate prices in Baden.  Goodbye, Manulife!  Hello, RIM!

we'll see if I even have electricity!
If you run your own generating plant, would this mean more frequent bouts of inability-to-work due to power failures?  I'm not clear about the extent to which I'm supposed to have an opinion on your choice of work location.

Besides, satellite is fairly good; it's just cellular that sucks in rural areas.
If your ping times are poor or your cell signal drops out a lot, doesn't that mean that an hour of charged time contains more "waiting" and less "working"?

[shiver-raccoon.livejournal.com]

If you run your own generating plant, would this mean more frequent bouts of inability-to-work due to power failures?

Likely the other way around; between solar and generator, I should be better off than flakey power lines that run for miles.

doesn't that mean that an hour of charged time contains more "waiting" and less "working"

That's factored into the "duty cycle". Besides, other than the occasional Bugzilla headache, everything I do is local these days.