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There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Group Therapy (page 52 of 81)

June 6, 2010

The first word in “free enterprise” is “free” — how economic fallacies are deployed to frustrate human liberty.

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

In a comment to my post on the NAR’s most recent attempts to rape the taxpayers, Michael Cook set forth a number of subtle economic fallacies. I am not picking on Michael. He is simply repeating Marxist propaganda that is ubiquitous, more’s the pity. But I thought it were well to take these claims apart, to illustrate how these kinds of fallacious arguments are used to frustrate human liberty. I’m taking this to a separate post because the comments thread on the original post is already wildly off topic.

So: Start here, quoting from Michael’s comment:

The very capitalist machine everyone here loves was bolstered by the use of slaves.

This is simply false, not alone simply by definition. The first word in “free enterprise” is “free.” Transactions in a free economy are always mutually-voluntary. If someone is being coerced, what is occurring is a crime, not an honest trade. Every modern economy we can speak of is in some way a form of socialism — a criminal conspiracy harnessing the power of the state to advantage certain people at the expense of the others. Slavery is of a piece with this pattern, although it predates modern economies by many millennia. Moreover, it was the free enterprise that was suffered to exist under modern Rotarian Socialist governments that finally rid the civilized world of chattel slavery. To be fair, this miracle was effected not by a moral awakening but simply because slavery is a lot less efficient than is investing wisely in fixed and human capital. In any case, slavery and free enterprise are mutually-exclusive phenomena.

History is wrought with takings back to the Egyptians, Roman and Greeks.

The same fallacious argument repeated, only this time with respect to land and portable wealth. Theft happens, but theft is not wealth creation. Consumable portable wealth quite literally turns into shit in no time. Mineral wealth and baubles can retain their exchange value, but these are static values. It is not possible to cultivate stolen gold or rubies. And stolen land or livestock is only productive of future wealth by means of intelligent husbandry.

Neither of these crimes — Read more

June 4, 2010

Unchained melody: Seven nights in Eire by Reckless Kelly

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The video is not just visually bereft, it’s also riven with misspellings. But the song is great fun, most appropriate for a Friday evening.

Here is a Pandora radio station built from the Reckless Kelly style of alt.country — rock ‘n’ roll instrumentation with rich saw-tooth voices lamenting intricately-detailed tragedies. This is what country music can and should be, when it’s not trying to sell beer and tampons. This is good art — pure, simple, brutal.

June 3, 2010

Bubba cools out in the cold

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

News is not my thing, but sometimes it falls into your lap.

That’s what Bubba did — literally.

He was half in the bag and he stumbled and tripped and landed his sloppy self right on me.

For a while he just laid half across my lap, grinning stupidly at the sky, his arms flailing, directing traffic for the stars. He looked at me and his smile weakened. He said, “Ain’t this the shits?” Then he belched. The smell was… unforgettable.

He sat up and slouched on the bench on his own weight, throwing his arm across my shoulder like an old friend. His bouffant gray hair was a mess, finger-raked into deep furrows. The skin of his face was a greenish white and it hung on him like an old sheet. Like the last time I saw him, he was wearing a pink chenille bathrobe embroidered with the initials ‘HRC’. His pockets were stuffed with paper tissues and Big Mac wrappers.

I had been watching him for a while. It was a cold night and I was bundled up on a bench in Lafayette Park, across from the White House. There were news crews camped out over there, of course, and Bubba had been wandering from crew to crew, trying to get someone to pay attention to him. He had gone through the Mood Cycle of the Mentally Adrift: Bravado, self-effacement, supplication, disturbingly plaintive supplication, anger, rage, distressingly uncontrolled rage, resignation and finally a good-humored kind of drunken aplomb. It was in this frame of mind — fatalism amused by its own futility — that he landed in my lap.

“Gotta laugh, don’tcha’?” He hiccoughed.

I shrugged.

“Sure you do! You can run, but you can’t hide! My ol’ granddaddy usta say that. O’ sinner man, where you gonna run to? They made me sing that ol’ hymn ever’ Sunday, and I usta just smile behind my hymnal. I thought I knew better. Right up to the bitter end, I thought I knew better.”

I said nothing. I really, really wanted Bubba to take his arm off of my shoulder.

So of course he pulled me Read more

June 2, 2010

Mary Canary on her way to feed the pigeons

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

“I married myself a quiet man. He told me so himself, many times. When he was drunk, he’d shout it to the world.”

Mary Canary said that. She says stuff like that just to make sure no one’s listening. And no one on the bus was, no one except me.

And Mary Canary is not her real name. It’s Maria Carnase, and I had to work on her quite a while to get that out of her. She’s not quite homeless, not quite penniless, not quite elderly and only mildly odorous. She’s bone thin and desiccated, and her flowered tent dress fit her like a tent. Her hair is not quite white and she wears it under a net. She had on cheap sneakers and compression hose bunched up at the ankles; seemingly, there was no flesh on her legs for the hose to compress. She has a bus pass and a mission. The bus pass is paid for by the taxpayers, but the mission is all her own.

“I like the sound of a pedal steel guitar. It makes me think of a cat curling up for an ear-scratching.”

A college girl with a black ponytail stared hard at her paperback book. An office geek whistled softly through his teeth and looked every which way except at Mary Canary.

“When it gets too quiet, I can barely hear. I can’t hear myself sigh for the roar of the silence.”

A very tall, very thin black man got up and walked to the front of the bus. He stood hanging from a pole as if he were about to get off, but he didn’t.

“If I look behind my eyes, I can see the naked face of god.”

A portly little man who had gained a pound or two since he’d bought his suit adjusted and adjusted and adjusted his necktie.

And Mary Canary said, “I think you’re noticing me.” She said that to me, of course.

“Yes, I am.”

“You’re not supposed to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Nobody does.”

I shook my head and smiled a gentle smile. “Everybody does. And you know it.”

She shook her head, too, but it Read more

June 1, 2010

Dear National Association of Realtors: How about you fetid, rotting pusswads do something patriotic and get off the taxpayer’s tit…?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

To say the truth, I’m kindasorta liking the Tea Party movement — as far as it goes. I don’t think we’re at a turning of the tides — although I can at least hope that we might be before too long. Any sort of discussion of individual rights is a good thing, but it doesn’t do, I don’t think, to expect too much philosophically from these folks just yet.

Consider: The self-anointed “progressives” were committed, knowing Marxists who developed an incremental strategy for razing individualism in the United States and raising collectivism in its place.

By contrast, the Tea Partyites seem to me to be largely unconscious Marxists promoting a grab-bag of unconnected tactics generally aimed at temporarily delaying the “progress” of the “progressives.”

In other words, the true Marxists know what they want and the (sad-to-say) clueless Marxists portend, at least thus far, to be nothing more than a flat tire on the road to mass extermination — the unvarying end-consequence of Marxism.

That could change, but only if the Tea Party folks engage their battle philosophically and not just tactically.

How will we be able to tell when they’ve done this? One quick bellwether would be for them to get their hands out of the public till, to the extent that they can. I do understand that many people have so mismanaged their finances — at the behest of the “progressives” — that they can only remain alive by sucking on the taxpayer’s tit. That’s sad, and I would follow a different course in the same circumstances.

But many of the Tea Partyites accepting government checks could easily do without them. We’ll know they’re serious — are you listening Drs. Ron and Rand Paul? — when they publicly refuse to accept even one penny that has been stolen from innocent taxpayers.

That’s a debate for another day, though. Here’s a little something closer to hand. Today I was spammed by the professional sucktits at the National Association of Realtors entreating me to help them rape the taxpayers — again. Apparently, all human progress will be stopped cold if we do not continue to reward Class-A morons Read more

May 29, 2010

“If wind and solar power were practical, entrepreneurs would invest in it. There would be no need for government to take money from taxpayers and give it to people pushing green products.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

John Stossel on the phractured physics of “green” energy:

Maybe the electric car is the next big thing?

“Electric cars are the next big thing, and they always will be.”

There have been impressive headlines about electric cars from my brilliant colleagues in the media. The Washington Post said, “Prices on electric cars will continue to drop until they’re within reach of the average family.”

That was in 1915.

In 1959, The New York Times said, “Electric is the car of the tomorrow.”

In 1979, The Washington Post said, “GM has an electric car breakthrough in batteries, now makes them commercially practical.”

I’m still waiting.

“The problem is very simple,” Bryce said. “It’s not political will. It’s simple physics. Gasoline has 80 times the energy density of the best lithium ion batteries. There’s no conspiracy here of big oil or big auto. It’s a conspiracy of physics.”

Yes, Stossel is pop-science. You can only go so far with him. But this may be the only article you will see that explains why so many of the highly-touted environmentaloid “solutions” are pipe-dreams, based in wishful thinking and a math education that foundered on the shoals of Algebra. Read the whole thing.

May 27, 2010

Ubiquitous Bloodhound finally makes his break

by

Realtor, Peripatetic Iconoclast

Author website

All of us, proprietors of this kennel included, have known that Odysseus was destined for the big time. Well, he finally got his break! Look for our pal anywhere a gorgeous face is needed.

It's midnight. Do you know where your Bloodhound is?

True confession: I was hiding in the bushes at a webinar (name withheld to protect the perps) and discovered PhotoFunia while waiting for the inevitable “buy today! Special deal just for our attendees! Super special deal if you get your broker to bring more lambs agents  to the slaughter!”  Well anyway, I found PhotoFunia at this webinar.  It is free and it is fun. There really was a pony in there!  I hope you enjoy.

May 27, 2010

Like bugs trapped in amber, take a close look at Rotarian Socialist cockroaches and the pusillanimous pissants who make them possible.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is from today’s Arizona Republic:

Businesses that send employees door to door through Phoenix neighborhoods have jumped into the discussion over whether the city should require peddlers to be licensed before ringing doorbells.

Phoenix is the only major city in the Valley that does not require some sort of business license for door-to-door solicitors. In the past year, council members have been getting complaints about bad behavior by people who sell door to door.

On Tuesday, about 25 residents and business representatives gathered at the Phoenix Public Library’s main branch for the first of seven public hearings the city will hold on the issue.

Of course we need a new law. Why should fully-grown adults be expected to confront and respond to “bad behavior” without Big Brother to scare away the bad guys and Big Mother to kiss their boo-boos?

But wait. There’s more.

About half of those attending represented areas that are fed up with solicitors. The rest represented businesses that had a range of opinions on regulation.

This is a fact: Business “regulations” are written by and for the businesses putatively being “regulated.” They put the Rotarian in Rotarian Socialism. Hide and watch:

“We are in favor of regulation and monitoring of door-to-door solicitors,” said Magnolia Lee, who described herself as business consultant who represents a small group called Sales, Solicitation and Distribution United.

“There needs to be some sort of standard for professional and courteous conduct,” she said.

What’s the standard? Me-and-mine, not thee-and-thine. The “regulations” will advantage Lee’s clients by disadvantaging their competitors. This is the objective sought by all “regulation.”

But we’re not done yet:

Marc Scher, government relations director for the Phoenix Association of Realtors, said his group favors licensing people who ring doorbells to sell products but wants any new law to exempt real estate sales people seeking listings.

“Realtors have been going and knocking on doors and introducing themselves to their neighbors,” he said. “There has to be a differentiation between selling a product and a relationship.”

This would the the anti-dog-eat-dog rule, straight out of Atlas Shrugged. Steal the other guy’s dinner, but keep your mitts off mine! Makes you proud to be a Realtor, Read more

May 26, 2010

Using Captcha to Capture Idiotic Real Estate Agents

by

Realtor, Renaissance Man

Author website

A CAPTCHA is a challenge-response test most often placed within web forms to determine whether the user is human. The purpose of CAPTCHA is to block form submissions by spambots, which are automated scripts that post spam content everywhere they can.

Somebody’s Got to Stop the Stupid

Okay, a bit of a rant.  But I’ll bet you’ll want to jump on the proverbial bandwagon once I’m exhausted, spent and fallen down in subluxed joy after finishing this. The outlet for my frustration came courtesy of a Facebook comment by Mary McKnight. “Thanks, Mary.”

If there’s one theme that Bloodhound blog has perpetuated, promulgated and promoted, it’s excellence. A close second would probably be splendor. Tom Johnson perhaps put his arms around what I’m about to rant a little over tonight, and he did it with this post about a famous Greek historical event.  The Spartans were professional soldiers. They studied their craft. They studied their history. They studied their enemy. They sought fellowship with one another, coupled by a sense of duty to excellence and splendor.

Oh, how I would that my compatriots in the profession of real estate were to embrace the Spartan ethos. And if not, at least an ethos. My encounters of late with real estate agents have left me thinking they lack not only a distinctive character, not only fundamental values, but simply a lack of any character, training or professionalism whatsoever.  In short, I’ve had my fill recently with agents who have no common sense, no commitment to excellence, no knowledge commensurate with their duties, no bleeping right to be called a professional real estate agent, and certainly no right to practice the longstanding legal requirements of agency.

I’ve had agents not call me back.  Then, then don’t call me back.   They tell me to sign contracts that they know have errors in them.  They provide inaccurate information to me about contracts they represent. They cant’ find documents. They can’t find the time to do what needs to be done. They can’t find their own assholes, honest. What they can Read more

May 26, 2010

Capitalist going green: Why the hate during my quest to go paperless?

by

Realtor, Guerilla Technologist

Author website

If you’re an artist or a tree hunger, you may want to read this post and re-tweet or repost this on your left wing blog while you’re probably still living in your parent’s basement trying to help save earth worms and maggots!  Hey artists of the world, after reading you may feel like you should be on the right, instead of the left (wink).  Does anyone every feel like when someone gives you literature or a brochure on products or even a simple appointment reminder slip from the doctor that you try everything in your power to be polite and kindly say, “No thank you, I can save that reminder in my phone” or even ask a sales rep to email you that brochure?

My story is simple.  I am a capitalist who is trying to go paperless.  Why would I need paper when I have a tablet pc and also receive email?  You see what I have been finding is that people in general take offense to the fact that I kindly decline their literature or appointment reminder slip.  Simply put, my life is organized all virtually.  As a matter of fact, I recently purchased a professional scanner the “Xerox documate 152”.  I simply scan all the closing papers to my hard drive and carbonite automatically backups up my hard drive daily.  I’m way more efficient and organized which allows me to close more deals and wow customer and enjoy my life more at the same time.

I do send out snail mail for marketing purposes yes, however, the real question I am trying to pry out of you right is do you see yourself going paperless (or near paperless) anytime soon?  If yes, describe how you think people will react towards if you kindly decline literature, ect, ect and as that is all be emailed to your email address for receive.

May 26, 2010

So Simple Even a Realtor Can Do It? – Fishing In Wells

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

“So simple even a Realtor can do it.”

Our old friend Russell Shaw wrote a post recently in which he made use of that quote. It comes from the well known Gary Keller book, Millionaire Real Estate Agent. Though I’ve not read it, that quote alone got it on my to-do list, if only to see what other nuggets might be lurking within.

I understand the sentiment. Even if we assume the expertise and knowledge it takes to produce results for buyers and sellers, without the ability to get yourself in front of folks who have the option of tellin’ you to stick it, all your skills will go unused. The best fisherman in the world won’t catch fish #1 casting his line down a well. He tends to prefer plyin’ his talents where the fish are likely to congregate. Go figure.

We humans tend to pull the wool over our own eyes. Having a plausible, even credible sounding reason for consistent abject failure is key to maintaining our perfect record of failing for very solid reasons. You know, we may fail, but it’s never due to anything we’ve done or failed to do, right? Right.

Beginning last week I began knockin’ down dominoes launching my company’s new infrastructure/marketing/return to San Diego. I ‘left’ SD almost seven years ago, as income property there was for those who either didn’t know what they were doing, were unaware of outa town options, had simply given up — or all of the above. My assessment back then, and until recently, was that it was akin to fishing in a well — it might be relaxing, but you were still gonna be eatin’ beans for dinner.

One of the dominoes knocked down this Monday was reintroducing myself to the local Board of Realtors (gulp) and the MLS. I was pleasantly surprised to learn they’ve followed Phoenix’s lead and become Mac friendly. Also, don’t know when this started, but one must now click a fob to access the MLS now. I joined again cuz I needed other fishermen to know where my fish can be found. Read more

May 26, 2010

What caused the housing crisis? Perverse government incentives.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Form an academic paper by George Mason University Economics Professor Russell Roberts:

Beginning in the mid-1990s, home prices in many American cities began a decade-long climb that proved to be an irresistible opportunity for investors. Along the way, a lot of people made a great deal of money. But by the end of the first decade of the twenty- first century, too many of these investments turned out to be much riskier than many people had thought. Homeowners lost their houses, financial institutions imploded, and the entire financial system was in turmoil.

How did this happen? Whose fault was it? Some blame capitalism for being inherently unstable. Some blame Wall Street for its greed, hubris, and stupidity. But greed, hubris, and stupidity are always with us. What changed in recent years that created such a destructive set of decisions that culminated in the collapse of the housing market and the financial system?

In this paper, I argue that public-policy decisions have perverted the incentives that naturally create stability in financial markets and the market for housing. Over the last three decades, government policy has coddled creditors, reducing the risk they face from financing bad investments. Not surprisingly, this encouraged risky investments financed by borrowed money. The increasing use of debt mixed with housing policy, monetary policy, and tax policy crippled the housing market and the financial sector. Wall Street is not blameless in this debacle. It lobbied for the policy decisions that created the mess.

In the United States we like to believe we are a capitalist society based on individual responsibility. But we are what we do. Not what we say we are. Not what we wish to be. But what we do. And what we do in the United States is make it easy to gamble with other people’s money—particularly borrowed money—by making sure that almost everybody who makes bad loans gets his money back anyway. The financial crisis of 2008 was a natural result of these perverse incentives. We must return to the natural incentives of profit and loss if we want to prevent future crises.

May 23, 2010

The greatest risk of resurrgent statism is that we will forsake the unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Arthur C. Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute in The Washington Post:

The new statism in America, made possible by years of drift and accelerated by the panic over the economic crisis, threatens to make us permanently poorer. But that is not the greatest danger. The real risk is that in the new culture war, we will forsake the third unalienable right set out in our Declaration of Independence: the pursuit of happiness.

Free enterprise brings happiness; redistribution does not. The reason is that only free enterprise brings earned success.

Earned success involves the ability to create value honestly — not by inheriting a fortune, not by picking up a welfare check. It doesn’t mean making money in and of itself. Earned success is the creation of value in our lives or in the lives of others. Earned success is the stuff of entrepreneurs who seek value through innovation, hard work and passion. Earned success is what parents feel when their children do wonderful things, what social innovators feel when they change lives, what artists feel when they create something of beauty.

Money is not the same as earned success but is rather a symbol, important not for what it can buy but for what it says about how people are contributing and what kind of difference they are making. Money corresponds to happiness only through earned success.

Not surprisingly, unearned money — while it may help alleviate suffering — carries with it no personal satisfaction. Studies of lottery winners, for instance, show that after a brief period of increased happiness, their moods darken as they no longer derive the same enjoyment from the simple pleasures in life, and as the glow of buying things wears off.

The same results emerge with other kinds of unearned income — welfare payments, for example. According to the University of Michigan’s 2001 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, going on the welfare rolls increases by 16 percent the likelihood of a person saying that she or he has felt inconsolably sad over the past month. Of course, the misery of welfare recipients probably goes well beyond the check itself. Nonetheless, studies Read more

May 22, 2010

Everything the ancient Greeks warned us about democracy has come true in modern Greece — and right here in River City as well

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Mark Steyn in Macleans:

Traditionally, a bank is a means by which old people with capital lend to young people with ideas. But the advanced democracies with their mountains of sovereign debt are in effect old people who’ve blown through their capital and are all out of ideas looking for young people flush enough to bail them out. And the idea that it might be time for the spendthrift geezers to change their ways butts up against their indestructible moral vanity. Last year, President Sarkozy said that the G20 summit provided “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give capitalism a conscience.” European capitalism may have a conscience. It’s not clear it has a pulse. And, actually, when you’re burning Greek bank clerks to death in defence of your benefits, your “conscience” isn’t much in evidence, either.

Let us take it as read that Greece is an outlier. As waggish officials in Brussels and Strasbourg will tell you, it only snuck into the EU due to some sort of clerical error. It’s a cesspit of sloth and corruption even by Mediterranean standards. On my last brief visit, Athens was a visibly decrepit dump: a town with a handful of splendid ancient ruins surrounded by a multitude of hideous graffiti-covered contemporary ruins. If you were going to cut one “advanced” social democracy loose and watch it plunge into the abyss pour encourager les autres, it would be hard to devise a better candidate than Greece.

And yet and yet . . . riot-wracked Athens isn’t that much of an outlier. Greece’s 2010 budget deficit is 12.2 per cent of GDP; Ireland’s is 14.7. Greece’s debt is 125 per cent of GDP; Italy’s is 117 per cent. Greece’s 65-plus population will increase from 18 per cent in 2005 to 25 per cent in 2030; Spain’s will increase from 17 per cent to 25 per cent. As lazy, feckless, squalid, corrupt and violent as Greece undoubtedly is, it’s not that untypical. It’s where the rest of Europe’s headed, and Japan and North America shortly thereafter. About half the global economy is living beyond not only its means but its diminished number of children’s means.

Instead Read more

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Inventing Real Estate 2.0

Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

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