I could say a lot about this. Texas has deplorable infrastructure. People keep moving here for the low taxes, making things worse. Fox Business will explain. The city in the headline is Austin.

Texas city faces second boil water notice in a year, residents ridicule ‘third-world’ conditions

There is lots of discussion about “inflation” these days. Inflation here is taken to mean rising prices. Of course, we have seen the prices of lots of things rise at ridiculous amounts over the years. I’m thinking of things like health care and education, which have gone up dramatically compared to people’s average earnings.

The other part of the inflation equation is wages. This leads to the famous Wage Price Spiral. Of course, lots of wages have gone up quite a bit over the years. I’m thinking of CEO wage inflation here. Nobody has been concerned about that.

So to be more specific, the inflation fear being discussed is that the average American workers are going to make more money and this could increase prices for the things they want to buy. The solution? Raise interest rates, put people out of work and make sure wages stop rising. If you want to know why wages in the US, at least at the bottom end, stagnated for the last few decades you have to look no further than this Fed policy, championed by Libertarian stalwarts like Alan Greenspan. Robert Reich explains it better than I can.

The Fed is about to raise interest rates and shaft American workers – again

A good interview with one of the former ERCOT members. He makes it clear that the problem was specific to gas pipelines and the political influence of their owners. He also says renewables are a big part of the answer for Texas. As long as the oil and gas crowd own Texas politics (and politicians) I don’t see any significant changes coming.

Former ERCOT vice chair explains what actually went wrong during February 2021 freeze

Years ago some Libertarian friends introduced me to the idea of the Tragedy of the Commons. I wasn’t aware until now that this idea was old but was popularized by a paper from 1968. As dogma, it really is questionable, since common resources in societies have existed as long a societies themselves. Yet Tragedy of the Commons became a sort of rallying cry for privitazition of public resources, at least in post-war America. I only recently became aware of the counterpoint to this idea, a Nobel Prize winning work by Ostrom, which gets much less attention. An article from Aeon which focuses on game preserves in Africa and how groups organize to conserve and share reaources.

The miracle of the commons

A good read from Al Jazeera about south Louisiana. I had an Aunt (on my mother’s side) who claimed we were related to Jean Lafitte. And there are lots of oyster people on my father’s side of the family.

On the trail of a pirate

Not quite sure what to make of this one. Some medical professionals in Wisconsin took better offers from a competing hospital. Their employer is trying to block their move and forcing them to keep working in their current positions. And doesn’t seem to be looking to match their new offers. I suppose the American medical system is abusive and predatory, but it seems to be turning on it’s doctors and nurses.

What to know about the battle over Wisconsin health care workers now playing out in court

Ive been a critic of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies from the start. My main complaints are two. First, crypto doesn’t solve any problem I have. I am quite happy to use other traditional electronic transactions, like, uh, credit cards. Secondly, I have no idea how to value a bitcoin or other currency. I can value stocks, bonds, options and other realiity-based assets, including government currencies. This all seems well established and mostly on the up and up. It is also policed, which I suppose some people consider a negative.

I am less informed perhaps on the details of how all the crypto financial plumbing works. A good article in Jacobin goes into detail about the necessary mechanisms for converting to and from crypto to traditional currency. If this doesn’t worry you, then I suppose nothing will.

Cryptocurrency Is a Giant Ponzi Scheme

My father was a photographer. When I was growing up his bread and butter was school pictures. Part of his business was all sorts of freebies for the schools. Desk calendars printed with his company name were popular with the teachers and secretaries. He also made name plates for doors and desks. I spent many summers over a sort of engraving machine that made name plates from blank pieces of plastic.

Another thing that became popular was photo ID cards. To make things simpler, he began to use instant film which was popular at the time. It was expensive, but it mostly went to waste, with a single small head shot in the middle of the photo that had to be cut out and glued to the card. My father imagined a way to save some costs by putting multiple photos on a piece of instant film. He has a family friend build a prototype and he began to use it. He also had a lawyer friend file a patent on the idea.

This was probably in the very early 1970s. I remember it almost 50 years later because I have been in the process of scanning in old family photos. A few weeks ago I ran across photos of the prototype.

I was very young, but I remember my father licensed the patent to the maker of the instant film. They also made instant film cameras and I recall my father bragging to a friend that he was getting $5 for every camera they made that put multiple photos on a piece of instant film. It wasn’t long before these camera turned up at the !ocal drivers license bureau, and I’m assume at other similar places around the country and around the world.

I also remember some phone conversations later on, where my father complained that he had stopped receiving royalty checks, then him telling a friend that the Big Instant Film Company told him he would have to sue them. I remember him telling a friend that he made lots of money and wasn’t going to pursue it. I was just a kid and I remember it made me mad. I remember telling myself that one day I was going to make enough money to go after the Big Instant Film and Camera Company and make them pay my father whatever they owed him.

Over the years I mostly forgot about this little piece of family history. Except every few years when I went into the DMV for a new driver’s licence and saw their cameras. But the Instant Film and Camera Company went broke in what is even today considered a specular downfall. They did not see digital cameras coming and almost over night film and instant film companies disappeared. There wouldn’t be anyone left for me to sue, even if I wanted to.

I became an engineer and had some patents of my own. One day doing an on line search on my last name I realized I didn’t see my father’s camera patent out there. Maybe the patent never went through. I didn’t give it much thought. Perhaps there never was a patent. A few years ago I did another search and it did turn up. I suppose it took a while to backfill the old patents. There is was, US3772977A. Titled Camera with Multiple Exposure Feature.

I still can’t help but wonder about the Famous Instant Film and Camera Company and what they were thinking when they decided to stiff a small business man like that. I like to think it led straight to their downfall, a technology company mistreating the people who create their technology.

The move by some university endowments to not invest in oil and gas is being attacked. Already in Texas it is basically against the law to not invest in oil and gas. Think about that for a moment. Private investment is now being forced into oil and gas, even if it is considered a bad investment. Other states like West Virginia are following suit.

The Oil Industry Is Terrified of College Kids

No lockdowns and a small fraction of the death rate in the US. How? The “Three C’s”.