Wager

[degringolade]

 

Romanticism / James Ward/ An Overshot Mill in Wales (Aberdulais)

Lots going through my head this morning.  Need to sit down and sip some coffee before I get down to it.  It’s Thursday and that means I have been letting things slip in the place here for a couple of days and when I get home tonight, there is some chorin’ to do.  So right now I am surveying the minor damage and deferred maintenance of my lowly hovel and have to decide to commit to a half hour of low-intensity labor this evening to put things right.  

Spent some time yesterday at work reading JMG’s Wednesday post.  Sounds like he is tanned rested and ready after taking January off.  I did read the article in Wired that he spoke of and laughed out loud.  I made a similar bet with a friend years and years ago.  The difference is not that that I lost (I had taken a position that the America that we knew in the 1980’s would not exist in 2015).  The big difference is that I paid the bet.  Instead of the $100.00 that was the original bet, I offered 5 oz of silver.  Joe felt that this was an adequate payment along with the bragging rights conveyed by the receipt of the payment.

(As an aside, Kirkpatrick Sale is a fucking asshole; you don’t welsh on bets.  But, as JMG and the article pointed out, Bill Patrick is a dickweed too, so I guess that an asshole stiffing an asshole doesn’t rise to being a mortal sin)

But I think that if I had the prescience I have so desired for years, I would have set the payment date to 2016.  With all that was going on in December of that year, I think I could have made a better argument for at least a “push”.   

But the piece by JMG and the bet itself got me thinkin’.  

I think that JMG’s central thesis in this piece (or for that matter, his whole way of looking at things) is valid.  M is a negative number and that ain’t gonna change.  But the slope is not of the nature that the length of a single lifetime is adequate for a valid evaluation.  I was born into the time of the American Imperial Apogee.  I graduated high school in 1972.  You could argue that I was of the “Peak America” generation.  The trouble is that being at the peak means that it is all downhill from there. 

But the downhill is still pretty damn sweet.  I think that things will be fine for my remaining years.  I think that my kids will probably work out just fine, the traction will start when my grandchildren (currently non-existent) start entering society.  

I will offer Joe another bet.  But this one will be more rational.  When we are in Sisters this year and every year following, steaks (must be greater than 20 ounce porterhouse) will be purchased by the loser of the proposition:

The state of the Union in the USA has made a net improvement over the previous year. (yes/no)

At the completion of the meal, the loser gets to choose his next year's position for the bet. Ties are allowed and probably encouraged. (after all, we do live in the times of participation trophies)

Since I offered the wager, Joe gets to choose the position for this year.