Boiling frogs

How do we avoid the fate of the boiled frog?

When do the rules change?

In a football game, it is the two-minute warning. In investing it might be when the closing price of a stock drops below the 40-week-moving-average price or when quarterly revenues drop across a multitude of industries.

This is an intensely personal issue. Everybody will have a different answer. The most important thing is that you indelibly mark the "trigger looks like" into your brain because there will not be balloons and trumpets marking the occasion.

Everybody will have a different profile of "immediate actions" that will be their primary response. The ardent pacifist might purchase a gun. The miser might drain most of his money out of his IRA. The city-slicker might buy property and pick up a shovel and start a garden.

A few scenarios

For one person, the trigger came close when the Canadian media reported hundreds of mass-graves near schools that taught First Nations (Native American) children. The Brownshirt-thugs responded by fire-bombing churches across western Canada. The only thing lacking for that person was that the Brownshirts were not hunting and executing clergy.

A few key points:

• Fire is potentially a weapon of mass destruction and in urban areas or areas where conifers or tall grass grows (like western Canada), can rage uncontrollably.
• Churches/temples/mosques were traditionally neutral areas that were not targeted. They were granted the status of sanctuary.
• The information was twisted by the media. The academic findings were "anomalies in ground penetrating radar returns" which can be rotting roots, marmot dens or a host of other changes in soil density.

A second scenario (that I am totally making up) involves somebody who is attacked but successfully fends off their attacker. He reports it to the police.

Scenario 2.0 has the police being professional. Collecting information. Ensuring that the person who was attacked receives medical care. Providing feedback about the investigation to the victim. Maybe recovering some of the property. Promptly supplying the victim's insurance company with photos/evidence and police reports.

Scenario 2.1 has the police tossing the victim in jail for fighting back and harming the local entrepreneur who was just trying to make a living via small-scale wealth distribution. Medical attention is not provided in the jail. Cooperation with the insurance company is stonewalled.

A third scenario might be some arbitrary rate of inflation over a period of six months. What happens if prices across a broad market-basket of goods goes up by 25% over a period of 6 months? It might be bad for people on fixed incomes. It might be bad for normal people living near folks who depend on entitlements for their Doritos and Mountain Dew and suddenly their EBIT amount doesn't cover their needs.

A fourth scenario might be when random attacks at gas stations in certain areas become a regular occurrence. Maybe thugs demand protection money and bust your windshield if you don't cough it up. That would quickly make the areas where that behavior tolerated a NOGO zone. Incidentally, that has been happening in parts of Chicago for more than 25 years. Dudes start washing your windshield and then demand payment.

 A fifth scenario might be when the thugs declare open-season on first repsonders. 

What Mrs ERJ and I are doing

We are intentionally becoming more local. We stopped donating to "national" and "international" causes. Vacations are closer to home. I am considering a dentist who is more local.

We are battening down the hatches in the house. Last summer we had a contractor renovate a bathroom to make it senior-citizen friendly. This summer we replaced our 1977 oil furnace and air conditioner with more efficient units.

We are ruthlessly culling out plants that are not paying their rent. For example, I will be removing almost all of the grapevines growing on the trellis between the rows of fruit trees. They don't produce enough grapes to justify the complications the create.

We are also culling books. Some books are a waste of paper and a waste of storage space. Like the grapevines, I have an emotional attachment to some of those books but priorities change over time.

A big one for me is to organize my tools and prioritizing putting things away right after I use them. I am getting more absent-minded as I age and I need to invest in tool-box infrastructure. A tool is infinitely more valuable when you spend less than five minutes between thinking "I need my carbide-tipped, metric gonculator" to having it in your hands vs. when you have to hunt two weeks before finding it. 

A parting thought

The best time to plan is any time before the bullets are whistling over your head.

It doesn't have to be a great plan but it does have to be simple to execute. Fine motor skills and the ability to process nuance turn to crap under stress. If-Then-Else sign-posts must be clear.

A quote that has been attributed to Col. Jeff Cooper "We will not rise to the challenge. Rather, we will regress to the highest level of training that we have mastered."

So, decide what skills you need to master. Get the appropriate tools. Make a plan. Work the plan. Tweak the plan as you get boots-on-the-ground experience. 

There will probably be a Part II to this post.