On Credit Scores

(Editor's note:  I am, once again, flying back to The Ranch for the weekend to attend to things.  Responses may be delayed, for which I beg your indulgence.)

Last December when we were visiting my in-laws, the question of credit scores came up with my nephews and sister in law, who were chatting away and comparing them.  They asked me what I thought mine was.

I literally had no idea.

To my mind, my credit score only mattered if I was borrowing money.  And since I did not intend to purchase a house or buy a new car or open another credit card, I never really kept up with.  If I needed to know, I was pretty sure that The Ravishing Mrs. TB would let me know.

Cue about two months ago when, due to a major information hack and breach, a rather large number of Americans were faced with the potential of credit theft.  The recommendation?  Sign up with each credit reporting service and put a freeze on your account.  Which, as this was endorsed by The Ravishing Mrs. TB, was duly performed.

The great thing about "signing up" is that now I get almost daily e-mail updates telling me whether or not my credit score is rising or declining:  "Congratulations, your credit score has gone up by 9 points!" or "Your credit score has declined by 22 points."

Looking at my credit score (which, apparently, is "Excellent"), I both have no idea what this means and am aggravated.

I suppose my fundamental problem is that credit scores indicate credit worthiness - which 90% relate directly to the ability to borrow money (the other 10% being rental application - which I have come to know) and certain job applications.  The fact that, at least from where I sit today I have no interest and no need to borrow (so far as I am aware) does not enter into this calculation.

I would bet, were I to think about it more, that likely people with "lower" credit scores are the individuals more likely to borrow and people with "higher" credit scores are less likely to.  It would be wrong to draw many conclusions from that - life happens and all - but I do not wonder that there is likely a correspondence between people that handle their money better and a higher credit score.

On the one hand, I suppose I could just unsubscribe to those e-mails.  On the other, I might miss out on breathlessly awaiting my next "Credit Score Update".

46%

 It that time of year that we engage in the annual sport of Property Taxes.

As expected, our bill arrived late April.  As expected, there was an increase - although this year strangely enough, there was decrease on the total assessed value of our home but an increase in the total amount being assessed (some dark arts involving the loss of some deduction which I can clearly see on the sheet, but I do not understand).

During my usual grumbling and cursing of all things taxes (because apparently even when things go down, they never do) I caught a small comment at the bottom of the page:  "The difference between the 2019 appraised value and the 2024 appraised value is 46%".

Helpfully, the next line is "The percentage information is required by Tax Code Section....".

If you run this to ground, of course, it is nobody's fault.  The Collection authority points to the Appraisal Board, noting they are only collecting what they are told to collect.  The Appraisal Board points to the Entities that set the rates, stating they are only executing the law.  The Entities that set the rates (local boards, county government) simply state they are doing what the voters have told them to do. The voters will point out they did not say anything about obscene assessment gains; they blame the Entities for raising taxes too much.

And so it goes. No-one is at fault, but everyone except the home owner is happy to take the result.

46% increase.  In no other way has my life improved 46% in 5 years.  My salary has not gone up in that amount.  Any investments I have have not increased in that amount.  Nothing in the real world has gone up 46% in value.  I have not lost 46% of my weight (highly dangerous of course, but it is possible thing to lose).

It is bad for the homeowners, who at some point will get pushed out by taxes.  It is bad for home buyers, who can no longer afford the very high cost of buying a home (let alone owning it).  It discourages home ownership, which was for years was a mechanism for many average folks to build a form of wealth (and stable communities of home owners, by the way).  It is bad for renters as well, who feel the downstream effects of rising property assessments (says the man who is now in both worlds).

A significant problem.  A serious problem.  Yet, one that seems to be no-one's fault or responsibility to fix.

Tax Season And Taxing Patience

 For my readers that may live in The Near Abroad, we here in Baja Canada find ourselves in the midst of tax preparation season.

I say "season" because - based on how many incoming documents you may have - it really is a period of time rather than short event.  The opening of the season - not celebrated nearly as much as that of something like Deer or Abalone season - starts on 01 January at the close the old year and will come to an end on or about 15 April, when the grinding of teeth will stop, when mental preparation for next year's tax season will begin.  Suddenly, the race is on to gather all the documentation required to file one's taxes.

If one has an employer, the appropriate form (W-2) must be issued by 31 January.  Other forms or information (some institutions no longer offer the forms themselves if you fall below a certain amount) can be ferreted out on the monthly statements or find themselves issued in a timely manner.

And then, there are the remaining forms.  Or as I have come to call them, "The Usual Suspects".

There are unifying factors around The Usual Suspects.  They are all companies that are virtually based - there is not a brick and mortar location that you can go in.  They all deal with electronic sorts of money in one form or fashion.  

And they are all terribly bad about providing their required forms.

Two companies - one for the small personal investment account I hold, one for the very small amount of remaining Crypto I hold - managed to make their forms available around the middle of the month.  The other - the repository for the Brave Attention Token, or BAT - just managed to create theirs this past Tuesday for me (14 March for those counting along on their calendars).

This strikes me as a bit ridiculous.  Everything is electronic now.  It literally just running the algorithm and generating the forms or spreadsheets - I do this at work on a daily basis.  It seems like it should be the sort of thing that could completed on January 2nd.  And yet, 2.5 months later, the last piece of paperwork comes crawling in.

I have noted before that the BAT - given for looking at advertisements in the Brave browser - has actually worked out for me in that it allowed me to purchase Amazon gift cards which I then turned into books as quickly as possible.  But the value of the BAT has fallen in recent months; last year when I wrote the article it was worth approximately $1 (more or less); it now sits squarely at $0.23.  So now it a) takes longer to get to that treasured $25 gift card level and b) makes it a lot less worth my while to deal with the inconvenience of a delayed tax filing to get that last piece of paperwork.

To be fair, now that I have the documentation and reverse engineered the calculation, I can get to the same number (on January 2nd, as it turns out) so next year in theory that should not be an impediment - at the same time, I am someone who wants all my documentation in place before I submit something (having to revise a submitted tax return, at least in the US, is a great way to get moved to the back of the line).  So I will either have to stop collecting back, live with what will be potentially a minor non-impacting calculation and file, or continue to wait.

Supposedly one of the big benefits of the InterWeb revolution was that information was going to be available quickly and seamlessly, especially for the those companies that saw the InterWeb and technology as "the next big leap in human (de)evolution".  It might be worth it to those companies to consider that it is not just delivery of one part of the service but every part of the service that makes something revolutionary.  Otherwise, it just becomes another annoying thing to deal with and give consideration to why one is doing it in the first place - after all, people adopt what works for them, not what they struggle with.

Of Small Places And Agrarianism

Friend to this blog Leigh Tate made a comment in the post Of Small Towns and Small Cities that made me think a great deal more than perhaps is wise in the early morning upon reading it: 

"It was the connectedness of today's reading list post that reminded me to comment. I sometimes mention agrarianism as a lifestyle, and it is interesting to me that the response is usually a variation of "yes but, not everybody wants to be a farmer." This post reminds me of what I am consistently unsuccessful at explaining, i.e. that agrarianism isn't farming, rather, it's a social and economic structure based on community and the land. The small town is the heart of such a structure because it's there that the community has the potential to to meet its needs. I would like to say that it has the potential to be self-reliant, but I get scolded for that term too, because it tends to be interpreted as isolationist.

Instead, I think I'll say, an agrarian community is more resilient, and able to weather whatever ups and downs happen in life. Of course, this will never happen because human nature strives against it. But I sincerely think it's the way things were designed to be.”

Well, that is a lot for 0500 wake call and cup of coffee, to be sure.

I believe I was originally introduced to the term of Agrarianism by Herrick Kimball (Formerly of The Deliberate Agrarian, now of HeavenStretch), although I really believe I came tor understand it earlier through the writing of the sadly now departed Gene Logsdon in The Contrary Farmer.  Logsdon's book was in principle about farming and self-sufficiency, but really what it was about was way of life that both valued the land that enabled it and the small environments that it created and thrived in - the social and economic structure based on community and land that Leigh refers to.  In a way, it was a call back to the small place that I had grown up - but really a call back to the small environment that I had grown up in, the place where I felt (and continue to feel) most connected to.

Small communities can be (but are not always) interdependent and resilient.  It is not just in the sort of Hallmark-ish concept of "taking care of each other"; it is in the real human connections that come from living and doing business with people that live in the same community that you do.  One comes to value that community because in a way, through its success comes one's own success - not measured necessarily in the wealth one possesses, but in the way one feels when one is finished with the day.  One has done business - be it a retail enterprise, a farm, or some other interactive contribution - instead of just "commuting to a job".

Interdependence.  Resilience.  These are phrases we - or at least I - have heard a great deal in recent years.  The surprising thing - or perhaps not so surprising - is what this terms have come to mean.

"Interdependence", in the modern parlance, has come to mean relying on the largest administrative body possible. Communities should not be interdependent, states should be.  Interdependence is always facing up and outward, not down and inward.  Not needing "The System" is seen as rebellious and a bit;ignorant:  States need each other because that is the best and highest use of the individual, communities should not to the exclusion of the state but subservient to it.

Resilience is the same.  States should be resilient, but not communities.  Communities need to look to the state for their resilience and show there dependency on those outside, not generate their resilience internally.

Why is the concept of agrarianism - interdependent, strong communities generally (but not exclusively) practicing agriculture and the basics of living not embraced by those that mouth such words?  Because such places are not reliant on the the state that exists above them, are not "plugged in" to the much larger urban units that they are expected somehow to support and defer to.   Small communities in the modern world - agrarian communities - are places that should be dying or kitschy places where large urban entity dwellers can go to shop and stay and eat and be catered to, not communities which are not reliant on the larger whole for survival.

I perhaps sound a bit out of sorts by this disconnect between what the modern world says it wants - for example, interdependence and resilience - and what the modern world is willing to accept.  My thought is that it is - again - based on the concept that there can be only one "right" answer, the one that is authorized by Our Political And Social Betters (OPASB).  Interdependence and resilience must be exercised in the approved fashion, as specified by the experts and accepted by the social masses, not run willy-nilly by people who think they know what is best for themselves.

There is one thing I will say for state-sanctioned or state enforced interdependence and resilience:  it is a fragile thing, a tropical flower sustained in an arctic environment only by the greenhouse of the state.  Remove that greenhouse - remove the official requirement to make people be interdependent and resilient via laws - and much of those things, I posited, would blow away with the wind of reality.  These sorts of things, to last, must come to fruition organically, not enforced.

We live today in a bifurcated world:  those that are interdependent and resilient (and this is not always in the "classic" way) and those that believe they are because the state says they are. Let the requirements fall away, and I suspect that true agrarians among us will shine like stars in the sky. 

New, Repair, Replace, Destroy

 As I was mulling over my patching and the (as ever) wonderful commentary that continues to populate this page, I realized that there was an inherent conundrum in the nature of repairing things and modern society.  A commenter - our good friend Greg - noted the following:

"As we transitioned into the age of "remove and replace' instead of repairing, it deeply offended me and still does, but do much of our technology is such that replacing it is much cheaper than repairing".

As I mulled over the comment, I counterpoised it with a post that Eaton Rapids Joe had some days ago about hurricane recovery and donations with commentary from someone on scene:

"People have been incredibly generous, but, at the same time, incredibly thoughtless.

It would probably mortify folks to know it, but we've sorted through donated clothes...well over 75% were inappropriate....shorts, t-shirts, prom dresses, dirty used underwear, 1960s clothing that was dry-rotting in someone's grandmother's closet, negligee', old worn out shoes, etc., and have the 'sold' a semi-load (30,000 lb) of used clothing for 25 cents/lb just to get it out of the way and generate some $$ to buy needed supplies to help get folks re-established in their next place of residence.  Yes, there have been some nice new articles of clothing and bedding, but not a whole lot."

In my mind, these two comments juxtapose a critical disconnect in our modern consumer/environmentally conscious society:  wanting the new, not repairing the old, and not disposing of the useless.

The Western World - the one I know the best and the one that I can write from - has a paradox:  it has become incredible concerned about the environment and waste, yet it continues to demand consumer goods of the highest quality and "newness".  After all, the economy does not function unless people are buying goods and services, thus the constant underlying thrum one hears is "Buy the newest model".  

Think on it:  whether it be phones or cars or refrigerators or clothes, the last thing industry suggests is "be satisfied".  Or even, to be somewhat environmentally conscious, "let us help you repair that".  To Greg's point, repairs are now almost or actually are more expensive that buying a new item.  The government, too, is complicit in this, as without the steady stream of tax dollars from both sales tax and a tax on profits, there is less money in government coffers to spend.  Waste and destruction are decried while the profits that slide in from it are carefully distributed just beyond the gaze of those doing the decrying.  As a sop to the conscience, policies are promoted so companies can say they are concerned (hint:  you will never destroy 100% of the resources you never use).

But then, there is a problem: we are stuck with that which we own but are no longer desirable and cannot - because of expense or difficulty - be repaired.  To destroy it ourselves is, for most people, beyond their abilities:  the burn pile and burn barrel are largely a thing of the past and the amount of "waste" they can dispose of is limited by the size of their trash disposal can.  And trip to the dump costs the disposer of the materials additional funds to get rid of things they were already done with in a sense, paying for things twice.

This leaves really only two solutions:  just dispose of it on the side of road (not desirable from an environmental point of view, of course:  who wants to see chairs and couches slowly breaking down?) or wait for a donation chance to push everything out the door.  The giver feels good as they have done something charitable (true) and eliminated items from their house (qualified true).  In point of fact, if they have not donated goods of use - to Eaton Joe's contact's comment - they have only pushed the problem downstream, not resolved it.

(A third option exists:  Freecycling or other local options where individuals exchange things locally.  This is actually a fine alternative, but I suspect it works so well because the local government does not consider it a threat to its income.  If it were, it would grind to a halt.)

But can it be resolved?  We live in the age where consumption is discouraged yet necessary, where we are not encouraged to repair but to replace and yet our replacements have nowhere to go but in the trash, where we are encouraged to be charitable which (apparently) is as much of justification to "clean house" as it is to actual do something charitable.

In an ideal world - if such a thing were to exist - the used would be the new "new", the ability to repair important and cherished and perhaps more important than the ability to only produce the "new", a methodology to dispose of or destroy old items in such a way that residual value was found and the truly "useless" was destroyed without outcry, and the world (on the whole) perhaps a little better off with not as many resources being poured into new things and people happier with the old things they had and cared for.

Ah well - I can dream, can I not?

Sewing a Patch

 This past weekend, I patched a pair of pants.

This is the first official "Patch" I think I have ever sewn in my life.  It made a great deal of sense to do it:  the pants - other than a long tear in the knee -were perfectly fine and given the price of things, there was no need to buy a new set (nor, sadly was I about to wear them as they were:  for all of the young people's affection with "distressed jeans", I prefer mine without holes).  So I watched a couple of videos online, gathered my patch, needle, and thread, and started patching.

It is not ideal of course:  there is more bunching that I suspect should be there - but then again, these are intended to be worn around the house or away at The Ranch, so appearance is not the first consideration. Some of this I will attribute to the fact this is the first patch I have sewn; the rest I will attribute to the fact that being able to "check your work" on a tubular construction that you essentially have to re-unfold to see your progress is not ideal.  Still, other than one leg being slightly shorter than another, I think they will work fine (and as an added bonus, if I really do not like it I will just rip out the seams and start over again).

In terms of an investment, it cost precisely nothing:  the needle, thread, and patch were all already here on hand and the jeans I obviously owned.  Had I gone to purchase a new pair at a lower end "Big Box" store, I would have paid $40 -$60 for a new pair.  The requirement for this exercise was a little time and attention.

Although there is a great deal of way to go with the results (no bunching would, of course, be ideal) it does bring me back to the very relevant about managing purchases, costs, and consumerism.

Why is this the first time in my adult life I have done something like this?  Yes, jeans are not necessarily "business casual" attire that I have had to wear for many years pre-Plague, but certainly such repaired items done by skilled tailors or seamstresses (not mine obviously; other people's) would appear almost as useful and acceptable as any other.  Yet on the whole this is something I can tell you that you will not see in the business or larger world (except as a fashion statement).  Unmarred, unrepaired clothes are the standard.  Clothing with small imperfections or potential repair are just as often thrown away or shipped off to Goodwill.

Which is of course, pre-early 20th Century, a very rich thing to do.  Prior to that time, so far I as I know and understand, clothing was used and reused until it could be used - as clothes - and then turned into something else:  quilts, rags, parts for other clothes.  It is only we, in our late 20th and early 21st century glory, that have determined that only the unmarred is good enough for making appearances in.

We will see how the patch holds out of course; the first test of these jeans may mean the "first patch" becomes "the first in a long line of patches".  Which is also fine - practice, as they say, makes perfect.  

Or at least for patches with less bunching.

On Financial Tracking

 Once upon a time, when we first got married, I used Quicken to track our expenses.

My parents used a paper based binder system for tracking their expenses which they inherited in turn from my material grandparents (said binder still exists at my parent's house, with expenses entered up to February of last year).  It is one of the memories I have of them, sitting at the table at least once a month going over the entries (the other memory I have is my father bringing out the shoeboxes of receipts on an annual basis and muttering something about "taxes", which I scarcely understood for many years).

But it became our responsibility in turn, and so getting our fancy new Macintosh in the early 1990's I started entering them in.

It became  pain, of course. I was not terribly well versed in finance and had to teach myself as I went.  We also lacked the ability we have now to electronically look up (and download) our statements and so painful hours were spent combing through bank statements and card statements to try to capture everything.  And statements for retirement accounts, when I got them, were even worse:  not only did I not know how to enter the principal, how did one enter the "gains"?  

But in spite of all my trials and travails, most things worked their way into the sheet and over time, we built up a record of expenses and a Net Worth.

Oh, how I loved that Net Worth. I  would look at it as it slowly grew, so very proud of ourselves.  I liked charts and historical graphs and there it was, in loved colored bar chart form.  Graphs and reports, I thought, were great.

And then - like it always does - things changed.  In our case three things:  The Firm, Hammerfall, and our computer.

The first two - although financially a bit devastating - were pretty clear cut:  The Firm crashed our ongoing finances, and Hammerfall precipitated the loss of our home equity.  Tracking your Net Worth is magically a great deal less fun when everything is going down.  And the computer - well, when the computer got changed, we needed to change our version of Quicken and port it over, which never seemed to be important enough to get done.

We have adapted in the years since then, and use much less glamorous tools. Our spending plan is a spreadsheet with income in two columns and spend for each category deducted in an adjoining column.  Our assets sheet is a simple two page spreadsheet (no glorious colors or reports) that tracks everything on a monthly basis.  

We have a pretty simple division of duties at this point.  The Ravishing Mrs. TB handles the monthly expenses, I handle the assets.  Instead of spending hours coaxing information from the reports, I spend about 30 minutes once a month updating everything.  Oddly enough, everything outputs just as nicely as it did.  Yes, we do lose some granularity as to what spending went into what categories, but I find I am less concerned about the particulars, only the overarching whole (and to be fair, one can always look that up on-line as well).

The cost of such tools, as you might imagine, is greatly reduced from the original cost of Quicken or the now ubiquitous month subscription charge for such things.  I run LibreOffice and so the cost to me is only my time; The Ravishing Mrs. TB uses the Excel that came with her computer so again, the cost has effectively amortized away.  It is interesting to me that over time, the cost of a specialized program has become reduced to almost nothing, if it will serve your purpose.

Every now and again I think about those old Quicken sheets.  I still have the information, stored away in my portable digital archive (which all fits on a memory stick, another poignant reminder of the times and technology).  But even if I wanted to, I do not think I could get at it now as that operating system is long gone.

Which is, I suppose, okay. I can always just make a graph if I need one.

On The Finishing Of Buying Of Things

Last night I made essentially my last purchases beyond needs (and books) for quite possibly the rest of my life.

The purchases themselves were pretty minor - two of my beloved "Gamma World" Miniatures by Grenadier (circa 1980) and a couple of sword maintenance items (Choji oil - mineral oil scented with cloves - and a tool for removing the hibaki, or sword collar).  There is a modern Japanese Print that I want to procure next month simply because it pleases me.

And after that, there is nothing on my list.

Part of it is simply that I have reached the limit of things that I can actually have - yes, there is always more that I can desire but truly, do I have the room for it or the time to enjoy it?  The other part is simply the realization, especially after coming back last week from The Ranch, that there is a point at which stuff becomes too much.

I have a list, of course, of items that will be necessities, both one for here at New Home and one at The Ranch, and whether here or there will need to be procured.  And a continuing list of supplies and handy things to have in the event that, say, the electricity and water somehow magically go away (I understand that happens in certain places).

But those are relatively minor things in the scope of the whole picture.  If the economy is looking for a recovery from me, they will be hard pressed to find it.

It is rather odd - having made the decision that I have reached that point, I find it rather freeing.  There is no sense that I am "limited", but rather that like with any other activity, I am done.

It has yielded a rather surprising sense of relief.  And indirectly, of money.

Wealth And Wants

 

One of the items I find myself working through this years is wants and desires.

This has been a rather slow process.  Originally I tracked nothing that I wanted, merely got it when I "had the money".  This went on for a very, very long time - really until a few years ago.

Then, I began the practice of tracking what I bought personally, the same as if I would track things on a household budget.  First it was books, then it was other things.  Before long, I was putting everything that I wanted on to a list prior to purchase.

That helped, of course.  Now when the question came up "What was I going buy?", I could go look at my list and see what was on there.  If it was not on the list, it either got added to the list or fell off it.

But I am undergoing a sort of transition at this point.

Maybe it happens to all of us when we hit a certain age.  Maybe it happens at different ages.  I am not sure.  But at some point, one begins dialing back on what one wants.

Perhaps it is the approaching on-rush of mortality, and the realization that one can only read so many books or have so many clothes.  Perhaps it is the realization that no matter how many weapons one has, one can only train with them one at a time.  Or perhaps it is the realization and attempted application of the idea that wealth is something else entirely.

I am not against the concept of money or wealth - indeed, the phrase "I have been rich and I have been poor.  Rich is better." resonates with me if for no other reason that not having to worry how basic expenses are going to be paid is a great relief.  And without wealth, in a service economy, very few people actually have the chance to make a living.

At the same time, the focus on and earning of wealth can become an albatross.  One is always concerned about saving, making, conserving one particular item:  money.  And it can all too soon be swept away by accident or bad judgement - or, we reach that point where we can "enjoy" our wealth, only to realize that we have spent most of our useful life and health trying to get to the point of using it, only to find we have little time or energy left to do so.

This has resulted in a twofold consideration in my life:  the first is to go back and re-review everything on my "want" list and re-examine it.  Do I really want it?  Do I really need it?  What will I do when I have it?  Several things have fallen off the list this way, as well as coming to the conclusion that there are fields of study and practice I will never achieve because of the investment to start them (time for these as well of course, but that is another discussion).

One immediate implication of all this?  Suddenly, it seems, I have enough to do all that I wanted to do.  And the things that I get and what they help me to do is truly valued, instead of just being used a few times and put away up on a shelf or in a closet.

It is not that I acquired any more wealth than before.  It is that, by the paring of my wants and needs, it suddenly went much further.

On Currency And Mediums Of Exchange

 So a big round of thanks to everyone that participated in yesterday' discussion of Cryptocurrency.  I am somewhat comforted by the fact that the takeaways from the conversations are similar to my own thoughts:

1) It seems complicated.

2) It seems interesting.

3)  It has possibilities.

4)   It could be a limited for investment, like many others.

5)  You could lose everything.

The other question - the more interesting one, the more I thought about it - is the nature of currency, the market, and mediums of exchange.

One of the concepts from yesterday's discussion is the fact that an underlying economic system - one that somehow involves a government - has to exist.  It is odd that when I think of the "economy", this is not something that I consider as I am thinking only of the buying and selling of goods between individuals and businesses - but "the government" seems to underlie the whole thing.  Yes, in maintaining the system, but also in a sense continuing to allow it to exist.

Perhaps it has always been so and I have never considered it as such; but it certainly seems to me that any economy or mechanism that relies on the government allowing it to be used as an economic medium of exchange is really all and only dependent on the government allowing it to exist at all.

Which brings up currency and mediums of exchange.

A currency is, per Merriam Webster, "something which is used as a medium of exchange" and only dates to this use in English back to 1624 - which is not very long at all, if you think about it.  The fact that it could be "something" implies it could really be anything to be used as a medium or exchange, although traditionally it was precious metals as they had value - now, of course, virtually every nation uses bank notes and to a lesser or greater extent coins which are magically linked (to Ed's comment yesterday of dark matter and black holes) to the country's repository of precious metals or (more alarmingly) its "ability to pay".

So now, really, paper and electronic currency is really a medium of exchange on a theoretical value that we all choose to believe in and accept, even though we can neither see it nor take hold of it.

Now, to be fair I use this system as much as anyone else.  My "check" goes into the back:  taxes are withdrawn, retirement withheld, and various forms of payments made without me ever seeing or touching this "currency".  Nor does anyone that receives these payments question them:  the government does not write me an ugly letter, my electricity continues to be on, and my retirement account to continue to be funded. 

But all of this presumes that we use the official currency, the government's decreed medium of exchange - in my case, the U.S. Dollar (your mileage may vary).

An interesting historical note is that in the U.S. constitution (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5), only the U.S. government has the power to coin money and determine the value thereof - and that it is a violation of federal law for individuals or organizations to create currencies to compete with the official currency system.  This supposed to preserve the value of the currency and give everyone a level playing field; in point of fact it does create a bit of a monopoly as well.

A medium of exchange can be anything, of course; that is whole point of the barter system.  Barter can be difficult to manage for larger amounts of goods (one ton of wheat, for example, is not very portable), which is a major reason that currency exists.  Barter is also limiting in the fact that it only allows me to trade what I own.  If everyone needs carrots I am in luck; if no-one needs carrots I will either have to find something else to trade or eat a lot of carrot soup and carrot cake.  So currency has its practical place.

Is there a way for currency to exist without overall government control?  I really have no idea - in theory cryptocurrency is an example of something filling this niche, although it could be declared illegal for use by any or all of the world's governments - and while they may not control the systems this currency exists on, they do control the world in which it operates.  Which would limit its usefulness to the small items not easily traced or electronic bits and bytes that exist only on your electronic devices (neither of which is very practical for daily living). 

I have no solutions of course, only more questions.  But given this considerations, the whole system certainly seems rife for abuse and with a high potential for failure as soon as someone - a person, a nation, a world system - declares another country's currency to be "worthless.

Question: Virtual Currencies and Decentralized Finance

 A true information gathering question for a post today:  What do people think about Virtual Currencies (e.g. Bitcoin and its competitors).

I have precisely zero knowledge of such things.  I have tried to do some reading on Blockchain Technology and "Defi" (Decentralized Finance, to you oldsters like me) but do not seem to grasp the basic concept of it.

I do, however, grasp the concept of anything having the value that two individuals ascribe to it and that with such value, anything can be used as medium of exchange.  To be fair, I am also attracted by the fact that a currency without government interference - the amount of dollars we have been pumping and will be pumping into the economy last year and into next year suggests that at some point, inflation starts and the dollars we all currently hold will be worth less overall.

One could argue - and many do - that precious metals fill this void and in some sense they do.  My complaint in that regard is simply that the purchase market for this seems a bit rigged.  Between the amount I would pay in spread to cover the seller's "costs" and their shipping, immediately upon purchase I have to wait for the price to increase 10-20% to recap my loss.

Full disclosure: I own a bit of virtual currency.  Turns out if one goes to Coinbase, they will give you small amounts of virtual currency just for watching some videos.  The amounts they give you, based on the actual value of the currencies, is not much - for example, I own 0.00031015 of BitCoin, or $11.00 today - and the whole point of it is to get you to buy more, but I am in some small way "invested".

I do get the very real sense in some ways it could be the proverbial "Ponzi" or pyramid scheme, but I also am a believer that as the push for electronic currency and transactions continue, there will be an equal push for a system in which government or banks are not involved and cannot interject themselves into the system, for example deciding where one can spend their money and where one cannot.

As I have said, I have been trying to read up on the subject and find myself having to constantly stretch my mind and learn new things, which in no case is a bad thing.  I have to tell you that many of this seems way beyond what I can muster for understanding, which suggests I may need a more basic course.  But I was this way about stocks once upon a time too; I can learn anything, given time and effort.

But I am truly curious:  Thoughts and opinions on the concept of virtual currencies and decentralized finance?