House of Eratosthenes

…a few days later, I received a notice from the L.A, Department of Building and Safety, informing me that I had to make an appointment so that a city inspector could come out and make certain the job was done correctly. That entailed my making a call and dealing with a couple of electronic voices before reaching an actual person, who let me know that I had to allow for a six-hour window, but would be receiving a call the following morning that would narrow it down to a two-hour time frame.

As promised, I received the call. The inspector would be showing up between 11 and 1. And, so, he did, at 12:56. I led him to the kitchen. He took one look at the exterior of the dishwasher, said it looked okay to him and turned to leave.

“Hold on,” I said. “That’s it? You only needed to see that we had it?”

“There’s really nothing to check. It’s like plugging in a toaster.”

Funny how some people insist they don’t get anything for their tax dollars. How about peace of mind? Don’t try telling me or my wife that we won’t be sleeping better tonight knowing that it wasn’t a figment of our imagination; we’ve now had it confirmed by a city inspector that we actually have a brand new dishwasher!

But this is much bigger than dishwashers. No, I don’t think it’s a sinister conspiracy to keep people from going to work, or to create a bunch of jobs that don’t have anything to do with accomplishing anything. Although, certainly, lack of respect for productive work does have something to do with it. Just, no conspiracy of any kind. I swear, the older I get, the more I see of human weakness, the more hostile I become against the very concept of a conspiracy. The discretion and skill required to keep things coordinated and secret…that level is, like, way-up-here…and what I see humans successfully pulling off, is way-down-there.

I should add: Generally. There are isolated cases of secrets successfully kept, and traps successfully sprung.

But that’s more an exception than a rule. It certainly doesn’t apply to the by-the-book-dumbth of sending s city inspector out to make sure a dishwasher is present and accounted-fer. That, there, is a human weakness.

As I’ve said before a few times, in places I’m too lazy to go out and find: We, as an advanced, civilized society, have shown an amazing deftness when it comes to diagnosing things as mental/behavioral disabilities/disorders, that really aren’t, and failing to diagnose things that arguably are. This one, I contend, is: The weird boundless faith some people place in “oversight.” The guys who work for the store that sells the dishwasher, which in turn makes its profits form the sales of the dishwasher, hook the thing up — but who the heck knows if they did it right? They could have screwed up any one of a number of things. We don’t even know their names. So…this other guy whose name we also don’t know, but who works for a local government and not for the store that sells the dishwasher, checks it and now that makes it all okay.

I could see it if the argument went something like: The store has a concern, the government has a different concern, so if they both look at the same thing and come to the same conclusion about it, then we enjoy the benefits of this stereo-validation, if you will…that would make some sense to me. But that is not the argument, as best I can tell. The argument is more like, the city inspector can be trusted and the store cannot. And that’s where it looks to me like a mental illness. Which of those two parties has a stake in the damn thing working the way it should? Which one doesn’t? Like, duh.

Just something to keep in mind, next time a statist starts yammering about the benefits of regulation and proper oversight, and “Without Government We Wouldn’t Have _____” (fourth column, fourth row on the Bingo card).

Prelutsky, wandering from topic to topic as is his wont, goes on to make an observation:

Speaking of which, under Obama, the richest 7% of Americans have seen their wealth increase by 28% since 2008, while the other 93% have seen their net wealth decrease by 4%. Is it any wonder that the seven percenters donated so generously to his re-election campaign and why Hollywood’s pampered poodles all go gaga over him?

Confirmation sought, and found. My goodness, I thought Obama was a liberal and liberals, it has been said, have always been about equality. Again and again, we see evidence that if this was ever true, it no longer is. Liberalism as we know it today is about control. It is about the few dictating the actions, obligations, and customs of the many.

The liberalism we know today, is about statism. It is about having a city inspector come by to properly notice things, his words carrying infinite weight, while the guys who work for the store that sold the dishwasher can’t be relied upon for anything at all. I mean heck, without an inspector following up, who knows maybe those store-guys just crammed a big beach ball in there, and then urinated all over it. The inspector can be trusted, they can’t. Is it fair to call that a liberal idea? It certainly isn’t a conservative one.

From my bullet points on this:

• Conservatives have more respect for occupations that create assets, and defend the realm
• Liberals somehow reserve their respect for occupations that do not do this

That particular pattern should be a fragile one. Surprisingly, it holds up rather well. It applies here. Dishwasher guys are producing something of value. City inspector guy might be a decent swell guy and all, working hard, and his work might be very important and applicable in other settings. But that work doesn’t have to do with creating new assets or defending the realm. And from noticing the patterns, we see a likely cause-and-effect relationship — which even at this late date, I still cannot explain, in solid, likely terms — that because this is unproductive work, we have these fellow citizens of ours, toiling away like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the mountain, to make that work relevant when it isn’t.

So no, it isn’t a conspiracy. Call it a…human foible. Kind of a reflex-motion of sorts.

I can’t say government has a monopoly on this behavior. It’s a union thing as well. Years ago, I worked for a company who leased video games. My job was to drive to the various sites and empty the quarters from the games, count them and split it with the location. I went to a Pizza Hut on my route one morning before they opened, and they were having some construction done. I got my gear (I had an electric coin counter) and went in. After getting the coins I went to plug in my coin counter and was stopped:
Guy: “Hey hey hey what are you doing?”
Me: “Plugging in my counter.”
Guy: “You can’t do that.”
Me: “Why not?”
Guy: “You’re not union. A union guy has to do that.”
Me. “It’s a standard plug, and that outlet on the wall appears to be a standard outlet.”
Guy: “We’re proud union local 736 and you’re not going to plug it in, we are.”

I went to plug it in anyway and the union guy moved between me and the outlet.

Some folks just love to enforce their little area of power.
- Wamphyr | 09/07/2013 @ 07:35
Oh sure,
but if the name and address of that washing machine is on “the list” of a certain political rent seeker in town, that casual “inspection” would NOT have been so rosy, requiring subsequent Union Electric labor, Union plumber labor, City electric inspector (“retired” union worker), City plumbing inspector (“retired” union plumber), City housing inspector (somebody’s nephew that failed out of school),
ALL of whom could not proceed until the other “$ign$ off”.

Options:
1. Live discretely
2. Learn what used to be called “basics” for men, no matter your gonad location. Ignore “the city”.
3. Learn where the Mayor’s Aide’s “special assistants” drink. “Pal” em’ up.
- CaptDMO | 09/07/2013 @ 16:17
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- House of Eratosthenes | 09/08/2013 @ 10:01

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Burt Prelutsky Bought a New DishwasherSaturday, September 7th, 2013

Burt Prelutsky Bought a New Dishwasher
Saturday, September 7th, 2013