Life lessons from an Erector Set - knowing when to start over

I remember playing with Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets, and Legos as a kid. There was a lot to be learned from these activities. Never mind the little lessons - the pieces never fit back in the box, some pieces will be found under the couch in a month or two, or you can really hurt yourself getting poked with a thin piece of metal. Those are the easy lessons.

One of the best lessons I learned, is that many times, regardless of how well I thought out the foundation, I would get to the point where adding more pieces made no sense. Adding pieces would make the pending failure even larger. When I got to this point, I would pull the product apart, put it back in a pile, and start from scratch. I'd apply the lessons I learned in my first attempt to my next iteration.

Other times, I would try to reinvent what I was building into something different. "I started with a house... where did that pointy side come from? Oh, who cares, I'll turn it into a boat. A big ugly boat. At least it won't feel like I wasted my time...".

Frequently we allow ourselves to become too deeply involved in what we are building, and as a result we are unable to see that we can't achieve our original objective using what we presently have. We can't continue to try and add on, tweak, or modify it, because all of this will just add to the costs when we fail, and be that much harder to start over. In fact it seems like the larger the scale, the harder it is to see how bad things are, and we continue to apply effort thinking that if we just do a little more, all will be well. If we stay the course, it will all work out.

I started to think of what I learned from an Erector Set as I looked at the challenges in our public school system, entitlement programs, bloated government bureaucracies, sickening levels of deficit spending, and ballooning national debt. The investment may be in emotion, time, money, effort, paycheck, fat union benefits, or voting block payoffs. This crosses party lines, and impacts the taxpayers the same.

Many of our government agencies have morphed into something different from what they were envisioned to provide, and have grown at a rate much faster than the general population has increased. They often do this as a self preservation tactic, to show value where maybe they would have a hard time measuring against their original mission. Our government is full of these. I won't mention any specific examples, since I am not writing this to be partisan.

When is it time to pull it apart and start over? How can we convince the people who are invested so heavily in their own large-scale, real-life Erector Set failures that it's time to start building from scratch? I don't have the answer, I was hoping you did.

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Super size, or stupor size?

Bigger is better. Big stores bring us big savings by driving down production costs, buying in volume, and passing on the savings to us consumers. Big cars make us safer, and help us merge in traffic. 

Big cruise ships and big airlines provide us with cheaper vacation options, and many destinations. Big fuel provides us with a reliable flow of gas for our automobiles. Big trees provide us shade, protect us from the winter winds, and yield lots of lumber.

There is safety in numbers. In the animal world, we see herds of four legged game staying together. They travel, eat, and sleep with their herd. When predators come, they often defend themselves as a group, or when faced with overwhelming fear, will run in a group to escape the danger. As I often say when I am hiking with friends, I don't have to out run the bear, I just have to out run you. 

Big companies are often thought of as a safe employment option. With so many employees, it is less likely you will be singled out to be downsized. It's the herd mentality, without the bear. If you can make sure you aren't in the back of the pack, you can feel safer in your job. 

When my honey and I raced sailboats, we preferred larger fleets. The same herd mentality applies here. With a large fleet, we could expect a certain number of boats to have equipment failures, make tactical errors, mess up a tack or jibe, or not be hearty in bad weather. We improved our place in the regattas by just showing up and crossing the finish line. In a small fleet, finishing 3rd out of 4 boats sounds bad. Finishing 15th out of 20 sounds much better. 

But is bigger better? Safety in numbers is statistically accurate. You're less likely to be the loser when there are more players. But I've never seen a hungry hawk after it chased a flock of birds. 

Terrorists don't attack sparsely populated areas, they look for density to perpetrate their crimes. They have more targets there.

Large ships have become the favorite target of the pirates. Their size makes them hard to hide and not very maneuverable. 

Big cars are only safe when they are light. Big heavy cars are dangerous not only to the occupant of the car, but also to those around it. 

Big trees fall and crush homes. When was the last time you had a sapling cause heavy damage to your home? 

When big businesses fail, whole divisions of "safe jobs" are sent to the streets for the reporters to take pictures of. Think of Enron, Global Crossing, Merril Lynch, and we saw the Big Three Automakers downsie, along with companies that supported them. 

We've also seen large investment funds disappear. People must have felt very safe adding a hundred thousand dollars to a fund worth $50 billion. Safety in numbers. A small player on a big field. One in a large herd. A small fish in a big pond. This equates to less you have to worry about. 

In a large fund, every investor is represented by numbers. There is an account number, and a balance number. Humanity is removed. No longer is the hundred thousand dollar investment associated with your neighbor Joe, it is a number in a large pool of numbers. A faceless victim, "they should have known better", and "better them than me". 

Look at our government. Approximately 10% of the American workforce is employed by our tax dollars. This represents a tremendous voting bloc, and the dollar amounts are huge. 

How else would a group of people think that spending a trillion and a half dollars for a short term bailout is a good idea? This equated to 10% of our entire economy, and coincidentally, 10% of our existing national debt. 

As the numbers get bigger, the numbers mean less. A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money. How can we not fund a billion dollar program when our numeric reference is so big? Trillions? What is that?

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. That was one of my Dad's favorite sayings. He usually threw that one out there over the top of the Daily News when a politician took a hit. 

Maybe bigger isn't better? Throw a small rock into a lake. The splash is small, the ripples are low, and they don't last long. Now throw a big rock into the same lake. Note the difference in splash size, the height of the ripples, and how far they travel - they often reverberate, bouncing back and forth across the surface.

Maybe smaller is better. Small is manageable. Small is agile, it can change as needed.  Small is easy to understand, we can get our arms around it. Smaller food servings, smaller waists, smaller health bills.

Small banks, where we know the employees and they know us. Loans would be written based on our ability to pay, not some big algorithm crushing numbers in a big data pool. 

Small is green. Over half of our workforce works for a small company. Small homes, small obligations, and most importantly, small government. This will mean small tax bills.

Small must be the status symbol of our future. We must get back to being small. Smaller is better. 

Friday blog round-up, and weekend project buffet menu

Fridays will be light on the blog, mostly round out comments related to previous blogs, and when I have a home project lined up for the weekend, I will preview it for the rare readers. If there are topics you are interested in hearing about, please leave a comment and I will come up with something to meet your request.


The most read and commented on blog so far is Economics, the dismal science - Junior Achievement class, which was about my experience with a high school class as part of a Junior Achievement program. From speaking with acquaintances, I realize that not many of us are schooled in economics. In my opinion, this is why the banks can prey on people, and automobile marketers can convince consumers that a fleece... or was that lease... is a good idea. So get involved, and make sure you learn economics, and then teach others. There is a great organization The Foundation for Economic Education that is addressing this need for economic literacy, and has some great resources, as well as a Facebook presence.


My book review of Carjacked was fun to write, and also had a decent number of visitors. It will be interesting to see how rising fuel prices will impact our love affair with the automobile in the coming months. Maybe a bike commute won't look so bad to many people.


I am not a big fan of big companies running our utilities, and especially not to manage our water. It appears that some nice employees of United Water have been arrested for "fudging" tests. The indictment "lists 68 times that 12 unnamed superintendents and employees lowered chlorine levels". These people must be great neighbors. I wonder if they drink the tap water, or if they opt for the bottled water from another big company?


The weekend project is to replace the expansion tank and air release valve on our boiler. It should be easy to do once I have the parts. I will also be finishing our second floor storage area, and be preparing the basement floor for painting. Watch for the post about this over the weekend.

Economics, the dismal science - Junior Achievement class

"How come rich people like Donald Trump get richer in a recession?", followed by "how come the government doesn't tell companies they have to charge less for their products so people who are struggling can pay their bills?" were two of the questions that came up today in the high school class where I am teaching Economics through Junior Achievement. I put on my screen saver face and formulated my answer in my head... but first a little aside.

I don't remember anyone explaining economics to me as a kid, at least not in a structured sort of way. Economics was taught in real-time, with instant feedback for wrong answers. If I wanted to purchase something, I wasn't able to go to the governing entity (my parents), and get a bail out (allowance). I had to come up with ideas on how to make money. This environment forced me to become an entrepreneur at an early age.

My first few businesses were started when I was around 9 or 10, and revolved around filling a need in our household. My older brother didn't want to feed the family dog, which was his job. So he paid me $1 a week. He also hated to put his clothes in the laundry, so I would load the hamper in return for any loose change in his pockets, or from the floor. This business soon grew into cleaning cars in our driveway, and getting to keep the change. After a time, the money was not so good, since it takes months for change to fall out of a pocket at a rate I could justify doing the work for, so I started charging for car washes. As the youngest of 9 kids, there were lots of cars in the driveway.

Tom Finnegan was a nice guy on our street who was friends with my father. Tom asked my dad if he could pay me to cut his grass, and my dad agreed. So at about 12 years old I started to cut grass, which grew into 40 lawns spread across Pompton Plains and Pequannock Township, and was my primary income until I was in my early twenties. During that time, I worked regular jobs, such as at a local nursery where I started out planting mums, and stayed on for a couple of years picking vegetables and working in the greenhouses.

When I started to work, my parents made me buy my own work clothes, such as jeans, work boots, and whatever I'd wear to work. They covered school and church clothes. When I turned 16, 1/3^rd of my income was taken to cover my home expenses, plus I covered my own work clothes costs. At 18, the third was capped at $20 a week, and if I didn't work, they ran me a tab.

We learned early about economics. So back to the class today. In one of the first classes I taught, I asked who had a job that paid money. About 25% of the students raised their hand. I then asked who received a weekly allowance from their parents, with no strings attached - meaning they just received it, no chores required. Over half of the hands went up. Things have changed since I was a kid, and it is bad.

So my answer to the questions at the start of this blog were real simple, and derived by asking questions of the students. First, smart people make money in a recession. Having money going into a recession allows you to purchase at a deep discount. So don't waste your money buying stuff in a good economy, at least not on credit. Cash is king in a recession. But this recession has not been an opportunity for everyone. By taking money from the taxpayers and using it to prop up poorly managed banks, the government artificially kept home prices high, eliminating the opportunity for the average person to take advantage of the cheaper homes in the recession. As low as the home prices are, they are still artificially high because the banks don't have to sell the homes the foreclose on, since they now have our money to keep their business running. So Donald Trump got rich because he is smart, not because he is rich.

I also asked who pays for employees' health insurance - "employers". Does the company consider the cost of health insurance when determining how much to pay an employee? - "yes". So who pays for health insurance? - "the employee". So is government forcing insurance good for small business? We'll leave it there...

We covered many topics, mostly around entrepreneurship, risk and reward, taxes (including hidden taxes), regulations, and how much a company must to do comply that costs them money and time, without revenue for them. My last comment was that I talk economics with many people, and few understand it in even a basic way. Learning economics will act as insurance against being poor. The market cycles, and they are in school in a down cycle, and knowing about cycles, and not getting into debt will give them a much better chance at a good life.

It is very fulfilling being involved with Junior Achievement. If you haven't been involved yet, you should contact your local school and see if they participate, and how you can help.

The weekend project has been selected - garage siding!

We moved in here last June. When we bought the place, the detached two car garage had a tree growing through the back wall of the garage, leaving a shark bite in the wall and roof. We knew this when we purchased.

Our first order of business for this project was to find a tree service to remove the tree. I called about 5 tree services, and one showed up. He grimaced when he saw the tight quarters, and told me he needed to come back with a colleague to estimate. It would take a crane to take the tree down. I never saw him again, I hope he wasn't abducted by aliens after he left.

I then called my next list of tree services, and ended up with several $2,500 estimates. I finally called one last service, and he quoted $1,000. I asked for a certificate of insurance, and as soon as I had it, we hired him. His crew climbed the tree, and roped the pieces down, leaving me wood for the anticipated fireplace (it's in now, more on that another time). Based on how much most tree services charge, and how few actually came out to offer an estimate, I would think that starting a tree service would be a great opportunity for someone not afraid of heights - which counts me out.

With the tree down, I was able to start on the garage repair. At this point we had a roofing company lined up, so I was under the gun to finish it. Before I could start the wall replacement, I had to replace the joists that hold the walls together, and the roof up. A previous owner had installed electric garage door openers, and the installer notched the joists, weakening them severely. So I called one of my brothers, and he educated me on rafter ties and collar ties, and we decided I needed rafter ties. While I installing the rafter ties and pulling out the damaged rafters, I modified the construction so our sea kayaks could be hoisted above the garage doors. I'll put some pics up eventually to show that.

So I took a few days off work, and started on the repairs. I built a wall inside the garage, and with sledge hammer in hand, I started hitting the wall. The walls are stucco, which is concrete on iron mesh which is nailed to planking. It isn't easy to take down. As I took the wall out, I disturbed carpenter ants, spiders, and termites. the three foot section of wall I planned on replacing, became a whole 20 foot wall, from the ground to the roof ridge. It took a couple of days to complete. With the wall complete, and the roof installed, my priorities moved on to other areas of the house.

Before I started swinging the big hammer. See the shark bite up top.

A bit more than I expected, and the insect damage continues

I eventually made it all the way to the right, I did sections at a time to maintain the load of the roof

So last weekend I blocked time out to do the siding. I headed to Lowes in Paterson, NJ, and after spending way too long discussing the fine art of vinyl siding installation, I finally had a cart full of what I needed. I headed to the customer service desk to pay, and to rent a truck. Sounded easy to me, but woe was me. The name on my insurance card has my wife's name, and - you guessed it, my license is in my name. Same address almost same last name, but the policy of Lowes very strict customer service department was that the names must match. I tried to make my case with the manager, but realized I would have more luck convincing an inflatable Santa that reindeer can fly, than I would have in winning my case. I left the store. I generally try to avoid big box stores, but they have cheap vinyl, and give me a 10% military discount.

Last night I returned with my honey to Lowes, we purchased the stuff, and I drove the loaded truck home and back empty. The outcome didn't change, I still drove the danged truck.

The deal I have with my honey is that I have rationalization money I can spend to compensate myself for being our contractor. So I purchased a new log maul and a hatchet. My last log maul broke when I tried to split a log, and it was closer than I thought it was. The hatchet was for making kindling, because right before I broke the maul, I caught two fingers between the sharp side of the maul and the wood. I luckily was able to check my one-handed swing, and ended up with a bruise, and a small indented cut on two fingers. There's no cure for stupid, but stupid sometimes gets lucky.

So Saturday you will be treated to the story of the siding. From start to finish. For now, I need to get back to projects. I just painted the laundry room, and am finishing the spackle in our storage closet.

Water Wars - real or imagined?

I think you'll find a common theme in many of my posts. I don't trust large organizations, whether they are government, charities, or business. Last night I watched an interesting movie about water, titled Blue Gold: World Water Wars. The movie focused on the large water companies, and how they collude with small government to buy water and resell it, often out of the area where it is located. To the average person, this sounds like a far-fetched conspiracy. Having lived in Rockland County, NY, I see the reality behind the story.

Rockland County can no longer provide enough water for their rampant development, and United Water - Suez (a French company) is more than happy to install a high cost, resource intensive solution to meet the growing demand - a desalination plant. Never mind the PCBs, radiation leaks, Yonkers leaking sewage, or Riverkeeper's opposing position on the desalination plant. Rockland County will receive the highest priced water in the nation once this scheme is implemented.

As part of the continued isolation of the general population from water resources, most water companies used post-9/11 hysteria (more on this soon...) to fence in the reservoirs. This looked prudent, but what is the threat? I can see fencing the pumping stations, but how much contaminant would be required to poison a reservoir? You'd see the tanker trucks lining up long before the first drop ended up in in the water. Biological agents can't be deployed easily, and few would survive a short period of time in a large body of water with the sun shining. UV rays sterilize. So why are the reservoirs fenced?

We see many people move to the desert for the drier air, and then they recreate their lush landscapes in the desert. What is the impact to the hydration cycle? We are building golf courses in the desert, emptying aquifers, and not thinking of the long term effects of this. Water taken into an arid environment condenses in the arid environment, and at some point, will that area still be arid with millions of gallons of lawn sprinkler water heading into the sky and forming clouds? Where is the water coming from, and at what cost?

Droughts are a great opportunity for water companies, when people are conserving water, the water companies increases rates to make up for lower revenues to cover the infrastructure costs.

Be careful if you stand against the "progress" of our government selling our water to a corporation, or you may find yourself hit with a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, which scares citizens into not protesting for their rights. Or you may find yourself in a situation where your activism lands you on the Department of Homeland Security's terrorism watch list, like Mark Ruffalo, when he questioned what fracking for oil and gas will do to the water supplies.

I thought I had a solution. I started using rain barrels years ago to capture run off from our roof for watering our plants. I don't pay for the water, and the rains in NJ come frequently enough that even in a drought, I can usually get through the worst of the season without pulling my hose. It is a simple enough solution, but did you know that in many states, including Colorado, using a rain barrel to capture water is illegal, but you can buy water from the water company to water your lawn. They want the rain to run off your roof, and work it's way back to the reservoir in the water shed so they can resell it to you. If you don't own the water that lands on your roof, why should it be owned by a corporation?

What is the solution? I think one pearl in the movie was stated by the Alaska water guy - a three way partnership between government, corporations, and activists must be put in place to manage water resources. But this is only part of the solution. I also believe that we must bust up the big corporations, and put control of resources at as low a level as is practical. This model should apply to all utilities, since they are all part of the public good. I of course don't count cable television as a utility, so you will still pay a premium for that.

Small is best. Big is bad. Think small, and be a locavore. Go ahead, share this with your network using the buttons below.