When I was young, I was brought up with human values - meaning doing good stuff, constructive things, inventive, make the world better. That's engineers and scientists.
I didn't know to hunt down the cash flow, form anti-competitive cartels like doctors and lawyers and get OPM in bulk.
So as a result I had to work a lot, doing everything myself, because hiring a lawyer for an hour would take me a week's work. So it was better to get the land transfer act, to figure out how to do conveyancing so I could buy and sell houses without paying the extorquerationate fees demanded by lawyers.
When my father died, hiring a lawyer would have cost a bundle, so I learned how to probate a will. It took some time, but still was cheaper than the alternative. Interestingly, the dopey lawyers who had the will didn't know little details like "don't spike a will". So when my brother and I took it to the probater, he gloatingly said "Well, there's the first thing wrong". I was happy to point out that his cartel member [Bruce Slane cairnsslane.co.nz ] had done that and should I sue them for damages for having destroyed my father's will? He didn't seem to find anything else wrong with what I had done. That's because there wasn't anything wrong with what I had done, not that he wasn't looking.
He was actually a decent bloke, but like so many people who are in gangs, their main purpose is defence of the gang and to be superior to others.
My last major car repair, and I hope my last [brake replacement and the like counts as minor], was replacing the timing belt on a diesel Chariot. It was 11 pm, winter, I was in the car port, the gap between the car body and the belt was barely enough, I was learning on the job, it was very difficult. It was fun in the sense of getting to the top of Mt Everest with frost bitten toes and having survived the process and achieved the goal.
I would rather have been sitting inside reading a book [it was before cyberspace ranting days].
It wasn't noble to do all the stuff I did, it was survival. After high-priced skilled people take a big bite, on AFTER-tax income which has also had essential spending taken out such as food and shelter, it was simply too expensive to hire people.
To pay a plumber $50 an hour, I'd have to earn $200, of which half goes in swarms of taxes [income, GST, petrol duty, council charges, myriad other swindles], $50 goes in food and shelter, leaving $50 to give to the plumber.
I could do in 2 hours what the plumber takes an hour to do. Plus I get the job done right. And I learn on the job so the next job takes even less time. There's no traveling time, lunch break, rounding the clock up to the next half hour. So I keep the $200, which goes into investment in QCOM. I do the job in 2 hours.
If I worked for another 2 hours at my $20 an hour normal pay rate, I'd get $40, of which half would be taken on tax and after shelter and food, I'd have $10. So to pay $50 to a plumber or $400 to a lawyer, I'd have to work 5 hours to hire the plumber or 40 hours to hire the lawyer.
That shows the economic damage by governments and taxation. Hordes of DIY people doing things highly inefficiently because governments rob them and pour the money down the drain on really dopey things, such as "The Greenhouse Effect" which is going to starve umpty million people in history's biggest ever famine because population boom, increasing wealth, biofuels and political disruption is making food unaffordable for swarms.
It would have been easier to just be a fat cat lawyer, charge $400 an hour and hire plumbers for $50 an hour. Even after governments take half in tax, a plumber at $50 an hour is okay. Food and shelter are a tiny part of $400 an hour.
Mqurice |
