Archive for the ‘Christianity’ Category
Nov
05
Posted under
Christianity,
Family,
Government Even people who don’t want the influence of Christianity to grow recognize the influence on religion on birth rates children’s church attendance. Beautiful!
http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/news/online_clips/070820_brooks_wsj_9.asp
EXCERPT:
In all likelihood religion will grow as a social force in American culture and politics over the coming decades. The reason: A secular nation needs secular citizens. And nonreligious Americans are outstandingly weak when it comes to the most efficacious way to achieve this: by having kids.
If you picked 100 adults out of the population who attended their house of worship nearly every week or more often, they would have 223 children among them, on average, according to the 2006 General Social Survey. Among 100 people who attended less than once per year or never, you would find just 158 kids. This 41% fertility gap between religious and secular people is especially meaningful because people tend to worship more or less like their parents. According to data collected in 1999 by Gallup, 60% of adults who were taken to church at least once per month as children grew up to attend at least this often; only 15% stopped attending as adults.
The demographic implications are even more profound for the political left, where a disproportionate number of secularists are located. Religious people who call themselves politically “conservative” or “very conservative” are having, on average, an astounding 78% more kids than secular liberals. Studies show that people are even more likely to vote like their parents than they are to worship like them. The secular left, therefore, has to rely on the tough slog of bringing people from the political and religious middle over to their views. The religious right simply has to keep having lots of babies.
Sep
17
Posted under
Baby Boomers,
Christianity,
Concepts,
Echo Boomers,
Economics,
Energy,
Government,
Inflation,
Investing Strategies,
Oklahoma,
Peak Oil,
Real Estate,
Recession,
Retirement,
Social Security/Medicare,
War I’m in love. Her name is Oklahoma City. And I will give myself up for her “to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word.”
The one I love is growing up quickly. She has the potential to become a beautiful woman or a rebellious person. A lot of that is going to be determined by what kind of leadership she has over the next five years.
Yes, you heard me right. That’s five years. That’s because the greatest benefit is going to be derived by noticing changes in our city early, while they they’re still potential but highly probable trends. You get a beautiful eighteen-year-old by parenting her when she’s eight. And we can start to disciple beautiful eighty-year-olds when they’re still twenty-eight.
I’m going to point out some of the early growth trends in Oklahoma City using principles from Christian economics.
And in case you want my conclusion right now, here it is:
We don’t have a lot of time.
Inflation
Most of my analysis is going to depend on one concept: Inflation of our country’s money supply. If you understand that, then it will be easy to see why Oklahoma City is poised for enormous growth.
Your silver has become dross, your wine mixed with water. (Isaiah 1:22)
Ever since Old Testament times, people have dealt dishonestly with one another. Some people mixed silver with less valuable metals (”dross”), creating counterfeit coins, and presented the coins to others as if the coins were made of pure silver.
We agree that it’s wrong when individual people do this. But when governments legalize the process, we call it inflation. And everyone seems okay with it.
Although the dime has not undergone any major design changes since its introduction, its composition changed significantly in 1965. The Coinage Act of 1965 removed the silver content from the dime (as well as the quarter and, in 1971, the half dollar), and replaced it with a clad composition of 75 percent copper and 25 percent nickel. Dimes with the silver composition were minted in 1965 and 1966 but bore the date 1964 to increase mintage figures and prevent hoarding of it. (Wikipeida)
Let’s get this straight. In 1965, our government stopped minting dimes with silver and started minting them with copper and nickel. And it minted those 1965 and 1966 coins with a date of 1964 so that they could not be distinguished from the dimes that were made of real silver.
There is a moral issue here. There is also a real consequence.
Do not have two differing weights in your bag—one heavy, one light. Do not have two differing measures in your house—one large, one small. You must have accurate and honest weights and measures, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you. For the LORD your God detests anyone who does these things, anyone who deals dishonestly. (Deuteronomy 25:13-16)
It gets worse.
The Federal Reserve
The dimes are chump change compared to the money that’s created digitally. When the government overspends, it needs to borrow money. When it doesn’t want to pay the market rate of interest, it goes to the our national bank, the Federal Reserve, which creates money out of nowhere and lends it to the government. Most of this money will never be printed out in dollar bills. It simply circulates through the economy through bank accounts and credit cards.
Inflation has never been so easy. Its consequences will be disastrous for most people but beneficial for Oklahoma City, as I’ll explain later.
With more money circulating through the economy chasing the same amount of goods, prices eventually go up. The more money is created, the more prices go up.
China
Right now, the Federal Reserve isn’t creating very much money. That’s because China is lending money to the government. It creates hordes of its own currency, the yuan, and converts some of it to dollars to buy U.S. Treasury bills.
If China’s currency is weak (lots of money in circulation) and the U.S. dollar is strong (not very many dollars in circulation), the dollar will buy a relatively large amount of yuan. That makes it profitable for U.S. retailers to convert their dollars to lots of yuan and buy TVs, toys, and other consumer goods to sell to U.S. customers.
Low inflation of the dollar helps us import stuff and makes it hard for us to export stuff. Conversely, high inflation of the dollar hinders our imports and strengthens our exports.
What do you think will happen when China stops lending money to the U.S. government? Our government will start borrowing more money from the Federal Reserve, which creates money out of nowhere. This leads to a higher rate of inflation.
At some point in our future, government overspending and China’s eventual refusal to keep subsidizing the dollar will lead to high inflation.
And when that happens, I want to be invested in a city that will benefit from an economy where it’s hard to import stuff and easy to export stuff.
What “stuff” are we currently importing that we’ll have to start producing within our own country? Oil.
What will we export more of in the future? Food.
War with Iran
Now look at what happens if we attack Iran in 2008.
Time frame before our city begins its major growth: 12 to 24 months.
War with Iran will impact China. China has been undergoing some incredible growth:
China is just building the beginnings of its own system of national highways, and filling up the roadways with its own domestic version of motorized carriages. If China were to burn as much gasoline on a per capita basis as does the U.S., China alone would require the entire world’s daily oil output and then some. But that is just extrapolating the present into the future, and things are going to change dramatically long before something like that could occur, if it were even possible….
Overall, China is constructing buildings and roads and infrastructure that is the equivalent of a “new Houston,” about every month. And last year, in 2006, China added more electrical-generating capacity than exists in the entire state of California, where they have been building generating capacity for 100 years. So China is growing, and growing fast. (Whiskey and Gunpowder, 2007 April 18)
Do you think China can get away with this without buying oil? China is importing oil like crazy.
And if we go to war with Iran, do you think China will become more motivated to (A) keep on lending its money to the U.S. government OR (B) use that money to buy more oil instead?
I’m siding with option B. If China starts buying our oil and stops subsidizing our government, three things will drive up the price of oil.
(1) There will be a decrease in the supply of oil, since Iran will no longer be available as an exporter.
(2) There will be an increase in demand for oil, since China and other countries will begin an emergency buying frenzy when they see the price going through the ceiling.
(3) There will be high inflation in the U.S., making it hard for us to import oil from other countries.
This would throw most of the country into an inflationary recession. Take the “stagflation” we saw in the late 1970s, with rapidly rising prices and long lines at gas stations. Add to that the mortgage and banking crisis already building up today. That’s what I think we’ll see if we attack Iran.
The oil-producing states in the U.S., such as Texas and Oklahoma, will benefit from this. We will see a repeat of the oil boom that began in 1973.
Everyone else will suffer.
If we go to war with Iran next year, this will create the perfect situation for economic growth in Oklahoma City.
This gives us one to two years to train our leaders to influence our community before major changes begin to happen in Oklahoma City.
Peak Oil
We are heading towards a recession right now because of the banking crisis that is building up. If we don’t go to war with Iran, the recession will slow down the fundamental changes that are taking place in the city. This ought to buy us a few years.
Time frame: about five years, I think.
After we get through the recession, inflation will re-assert itself. China will also demand more and more oil as its economy grows. Over time, these factors will make it harder for us to import oil.
Combine this with the fact that production of oil is likely to slow down over time: the problem of peak oil.
We produce a lot of oil and natural gas in Oklahoma City.
We also have a lot of railroads that will be increasingly used to ship goods as the price of gas goes up. It takes less energy to ship by rail than by truck. Don’t forget why we’re better than Guthrie: we used to be a railroad town.
I’m guessing that the rising price of oil will begin to have a major influence on our city in about five years. That’s if we don’t bomb Iran. We’ll have to weather a recession with a temporarily lower demand for oil.
That gives us about five years to train leaders to impact this city in a major way.
Agriculture
Remember that rising inflation will make it easier for us to export goods to other countries.
China’s enormous growth makes it a prime candidate for U.S. exports.
China is already importing a significant amount of wheat and beef from other countries. I expect that amount to increase over time as China’s standard of living goes up.
And guess what we produce here in Oklahoma City?
Where do all the highways and railroads cross by which all of these agricultural goods will be shipped?
Time frame: ??
When this does hit, it will hit big. We’re currently paying farmers not to farm. This keeps the price of food artificially high. Imagine what will happen when this trend reverses and farming won’t need a government subsidy any more. The United States has the capacity to feed a large portion of the world.
I think agriculture is one of the most undervalued sectors of our economy.
I don’t know how much time we have to train leaders for our aggie city. This is something we should keep our eye on.
Social Security and Medicare
Social Security and Medicare are under-funded programs. The only way to keep them alive is by borrowing money: more inflation.
When these programs really start to go under, we can expect to see high inflation, which will strengthen the production of oil, natural gas, and food in Oklahoma City. It will probably also increase our city’s importance as a rail shipping center.
High inflation also means that many people on fixed incomes, especially retired people on pensions, will find that they can’t afford to live in the more expensive areas of the country any more. Inflation means that their monthly checks will buy less and less over time.
The same will happen for young families with kids and new careers. Companies who can’t afford to pay California salaries based on California real estate prices will move to less expensive areas.
The median home price in San Jose, California is $649,000. In Oklahoma City, it’s $154,900. In relation to salaries, San Jose was overvalued by 44% 20 months ago, while Oklahoma City was undervalued by 5%.
People are already starting to move into Oklahoma City from other states. Outside of Oklahoma, California is sending more money to buy Oklahoma City real estate than any other single state in the country.
Time frame: 2015??
Like agriculture, this is going to hit big. If you think we have a generational problem now, imagine what’s going to happen when twentysomethings and seventysomethings begin to move in droves into the same city, and the twentysomethings are made to pay taxes to support a larger and larger group of retired seventysomethings.
There’s going to be conflict. But this is better than having the seventysomethings move back in with their children and grandchildren, which will be the California alternative.
It’s hard to put an exact date on when this will happen, since it depends a lot on how quickly the Baby Boomers retire. The smart ones will realize that they’ll have to stay on the job or else be forced to move to Oklahoma.
The really smart ones will move to Oklahoma and use their increasingly worthless pensions to buy them a short retirement. Their time can be used to buy rental houses. Inflation and economic growth in Oklahoma City will cause property values and rents to rise dramatically over time. At some point, they will sell some of those houses to pay off the mortgages on the rest and retire into comfortable careers as property managers.
Our Opportunity
Future inflation offers us a dual opportunity. We can train leaders to be ready for these changes in the city and offer solutions, both in our churches and in the political realm. We can also help our future leaders see the potential of starting companies and buying rental houses in the Oklahoma City area.
People who are financially independent, whose businesses are producing a lot of passive income, have their minds and time freed up to consider how they can be God’s servants in the city which we love.
Even more importantly, people who have become financially independent usually have done so because they’ve developed the ability to make educated guesses about the future status of the economy. And this gives them an edge when they’re making ministry plans for a city that’s poised on the edge of enormous growth.
Take action. Start a business. Buy a rental house this year. Provide for your future grandchildren. Start looking after our city’s future.
Fall in love with Oklahoma City. Take leadership. Help her become a wonderful woman the entire world will admire.
This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” (Jeremiah 29:4-7)
Speak, O Lord, till Your church is built
And the earth is filled with Your glory.
Apr
28
Posted under
Christianity,
Economics,
Family,
Investing Strategies,
Personal Finances,
Real Estate IT IS THE CRY OF MY HEART
I started my first day of work at Kaplan today. They’re giving me an SAT class. I’m excited to be teaching again, but my eventual long-term goal is to work on curriculum development.
We can help transform homeschooling and Christian education in Oklahoma City. We can also provide easy-to-understand books on apologetics to a wide audience.
I have a big, broad vision. I want to see Oklahoma City become the center of a movement where God’s Word becomes central to family life.
It’s the family unit that will accumulate cultural and material wealth. Material wealth will allow us to have more free time to influence the city. Cultural wealth will provide values which will make the transformation permanent and positive.
Just look at the results of the Puritans’ work hundreds of years ago. They built a Protestant culture friendly toward economic growth.
Now we have the largest economy in the world. Even though we have problems with borrowing too much money, we still have more economic freedom than most European countries.
Talk about a city on a hill.
Rich vs. Poor: Not a Very Helpful Way to Think
And no, you becoming richer doesn’t necessarily make other people poorer. The invention of the light bulb helped almost everyone. Thomas Edison got richer faster than the poor did: if you look purely at dollar signs. But the standard of living went up much more for the poor than it did for Edison.
Light bulbs cost the same whether you’re poor or rich. So does electricity. Yes, Thomas Edison got rich in dollar signs faster than poor people did. But being able to buy 10,000 light bulbs instead of one doesn’t increase Edison’s standard of living 10,000 times. This is an example of the law of diminishing returns.
So even though the gap between the rich and the poor widens in terms of dollar signs, the productive inventions created by rich people make both the poor and the rich richer. And the standard of living goes up for everyone, but it goes up for the poor faster than it does for the rich.
If there were no rich people, we’d have no light bulbs. Or cars. Or transistors. Or computers. So in what way is the growing gap in dollar signs between the rich and the poor a bad thing, when the standard of living gap is actually shrinking?
If you doubt this, pretend that you’re poor. You want a more comfortable life. Pick any period in American history prior to this one that you’d rather live in. Can’t think of one? Didn’t think so.
You’re poor today. Would you switch places with a rich person from 1907? 1807? 1707? Why or why not?
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” Exodus 20:17
Ministry Vision and Business Vision Are Connected
There are lots of people more qualified than I am to do curriculum development. I met one of them: he teaches worldview and history at Community Christian School in Norman, OK.
So why aren’t they doing it? It’s usually lack of time, lack of vision, or both.
That’s why I’m so big on Christians starting their own businesses and teaching their children how to run them. If children inherit pre-built businesses and don’t have to start from scratch, they’ll have more free time to develop an all-encompassing vision for their community. They’ll have time to apply their gifts toward specific needs like curriculum development.
People may think I’m weird for posting on so many money-related topics. They know I’m not very materialistic, so why do I do it?
I want America to be friendly toward a culture that produces wealth, a standard of living high enough for people to devote their excess time and income to re-investment and ministry, not consumer spending.
A Society That Accumulates Wealth
What conditions must exist for a society that accumulates wealth? Here are some:
(1) A large population. The larger the population, the more people can specialize on jobs they’re good at. I can teach at Kaplan and trust farmers, truck drivers, real estate investors, commercial banks, supermarket employees, auto manufacturers, and gas stations to help me get my food. This is the division of labor.
(2) A society where people cooperate in peace. Violent racism, fear of nuclear war, and religious isolationism all have the effect of separating the population out into little pockets, reducing the division of labor. I met Gary North at South San Francisco OPC about a year and a half ago, and he told me that India’s caste system reduces their division of labor and prevents them from achieving the kind of economic growth seen in other Asian countries. I became convinced that he was a genius and signed up for his e-mail list.
(3) Values that emphasize free trade. Free trade allows buyers and sellers to set prices so that both parties are satisfied with what they’re getting. There’s no such thing as an equal exchange: when I buy a pair of sneakers, I do so because I think I’m getting a price that makes the shoes worth buying. The store thinks they’re getting enough money that makes the shoes worth selling. When we allow buyers and sellers to determine prices on the free market, the market automatically urges sellers to be competitive with prices and quality.
(4) Laws that reward honesty and punish dishonesty. Don’t you go trying to weigh me two pounds of bananas when I think I’m getting three, or the sword of the government will come and get you. Don’t you go counterfeiting money, especially when there are unbiblical legal tender laws in place saying that we can only use paper dollars to repay debt.
Today’s unbiblical laws put the government and central banks, the greatest counterfeiters, in control of everyone’s wealth. They allow central banks to devalue the dollar and take wealth away from people who have dollars stored up (savers and productive people) and people who are expecting future dollars (retirees and others on fixed incomes).
(5) Individual people who want to save and re-invest rather than spend all the money today. They are future-oriented and think about what their grandchildren’s lives will be like.
Theonomy
Hm. A large population of people who work together in peace. Free trade. Fair laws. Small government. Future-oriented families.
These are things we’d have if we only followed the guidelines for government found in the book of Deuteronomy.
I’m excited. People at Oklahoma City, and especially at my church, are already inclined to think this way. A lot of people would become theonomic if the theology were only explained to them clearly.
Buy One House a Year
Buy one house a year to rent out. If you’re in an undervalued region of the country, the rents will pay off the loan and all other expenses. Each year, you can raise rents to keep pace with inflation.
(Rent goes up, but you don’t get a raise every year? That’s the reason why inflation lowers unemployment. You’re getting paid with money that is worth less every year, yet you get little or no raise. Since employees are effectively getting paid less, companies can hire more of them. Don’t blame the companies. It’s the Congressmen and President who want this inflation so we can lower unemployment and “boost the economy.” Ha, ha. And we’re the ones who vote for them.
And if you’re eventually given a pay raise to compensate for inflation, that’s also good for our politicians. It means you’ve been inflated into higher tax brackets, ones meant originally for those oppressive rich people. Now we get a taste of our own medicine.)
I’ll Say It Again
Buy one house a year. After twenty years, if not sooner, you’ll have enough rent coming in so you’ll be able to leave your job and do more ministry. Have your children manage the properties: pay them 10% of the rents. They’ll have a head start on the business when they inherit your houses.
May our children make a huge impact on this world for God’s glory.
—
Me tired today, too tired to answer Min’s response to my Government Schools post. But don’t worry, Min, I haven’t forgotten. 
to follow You all of the days of my life
Apr
03
Posted under
Christianity,
Concepts,
Economics,
Education,
Entrepreneurship,
Family I WILL LIFT MY HANDS TO YOU
When I was a middle school teacher, students would sometimes come to me and ask, “Why do I have to learn this stuff?” It didn’t seem to matter much whether the subject was math, science, or Bible. The standard response runs something like, “This stuff will be useful to you later in life. You don’t really understand now, but you will.”
While there’s some validity to that answer, I wonder if we answer that way partly because we ourselves don’t know the answers. Most teachers don’t have a worldview that is as unified and full of interconnections as we think we do.
To see what I’m getting at, try writing down a list of what topics students study in school. Then choose two at random and combine them to make a subject. Here are some examples:
History of technology
Mathematics of music
Philosophy of computer programming
Biblical psychology
Economics of geology
Biology of music
Theology of philosophy
Languages in home economics
Science of physical fitness
Apologetics in economics
Language of counseling
Business of art
How many science teachers teach the history of technology or the economics of geology? Phrases like this sound strange to us, but they’re actually very practical fields.
It would be an interesting experiment to ask Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Computers, whether he would have introduced as many innovative ideas if he hadn’t been aware of the effect of other such innovations in the history of technology, such as Henry Ford’s invention of the assembly line.
Maybe we should also ask petroleum companies who are working on the oil sands of Alberta whether economics, geology, and current events are connected.
Is It the Teachers’ Fault?
Should we blame teachers for our lack of a comprehensive worldview? This is tempting, but think about what we’re asking of our educational system. If teachers knew enough about the history of technology to start their own companies and become rich, how many would have the motivation or free time to be teachers?
Look at what happened to me. For the past year and a half, I’ve been determined to have enough income to support a family and be involved in ministry, and that’s taken me temporarily away from the classroom. If I had five kids, I might never return. And who could blame me for putting my family, calling, and business first?
Even if we could blame our teachers, I don’t think it would be very productive to do so. If a student had a worldview comprehensive enough to recognize what was wrong with the school system, in what way would it benefit him to get teachers to teach him what he could learn for himself?
We have a tendency to place blame where we don’t want to take responsibility. Are you, as a student, willing to learn what your teachers don’t know and eventually work as a teacher yourself? More to the point, are you willing to fill the education gap that exists in your own life rather than just complaining about it?
Take Responsibility for Learning
I’m going to take a radical step and say that it’s your responsibility to learn what teachers aren’t able to show you. The fact that you’re reading this means you’re probably enough of an adult to do this own your own.
If your worldview is broader and deeper than what schools are teaching you, then you may also realize that your life doesn’t have to follow the path that others have laid out for you. Maybe you don’t need to get a job and work 9-to-5. Maybe the world isn’t even headed in that direction any more.
Think of what technology has done to snail mail and long-distance phone bills. Who’s to say that it won’t eventually make equally radical changes to our work environments? When Californians call a big company’s customer service line, they get a voice from India or Oklahoma. It’s more economical to outsource customer support to places where the cost of living is low.
Now combine what you’ve learned about economics, science, math, and current events. What will these companies do to eliminate gasoline costs and commute time as the price of oil rises? Perhaps someday, customer service employees will work from their living rooms or bedsides. They could be paid per call or per telephone minute.
Don’t Be Like Us, Okay?
We teachers generally live in the past. We make the same amount of money regardless of what we teach or how successful our high school graduates are. There’s no incentive for us to try to forecast the future like a businessperson would. But if America’s past history of technology and economic growth are any indication, we should be prepared for things to change, not stay the same.
Just to be clear, I’m not encouraging you to rebel against your teachers or parents. I’m not suggesting that you stop going to school. Not only would that be disrespectful (Hebrews 13:7, 17), you won’t be able to help anyone if you’re sitting in the school office half the week.
I’m suggesting that you give yourself the education that schools can’t help you with. A good place to start would be to sign up for Gary North’s e-mail list and read some of Paul Graham’s essays.
I’m confident that if you do this, you can learn what you need to free yourself from dependence on a 9-to-5 job. But you may choose to keep that job because you love working so much, perhaps becoming the school teacher that you never had.
Here are some excerpts from Paul Graham’s latest essay on beginning your own technology startup. His principles also apply to starting your own business in other areas.
Paul Graham: Why to Not Not Start a Startup (excerpts)
You need a lot of determination to succeed as a startup founder. It’s probably the single best predictor of success.
…
How can you tell if you’re determined enough…? I’m guessing here, but I’d say the test is whether you’re sufficiently driven to work on your own projects. Though they may have been unsure whether they wanted to start a company, it doesn’t seem as if Larry and Sergey [the founders of Google] were meek little research assistants, obediently doing their advisors’ bidding. They started projects of their own.
…
How do you tell if you’re independent-minded enough to start a startup? If you’d bristle at the suggestion that you aren’t, then you probably are.
…
One reason people who’ve been out in the world for a year or two make better founders than people straight from college is that they know what they’re avoiding. If their startup fails, they’ll have to get a job, and they know how much jobs suck.
If you’ve had summer jobs in college, you may think you know what jobs are like, but you probably don’t. Summer jobs at technology companies are not real jobs. If you get a summer job as a waiter, that’s a real job. Then you have to carry your weight. But software companies don’t hire students for the summer as a source of cheap labor. They do it in the hope of recruiting them when they graduate. So while they’re happy if you produce, they don’t expect you to.
That will change if you get a real job after you graduate. Then you’ll have to earn your keep. And since most of what big companies do is boring, you’re going to have to work on boring stuff. Easy, compared to college, but boring. At first it may seem cool to get paid for doing easy stuff, after paying to do hard stuff in college. But that wears off after a few months. Eventually it gets demoralizing to work on dumb stuff, even if it’s easy and you get paid a lot.
And that’s not the worst of it. The thing that really sucks about having a regular job is the expectation that you’re supposed to be there at certain times. Even Google is afflicted with this, apparently. And what this means, as everyone who’s had a regular job can tell you, is that there are going to be times when you have absolutely no desire to work on anything, and you’re going to have to go to work anyway and sit in front of your screen and pretend to. To someone who likes work, as most good hackers do, this is torture.
In a startup, you skip all that. There’s no concept of office hours in most startups. Work and life just get mixed together. But the good thing about that is that no one minds if you have a life at work. In a startup you can do whatever you want most of the time. If you’re a founder, what you want to do most of the time is work. But you never have to pretend to.
…
A significant number of would-be startup founders are probably dissuaded from doing it by their parents. I’m not going to say you shouldn’t listen to them. Families are entitled to their own traditions, and who am I to argue with them? But I will give you a couple reasons why a safe career might not be what your parents really want for you.
One is that parents tend to be more conservative for their kids than they would be for themselves. This is actually a rational response to their situation. Parents end up sharing more of their kids’ ill fortune than good fortune. Most parents don’t mind this; it’s part of the job; but it does tend to make them excessively conservative. And erring on the side of conservatism is still erring. In almost everything, reward is proportionate to risk. So by protecting their kids from risk, parents are, without realizing it, also protecting them from rewards. If they saw that, they’d want you to take more risks.
The other reason parents may be mistaken is that, like generals, they’re always fighting the last war. If they want you to be a doctor, odds are it’s not just because they want you to help the sick, but also because it’s a prestigious and lucrative career. But not so lucrative or prestigious as it was when their opinions were formed. When I was a kid in the seventies, a doctor was the thing to be. There was a sort of golden triangle involving doctors, Mercedes 450SLs, and tennis. All three vertices now seem pretty dated.
The parents who want you to be a doctor may simply not realize how much things have changed. Would they be that unhappy if you were Steve Jobs instead? So I think the way to deal with your parents’ opinions about what you should do is to treat them like feature requests. Even if your only goal is to please them, the way to do that is not simply to give them what they ask for. Instead think about why they’re asking for something, and see if there’s a better way to give them what they need.
…
This leads us to the last and probably most powerful reason people get regular jobs: it’s the default thing to do. Defaults are enormously powerful, precisely because they operate without any conscious choice.
To almost everyone except criminals, it seems an axiom that if you need money, you should get a job. Actually this tradition is not much more than a hundred years old. Before that, the default way to make a living was by farming. It’s a bad plan to treat something only a hundred years old as an axiom. By historical standards, that’s something that’s changing pretty rapidly.
We may be seeing another such change right now. I’ve read a lot of economic history, and I understand the startup world pretty well, and it now seems to me fairly likely that we’re seeing the beginning of a change like the one from farming to manufacturing.
And you know what? If you’d been around when that change began (around 1000 in Europe) it would have seemed to nearly everyone that running off to the city to make your fortune was a crazy thing to do. Though serfs were in principle forbidden to leave their manors, it can’t have been that hard to run away to a city. There were no guards patrolling the perimeter of the village. What prevented most serfs from leaving was that it seemed insanely risky. Leave one’s plot of land? Leave the people you’d spent your whole life with, to live in a giant city of three or four thousand complete strangers? How would you live? How would you get food, if you didn’t grow it?
Frightening as it seemed to them, it’s now the default with us to live by our wits. So if it seems risky to you to start a startup, think how risky it once seemed to your ancestors to live as we do now. Oddly enough, the people who know this best are the very ones trying to get you to stick to the old model. How can Larry and Sergey say you should come work as their employee, when they didn’t get jobs themselves?
Now we look back on medieval peasants and wonder how they stood it. How grim it must have been to till the same fields your whole life with no hope of anything better, under the thumb of lords and priests you had to give all your surplus to and acknowledge as your masters. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day people look back on what we consider a normal job in the same way. How grim it would be to commute every day to a cubicle in some soulless office complex, and be told what to do by someone you had to acknowledge as a boss—someone who could call you into their office and say “take a seat,” and you’d sit! Imagine having to ask permission to release software to users. Imagine being sad on Sunday afternoons because the weekend was almost over, and tomorrow you’d have to get up and go to work. How did they stand it?
It’s exciting to think we may be on the cusp of another shift like the one from farming to manufacturing. That’s why I care about startups. Startups aren’t interesting just because they’re a way to make a lot of money. I couldn’t care less about other ways to do that, like speculating in securities. At most those are interesting the way puzzles are. There’s more going on with startups. They may represent one of those rare, historic shifts in the way wealth is created.
That’s ultimately what drives us to work on Y Combinator [helping people start startups]. We want to make money, if only so we don’t have to stop doing it, but that’s not the main goal. There have only been a handful of these great economic shifts in human history. It would be an amazing hack to make one happen faster.
You can read Paul Graham’s article in its entirety
here.
I will lift my voice and sing. I will sing of Your glory, the glory of my King.
Jan
15
Posted under
Christianity,
Entrepreneurship,
Family YOUR JUSTICE FLOWS LIKE THE OCEAN’S TIDES
Here’s an unusual idea I want your comments on.
Men’s qualifications as suitors and husbands are linked to the amount of risk they’re willing to take in their careers.
I’ll explain that opinion in a bit, but to do that, I need to give you my two cents about the working world.
Trapped By Your Job?
Imagine if you could take the salary you’re earning right now and double it. You’d have to work harder, but you wouldn’t need a boss telling you what to do all the time. There would be no glass ceiling. You could give yourself a promotion whenever you wanted. And if you planned ahead, you might even sell your job to someone else for a significant amount of money.
What kind of job is this? It’s one you create for yourself. It’s your own business.
It’s popular these days to categorize people as either capitalists or exploited workers. And yes, there are many business owners who treat their employees unfairly. But in America, no one forces these employees to stay. They can leave whenever they want for other jobs. They can even start their own businesses and compete with their former employers. Because we have so much freedom, I don’t like describing these people as exploited.
You don’t need to fill out a lot of paperwork to start a business in America. All you have to do is start selling your services to others, keep accurate records, and file some forms with the IRS at tax time.
People Trap Themselves
Why don’t more people do this? I think it’s the same thing that keeps men from courting women and then leading lovingly during marriage. They’re afraid of one thing. What is it?
Your company makes a lot more money than you do for your day’s work. They couldn’t afford to hire you otherwise. You can sit and complain about it all you want, but the next morning, you get up and go back. There’s one thing you want to avoid. What is it?
Risk.
I don’t think it’s really fair to say that companies exploit workers. Workers subject themselves willingly because they’re allowing the companies to shield them from risk. If companies go bankrupt, the employees may lose their jobs, but no lawyers will come after them for their houses and cars. They buy safety by allowing their employers to have the most lucrative and risky business opportunities.
Someone who’s a good small business owner will have learned how to manage risk. One good way to do this is to do a lot of research and then practice making reasonable decisions with the limited amount of information available.
EDIT: Many employees also have good risk-reward opportunities and can grow without leaving their jobs. It takes courage to climb the corporate ladder. Others can start side businesses without leaving their jobs. Professionals like doctors, lawyers, accountants, and IT experts have an advantage here because they can earn high salaries while they make plans to start their own practices (read: their own businesses).
An Example
Think back the the four-unit apartment building I wrote about yesterday. It should be clear from the post that I did quite a bit of research before buying the building. Most of it you can’t see, like running spreadsheets and looking up property data online. And I wouldn’t have been able to do most of that research without being mentally prepared beforehand.
How prepared? Well, I’m about halfway through this stack of books:
And that doesn’t count the dozen or so books that I’ve read and given away. It also doesn’t count the hundreds of hours I’ve spent doing research on the Web.
That’s a couple of semesters worth of material, yet I have no formal education in business or economics. Doing it this way is a lot less work and a lot more fun than going back to school would be, since I get to make my own decisions about what and when to study. Grades and final exams don’t have much meaning in this context.
The self-motivation and initiative come because I have to love knowledge in order to take big steps in life. I love to picture myself supporting my family and having a lot of free time for ministry in the future. I hate the idea of being stuck at the same stage of life forever, not only because I’d be single, but because I want to serve God as effectively as possible. Big dreams, big rewards, and careful research make the stress of taking risks bearable. Well, usually, anwyay. 
(EDIT: You can do this too. Start at Gary North’s Web site. Sign up for his e-mail lists and read the publicly accessible free articles. The subscription, at $10/month, gets you full access to the site with hundreds more articles and a discussion forum where you can interact with Dr. North and other Christian businesspeople. I wouldn’t have moved to Oklahoma without first Paul Graham’s and then Dr. North’s influence. They’ll probably never understand how thankful I am.)
People Are Scared
Diligent study and risk-taking go hand in hand. Many people are scared to make big decisions because they don’t know how to evaluate and manage the risks involved. They go through life making one small change after another but never take steps necessary to go for what they really want.
Now jump a decade into the future. If you’ve had success in your decision-making, others will say what a good economic forecaster you were. They’ll say that they should have done the same thing earlier in life, but they never had the opportunity.
At the time, they were unwilling to take the risks. You were. So today, you reap the profits. Most people don’t have to be “exploited workers”. They choose that existence.
Risk and Family Leadership
What does all this have to do with courtship and marriage?
My theory is that these business-related character traits also make men good family leaders. A man has to demonstrate preparedness, foresight, and a willingness to take risks in order to find and court a woman. He has to see all kinds of problems in advance and try to solve them in order to guard his family from risk, since it’s his job to love and protect them.
A leader who always tries to deal with life’s issues “as they come up” will procrastinate and allow problems to build up, not just for himself, but for those he leads. A man who’s used to passing risk on to someone else is going to be uncomfortable shielding his family and allowing the bullets to hit him when things get tough. He won’t be used to managing the stress and fear that uncertainty brings, and this will affect his relationships with other people.
What is courage, after all? Is it the absence of fear? Or the ability to manage the fear and still be able to lead others?
They came to a place named Gethsemane; and He said to His disciples, “Sit here until I have prayed.” And He took with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be very distressed and troubled. And He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death; remain here and keep watch.” And He went a little beyond them, and fell to the ground and began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass Him by. And He was saying, “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.” And He came and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Keep watching and praying that you may not come into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Mark 14:32-38 NASB)
God, please forgive me for living a life of uncontrolled fear. Please help me to trust You so I can be Your instrument of blessing to others.
Improve This
What I’ve written is just a theory based on observations I’ve had from my business experiences. Please critique it and make it better.
Don’t have a Xanga? You can still comment. After you type your comment in and click the Submit button, log in with the username DarrensGuest and the password darrensguest.
Dec
12
Posted under
Christianity,
Oklahoma,
Real Estate 
Before I say anything else, I admit that this post is a blatant ad to try to get you California folks to come out to Oklahoma. This is my favorite place in the world, not only for what it is today, but for its potential.
Large cities’ populations have been shrinking for years. Plug San Francisco into City-Data.com and see for yourself. People are leaving because taxes are high and houses are expensive. City cores are crowded, dirty, and ridden with crime. People in suburbs have to fight traffic every day and spend a lot of money on gas.
Immigration and birth rates are not high enough to replace the people who are leaving. Big cities discourage people from having families. Liberal values lead to high abortion rates. The high cost of living means that people have to spend more time in school to earn enough to have kids, and when they do, their budgets don’t allow them to have more than a few.
In contrast, the people who live in Oklahoma City place a strong emphasis on family values, and the cost of living is low enough that people can have lots of kids even if only one of the parents is working. The low cost of living and business-friendly environment are starting to attract a lot of people who used to live on the East and West coasts. Try calling a title company in Oklahoma City. Ask what state is sending the most people out here. Hint: It starts with C and ends with A.
I’m optimistic about the future growth of Christianity. We can create a Christian-friendly environment in Oklahoma City before the masses flood out here. I pray that Christians will have some foresight and move to the cutting edge of historical change.
TEN REASONS WHY I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE OKLAHOMA CITY
10. THIS PLACE IS BEAUTIFUL.
All the pictures I’ve posted on this site were taken either in Oklahoma City or the nearby suburb Norman. Notice how much open space there is. Oklahoma City is about the size of the entire San Francisco East Bay, while the population is only about two-thirds that of the city of San Francisco.
There’s lots of room for lovely plants and animals, but you can find skyscrapers if you want to live near them. Check out the Quail Springs shopping mall and movie theater. There’s something here for everybody.
9. MILD WEATHER
Take a look this climate data:
While Oklahoma City has high temperatures in the summer, it really doesn’t feel too bad. When I moved to this area in August, I was always surprised to see the thermometor read 85 to 95 deg F when the air felt ten degrees cooler. Our body temperature is usually higher than the temperature of the outside air, and Oklahoma’s powerful summer winds blow that body heat away.
October and November feel a lot like the California coast. The clean, moist lake air at 65 to 85 degrees reminds me of Santa Cruz.
The winters are normally supposed to be mild. You’ll notice from the weather data that Oklahoma gets less snowfall than the national average.
This winter was an exception. You’ve probably heard about the snowstorm that swept through half the country on November 29. That storm laid down more snow in one night than Oklahoma normally gets in an entire winter. The snowplow crews were taken by surprise and couldn’t clear the freeways, so most of the schools and work places were shut down on November 30.
Is this bad weather? Not if you look at the average. The day before the snowstorm, when I took the picture of the bluebird (now gone away), we had a high of 73 deg F. Two weeks later, the temperature is back up to the mid-60s.
Overall, the weather isn’t really that different from inland California’s. Think of Sacramento. Celeste, you would get your seasons without having to suffer extreme heat and cold. Ron, you would get your first chance to drive through the snow. Mark and Paul, go ahead and crash all of the Christian clubs out here. They need to be shell-shocked into action.
8. LOWER COST OF LIVING
Most people don’t want to move out of California. “I won’t be able to find a job that pays well.” That particular objection is not usually based on careful research.
A dollar can buy more in Oklahoma City than it can in San Francisco. The same money has more purchasing power. Here are some comparisons. (Notice that I’m using San Francisco suburbs rather than the city itself. Almost no one can afford to live in San Francisco without government-subsidized rent.)
State income tax (highest bracket):
California: 9.3%
Oklahoma: 7.0%
YOU SAVE 25%
Auto Insurance for six months (new driver):
San Bruno, CA: $1300
Oklahoma City: $450
YOU SAVE 65%
Airport parking per day:
Oakland, CA: $11
Oklahoma City: $4
YOU SAVE 64%
Rent for a 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom apartment per month (1200 square feet, no garage, middle-class area):
San Bruno: $1400
Oklahoma City: $700
YOU SAVE 50%
4-bedroom, 2-bathroom lakefront property (2300 square feet, 2-car garage):
Bay Area suburb: $2,000,000
Oklahoma City suburb: $200,000
YOU SAVE 90%
Four-unit rental property:
San Bruno: $1,200,000
Oklahoma City: $140,000
YOU SAVE 88%
Now let’s say you’re an immigrant who could choose any place in the country to lay down roots. You’re a hard worker. You’re smart, or you would never have chosen to move in the first place. If you went to Oklahoma City, your pay would be 40% lower than it would be in San Francisco. Where do you go?
7. GAS PRICES
Need I say more?
6. ASIANS! MEXICANS! AND THEIR FOOD!
Oklahoma City has an Asian district as well as a large Mexican area. There are some good restaurants, but that pales in comparison to what will be built over this lot:
A Chinese businessman is going to tear down the buildings that are there now and build (another) Asian shopping center. Sounds just like home.
5. RUSH HOUR
A snapshot of rush hour traffic on Highway 9 (Norman, OK):
Norman’s Wal-Mart at rush hour:
If I want to get home from central Oklahoma City to Norman at 5pm, I take Highway 235 south, 40 east, and Sooner Road south. No traffic wars -> more concentration for Doug Wilson’s tapes. Average speed: 60 mph.
Late at night or on Sundays, I take Highways 35 and 9, a more direct route. Average speed: 70mph.
I boarded a plane today: Oklahoma City to Oakland, CA. Total time waiting in airport lines: Two minutes. Total time from parking lot to gate: fifteen minutes. Only 20% of plane’s seats were filled. I doubt if the airport will be as pleasant on the return trip.
Still want to live in the Bay Area?
4. FRIENDLY FOLKS
This places GLOWS with hospitality. Business owners, waiters, and sometimes retail workers give customers shining smiles. People help each other and chat in the grocery store. Little old ladies actually let me walk them across the street. Women are appreciative when I open the door for them. The people at the national bank actually know my name.
The airplane pilot was joking around as she made intercom announcements during her flight today. Really friendly and lots of fun!
3. REAL ESTATE
Take a look at the rental property data I gave you in #8 above. Note that an Oklahoma house costs about 10% of the price of a California house, but the rent is half of California’s rent.
This means that the ratio of rent to property value is five times as high in Oklahoma as it is in California. One million dollars of property will collect five times the rent in Oklahoma as it would in California.
I recently bought a house to live in. It’s actually a four-unit apartment building. I plan to live in one of the units and rent the other three out. You can tell from the pictures that the property still needs some repair work but definitely has potential.
I work with Bencorp Finance. We can help you buy Oklahoma property out of state.
2. MINISTRY OPPORTUNITIES
Since I’m a theonomist, I believe God will use Christians to change the world one person at a time. I’ve found only one Reformed church that lives consistently with that vision: Our Lord’s Community Church. One of the pastors, Keith Adams, has done a great job convincing people that they can make a difference. In the young adults’ group, Megan Parker lives this vision out in an awesome way. Come and meet them. You’ll see what I mean.
What does Oklahoma City need? The same thing California needs, but for different reasons. People in Oklahoma need Christ, and Christians need to be trained to interact with every aspect of the culture. Because the place is spiritually and economically poised for enormous growth, the burden I feel is that much greater.
San Francisco is destroying itself anyway, as the people’s moral and political views are causing the city’s population to shrink. The suburbs will follow as the prices of gas and other commodities rise. Its culture might not survive the coming year of recession and decades of high inflation. San Francisco is a dying city.
Come to Oklahoma City. Our cultural legacy could be felt for centuries to come. We need your help.
1. FAMILY FRIENDLY
Oklahoma is infamous for having the highest divorce rate in the country. Most people who cite that statistic don’t mention another: Almost everyone in Oklahoma is married. The divorce rate is measured per thousand people, but many more people in that thousand are married in Oklahoma as compared to, say, California.
This makes a huge difference in interpreting that statistic. In California, people just jump into bed with one another. That’s not marriage, nor should it be called marriage. At least people in Oklahoma make a lifelong commitment first, even if that commitment often fails.
Ironically, the family-friendliness of Oklahoma makes its problems with sexual immorality more visible.
Out here, many women want to have kids and enjoy the privilege of raising them 24-7. The cost of living is low enough that the husband’s salary is often enough to support a large family.
Real estate is cheap enough that most families can buy rental properties and use the cash flow to gradually replace the husband’s income. His free time could be used for ministry. Our combined efforts would have a large effect on Oklahoma’s culture. Unfortunately, most Christians don’t do this. We just don’t think big enough.
I wouldn’t mind getting married and spending the rest of my life out here. I can always fly back to California to visit. After living in Oklahoma City for two months, I can say that there is no significant culture shock…
OTHER than the fact that almost everyone is married. I honestly feel a bit out of place. Of course, my role as a Christian requires that I adjust to their culture, and I don’t mind doing that. This particular problem involves more than just a cultural adjustment. It’s a reminder to me of my dream. I want to have enough passive income to support a family and have lots of ministry at the same time. I’ve chosen the income and the ministry, and I had to move to Oklahoma to do it. Is it possible that the move will keep me from having the rest of my dream?
I asked this question to Ruth yesterday when I met with her and her husband for lunch. I knew what she was going to say, but it was somehow really comforting when she said it. I taught it to my 7G Bible class for a whole year. Why is it that I don’t quite believe it myself?
“Trust God. Serve Him.”
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6)
Looking back You know You had to bring me through
all that I was so afraid of
Though I questioned the sky, now I see why
Had to walk the rocks to see the mountain view
Looking back, I see the lead of love. (Caedmon’s Call - Lead of Love)
