(Continued from Part 4.)
Preparations for Sons
After spiritual preparation, the number one thing a parent can do is to prepare their son for life is to teach him how to make and control money. Money and resources create options. Lack of money limits opportunities. I have a collateral or lineal relative in every conflict from the Revolutionary War to the present. If you go back far enough in history, you will find multiple great-grandfathers at a distant generational level. For instance in the time period of the American Civil War, I have multiple grandfathers and collateral relatives who served in the Confederate Army and Navy including at the rank of General and other Flag Officers. I also have a grandfather who sold the plantation and divested his wealth out of the Confederate currency. There are a lot of stories I know from families who were wiped out either in the Civil War or in the Great Depression, so knowing how to control resources are critical for a man to develop.
A lot of people incorrectly say that money does not matter at all. But historically, money has beens the single greatest determiner in the ability to marry and reproduce in addition to its fundamental aspect in survival in modern societies. Marriage (and child-rearing) are a very resource-intensive exercise. A single man uses relatively little resources compared to a married man with a wife and children. There is a resource “marriage gap” where education, income, and overall wealth are the best predictors of marriage than any other factor. Almost 90 percent of millionaires and higher-income individuals are married with over three times the marriage rate among those with higher incomes versus lower incomes. Increased education also leads to a higher likelihood of marriage.
There has been an economic war going on over the last 75 years and the middle class has been losing ground since the late 1970s where marriage rates have been falling as economic opportunities have been reduced. Now, middleclass jobs such as middle managers and other white-collar jobs are being exported or eliminated through technology and even more with the growth of artificial intelligence. Previously, many blue-collar factory production jobs were offshored starting in the 1980s and this decimated many small towns depending on the factory producing goods for wider export. As jobs disappeared, all of the support structures such as merchants supporting them also crumbled. So, many main streets became dotted with vacant storefronts.
All of these changes have impacted family formation. Currently, polls show that about the same percentage of 18-year-old males are interested in someday getting married as compared to the same group 30 years ago. But the percentage in young women responding the same way have declined by over 20 points over the same 30 year period. Many of these issues young women are having entering into marriage are rooted in economic dislocations and fractures in the American family and the collapse of the security of the male breadwinner.
Our country was much stronger when boys were developing ways to make money. This was fairly standard years ago when every boy was doing something to earn money. Now, so many boys are more familiar with video games than doing productive activities.
Consider the case of young Warren Buffett who was born in 1930. It has been widely reported that young Warren was ill back in 1938 with a case of appendicitis who was saved through the early intervention of his family doctor who came to his home, thought it was a minor condition, later returning, and admitted him into the hospital for an emergency appendectomy. Some would say why did the doctor not identify the condition immediately. There are a couple of ideas here that are useful to survivalists: you have to be careful of the principle of overdiagnosis of expending scarce resources on long-shots exemplified by the adage: “When you hear hoofbeats, expect horses, not zebras.” In other words, think of something common, rather than something exotic unless you are on the Serengeti Plain where the principle is the same with the animals reversed. As young Warren lived in the age before antibiotics were “discovered,” but not yet available, he spent weeks in the hospital. After his discharge from the hospital, he continued his various money ventures that have been widely documented. He was selling chewing gum at six years old. This included buying 40 acres of farmland for $1,200 from his earnings — including some from being a paperboy.
There is nothing historically extraordinary there. In the distant past, practically every boy and girl had some type of job or way that they were helping their family out. Young Warren discovered some principles at a young age to become an owner rather than just a consumer. Work is a wonderful thing. It teaches initiative, thrift, industry, and is a gateway to the world. I have read stories and known so many men who have recounted the tales of their youth of that world. Unfortunately, child labor laws have largely destroyed the ability of a boy to earn money. A boy today is protected, coddled, and becomes a user of resources instead of producer. By the time, he is “old” enough to work, he is many times soft, spoiled, and whiny equating work with drudgery always trying to figure out some way to escape rather than embracing it. Out on farms, life is a little different. Depending on the state a boy who lives on a farm such as in Kansas could actually have a driver’s “permit” at the age of 14 and the laws “allow” children to work on their parents’ farm. Many young city people today are frittering their time away while many farm kids are earning money and getting a head start on life.
The overall historical progression for sons in English speaking countries under the principles of primogeniture was for first born sons to inherit the land and title (if any), second-born sons to enter military service, law or business, and last-born sons would often enter into the clergy of the Church of England. The path for second or later-born sons from well-born families to higher nobility could improve if they did well on the battlefield. The life of Arthur Wellesley (later better known as the Duke of Wellington) is instructive. The man who would eventually become one of the most influential men in England in military and politics by outmaneuvering Napoleon and serving as Prime Minister twice started life as the fourth living son and in the military purchased commissions four times. Usually, a father would purchase a commission or commissions for his son for a career in the military.
During and after the American Revolution as a way to “increase” equality and remove ancient feudal customs, laws on primogeniture were removed being replaced with equitable divisions starting with the state of Georgia in 1777. One consequence of this was to reduce the important role of the eldest son who would lead the family in place of his father’s death or absence as demonstrated by the ancient Roman concept of paterfamilias. As a consequence of diffusing power and wealth among many instead of concentrating it, families became weaker as wealth and power have become more divided.
Even in the recent past in the earlier parts of the 20th Century, a natural progression was for even city boys to be around adult workplaces like a railyard and to begin learning about the world of work by observing people. Gradually, an industrious young boy was given some tasks that could gradually lead to getting paid for more tasks. In this world without instant communication or alarm clocks, often boys would be given the tasks of being a messenger or caller. In England, employment as a “knocker-up” is widely known where a man would be a human alarm clock — going around knocking on windows to wake up workers.
One of the many problems today is that even if a boy or a man is earning money he does not have the purchasing power of previous generations and it is rapidly depreciating. Young Warren bought his farm for 30 dollars an acre back in 1945. Now, eighty years later many productive farms are selling for a hundred to a thousand times more per-acre where the federal “minimum” wage has barely budged from 40 cents in 1945 to 7.25 or an increase of less than 20 times. By 1964, the “minimum” wage was $1.25 an hour (or five silver quarters) at 50 dollars per ounce, those are now worth almost 9 dollars. This means that the “minimum” wage in 1964 if in silver coinage would be worth more than 44 dollars an hour!
Because of various laws and regulations, it is exceedingly difficult to hire people because of minimum wage laws, child labor laws, worker’s compensation laws, social security laws, state unemployment laws, federal unemployment laws, and probably a few others that I am forgetting about. In a free market, wages are determined by the interaction between supply and demand, not by government fiat. A boy getting a start in life is really difficult today between government red tape designed to “protect” him from life. By the time he is unwrapped from this artificial bubble, he is fairly useless to himself and to creating a functioning society.
The concept of jobs and businesses for preparedness-oriented people will be covered in another article on the “Collapse of Western Civilization: Family Preparedness,” along with ways of how families can increase their chances of surviving the coming decades of likely war, chaos, and starvation, but I will make a few brief comments for young men on this important topic. Boys and young men need to concentrate on being moral, spiritually prepared, and in physical preparedness increasing their capabilities both to earn money and to be useful. Opportunities are closing up rather than expanding for boys and men. Women with the right values and fairly basic criteria still have much greater opportunities. It may not be in their town or state, but opportunities are out there so much more than for a man.
A man’s opportunities are mostly correlated with his resources. It has been said many times that the best time to plant a tree was at some point in the past, not in the future. The sooner a boy can make money, it is more likely his future self will thank him. Many years ago Charlie Munger (who was a very close associate of Warren Buffett) had a very illustrative idea which I will paraphrase: The first 100,000 dollars is a very important goal to achieve and everything after that was easy because of the compounding effect of money. The same can be said for interest that you are paying because that principle also works against you. Getting to $200,000 is a lot easier than that first $100,000.
(To be continued, in Part 6.)