A Little Perspective on What Lies Ahead

Eliminating Elites won't eliminate our structural problems or the reduction in phantom wealth we've all been relying on.

Many finance-oriented critiques start from the position that our problems largely stem from the financial/political dominance of Elitist cartels and cabals. Clearly, the malinvestment, exploitation, predation and disregard for the law that characterizes the rule of political-financial Elites in both developed and developing nations have wreaked havoc on societies and economies around the globe.

Implicit in this critique is a dangerously naive assumption: if all our problems can be traced back to Elitist cabals such as the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, then it follows that the subjugation or eradication of these concentrations of self-serving power would remove the cause of our problems.

Alas, that would be a welcome step in the right direction, but that alone would not resolve the structural causes of our devolution. Freeing ourselves of self-serving Elites would certainly create an opening for structural transformation that is currently impossible, but the transformation will require changing much of what the average citizen takes for granted as a "given" or even "right."

For a little perspective on what lies ahead, let's consider the structural problems that remain even if we were fortunate enough to throw off the yoke of the Fed, the corporate cartels, and the entire system of Elitist dominance.

1. We would still have mountains of debt that will never be paid and enormous losses to write off. It would be nice is we could place all the inevitable losses as phantom assets are exposed to price discovery on bankers and Elites, but the reality is that these assets are distributed throughout the economy: as these phantom assets vanish, pension funds, insurance companies and other bulwarks of non-Elite wealth/security will have to write off significant portions of their assets.

Citizens will ultimately find their wealth/financial security has been degraded, perhaps severely. It's tempting to think that a "debt jubiliee" on (for example) student loans would "solve the problem," but this is not a pain-free solution: the $1 trillion in student loans are someone's assets, and the "someone" is not necessarily a banker or billionaire: it might be the pension fund that is paying Mom or Dad's pension.

The unpayable debts are only symptoms of a deeply flawed system. To see the debt as the problem is to ignore the system which created the "need" for that debt: in the education cartel, that is the entire system of "higher education," which is fundamentally a "skimming operation" not unlike its partner in crime, the financial industry and central State that creates and enforces the debt.

In other words, simply writing off debt does not address the structural causes of the debt. That will require a massive revolution in our understanding and delivery of education, and a wholesale elimination of tens of thousands of "skimming" positions within the education complex.

That means tens of thousands of people will lose their high-paying jobs.

You see the point being made here: living within our means requires a massive structural downsizing of assets, employment and expectations. An economy that has lived on the creation of debt (phantom assets) cannot be transformed by the mere writedown of debt: the entire structure that created and enforced that debt must be torn down, and everyone who skimmed off a profit or livelihood from that reliance on the machinery of debt will experience a decline in their standard of living.

2. We would still have a global economy facing the constraints of higher-cost energy and commodities. As we all know, it's easier to create phantom wealth than it is to create real goods such as grain, energy, gold, etc. Phantom assets are ultimately claims on A) income streams or B) real-world assets, and so all phantom assets are ultimately claims on a limited resource, either a commodity or an enterprise.

You can "grow" phantom assets to near-infinity, but that near-infinite sum of money will still distill down to a claim on limited resources and income streams.

As I have often noted here (thanks to correspondents Bart D. and Harun I.), energy may well be abundant at a certain price; what will be scarce is the cash/income to pay for that "abundant" energy. Abundance of a commodity that has a high cost-basis due to real-world constraints does not lead to lower prices: if it takes one barrel of oil to extract and refine three barrels of shale oil, the cost of those barrels cannot drop below the cost of extraction, refining, return on the capital invested, labor costs, etc.

Sellers of oil below cost will rapidly deplete their capital and go bust.

Eliminating Elites is a first good step, but it does not magically eliminate the constraints imposed on a phantom-asset based system. Living within our means will require a massive reduction not just in phantom assets but in the income that has been generated by those phantom assets. It won't just be bankers and billionaires who will be poorer; everyone with exposure to the financial system and the real-world costs of the FEW essentials (food, energy, water) will be poorer in terms of purchasing power.

3. As Status Quo policies fail, replacement policies will become less predictable in their implementation and unintended consequences. Recognizing that a policy has failed is only a first step; understanding the structural causes and designing a policy that won't alienate all the vested interests while addressing the problem is politically impossible until the crisis has left the Status Quo no other choice.

But there is very little history that informs the confluence of crises we now face; the more replacement policies diverge from the mainstream, the more unpredictable their comsequences become. As the saying has it, the road to Heck is paved with good intentions, and policy choices that seem common-sense in crisis could issue disastrous results.

Political expediency is a powerful force for unintended consequences. Even if we got rid of the Fed and various financial Elites, the losses trickling down to the Main Street economy would still be large enough to cause powerful vested interests (union and municipal pension plans, for example) to support Status Quo "saves" of phantom assets and the machinery of debt-creation.

Political expediency will not vanish along with the Fed; vested interests will still seek to impose self-serving policies that have not been thought out or tested in the real world on smaller scales. They will attempt to conserve their own wealth and power at the expense of the general citizenry or politically weaker rivals.

Entries and email may be sporadic this week due to other commitments.

---

Resistance, Revolution, Liberation: A Model for Positive Change (print $25)
(Kindle eBook $9.95)

Read the Introduction (2,600 words) and Chapter One (7,600 words) for free.

We are like passengers on the Titanic ten minutes after its fatal encounter with the iceberg: though our financial system seems unsinkable, its reliance on debt and financialization has already doomed it.We cannot know when the Central State and financial system will destabilize, we only know they will destabilize. We cannot know which of the State’s fast-rising debts and obligations will be renounced; we only know they will be renounced in one fashion or another.
The process of the unsustainable collapsing and a new, more sustainable model emerging is called revolution.Rather than being powerless, we hold the fundamental building blocks of power. We need neither permission nor political change to liberate ourselves. A powerless individual becomes powerful when he renounces the lies and complicity that enable the doomed Status Quo’s dominance.

Read more...

Part 13: Robin Meets Kylie: Love AFS

Here is this week's chapter of my serialized comic novel "Four Bidding For Love."(Those who find absurdist humor and adult situations offensive, please read no further.)

     Robin withdrew his handkerchief for the third time and wiped his tearing eyes. The appointed rendezvous point—the craft fair's coffee stand—was unfortunately adjacent to a vendor of scented candles whose heavily-perfumed wares had instantly triggered Robin's allergies. It seemed as if an entire containerload of vanilla bean extract had been poured into the wizened seller's white candles, with another cargo of chemical-musk thrown into the array of squat purple candles for good measure.
     Surrendering to whatever petrochemical had launched a frenzied immune response in his suffering eyes, Robin shifted out of whiff range and reckoned he could watch for the pony-tailed negotiator from a safe distance. The din of hundreds of conversations filled the cavernous space, and Robin's innate dislike of crowds added to his discomfort. All this for a stupid toaster and an equally stupid poster, he sighed; this is the cost of being too nice for my own good.
     Amazing that someone can make a living at this in a depressed economy, Robin mused, for he'd paused in front of a booth of rustic bird houses. Taking in the steep price being asked for each avian abode, Robin thought, maybe I'm just naive, and this guy drives a Mercedes.
     A glance at his watch stirred Robin's annoyance, for his counterpart was late. As he scanned the coffee stand once again—no females with dark ponytails—he fumed, I've already wasted far too much time on this foolishness.
     The next booth featured a selection of handcast gargoyles, "suitable for lawn placement or hardscape decorations" according to the hand-lettered sign. Robin reckoned the hunched little monsters with exaggerated expressions of evil intent were hideously inappropriate for anyone's yard save the Addams Family; yet the proprietor, a hearty man with red suspenders and a jovial countenance, acted as if he were selling beatific cherubs rather than figurines guaranteed to etch nightmares in the minds of anyone deranged enough to purchase one.
     His curiosity was quickly rewarded—or perhaps punished would be a more accurate description— by the potbellied craftsman himself, who approached, thumbs crooked theatrically behind suspenders, to describe his purposefully hideous wares. In a booming voice designed to carry over the surrounding din, the man stated that the gargoyles were cast from originals that graced Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Robin nodded in feigned interest and twisted round to survey the coffee stand once again.
     His need for deliverance at fever pitch, he saw a slim chestnut-haired young woman in blue jeans and form-fitting blouse walk hurriedly up to the coffee booth and then slip off her sunglasses in a nervous scan of the patrons. Her dark hair was bound into a glossy ponytail, but he immediately dismissed her as a potential Kylie. It couldn't be her, he told himself; she's gorgeous. As the gargoyle maker droned on, Robin watched the young woman glance about in the fidgety fluster of someone late for an appointment. It couldn't be her, Robin repeated to himself, but then clearly she was late and looking for someone.
     Robin had never fallen in love at first sight, and so he could not know that angels voices don't well up in Heavenly chorus to announce the glad tidings; they whisper. What happens is precisely what he experienced, which is that everything and everyone but this young woman fell away from his perception, and he could not pry his gaze from her.
     Though it seemed more likely that the menacing gargoyle on the tabletop beside him would spring to life than this comely young woman would be the negotiator for the ursine axe-thrower, Robin was so desperate to escape the enthusiastic purveyor of gargoyles that he resolved to approach the young woman.
     Excusing himself, Robin walked unsteadily toward the anxious dark-haired beauty and inwardly prepared for cool rejection. Smoothing the front of his black turtleneck, he took a calming breath and then approached the young woman. "Excuse me, but are you Kylie?"
     The young woman gazed at him and stammered, "Why, yes. Are you Robin?"
     "That's me," he replied, and his relief was mirrored by Kylie's approving appraisal of him. Though Robin was pleased she did not seem disappointed, he could not hear the angels of love at first sight which murmured so enchantingly in Kylie's ear. For it seemed to Kylie that a Bollywood movie star had just introduced himself, and everything around her but his tentative smile and earnest dark eyes fell away from her view.
     Kylie too had never experienced love at first sight, she did feel aflutter with a new kind of nervousness. Though Robin’s black turtleneck and worn khaki trousers were ordinary, his symmetrical features, large soft eyes, easy grin and casually combed black locks worked like magnets on her gaze.
     In a voice which reminded her of an avuncular FM radio host he asked, "May I get you a cup of coffee?" and she nodded a bit too eagerly.
     "I must look like I just left the saddest movie ever made," he said lightly. "Those scented candles fired up my allergies most wickedly."
     Glancing about, Kylie said, "There's no place to sit in here anyway. Maybe we can find a bench outside."
     Robin affably agreed, and once the two had cardboard coffee cups in hand, they worked their way through the craft enthusiasts to the open doorway and the crisp San Francisco air beyond. Once beyond the odoriferous reach of the candles, the faint scent of Kylie's hair, or perfume, he couldn't tell which, reached Robin, and the thought that she smelled good registered brightly in his mind, alongside the observation that her blue jeans clung quite attractively to her firm derriere.
     Two pair of eyes followed the youthful couple with hawklike intensity: a matronly and not terribly attractive woman in a long purple skirt and square sunglasses wearing a kitschy straw hat wreathed with pink flowers, and a top-heavy man in a crumpled fedora and baggy coat trousers similarly masked by oversized round sunglasses.
     In their single-minded pursuit of the love-struck young couple, the ungainly set of spies collided in front of the cuckoo clock booth, and each issued a curt apology before advancing through the doorway.
     Though it was cruel to even think it, Alexia reckoned the rude woman who'd just bumped into her was ugly enough to pass for a man, and a damned plain one at that. This town is a magnet for batty old ladies in castoff clothes, she thought, while the rest of us are scrimping just to avoid ending up on the streets.
     For his part, Ross took one look at the bulging chest, grotesquely ill-fitting trousers and mashed fedora of the high-voiced man who'd jostled him and thought, Jeez, even the bums have pretensions; this poor devil thinks he looks like Sam Spade. He probably also thinks he's Emperor of Atlantis, too; what a nutty town.
     With these first reactions firmly in mind, each gave the other wide berth; Ross took up position beside the entrance registration booth, while Alexia joined the fair attendees who were enjoying the afternoon sun on the pier.

Next: The Smitten Negotiators 


To read the previous chapters, visit the "Four Bidding For Love" home page.

---

A note of thanks to those who buy the book: As an independent writer, book sales are a substantial part of my income. I receive no funding from a university, trust fund, hedge fund, think-tank or government agency. I self-publish my books as a financial necessity, as the small royalties (5% to 7.5% of the retail price) paid by publishers cannot support me during the long months it takes to write a book. Your purchase makes it possible for me to continue sharing ideas on the blog and in my books. Thank you.

Buy the Kindle ebook for $4.95

Four Bidding For Love (print, $16.99) 

Read more...

Health is Wealth Part 2: Expert Advice on Improving Fitness

In Part 2 of our "health is wealth" series, Dr. Don Jewett of global medical leader UCSF offers expert advice on improving fitness.

Dr. Don Jewett of the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF), a medical school/hospital that's on many "best in the world" lists, was kind enough to share some expert fitness advice in response to yesterday's entry Health Is Wealth: Prevention, Fitness and Strength.

"I'm a retired Orthopaedic Surgeon who was Director of Physical Therapy for 10 years at Univ. of Calif. Medical School, San Francisco. I was on the full-time faculty for 27 years. 

1. Your muscles have both "fast" fibers and "slow" fibers. Each is specialized for the named action, and the proportion changes, depending upon what your persistent activities are. Long Distance runners have almost all slow fibers. You can exercise the slow fibers with Tai Chi. 

2. However, you will not get stronger unless the muscle is "tired". Body builders and those with equipment go to the point of exhaustion. That works. But another way is to hold a given position such that the muscle trembles. Hold it that way as long as possible. In this way you can reach the "tired" state quickly. 

3. If you don't have weights, then save plastic gallon jugs that have a big handle (for most of your fingers). Fill them with the amount of water that you can lift and hold, say with the elbow bent to 90 degrees, with the muscle trembling. As you get stronger, increase the water. You may need different pairs with different amounts of water, for strengthening different positions and/or muscles. 

4. You can do push-ups, and hold the position. If you aren't strong enough to do a full push up, then make it easier: a) put your knees down on the floor, instead of your feet. b) lean against a wall. Again, you don't need to "do" push-ups, just get your arms bent at the point where your muscles tremble. 

5. Strengthen leg muscles by a partial squat to the point of trembling. If you aren't strong enough, then lean your back against a wall after putting a dining-room chair on either side of you. Put your feet away from the wall, and descend slowly to the point that your leg muscles tremble. As they tire, you may have to put your hands on the chairs to get up again. As you get stronger, move your feet closer to the wall and/or bend the knees more. 

6. Holding onto the back of a dining-room chair, then balance for some minutes on one foot. Move the leg your not standing on to different places around you. This helps keep the body feedback sensors "tuned up" (as you lose some when you age). Bend the leg you are standing on to the point where the leg muscles tremble. YOU CAN SAVE TIME BY DOING THIS EXERCISE WHILE WAITING IN LINE AT THE STORE--- holding on to the shopping cart! 

7. The abdomen strengthens by partial sit-ups, held part-way up--- it takes longer to make these muscles tremble--- they are all slow fibers. It may help to bend your knees a bit--- this flattens your back so that it doesn't hurt. 

8. The back can be strengthened by lying on your stomach and arching your back. If it is too easy when lying on a bed, then move your head and shoulders off the bed, into space. You can rest with your hands on the floor, and then exercise by lifting your hands and keeping your back straight. Again, the back muscles are completely slow fibers, and may not tremble. 

9. Know the difference between good pain and bad pain. Bad pain comes on immediately when you hurt yourself, or reach a certain position, and it feels "sharp". Good pain comes on gradually, often several hours after you exercise. It is "dull" and "aching". If you have $10 worth of good pain when you go to bed, then good pain the next night (24 hrs later) will be clearly less-- say $7, and in another 24 hrs it will be $4. 

GOOD PAIN IS A SIGN THAT YOUR BODY IS GETTING STRONGER. YOU MUST WELCOME IT. DON'T TAKE Aspirin, Steroids, Tylenol, Motrin, or any other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug BECAUSE THESE DRUGS ACT TO SLOW HEALING! Good pain can be in muscle, tendons, ligaments, joint capsule. Welcome it, you WILL be stronger soon. 

10. Make your exercises varied and interesting--- so that you will keep it up. Walking, swimming, bicycling are all "low impact" exercise that you can do with others, or go to some new, interesting places."

Thank you, Dr. Jewett, for sharing your hard-earned knowledge and experience.

In related news, Otis Brawley, M.D. recently laid bare the ill health of our healthcare system in his book How We Do Harm: A Doctor Breaks Ranks About Being Sick in America(Kindle) (print)

"I blame patients, I blame doctors, I blame hospitals, I blame drug companies, I blame insurance companies. Our health care system is messed up because the system is designed to fail, and everybody is responsible for health care failing as it is now." Dr. Otis Brawley

This entry was drawn from Musings Report #17. Subscribers and contributors of $50 or more receive the Musings Report each weekend. Subscription links can be found below.

Entries and email may be sporadic this week due to other commitments.

---

Resistance, Revolution, Liberation: A Model for Positive Change (print $25)
(Kindle eBook $9.95)

Read the Introduction (2,600 words) and Chapter One (7,600 words) for free.

We are like passengers on the Titanic ten minutes after its fatal encounter with the iceberg: though our financial system seems unsinkable, its reliance on debt and financialization has already doomed it.We cannot know when the Central State and financial system will destabilize, we only know they will destabilize. We cannot know which of the State’s fast-rising debts and obligations will be renounced; we only know they will be renounced in one fashion or another.
The process of the unsustainable collapsing and a new, more sustainable model emerging is called revolution.Rather than being powerless, we hold the fundamental building blocks of power. We need neither permission nor political change to liberate ourselves. A powerless individual becomes powerful when he renounces the lies and complicity that enable the doomed Status Quo’s dominance.

Read more...

Health is Wealth Part 2: Expert Advice on Improving Fitness

In Part 2 of our "health is wealth" series, Dr. Don Jewett of global medical leader UCSF offers expert advice on improving fitness.

Dr. Don Jewett of the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF), a medical school/hospital that's on many "best in the world" lists, was kind enough to share some expert fitness advice in response to yesterday's entry Health Is Wealth: Prevention, Fitness and Strength.

"I'm a retired Orthopaedic Surgeon who was Director of Physical Therapy for 10 years at Univ. of Calif. Medical School, San Francisco. I was on the full-time faculty for 27 years. 

1. Your muscles have both "fast" fibers and "slow" fibers. Each is specialized for the named action, and the proportion changes, depending upon what your persistent activities are. Long Distance runners have almost all slow fibers. You can exercise the slow fibers with Tai Chi. 

2. However, you will not get stronger unless the muscle is "tired". Body builders and those with equipment go to the point of exhaustion. That works. But another way is to hold a given position such that the muscle trembles. Hold it that way as long as possible. In this way you can reach the "tired" state quickly. 

3. If you don't have weights, then save plastic gallon jugs that have a big handle (for most of your fingers). Fill them with the amount of water that you can lift and hold, say with the elbow bent to 90 degrees, with the muscle trembling. As you get stronger, increase the water. You may need different pairs with different amounts of water, for strengthening different positions and/or muscles. 

4. You can do push-ups, and hold the position. If you aren't strong enough to do a full push up, then make it easier: a) put your knees down on the floor, instead of your feet. b) lean against a wall. Again, you don't need to "do" push-ups, just get your arms bent at the point where your muscles tremble. 

5. Strengthen leg muscles by a partial squat to the point of trembling. If you aren't strong enough, then lean your back against a wall after putting a dining-room chair on either side of you. Put your feet away from the wall, and descend slowly to the point that your leg muscles tremble. As they tire, you may have to put your hands on the chairs to get up again. As you get stronger, move your feet closer to the wall and/or bend the knees more. 

6. Holding onto the back of a dining-room chair, then balance for some minutes on one foot. Move the leg your not standing on to different places around you. This helps keep the body feedback sensors "tuned up" (as you lose some when you age). Bend the leg you are standing on to the point where the leg muscles tremble. YOU CAN SAVE TIME BY DOING THIS EXERCISE WHILE WAITING IN LINE AT THE STORE--- holding on to the shopping cart! 

7. The abdomen strengthens by partial sit-ups, held part-way up--- it takes longer to make these muscles tremble--- they are all slow fibers. It may help to bend your knees a bit--- this flattens your back so that it doesn't hurt. 

8. The back can be strengthened by lying on your stomach and arching your back. If it is too easy when lying on a bed, then move your head and shoulders off the bed, into space. You can rest with your hands on the floor, and then exercise by lifting your hands and keeping your back straight. Again, the back muscles are completely slow fibers, and may not tremble. 

9. Know the difference between good pain and bad pain. Bad pain comes on immediately when you hurt yourself, or reach a certain position, and it feels "sharp". Good pain comes on gradually, often several hours after you exercise. It is "dull" and "aching". If you have $10 worth of good pain when you go to bed, then good pain the next night (24 hrs later) will be clearly less-- say $7, and in another 24 hrs it will be $4. 

GOOD PAIN IS A SIGN THAT YOUR BODY IS GETTING STRONGER. YOU MUST WELCOME IT. DON'T TAKE Aspirin, Steroids, Tylenol, Motrin, or any other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug BECAUSE THESE DRUGS ACT TO SLOW HEALING! Good pain can be in muscle, tendons, ligaments, joint capsule. Welcome it, you WILL be stronger soon. 

10. Make your exercises varied and interesting--- so that you will keep it up. Walking, swimming, bicycling are all "low impact" exercise that you can do with others, or go to some new, interesting places."

Thank you, Dr. Jewett, for sharing your hard-earned knowledge and experience.

In related news, Otis Brawley, M.D. recently laid bare the ill health of our healthcare system in his book How We Do Harm: A Doctor Breaks Ranks About Being Sick in America(Kindle) (print)

"I blame patients, I blame doctors, I blame hospitals, I blame drug companies, I blame insurance companies. Our health care system is messed up because the system is designed to fail, and everybody is responsible for health care failing as it is now." Dr. Otis Brawley

This entry was drawn from Musings Report #17. Subscribers and contributors of $50 or more receive the Musings Report each weekend. Subscription links can be found below.

Entries and email may be sporadic this week due to other commitments.

---

Resistance, Revolution, Liberation: A Model for Positive Change (print $25)
(Kindle eBook $9.95)

Read the Introduction (2,600 words) and Chapter One (7,600 words) for free.

We are like passengers on the Titanic ten minutes after its fatal encounter with the iceberg: though our financial system seems unsinkable, its reliance on debt and financialization has already doomed it.We cannot know when the Central State and financial system will destabilize, we only know they will destabilize. We cannot know which of the State’s fast-rising debts and obligations will be renounced; we only know they will be renounced in one fashion or another.
The process of the unsustainable collapsing and a new, more sustainable model emerging is called revolution.Rather than being powerless, we hold the fundamental building blocks of power. We need neither permission nor political change to liberate ourselves. A powerless individual becomes powerful when he renounces the lies and complicity that enable the doomed Status Quo’s dominance.

Read more...

Health is Wealth: Prevention, Fitness and Strength

Today we start a multi-day series on improving health via prevention, fitness and strength.

Longtime readers know that I consider health (physical and mental) the key attribute of wealth and prosperity. Without health, then what good is your other "wealth"?

Readers also know that I consider "a healthy home-cooked meal a revolutionary act" because the Status Quo encourages chronic disease and ill-health. Why? 1) managing these conditions is immensely and enduringly profitable to the sickcare cartels and 2) weak, sickly, drugged-out citizens are easily manipulated politically and are too overwhelmed by their multiple chronic health issues to actively challenge the Status Quo.

I know that this sounds inflammatory to many of you, but for whatever reason oftwominds.com has attracted a very large readership of physicians, nurses and other caregivers, and the people who work in the trenches of the sickcare system are inevitably supportive of these "inflammatory" summations.

Sickcare is not sustainable financially, and so it will devolve and collapse, along with other unsustainable systems. I expect healthcare to slowly revert to cash-only if you want immediate care, with all other care becoming increasingly unavailable. Therefore prevention will be the key to well-being going forward, not hyper-expensive care that costs $100,000 for a few days of treatment.

In all my diverse reading about the science of human health, a few "obvious" things pop out.

1) Humans have a remarkable ability to prosper on a variety of real foods.
2) Processed foods are associated with "modern" diseases.
3) Chronic inactivity, stress and a diet of processed foods are associated with chronic inflammation.
4) Chronic inflammation is associated with a number of chronic diseases.
5) The only "miracle drug" is regular exercise combined with sleep, which is associated with exercise, good nutrition and stress reduction.
6) The mind and body are one. Mental health and physical health are related.

We cannot stave off all disease, of course, and many of us will need surgery or other major intervention regardless of our diet and fitness levels, but the point is that fitness and a common-sense diet of real, unprocessed foods make up about 2/3 of our "health metric" with genetics and the environment contributing perhaps a third.

The 80/20 rule may apply here (Pareto Distribution): achieving 20% of what's possible may reap 80% of the gain. For example, being able to jog 2 miles may reap 80% of the gain, while running 10 miles yields a diminishing health return and may even damage older runners.

This is of course inexact, but that's the rough proportions.

Increasing strength may provide an example of this: relatively infrequent short-duration intense exercise seems to increase strength and maintain it without daily workouts. In other words, it doesn't take much time to significantly improve one's strength.

Longtime correspondent Steve R. recently shared his own experiences with increasing muscular strength. Here is Steve's report:

Summary 

"Over about six weeks, I increased my overall muscular strength by 35%, by doing nothing more than a total of four 12-minute, very-intense workouts. 

Background
Over the past couple of years, I have been reading that much of the effort that most people put into exercise is wasted or even counter-productive, because they are missing the key ingredients of intensity and rest. The evidence coming into focus for me was that high intensity interval training (H.I.I.T.) was the quickest, most effective path toward cardiovascular fitness.
Long ago, I had learned that adequate rest is essential for weight training: i.e., never exercising any given muscle group more often than once per week. Recently, I ran across the book Body by Science: A Research Based Program to Get the Results You Want in 12 Minutes a Week (McGuff and Little), which presents a strong case for a 12-minute-only strength training workout, with about 7-10 days of rest between trips to the gym. I know it sounds crazy, but the authors back it up with their knowledge of physiology, their understanding of evolution, tons of studies, and their own clinical experiences (they are both trainers). The results I got are typical of their customers. 

The Workout
The workout consists of one 60-90-second set of each of five core exercises (leg press, underhand pulldown, overhead press, seated row, and chest press), moving from machine to machine as quickly as possible (no more than 30 seconds between machines). Each set is performed super-slow (6-10 seconds up; 6-10 seconds down) to prevent momentum cheating, and the weight should be chosen so that you "go to failure" (i.e., at the end of each set, you can't possibly do another rep). Doing the math shows that each set consists of about 5 reps. Only five sets of only five reps, for the entire workout, sounds easy, but trust me, the intensity near the end will kick your butt. 

Measuring My Results
I was careful to "compare apples to apples" when determining my gains. In other words, I didn't do fluff workouts early on in order to pad the results. The data show consistent 9% gains between successive 100%-effort workouts. I am very confident that the numbers are correct and that the gains are legitimate. 

Simplified Theory
The body adapts to an increased demand put upon it so that it can better meet that demand in the future. The idea is to give it a strong stimulus, followed by plenty of time to let it recover back to baseline, plus a small amount of growth. Experiments show that it takes 7-10 days for optimal growth to occur, much like the time the body needs to heal a cut. Resting less than 7 days thwarts the body's efforts to repair itself, like ripping a scab off before the cut is fully healed, leading to poor results, more injuries, and perhaps chronic stress. My average rest was 11 days."

This was very interesting to me on a number of fronts, and I replied thusly:

"Thank you for sharing your experience--it confirms my own intuitive sense of what works, as I tend to do pushups and sit-ups several times a week with biking and running interspersed throughout the week. I keep track and was surprised that a week between pushups did not really degrade the number I can do in one set (36).In terms of natural selection, this also makes sense. Hunters would more than likely only need bursts of strength or speed occasionally, and the body would thus maximize to occasional strength-building, as expending calories daily just to maintain muscle mass would be very ‘costly’ in evolutionary terms—why burn valuable calories unless there was a big yield?"

Steve added these comments on the natural-selection context:

"I think you're dead-on with your thoughts on natural selection. That seems to be the consensus among the top exercise people I listen to. Our ancestors probably didn't look like body builders, because like you said, excess muscle is too costly in terms of precious calories. This also dovetails with the emerging theory that traditional "cardio", especially too much, may actually be harmful. There are lots of people on the Amazon review/comment section for Body By Science that say something like, "Aerobics ruined my knees" or similar. It seems that short bursts of high-intensity exercise are the most effective. And I think for most people, distance running is very harmful - especially marathoners."

Thank you, Steve for sharing your experiences. I agree with Steve about "overdoing it." In typical American fashion (or is it human nature as well?), some people get obsessed with diet, fitness, etc. and go to extraordinary lengths, many of which end up being harmful simply because they are excessive.

The "middle path" may be the way to go in terms of fitness and prevention.

To give you a taste of what is possible in fitness as we age, here is a video clip of an 86-year woman performing a parallel-bars routine.

This entry was drawn from Musings Report #16. Subscribers and contributors of $50 or more receive the Musings Report each weekend. Subscription links can be found below.

Entries and email may be sporadic this week due to other commitments. 

Resistance, Revolution, Liberation: A Model for Positive Change (print $25)
(Kindle eBook $9.95)

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We are like passengers on the Titanic ten minutes after its fatal encounter with the iceberg: though our financial system seems unsinkable, its reliance on debt and financialization has already doomed it.We cannot know when the Central State and financial system will destabilize, we only know they will destabilize. We cannot know which of the State’s fast-rising debts and obligations will be renounced; we only know they will be renounced in one fashion or another.
The process of the unsustainable collapsing and a new, more sustainable model emerging is called revolution.Rather than being powerless, we hold the fundamental building blocks of power. We need neither permission nor political change to liberate ourselves. A powerless individual becomes powerful when he renounces the lies and complicity that enable the doomed Status Quo’s dominance.

Thank you, Vladimir T. ($25), for your much-appreciated generous contribution to this site-- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

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