Economy Post #2: Grain Silos and Shipping Containers = Freedom!

Ok, so maybe I am guilty of being a little bit sensationalist in my title, but from some of my recent investigations and personal considerations, I don’t think that this is far from the truth!

I have been looking at some of the numbers (I won’t bore you with them) for debt in the US per person and have been shocked at what I have found!  Some of the numbers are just plain old disheartening, but the one that I want to share with you is the one having to do with the national mortgage debt. This is the total amount of money that all Americans have pledged in exchange for owning or pursuing the ownership of a home.

If we divided the amount of money owed by the number of people in the US--every single man, woman, and child, that number would be around $23,688.

$23,688 per person.  You have a family of 4?  How does $94,752 sound?  To some of us that doesn’t sound too bad!  But considering that about 1/3 of Americans don’t own nor are trying to own their homes, that number jumps to around $72,000 a person!

So, I was wondering what I could do for $23,688... Travel?  Sure!  Be a high-roller for a week or two in Vegas?  You bet! But how could I invest that to give me a solid and livable home that would last me my lifetime?  $23,688 doesn’t go very far!  

Unless...

You consider alternative homes or alternative materials!

There is a group right now called the “Small House Movement.”  It is a fascinating collection of people who have taken it upon themselves to live without debt and with the smallest environmental footprint possible.  The easiest way to do this, they found, is to live in a teeny-tiny yet incredibly functional home and be satisfied with it...

Just HOW small I can hear you all saying... how about under 500 square feet.  Yikes!  But, from an economic standpoint this is genius!  You can heat these houses literally for pennies a day if that, and building one will cost you under $20,000 even if you want the best materials and accessories... You just have to have fewer of both... and be ok with that...

So, I have passively introduced the main problem with the Small House Movement.  You have to be ok living in a “quaint” home.  When I mentioned this movement to Rose she said something along the lines of, “That would be ok for California or someplace warm where you can be outside all day, but in Minnesota you would go crazy in a house that small.”

There must be some middle ground here!  AND THERE IS!

Have you ever seen one of those enormous metal shipping containers being pulled behind a semi on the freeway?  Or maybe on someone’s property being used as a make-shift storage shed?  Let me tell you a little about those things.

Shipping containers are structural, meaning they are strong!  They have to be able to be stacked a dozen high and be loaded with up to 30 tons of goods each.  That is some impressive strength!  

Shipping containers have to be weather-tight.  They are often stacked on the exposed decks of massive ships so they have to be able to resist the wild weather encountered on long sea voyages.  They are over-protected as there is no sense in risking 30 tons of goods because you didn’t put a good gasket on the door...

Shipping containers are plentiful!  Last year, upwards of 90% of the goods sold in the world encountered a shipping container at one point of their existence.  There were over 105 million shipping containers shipped out of China alone last year.  Put together the global total and you are probably talking close to 1 billion shipping containers.  That is 1 per roughly every 7 people on the planet...

Shipping containers are BIG!  They are usually 8 feet wide, 9.5 feet tall, and either 20 or 40 feet long.  This is either 160sq. ft. or 320 sq. ft. respectively.  That may not sound like a lot, but if you put a few of them together your square footage jumps exponentially.  4 boxes? 740-1280 square feet... We are almost up to the national average of 1700 square feet!

Ok, but how do we get them?  Easy!  Well, not that easy, but they are plentiful.  Depending on where they originate, most shipping containers only have a lifecycle of a  set number of transports.  After a certain number they become a liability and are replaced whether they need it or not since that is MUCH cheaper than wasting 30 tons of product... You can purchase these containers in various conditions for between $1000 and $2500.  See where I am going with this?

Cheap, strong, weatherproof, decent sized housing out of something that would otherwise be thrown away?  Now you are talking!

These are some photos of houses that were built with shipping containers.  Some of them obviously cost more than $23,688, but imagine if you were starting at $4000 for the structure of your home... you’d still have $19,688 to spend on other furnishings and infrastructure!

Another option?  How about metal silos?  Many of the same rules apply to these as to the shipping containers except many times you can get these for free or for scrap metal prices as farmers don’t use them very often anymore!

Rose and I have seriously considered taking on the project of making a home or an auxiliary building out of either of these.  We think that It could be a perfect fit for having a home with a small footprint without having it be tiny.  Also, with the median home price in the US hovering just under $200,000 paying 1/10th of that means you could pay for your home in a period of 5 years easily versus the 30 years most mortgages run.  Imagine the FREEDOM!  (See, I always bring things back together!)

A few business ideas that spring off of this:

1. A Bed and Breakfast on an old farm someplace in the gorgeous countryside or one of the old farms on the North Shore where all of the rooms are in metal silos converted to apartments with straw-bale insulation and a cozy feel...
2. A company that designs, builds, and sells homes made out of silos and shipping containers.  If you hd a few basic designs and finishes, I bet that you could get quite a few people to jump on the complete package cost for one of these of around $20,000! And you could build them for that easily!

Anyone interested?

Economy Post #1: Jobs and Working For Young People

The Problem (in a written explanation):

I have watched over the past several years as the job market for students coming straight out of college has tanked, leaving thousands upon thousands of ambitious, educated young people without meaningful work and (often times) with tremendous debt that they have no real way to start paying off.  The same is true for folks my age who happen to be interested in working in industries that don't suck your soul.

The blue line is 4 year college graduates

Now, I am not an economist, nor do I play one on TV, but I might have an insight into a systemic situation in many economies around the world that could be a partial source of this problem.  

We don’t honor age.  

This may sound like a counter-intuitive statement to make when I am going to try and explain the shortness of job opportunities for the young in many countries, but hang with me on this... there are actually a few things that go into this!

Our society is a bing-bang-boom, fast-moving, demanding machine.  We thrive on the newest, next-best, instant-gratification technology and products.  We cause rushes on the outlets that dispense these new items when they debut and thus cause noticeable movements in the stock-market.  All of this has come from a strange, but ironically evolutionary instinctual urge to have the most, the best, and the most useful things in our possession.  But more on that later.

This isn’t a novel idea.  Take a look at all of the advertisements around us, both in print and in video and you will see young, virile men and women in active poses, implying some sort of agenda... usually toward reproduction.  Very seldom do we see the wizened elder selling a product or pushing a new technology other than Obi-Wan Kenobi selling the new 3D versions of the Star Wars movies.  Old people are slow and can’t keep up.  They can’t handle the new tech so they are to be left behind and put into a home where they can stagnate and not be more of a burden than it costs to keep them there.  Then we don’t have to listen to them trying to give us advice.  Sad and maybe a little extreme, but true in some cases.  


The result: People work harder the older they get and stay in their positions of power until they just physically fall out of them because they don’t want to get left behind (or for other similar reasons).  If we respected the wealth of knowledge the aging community has and gave them an outlet for that knowledge, they might feel actualized and content in retirement and the younger generation would have some great advice to move ahead with!  

But I digress...

Shifting Gears--Your Religion Lesson for the Day:

While I have been here in India I have been teaching several different religions from several different cultures.  One of these, obviously, is Hinduism.  Now, Hinduism is a vast collection of semi-pagan traditions that have coalesced into a single religion, although it has no unifying creed or doctrine.  There are, because of this, several different paths (yogas--yoga is more than stretching here!) to the final goal of enlightenment or unity with the universe (that is a concept I will dive into later).  One of these paths is the path of karma or the cause and effect of your actions (there is more to that too, but... later).  There are innumerable things that you can do that are good and bad for your karma and that will impact your life and eventually your next life.  If you are trying to reach enlightenment via karma there are many things you are to do to eliminate your bad karma and build your good karma.  One of these has to do with age.

See, I told you it would make sense!

In Hinduism, there are 4 stages of life that you are to follow throughout your life to maximize your good karma.  They are:

1. The student (Brahmacharya)--12-24-- Where the young person learns about life, a vocation, religion, and society.  Very little is expected of these young people and in some circles they are exempt from karma during this age.
2. The Householder (Grihastha)--25-50-- Where the person starts a family, starts a home and seeks wealth (artha) and happiness (kama).  This is the period where people are to make out of themselves as much as they can.
3. The Retiree (Vanaprastha)--51-65?-- Where the person gives up their titles and positions and retreats to a forest dwelling to begin living simply and contemplating life.
4. The Wandering Monk (Sannyasa)--Elderly Years--Where the person gives up everything they have and begin wandering the world looking for the meaning of life and searching for enlightenment.  There isn’t a cut off or beginning time for this as you will just know when it is time to set out.

So, in this set-up there is a time for many things in life.  The implications that go with this are that if you spend too much time in one stage or not enough in another, that is bad for your karma.  I would like to point out a possible underlying cause, which is:  

People need to move on!  Staying in one place is bad for the soul and economy!  For instance: If you stay in school until you are 30 you will have an incredible knowledge base, but possibly little work experience and usually tremendous debt.  If you don’t spend enough time in school you will not be ready to contribute to the economy well.  If you stay in your job until you are 70 you may be getting quite wealthy, but that means that someone else can’t benefit from that job.  Also, there are a lot of people working who should have retired a long time ago because they aren't  excited to do the work anymore or they should be taking that time to be with their family or starting to think about life altogether. 

I am not saying that you shouldn’t seek higher education or that you shouldn’t work late into life.  I am saying that you should listen to your body and your mind and follow those cues so you can be happy on the inside, not just happy in the billfold. 

I am saying that I think that if everyone took a spiritual journey when they were 50 the world would likely be a much more sensible place!  

So, how do we young people create successful, profitable-enough lives that are happy and fulfilling if we are only supposed to work until we are 50?

The answer is simple...um, not converting to Hinduism... actually it is SIMPLICITY!  
(See “The Ox-Cart Lifestyle")

In future posts I will explore options for low cost housing (one of the greatest financial drains on people of all ages), and certain ways that you can live and make a living with relatively low expenses, but not at the expense of comfort and happiness.  

I hope all of this makes sense!  Please let me know what you think about all of this!

Hephaestus Forge--Testing your "Metal"

Right after I graduated from college I signed on for an internship at North House Folk School in Grand Marais, MN.  I was (and still am) seeking a tack for my life and thought that the environment at a school for traditional craft would be a good way to enrich my experiences and give me some clarity.  How right I was!  The interesting thing is that I didn’t find a tack at all, I found a new way to engage the journey, which was what I needed!

Amongst the responsibilities of the internship there were several benefits.  One of these was that I was allowed to take a certain number of courses during my time to develop my commitment to a discipline or just to enrich my life.  Of the courses that I took the ones that excited me the most were the smithing classes.  *I only took one class, but I gravitated to the forges when they were fired and gleaned information off of the instructors and students, thus gathering a pretty impressive amount of forge time.  

After my internship was complete I took up a position as a Director of Youth Ministries at a wonderful church in the suburbs, but also took on a part time position as the blacksmith at a reenactment settlement called Murphy’s Landing.  Here I was charged with explaining the early American culture of smithing and to give the kids some hands on experiences in the forge itself.  I had a great time doing this, but it conflicted too much with my responsibilities at the church so I chose to discontinue that position.

Since then I have often thought about the trade of smithing (especially when I took a last name that highlighted it!) and have tried to puzzle out how this could become a profession and way of life for me.

Enter Hephaestus Forge:

Hephaestus (gesundheit) was the smith of the gods in Greek mythology and is credited as the god of fire, craftsman, metals, and a few other lesser known things.  He is credited for being the craftsman of many of the famous articles worn by the Greek gods: Hermes’ winged helmet and sandals, Achilles’ armor, Eros’ bow and arrows, amongst others.  His creations almost always added ability to their possessors or had the power to influence their perceptions of the world.  He was, however, lame according to some accounts and thus never achieved as large a following as many other gods.  This didn’t affect his ability though, some of his myths claim that he was so good because of his lameness...

I see this as a strong analogy for what I would seek to accomplish with a forge of my own.  I would work to provide beautiful and functional items to enrich people’s lives, the whole time acknowledging that I have faults that add character to who I am as well as reminding me that I have to continuously strive for improvement.  Nice, huh?

There are a few problems with this idea though...

Number 1: The market for blacksmiths has...um... shrunk in the past 100 years, not just due to the increase in mass production, but also because of the “cradle to grave” nature of most products.  Think of if you have a pair of garden shears that break.  You don’t bring them to the smithy to have them mended... you go and buy a new pair of shears!  There is a saying that captures well the somewhat lost nature of the opposite view:  “I have had this hammer all my life!  All I have had to do it replace the handle 3 times and the head once.”

Number 2: The nature of metal itself.  Today 98% of iron ore mined from the planet is used to produce steel, which is forgeable, but generally it can only be forged well under conditions similar to its production.  These conditions are very difficult to reproduce in a coal forge due to fluctuations in temp, the type of fuel used... you get the picture.  

Number 3: Training and equipment.  I am a relatively capable smith (I think), yet to begin a business and have impressive products, I would best apprentice for a master smith for a few years and build up my ability or take some classes in metallurgy.  Also, the equipment for a forge is not cheap and although you can make most of it yourself, it is specific to the work that you want to do.

This is countered by its merits however...

Number 1: A creative lifestyle.  Need I say more!?

Number 2: Various challenges and tasks.  There would doubtlessly be the mundane as well, but you need a balance, right?

Number 3: The desire for authentic hand-made goods.  This area has shown definite growth in the past years.  I believe that if a niche could be carved for high-quality hardware and decorative pieces, demand would follow.  

Number 4: Working with my hands.  There is really something to working with your hands.  Check out my previous post containing the quote by Khalil Gibran for more of an explanation.

Number 5:  Preserving a craft that is dying.  There is great need to show the world where we have come from.  Smithing doesn’t have to be completely consumeristic.  That might be what would pay the bills, but TEACHING would be the main attraction.  Getting into school Industrial Education classes, doing reenactments, heck, even setting up shop at Renaissance Festivals or something like that would help inform the public of the wonders of smithing.

So that is the overview of Hephaestus Forge!  I have done some estimated business models for this project and believe that it could happen.  It is one of those things that I need clarity on.  Am I really a smith or just an Arrowsmith?  

*My wife says that there is no such thing as just an Arrowsmith...

An Ox-Cart Lifestyle

“In October he backed his ox into his cart and he and his family filled it up with everything they made or grew all year long that was left over.”

For the past three months Rose and I have been reading a book to Ennis several times a day.  It is The Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall and Barbara Cooney.  There are several reasons that we have been reading it so much: 1. It is one of Ennis’s favorites and with his new-found awareness of personal likes and dis-likes, The Ox-Cart Man has received great favor!  (He is pretty adorable when he holds the book out and says “oc ca” with a great look of longing on his face!)  2. The illustrations are magnificent, beautiful and complex, so every time you read the book you notice a previously hidden detail or pattern that adds to the beauty of each page.  3. Rose and I love the message that the book explains.  This last idea is what I want to talk about right now.  

Let me tell you a little about the Ox-Cart Lifestyle.

After the ox-cart is full of wool, a woven shawl, mittens, candles, linen, split shingles, birch brooms, surplus potatoes, surplus apples, surplus honey and honeycomb, surplus turnips, surplus cabbage, surplus maple sugar from their trees, and goose feathers the ox-cart man travels ten days at the ox’s head to Portsmouth Market where he sells all of the goods they have packed, the barrels and boxes the produce was in, the ox-cart itself and finally the ox (after he kisses it goodbye on the nose--this is one of Ennis’s favorite parts--he likes kissing...).  

He takes the money from these efforts and purchases an iron kettle for cooking, an embroidery needle (all of the way from England!) for his daughter, and a Barlow knife for his son as he is the carver of the birch brooms.  As a treat he buys two pounds of wintergreen peppermint candies.  Then he walked the ten days home with all of his purchases “and coins still in his pockets.”

The rest of the book walks through how when he returns home and has a wintergreen peppermint candy he begins to stitch new harness, his daughter starts embroidering, and his son starts carving birch brooms for next year.  Hall walks us through the winter, spring and summer activities that set the stage for the next year’s October trip to Portsmouth.  He does this with such a sense of purpose and ease that even though you know these activities (boiling maple sap, splitting shingles, making an ox-cart, spinning flax into linen) are not easy, the work you need to put into them seems like as much a reward as the harvest or the finished product.  This is an obvious area of appeal to me!  It reminds me of a quote from the Lebanese author and artist Khalil Gibran about work:

You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life's procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.
When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?
Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret." -The Prophet

Let’s get philosophical, shall we?

So much of the way I have grown to view the world comes from a model of scarcity: a view that there is not enough to go around and that we need to take care of ourselves and expand our possessions while we can.  This goes into the idea that you need to work for your existence and that you need to work HARD.  This view has definite merits don’t get me wrong!  How do you think we have gotten to the place we are in now!?  Humanity has the ability to store up for a rainy day and thus we are able to survive!  This is amazing stuff, but it isn't too terribly inspiring...

But what about the ox-cart man and his family?  They work hard, but with ease.  They are entirely (or mostly) self-sufficient and have little need for currency other than the sweat of their brow and the satisfaction on their faces.  They live in a model of surplus: a place where there is always enough and where the overflow provides for improved means and a little indulgence, but where it is not necessary.  Imagine a poor growing year.  What would the ox-cart man miss?  His wintergreen candies?  Darn.  They spend their money on things that have purpose to their lifestyle and to what they use their time productively for.  There is very little waste in this kind of a life and very little spurious expenditure.

Rose and I would like to explore how we can live in this model of surplus.  We want to find a way to exist self-sufficiently and use our time as a family to educate, explore, and develop the world in ways that we can always know the currency of satisfaction and celebrate the surplus when it comes.  Many of the posts on this blog will stray from this idea it is necessary (I think) to explore a variety of perspectives/ideas to find your own, but this is our starting point.  What we end up doing will hold these points tightly; we will be a strong, working family with time and love to spare.

Quite idealistic, isn’t it?  Strangely, I can identify that it is idealistic, but I also can’t see any reason why it can’t happen this way.  So it is with many of my ideas.  They are challenging and different and often quite idealistic, but there are really few good reasons why they can’t happen.  Join me on this exploration!  Offer your ideas!  Give me feedback!  Together I am sure that we can find our own Ox-Cart Lifestyle.