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An Investment Tip for the Austrian School
by James Glaser July 9, 2008 Every morning I start off my day by reading www.lewrockwell.com. I read any columns by Mr. Rockwell first. Lew's are usually at the top of the page, after all, it is his web site. His columns can range from explaining why your real income is falling, to something about Judge Moore and the 10 Commandments. Usually I also read the last column on his page, and that could be about anything... birds, wine, something new about the pyramids, or even a column on a new diet trick. It is the columns in between that are sometimes hard for me to get through. If Gary North writes something, I always give that a look/see, and I have to admit that his advice on gold made me some money. However, if I start out reading a column and start seeing lots of pie charts and graphs, and the writer starts drifting off into Austrian economics, I soon am lost. North has the ability to put things into layman terms, and that suits me just fine. I'm not an economist. I'm a woodworker. Just maybe if I had a bit of an economic background I would be a more financially successful woodworker, but I do get by. I muddle my way through those economic columns, and sometimes I get a bit of help or at least understanding out of them. I always wanted to think of something I could write about that would kind of fit into that money area of Lewrockwell.com, and now I think I have come up with just the thing. An investment tip! So, I have this investment advice that just maybe other Lew Rockwell readers might find helpful, and if you don't make any money with it, you might just save some using it. Here it is—Locking Gas Caps. That's right. I got ripped off last night. On the way home from work I filled up with $4.04 a gallon gasoline and set my trip odometer. It was three tenths of a mile from the station to home, but when I started out this morning I had less than a half of a tank of gas. At first I figured the thieves had two five gallon tanks and took about forty dollars worth from me, but now I bet they just transferred my gas to their tank. I can still remember what it is like to siphon gas with a hose. For sure you always get that gas taste in your mouth and that gas smell is going to be with you for a while, as you are going to get gas on your hands, and if you have a beard, there too. That's not true anymore. Somebody told me to Google "How to steal gas" and up popped page after page of You Tube videos on how to get "free" gas. One video was titled, "how to siphon gas from a newer vehicle". You no longer use a garden hose and the suction from your mouth. Now, you buy a pump, some rubber gas line, and with a 12 volt battery or a cordless drill, you rapidly send the gas from the victim's car to yours in just a few minutes. No mess, no gas smell. There were other videos that taught you "how to do a gas and go." That is where you fill your tank at a station and drive off without paying. Others were "Stealing Gas—The Basics." And as long as you were learning how to steal gas, in that same group of videos they had, "How to hack a vending machine," "How to hack a candy machine," and even some on how to steal the contents of rented luxury cars. Now, I'm not the only person taking these free stealing gas classes on You Tube. Some of those videos had tens of thousands of hits. With the price of gas going up, "free" gas is going to look better and better to a larger segment of society. So, there you go. The carpenter/woodworker's investment tip. Buy yourself a locking gas cap, and if you can, by some stock in the company that makes the best one. You can file this with some of my other investment ideas, and one would be hearing aid companies. Have you ever been at a stop sign next to somebody with 20 inch woofers in the back seat? I rest my case. And then there is the "quickie tattoo removal industry." You see somebody come up with that, and you had best buy in. Believe it or not, there is a large percentage of tattoos that contains spelling errors, and with the rate of relationship break-ups in this country, having it easy to remove a former loved one's name from your arm or some other part of your body, will really be in demand. Keep reading Lew Rockwell's page and enjoy it, but if you have a hard time with the pie charts and the graphs, start looking around in your own neighborhood for things to invest in. American capitalism is still alive. |
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