Monthly Archives: February 2011

The Rime of the Ancient Entrepeneur

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I find it surprising that an old lefty like me find myself in the same company of the right. It doesn’t happen often. I believe in the “nanny state” because when left to their own devices, people and corporations trip over themselves on the way to the bottom. When one examines the history of industrialisation, greed seemed to trump every other consideration, so government control and regulation of the private sector is imperative to protect the people.

And yet the last few years, I’ve run into government control as a major impediment to my own efforts, and I’m starting to wonder how often such control is for the public’s good, and how much is for the protection of corporate turf?

The first example was when I started looking for ways to make an income from my sailboat. Living in a tourist community like Victoria, surely I could take people sailing and charge them for it? I have many years of experience and my vessel is large, comfortable, and seaworthy.

How naive I was.

The government regulations that apply cover several pages, and ultimately involve huge expenditures for equipment and modifications. Even if I just want to take people on a tour around the harbour.

One could assume that those regulations are there to keep people safe, but I’m not convinced. What makes me sceptical is that the key word to these regulations is profit. They only apply if you are making money. I could volunteer my boat and load her up with a hundred school kids, and only a few coast guard regulations apply, such as having enough life jackets. When we do the Variety Club’s Boat For Hope each year, we take on a number of very vulnerable passengers, and that’s fine. If it’s safe for them when it’s free, why does it suddenly become horrifically unsafe if I charge them?

Because if I was to charge them a dollar each, the paper that the DOT would dump on me would bury me. What’s the difference? Maybe it’s because they recognise that the profit motive is a corrupt one and if you didn’t regulate hell out of it, boat owners would cut corners every way they can.

Or maybe companies with deep pockets pressure government behind the scenes, effectively ending competition from smaller operators. An example would be whale watching out of Victoria. Rather than a hodgepodge of small operators, you have a couple of huge ones, with massive investments in equipment. I know one small operator who is barely hanging on, squeezed again and again by regs that keep changing, and every time they do, it costs him more to stay in business. He’s been doing this for years without mishap and yet they keep telling him to change things in the name of safety.

The only exception is sailing schools. That is one profit-based operation where these regulations don’t apply, and the only reason I can see why is that the industry remains a small one, with a hodgepodge of operators because the market is so small. Very few people bother learning to sail. Large Corporate players have no interest in it, so the pressure isn’t there to tighten up the regulations.

Far, far more lives have been lost due to boat operator incompetence (no license required for a private operator, no matter how large or powerful the boat), than to dangerous charter companies, and yet who has the burden of massive regulations? This is because the government doesn’t really want to restrict boat ownership, which generates huge revenues for many companies, but it does want to concentrate profits among very few.

The other thing I’ve been working on is restoring Volkswagen Westfalia camper vans from the 1980’s. The Vanagon campers are far superior to the old “bread loaf” buses and there are a lot of them in Victoria. They are inexpensive and far cheaper to run than any other camper. Like many others, I love these buses and enjoy restoring them. I’ll pick up one on it’s way out, repair the inevitable rust and mechanical problems, and then sell it. Instead of going to the crusher, they are recycled back into the community for the next family to enjoy. I love the work and feel like I’m doing a social good, as most folks don’t have the equipment and skill to keep them on the road.

A lot of greenhouse gas emissions are prevented by keeping them on the road, as they are the only small camper available that gets gas mileage in the 25 MPG range. Also, the longer a vehicle runs the fewer gases are released, as manufacturing of a replacement releases enormous amounts of CO2.

I’ve been doing this kind of work all my life and know what I’m doing; I don’t turn out junk. The problem is that it’s illegal. In BC, it’s illegal to sell vehicles for a profit unless you are a licensed dealer. To become one requires that you go through all kinds of regulatory hurdles including having a service shop (or a contract with one), you post $10,000.00 into a trust account, you pay thousands in fees, you take training courses, etc etc.

The excuse for this is that it is designed to protect the public from shady characters who would sell you junk. As if this in any real way prevents that; I wouldn’t trust a car dealer further than I could throw them. But what it also does, is prevent me from doing exactly what I’ve suggested above: restoring vehicles. It prevents anyone other than the Jim Pattisons from making any kind of profit from selling cars.

I would like to open a small shop where I restore and sell these vehicles. But I can’t because government regulations say I can’t. There is absolutely no harm and much good in my doing what I propose, but government has decreed that it would be illegal unless I comply with these prohibitive regulations. If safety was a concern, they could simply pass a requirement that restored vehicles pass inspection.  As far as ripping off a customer is concerned, I can’t see how my selling my vans to the public would be any different from any other private seller. Caveat emptor.

But it is very easy to see how passing such laws exclude all except those with deep pockets from selling cars. Obviously, auto dealerships loathe private sales as it is massive competition for them. If they could, they would pressure government to make private selling of any type illegal –you would have to wholesale your own car to a dealer. This may not be far off, as I’ve heard of cases where municipalities have passed bylaws prohibiting placement of FOR SALE signs in cars. Where do you think that comes from? Do you think city hall is deluged by complaints?

Of course shady car dealerships have been a problem, and there are those who patch together condemned vehicles and sell them to unwitting buyers, and crooks who roll back odometers, (which should be impossible since ICBC has you record mileage when you do a transfer of ownership), but that’s not what I’m about. I don’t do this for the profit, I do it because I love the work and I think these vehicles are grand. I do need to make some money though, because I need to live. The government makes that illegal. So I’m faced with following my heart and conscience and become a criminal, or give it up. In most things in life I have followed my own beliefs and values, but government has a way of imposing real hurt if you piss them off.

 

It’s been quite cold on the boat lately, with both heaters going full blast and still needing the propane fireplace as backup. The most the electrics seem to be able to do is raise the temperature to 15. The furnace is needed to go higher than that. Not surprising given  windchill values approaching -20. All in all I don’t mind as it’s all part of the adventure, but this is just one aspect of living aboard that Tracy doesn’t have much patience for.

The inner habour after the snow. Yes, that’s Victoria.

 

Don’t trust that smile.

What to say to fifty?

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I cannot believe that in a few days I will have reached the half-century mark. It sure sneaks up on a guy, and it doesn’t feel like fifty years have gone by.

“I don’t feel fifty”, must be one of the greatest laments of men turning this age. Of course not “feeling fifty” begs the question what exactly one is supposed to feel, at half a century. Stereotypes abound of course, and few of them are pretty, so no wonder that many don’t feel like that lazy, helpless, impotent, disease-ridden slob that middle-aged men are supposed to be.

It also implies “old” and no man wants to identify with old, because old points back to the above appellations.

I don’t know what an neutral view of fifty would look like, (more in this later) but I doubt I feel like that, either. So I say again, I don’t feel fifty. How old do I feel? In many ways, I guess I feel like a boy.  I can’t say what age of a boy, because each year of boyhood brought new awareness and powers and insight, some invalidating earlier ones, some not. It all accumulated into a rich broth of attitudes and outlook that has never left me. I have the knowledge and wisdom accumulated from a long and dynamic life of searching and questioning, but deep inside, I’m still that kid.

What’s really interesting for me is that the more I have grown in wisdom, the more kid-like I’ve felt. I suppose I learned to throw off the many false trappings of adulthood that were taught me, reclaiming a more authentic self.

Like most of my peers, I emerged into adulthood looking for the world to teach me what I needed to know to be a man. I honestly tried to take on what was expected of me, but I eventually realised that most of it was horseshit, and based on archaic and arbitrary cultural values. What I found valuable I held on to, and threw the rest away.

What was most wonderful was the realisation that one does not have to give up one’s boyish heart in order to be a man. What does “boyish heart” mean? It means breathless wonder at the world around us. It means living in the moment. It means being able to feel joy in the smallest of things. Loving without reserve or fear. The boy sees life as an opportunity; he is relentlessly curious and often playful. He is mischievous and loves to laugh. He has great compassion for others.

Now what about that is incompatible with being a man? None of the above means that I cannot strive against hardship, sacrifice, be courageous, be a leader, and share my wisdom with others. These are the things I use to define “manhood”.

Now where should fifty years of life leave us? For everyone I suspect it will be different, according to their values. For me, reaching fifty years of age should leave us in a place of real wisdom, where we can help those following after us. By now, you hopefully have tried many paths, and know which ones are worthwhile and which are false. In my case, it also leaves me as a father who has done his job, and a husband in a great relationship with his wife. It leaves me accomplished in many things and knowledgeable about many more.

This is where the definition starts to fall apart, because I can’t see where my path leads from here, and many aspects of self are defined according to context, by what we do. In other words, I am now this, which means I’m ready for that. I don’t know what “that” is, I don’t know where I go from here.

This is a new and uncomfortable place. At the turn of each previous decade, my future was laid out before me, and I knew roughly where the next decade would take me.

When I turned ten, I knew I would finish school and leave home in the next decade. I would lose my virginity and have a girlfriend(s). I would get my driver’s license.

By twenty, I expected that I would marry, perhaps buy a house, and move forward in my career.

By thirty, I knew I would have children to raise, and university degrees to finish.

By forty, I knew I would finish with raising children, start practising my art again, and move aboard a sailboat.

By fifty? I have no idea. It’s not like there aren’t a thousand choices available to me, but growth requires that we constantly explore new shores, and I don’t want to just carry on doing what I already know how to do. But what is left? I haven’t done it all, but I’ve done a hell of a lot, and bits and pieces of a lot more, and most of what I wanted to have a whirl at, has already been done. And I got the T-shirt.

So what’s next? Perhaps starting my first decade without a plan? What will that bring? I find it interesting how so much more seemed immediately ahead when I was younger, but I suppose that comes with having done so little back then. Yet I don’t recall having had any problems with being so “unaccomplished” being new at everything; I drew even greater wonder out of life. Perhaps there’s wisdom in that. I suspect that the following years will see me even more focused on the present, and learn how to do what has been done, but see it with new eyes. Check back in ten, and I’ll let you know how that works out.

Going nowhere fast

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I have a feeling that we won’t be moving off this boat anytime soon, although you can never tell. I say that after our experience of showing the boat for the first time. According to our broker, while the client liked the model/design, he wasn’t impressed with the original engine and felt it should have been replaced.

Indeed? We paid $86,000.00 for our boat 3.5 years ago and have sunk a lot of money in it since then. At the time it was the most boat for the money we could find, and we looked at a LOT of boats, so I know we got a good price. We are now asking $25,000.00 less because of the market, and clients are coming aboard and saying we should throw in a new $24,000.00 engine replacement for the price we are asking. In other words, we should be selling our boat for something in the mid 30s. If I had heard that,  I would have run for my shotgun.

I understand about the market, and that things are only worth what people are willing to pay for them; there is no intrinsic value to anything. And despite the fact that Canada escaped the worst of the recession and supposedly everything is back to what it was, the market for supposedly luxury items like boats has really collapsed. This is our home, not a toy, but for most  owners a sailboat is simply an indulgence, and folks don’t have to buy. To make things worse, because of  the state of the US economy, you can pick up distress sale boats down there very cheap.

Even up here in Victoria, somebody is selling a 37′ C&C, in the mid-30′s. The lowest price in North America, apparently, and that’s our competition.

To compete with that pricing we would have to give our precious (to us) home away, and that just isn’t in the cards. If we were in the market, now would be a fantastic time to buy a boat as there are so many bargains, but behind those low prices may be some real heartache. The market sure don’t care.

So I suspect that this boat will be staying in our hands until something changes. I’m not sure what that means; perhaps Tracy and I will have to move onto land for part of the year and just move aboard for the summer. I really don’t want to be part of the community that owns boats but only uses them a few weeks out of the year. To me, that really IS indulgence and is contrary to my values.

Maybe we will move ashore and just rent her out. Or sell fractional ownership; right now I just don’t know. But it kills me even more that our dream has faded and Tracy needs to move ashore. Not only will we lose this wonderful lifestyle, but potentially our investment as well.

This probably seems like I’m complaining, which might seem a little incongruous given that I’m in no hurry to move off. I guess that’s my impulse to take care of my wife; I know she wants off and therefore it behooves me to find a way to make that happen. We care for each other that way. The fact that I want to stay is irrelevant. I also know that my happiness isn’t dependent on a boat or where I live or anything silly like that.

Right now the boat is starting to roll, the wind is howling outside, we have some gorgeous romantic Jazz on the radio, and I have a glass of wine inside me. God, I love life.

Here’s a shot from last summer, up in the Broughtons. Just one reason why I love this boat.