Comments

Episode-2378- Listener Feedback for 2-11-19 — 10 Comments

  1. Great show Jack.

    Regarding cannabis in Oregon…the law states we can grow (4) plants per household for personal uses. Medicinal patients (with the appropriate card) can grow more. Here is the latest link I could find:

    https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/DISEASESCONDITIONS/CHRONICDISEASE/MEDICALMARIJUANAPROGRAM/Documents/Plant-Limit-Chart.pdf

    There is a glut of mediocre weed here for sure…plenty of $40 per OZ to be found…but it is mediocre or low end. There is still money to be made in well grown, boutique buds. In all markets (black, grey, white) there is money to be made, even though there is a massive surplus.

    Many say it’s easy…my reply is yes, it is a “weed”, yes it will grow if given light and water..but there is no guarantee it will turn out to be great/worth a damn. There are definitely skills one can use from gardening other plants, but don’t assume it is easy. For example, it is a plant that relies on darkness for it’s potency and harvest time, just to name one qwerk.

    If anyone wants consultation or need help sourcing gear for growing their own medicine, hit me up! I  love to help like-minded individuals. Aaroneouw206@gmail dot com

    Last thought, the stuff that people can’t get easily, due to long flowering times, is worth a lot more (heavy saliva leaning plants). Can’t rush Mother Nature!

    • The piece was appropriately about pattern recognition and boom bust cycles which I agree is and will continue to happen as more states bring medical and/or recreational cannabis online.

      But I’m not sure the bulk of the glut will come from the home grower, especially when you have large companies (with a million square foot grow space) poised and waiting for laws to change so they can flood the market with cheep product to try and cash in on the market at breakneck speed.  Most potential home growers wouldn’t bother spending their time and money to grow their own when they can swing by the local store and pick up a cheap bag for the weekend.

      The glut will be from the Budwisers and Miller Lites of the industry.  That being said, there will still be money to made in the industry whether via large corps or artisan/craft industry, but I would think twice about sinking a bunch of money into the indoor mega growers to the north.  Even the best indoor grows require greater inputs than outdoors.  The best cannabis naturally comes from equatorial regions on the planet and as laws change and shipping across states/countries becomes a market reality, the mega indoor grows of the north won’t be able to compete with these outdoor grows and will go bye bye.  Food for thought.

       

      • Perhaps you didn’t get my point or perhaps I didn’t explain it right?

        I don’t think home growers will cause the glut directly but rather indirectly.

        You mention beer companies, so lets use that.  When home brewing really started to come around it was technically illegal and the big beer companies actually lobbied to keep it that way.  In the end they had other shit they wanted more, so they gave in.

        The effect on the beer market was non existent.  Making beer, even dump and stir is work, and time consuming.  A 5 gallon batch is 2.5 cases, beer drinkers kill that with friends in a weekend.

        Contrast that to 4 high quality clones in a grow tent upstairs in a closet.  You are growing a product by the pound that is consumed by the gram.  If legal and you smoke it makes sense to grow it from an economic stand point.

        People that do this will um, barter it to friends because it produces more than you’d ever use unless you are Cheech and Chong.

        So every home grower likely eliminates 2-4 customers entirely from the market.  May be more.  So as these big guys ramp up, they are not just over supplying the market, the market is also shrinking.

        And I can already tell you in legal states this is happening.  Joe smokes but doesn’t want to do the work to grow.  His friend Tom does and grows at his home and he gets his stuff from Tom.  Tom says hey Joe I could come set up a grow room for you.  Joe says, no man too much work.  Tom says well I will just take care of it for you, you can have X for free and I get to keep the rest.

        It is all legal fueling a gray market, it won’t ever stop.  This model can make a small profit at even 10 dollars an ounce once the initial outlay is recouped.  So the home growers are not the lion, they are the thorn in his paw and all the mice are stoned so no one is going to pull it out.

  2. I think part of the reason restrictions are so tight on cannabis growing is because pharmaceutical companies are in the process of flooding the market once it’s legalized nationwide. It wouldn’t be the first time the US government has stifled entrepreneurial endeavors, which can actually lift many people up the socioeconomic ladder they so claim to want to do, for the sake of big business market cornering (which is part of the reason hemp is just now legal). To Big Pharma, cannabis will be an amazing cornered market like opioids, with little downside.

  3. Also, I definitely encourage folks to move their funds over to strictly online banks if they’re not pressed to stay with brick and mortar. I also have a USAA account and it’s online, passing savings onto the user. SoFi provides up to 2.25% returns (I get 2.25% as a founding member). There are so many ways to directly and passively invest, with risk up to your liking.

    Take a Saturday to search the internet and get lost down the rabbit hole in anything that sparks your interest. In the era of the internet there is no reason not to take advantage of this relatively free vast knowledge (just use critical thinking to deduce whether what you’re reading makes sense).

    As a super saving millennial, I’m super optimistic about my future.

  4. UPDATE: I just got an email from SoFi and all accounts from everyone now get 2.25% APY regardless of sign up. GET ON IT!

  5.  

    I heard that about only 1% of renewable energy comes from solar or wind power. This is because wood and hydro are classified as renewable energy but that detail is often a deceptive part of the statistics. Right now Massachusetts is trying to bring in hydro power from Quebec by running power lines through Maine. This is touted as green energy but I remember it was a big deal back in the 1990s  when Quebec flooded tons of Indian land to build massive dams everywhere in Northern Quebec.

    There seems to be a reason why all the good chain saws, lawn mowers, and snow blowers are gas powered and not battery powered. I doubt there is going to be a good option for a truck than can have a 2000 pound slide in camper on it that runs on batteries. Either that or the battery/electric truck version will be far too expensive to be very affordable.

    The wind turbines also are not always particularly scenic when  you figure in how much they produce. There are a bunch up in the hills in Maine, but I would not look forward to a day when you climb a mountain and would see endless wind turbines as far as the eye can see.

    The real energy solution  from everything I have heard is nuclear fusion but not much research money goes into that. My impression is that the powers that be do not want affordable energy solutions but rather expensive ones that don’t produce much energy.

     

  6. Jack,

    The language/reading approach you are referring to was/is called “Whole Word” or “Whole Language” learning.  I have a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology, and language acquisition is a primary area of focus in that field (although not my area).  I was in grad school in the early 90’s at Florida State and that was the new hot theory in Education – in Psychology, however, we all knew it was a horrible idea.  There were only two kinds of people in our program – people with PhD’s and people getting them.  Everyone recognized immediately the fallacy of the approach in that article/interview.  Two of our Psychology faculty were fairly noted in early reading development and they would have nothing to do with that contextual reading silliness. So yeah – we all knew 20 years ago that it wouldn’t work.

    Dr. Bob from Tampa

  7. Hey guys n gals,

    Just had to say, my mom treats her birds like her baby kids and special pets at worst and even SHE says backyardchickens.com people are crazy idiots.

    I had to laugh.

     

    -Richard

    Hockley, TX