Here we go again.

The Southern part of California and much of the rest of the land west of the Rockies is desert -- either technically or might as well be (in other words, it comes just over said thresholds on official precipitation amounts.)  Add to this that the weather pattern in that part of the nation often produces wild-eyed winds (the gradient between the highlands and lower land, along with the ocean that is right there providing a "sink" for it) along with terrain that creates "funnel" effects multiplying windspeeds and its obvious that if anything gets lit during those high-wind periods you got problems.

As you might expect if you look around at the vegetation that does grow there you'll find fire-adapted things.  Plants that have fire-activated seed, for example.  Nature finds a way, in short, and over millions of years has done exactly that.

Then we come in, we build things in places we believe are beautiful, and are unhappy when that which has been going on for millions of years occurs again.  We claim its unfair, that something is "changing" (often at human fault) and similar.

Well, no.  We're simply in the way and it is we who have to adapt because nature will not.

The same thing is true for living along a coastline subject to hurricanes.  The hurricanes have always come.  Yes, its beautiful 99% of the time.  The other 1% of the time Mother Nature is very angry and throws a 10 or 20' high wall of water and waves driven by 120kt wind at you.  Ditto living in mountain valleys; 99% of the time its nice, the other 1% of the time snow melts more-rapidly than expected or a storm gets blown into the mountain face, the air is forced upward, it cools as that occurs (go hike in the Smokies or anywhere else and note the 10-15 degree difference -- similarly at the Grand Canyon except its even more-pronounced there) and cool air holds less moisture than warm air.  The result is torrential rain that then flows down said mountain, blowing that nice river out of its banks and triggering landslides that cannot be outrun -- you are either not there when it comes or you will be buried by it.  If you look at the topography you can see the scars where its happened before -- and will happen again.

Its just that nobody knows exactly when.

We do add to the risk of bad outcomes in some cases; if there are trees with a fall-line that reaches a powerline then high winds can and will cause the tree to fall and if it does it will hit the power line.  The benign outcome is you lose power.  The malignant one is that this comes during a windstorm when its dry rather than a hurricane or serious thunderstorm (when its very wet) and thus starts a wind-driven fire which, until the wind dies down, can be nearly-impossible to extinguish so long as there is available fuel in the path.  By the way if the wind is howling "in the path" means anything that can burn within a mile as embers will be blown that far -- or further!

We do have defensive acts we can take against some of this risk.  If you live where hurricane winds are likely you can build to code levels that can withstand the wind.  If you're where you can get surged you can elevate the structure on stilts or make the lower level(s) sacrificial with the walls designed to blow out when challenged in this way, and the living portion of the building and systems up above.  If you live where wind-driven fires can occur you can maintain a significant fuel-free zone, clad your structure in things that won't burn and not have openings into the attic and similar where blown embers can get inside (and light the attic on fire), along with putting in a significant-size cistern, run some pipe and have a fuel-powered pump for suppression while keeping the structure and roof wet (note that if you have a pool that's a pretty-large cistern, isn't it?)  As long as you can put the embers out faster than they can light your house on fire and keep doing it until the fire passes you win although the smoke damage may still be quite extreme, especially if the building is poorly-sealed.  In earthquake-prone areas you can build to seismic codes.  We can insist that power companies not allow power lines within the fall line of trees, and put in place both requirements to remove or trim said trees that encroach and pass laws that prevent private or public landowners from blocking that pruning or removal. We can remove available fuel which dramatically reduces wildfire intensity and propagation, either through control burns or simply removing it if you're in an area where burning it during periods when its safe won't work.

In addition as with Maui the LA area has a literally inexhaustible source of water suitable for fighting wildfires: The ocean!  Of course this is non-potable and not suitable for anything else, but for fire suppression -- well?  Stick fuel-powered pump-houses down near the water with fire mains of HDPE running to strategic points and... done.  But nobody did any of this, right?

None of these are proof against a bad outcome, of course, but all do help and might save property.  However, all do damage to the allure many seek; sticking your "beach house" on stilts obviously isn't at beach level anymore, maintaining a 100' perimeter of non-combustibles around your house in a dry wind-prone area is some amount of work and that cistern and fuel-operated pump (so it works if the power goes off first) costs money, as does filling it for what might wind up being a "nothing" of a fire season where it goes unused.  Keeping tree fall-lines away from power lines means cutting down or pruning trees on a regular basis proactively or putting the lines underground and that costs money too. Living in mountain valleys where you can see the flat, fertile and nice-appearing land is rather obviously there because it did flood in the past and the scour marks from previous slides are clear on the mountain when you look -- and there is no actual defense in either of those cases that matters; you're not going to stop a landslide no matter what sort of defensive engineering you apply.  Damming rivers and tributaries can provide serious defense against valley flooding if you let the agencies who propose it do so, which residents of Asheville and Buncombe and surrounding counties infamously did not in the 1960s and 70s when TVA showed up with allocated funds to do so even after the disastrous floods of 1916 and 1940 along with several lesser events.

At the end of the day life is about balancing risks, rewards and costs.  There are plenty of people around here who have built "a cabin in the woods" on or near a ridgeline.  A significant "no combustible material" setback and careful selection of materials for the exterior and sealing possible means of ember intrusion, along with a nice big fat cistern tank and fuel-driven pump and controls to keep the building and immediate surrounding area wet in the event of a fire all damage the ambience folks seek (never mind being a bit expensive) and thus it is usually not done.  That's a choice, but if a fire gets going during a dry period coming up the face of the ridge your house is sitting on there's nothing you're going to be able to do at that point except run and you better do the running before your exit paths get cut off.

There's a lot of yelling going on in WNC right now, particularly around Asheville, on flood map revisions.  They always happen after flood and other serious storm events; post Ivan they certainly did around where I lived in Florida (I rode that one out at the house and it was bad -- however my efforts were successful.)  But the federal government has no control over whether you can rebuild -- that's under State, County and local control.  What FEMA and thus NFIP do have control over is whether you can obtain government-sponsored flood insurance and, if so, at what price depending on what you do when you rebuild.  We should remember that the entire River Arts district in Asheville was so reasonable in cost for people to come in and "redevelop" not that long ago specifically because the prior users of that land, which were industrial, left after the previous flooding destroyed their investments.  Everyone who built there knew this so what's the problem -- you made a decision having either known or you could have trivially determined said history and yet people built there anyway!

The same is true out in Southern California.  Fires aren't new there and the Santa Ana winds are an annual phenomena that have occurred long before the California Gold Rush brought a large influx of humans.  No, humans are not making it worse but we are putting more and more "stuff" of ever-increasing value in the way that can be destroyed.  Couple high wind with dry conditions, given that part of the country is borderline desert, and you've got a high-risk environment with vegetation which reflects that and in some cases actually requires fire to propagate!  Add to that state government policies that do not clear brush (on purpose!) and in other areas do not conduct control burns during the part of the year when high winds do not occur and you've got the natural environment and its oscillations -- including much larger fires simply because there's more fuel available and you refused to reduce said fuel load despite having the opportunity to do so in advance.  Now add deliberate refusal to build out fire-suppression infrastructure (in this case California residents approved a bond issue many years ago to do exactly that but it wasn't done!) and you have all the ingredients for what is now occurring.  If you want to know why insurance companies left they asked for rates that reflected this deliberate neglect and foolish set of decisions by said government agencies and, when you get down to it, the people who live there and kept voting those government agents into office.  The firms had already taken large fire losses as a result and thus they had no evidence any of that would change.  The rate adjustments were refused and thus their only sane option was to withdraw offering coverage and leave.

It sucks for those caught in the middle of it, of course, but as someone who lived in a hurricane zone on the water for 20 years they as I knew the risk, they and I all selected our precise piece of property to own and live in with our own evaluation of said risk or willful blindness toward it along with the expected rewards from doing so, we engaged in (or not) the mitigations we believed made sense on a cost:risk:reward basis and that, as a free person in a free nation, was and is my and their right to do.

But having done so the consequences were both mine and now theirs as well, whether for good or bad.

We're not going to change the natural world; it is we who, through technology, adapt to it and not the other way around.

The remaining question is whether those impacted will force those who had responsibility for said mitigations, in many cases explicitly funded with tax dollars yet they did not act in accordance with their responsibilities and either did nothing or spent the funds elsewhere, to be held personally responsible for any and all of their malfeasance.

There appears to be plenty of that to go around.

This amuses me greatly.

Industry veterans, bartenders and servers in the nation's capital told the Washingtonian that resistance to the Republican figures in the progressive city was inevitable and a matter of conscience. 

"You expect the masses to just ignore RFK eating at Le Diplomate on a Sunday morning after a few mimosas and not to throw a drink in his face?," said Zac Hoffman, a DC restaurant veteran who is now a manager at the National Democratic Club.

Actually, what I expect is a bunch  of bankruptcies.

Its not like there isn't a restaurant or bar on every corner in DC -- there is.

Further, word gets around very rapidly.  If you start doing this everyone in the Administration will know about it in 10 minutes.  Everyone.

I'd love to be a bar owner in that town with this attitude running around.  I'd make very-clear to my staff -- I will be watching for any indication of this and if I see it, you're instantly fired and the table's check is comp'd.

And the next day I get all the business with lines out the door while the place across the street that pulls this crap sees half their business disappear in a single day -- and those people never come back.  Why would they when they get excellent service with a smile right across the street?

In fact I'd run advertisements so-stating and with all the targeted advertising (hi Google and Facebook!) I'd hit every mobile device in DC with the ads too -- "Come one, come all, everyone is treated equally and with respect irrespective of your political party.  We are here to sell you delicious food and beverages -- and for no other reason -- and every member of our staff shall do so."

Smart businesspeople love a market where their competitors deliberately destroy themselves.

... and it does not matter what the topic is.

I've written on this before but I believe it bears repeating: You can choose the basis of evaluation for virtually anything but if the outcome matters to you then there is only one acceptable decision, and that is engineering-based.

Engineering takes the current circumstances as the "baseline" and refuses to accept any path which cannot be proved to make it better, and further expects that if you represent it will be better and it isn't you lose all the money you made and if harm comes to others you go to prison.

No exceptions are allowed.

If the bridge has a sign on it that says "10 ton weight limit" provided your vehicle does not mass more than ten tons it must be safe to drive across said bridge no matter how many other vehicles are on the bridge.  The sign didn't say "one vehicle only", it said "10 ton weight limit."  The engineer who specified that has certified that provided the materials were not fraudulently sourced and that the bridge was assembled according to his stamped plans it is safe for you to drive over it with a vehicle that masses no more than ten tons.

Period.

We must apply this to all matters of public policy, particularly when we consider same to be more than a suggestion.  The NEC works this way; you can run 20 amps on 12 gauge non-metallic wire (e.g. type NM, usually called "Romex") in a house.  If the breaker is not larger than 20 amps the wire will not overheat and catch your house on fire provided it is actually the specified 12 gauge and made out of copper.  Every wire downstream from that breaker which connects between things must be 12 gauge for this reason; the breaker protects the wire and the engineering standard says that this combination will produce a safe -- that is, the wire will not overheat and catch your house on fire -- outcome.  (Yes, this is a bit simplified and the tables have "but for" limitations, but its generally the case.)

Note that while this table was developed using engineering any runt with a pair of lineman's pliers and some wire staples can run cable without being able to do the calculations to independently determine this.  A table is sufficient for an electrician wiring your house; he does not have to understand the math, only the rules which are clearly on the table.

Now it may be the case that in certain circumstances you may not find the performance acceptable but provided you follow that "engineering" rule in a typical residence per the table it is safe.

The standard against one judges in this paradigm is always the status quo; that is, a bridge must not fall down because while you may find it inconvenient (or even unacceptable) to not be able to cross the river without it (absent either a boat or swimming) you won't fall from height and possibly be crushed by the debris without the bridge existing, and obviously a person now under the bridge and subject to having tons of concrete and steel fall on him can't have that happen if its not there.  That is, the status quo is that you are safe from being crushed from above or dropped from height and thus that status quo must not be violated by building the bridge.  If you cannot assure that and, if it that standard is violated someone will be punished for it appropriately, including being asset-stripped, thrown in prison or even executed then you must not build the bridge.  Period.

We must apply this to the status quo when it comes to energy, medicine, appliances and everything else -- and insist that our governments do so without exception.  Further, for those who make said policy or act on it if they violate this stricture they must be held personally accountable for all of the damage that occurs without exception -- no "waivers" or "immunity" may ever be permitted in that regard.

Want a real goal for 2024 in terms of enforcing a change in our so-called "social contract"?

Now you have one.

My previous piece on this general topic was on the difference between people who take a science view of things and an engineering view of them.  I explained how an engineering view, when faced with an unexpected failure of some sort, immediately stops whatever they're doing and reverts it if something was recently changed.

A "science" view holds that statistical power is enough.

The problem is that each human is not a statistical problem; you are an engineering example.  That is, there is only one of you just like for any individual road over water there is one bridge.  One bridge failure is not tolerable because there may be cars on the bridge when it fails and the people in the cars will die.

The key to an engineering view is that engineering looks at the world as deterministic and thus statistical failures are not permitted.  That is, it looks at the world like physics does even given our imperfect understanding, and thus seeks to place outcomes well beyond confidence intervals.

Physics says that kinetic energy is always 1/2 mV^2.  Never anything else.  2H2 + O2 -> 2H2O + energy, always.  You never get gold, you always get water.  Gravity (on earth) accelerates all objects at 32 ft/sec^2, always.  It does not matter if the object masses one gram or one ton; that is the acceleration.

Here's the functional difference, and what you must understand: Everything in the universe is in fact deterministic.

But wait, you say -- medicine never seems to be.  Nor does weather.  Nor, for that matter, is so-called "climate science"; remember we were told by scientists the polar icecaps would be gone 10 years ago?  Well, they're not.  The weatherman can't even tell you with certainty whether it will rain tomorrow at 2:00 PM and he's wrong more-often than right.  The NOAA forecasters can't give you where the hurricane will hit in five days and how strong it will be either, or if a tornado will form.

Every one of these outcomes is in fact deterministic -- that is, it has exactly one outcome, just like hydrogen and oxygen always produce water and energy when combined at or above the activation level of heat.

Note that it was, for quite some time, believed that a rock and a feather were acted upon differently by gravity and this, it was believed, was part of why birds could fly.  It wasn't until we figured out how to construct a vacuum pump and remove the air from a chamber we proved otherwise.  That which looked not to be deterministic (gravity) in fact is; it didn't look that way because we did not understand enough of the full system in which it applied.

So why is it that when you are told you have cancer the doctor cannot tell you whether or not he can cure it?  At best he can give you some set of odds.  Ever notice that a medical study that claims a "p < 0.001", that is, almost-certainly the result is allegedly real, still does not claim that everyone is cured or helped?  It doesn't have to in order to get that "p" value -- it just has to have an outcome that is wildly improbable to be due to chance.

It is active fraud to use such to claim you should or must do a given thing.  To suggest a course of action is fine, but to cajole, coerce or mandate it is not.

Why?  Because you're always a trial of one.

So why is it that we can't actually tell you where the hurricane is going to hit a week out, whether the tornado will come (and where if it does), whether the medicine will cure you or whether you need your umbrella in two hours?

Simple: We do not actually understand the thing we are analyzing; at best we have only a partial understanding.  When it comes to biochemistry that understanding beyond the basics (e.g. metabolism of foods into ATP and thus your survival) is in fact quite poor in both depth and breadth.  This is also true for essentially all large-area physical systems on Earth and indeed through the universe.

An example from the planet we live on: Despite the claims that CO2 emissions are driving the warming of the earth nobody, to my knowledge, has been able to accurately provide the carbonate buffering reaction between the atmosphere and the oceans.  This is in fact critical to being able to accurately model anything related to same because there is far more carbon dioxide in the ocean in the form of carbonate than that which is in the atmosphere as a gas.  Without being able to describe this buffering reaction accurately (and several scientific groups have realized, after much experimentation that they have no accurate idea at all how to do so) you can't possibly determine how this will all balance out -- or, even more-importantly, which is the driver and which is the driven element -- or whether both in fact are in different places and times!

We lack the understanding required to be able to accurately describe it and, despite decades of trying, we are nowhere near being able to do so.

Yet in fact the outcome -- that is, the buffering reaction -- is deterministic and, if we understood what we were analyzing we could tell you 100% of the time what was going to happen.  The reason we can't is that we're ignorant of significant parts of what's being treated or predicted.

That's all it is folks.

There are myriad buffering reactions in every living thing.  We do not understand how most of them work accurately enough to describe them with a formula, function or model yet all are utterly essential to survival.  I can list a dozen off the top of my head and every single one of them is essential to the continuation of that organism's life.

The claims of anyone in these fields are not facts -- they're guesses.  Perhaps educated guesses but they are guesses and you must never confuse them with facts.

Policy, especially binding policy, is never legitimately made from a guess.  That is no different than religion; I may believe in God, but that belief is a guess.  I cannot prove it and you cannot disprove it; we both lack the ability to reach a deterministic outcome.  There is one but neither of us know what it is and by the time we know its too late to change our minds.

A climate "scientist" might tell you that we must reduce CO2 because he claims that humans emitting CO2 will cause the earth to get warmer and the sea level to rise, both of which are claimed to be bad and must be avoided.  I'll leave the "warmer" thing out for a minute and focus on the sea level aspect.  Said "scientist" in fact has made two claims, not one: First, that the sea level will rise (the bad outcome) and second that CO2 emissions by man are the cause -- that is, if we stop doing that the sea level will not rise.

This claim has multiple problems not the least of which is that he can't design an experiment to validate his hypothesis because said scientist doesn't have a spare earth laying around that is identical to this one upon which to run his experiment nor does he have the hundred years or more to prove he's right.  Therefore all he's got is back-fit mathematics which do not meet the scientific method that, I remind you, requires a hypothesis, formulation of an experiment in which only the desired variables are changed, recording and analysis of results and then publication of all of it so the results can be replicated by any interested party.

A back-fit model is never scientific; it is not, by definition, a test of a hypothesis.

Remember, the alleged "scientist" has not only claimed an outcome will occur he claims he knows why.  He has no evidence for either of these claims other than a historical back test which, anyone who's worked around any system that has a lot of unknowns (e.g. the stock market, for example) will tell you almost never validates on a forward basis.  These sorts of models don't even have the record of a coin toss; they nearly always fail to be predictive.  There are plenty of people who have blown up their trading accounts believing they have found the exception to this rule and nobody that I've ever heard of who has even a decent record of being right with what they've discovered in that regard in any system that exhibits evidence of non-deterministic, as we see it, behavior.  If such could be done the person who did it would wind up with all the money, obviously.

Let's ask what happens if he's wrong about the reason the sea level will rise?  Let's first presume that he's right in part and the sea level does rise.  He can't prove that his claim of cause is correct, however, as he cannot show determinism; he doesn't have enough facts to produce a deterministic result.  If he turns out to be wrong we take all the costs, societal, economic and otherwise, to reduce CO2 emissions and yet the people will still get screwed because the sea level rises anyway!

That is the alleged "solution" makes it worse than if you did nothing; the people still get hosed by the sea level rise but you first confiscated a large amount of their money by raising the cost of power, transportation, heating, cooling and agriculture so your "solution" screws them twice!

The engineering view of this problem, assuming the fear is that sea level will rise and destroy property and people is deemed both reasonable and worth defending against, is to build walls and otherwise insulate people and property from the sea level rise, or move the people and things out of the way so they don't get flooded out.  That, provided you do so beyond a reasonable confidence interval of said rise and are far enough on the safe side of it, will always work.  That is the engineering solution; it is deterministic in that provided you build the wall to the correct height with the specified materials of a given strength and/or move the stuff the bad result will not occur.

Why the sea rises from the engineering perspective is irrelevant.

When the pandemic hit in the first couple of months it was clear that young, healthy people were at statistically no risk (materially less than the flu) yet older, more-morbid people were at serious risk I put forward an engineering-style solution, albeit an imperfect one as we had wildly insufficient knowledge to get a decent confidence interval, which was ignored.  That is, the sanitarium model which was used for tuberculosis.  That absolutely would have worked far better than what we did because it did not rely on anything that we did not know was correct; there was no element of guesswork in the solution.  The only people allowed in and out of facilities housing said high-risk people would be those who had seroconverted and thus were known unable to acquire or transmit the infection.  We had no choice but to accept the "who's living there and has tested negative now is ok" but that risk only had to be accepted once for a given facility at the very outset when few people were infected at-large.  This meant putting up housing (e.g. rented RVs) at said facilities on site for workers who hadn't seroconverted and paying them whatever was required to work and stay there with food and other essentials brought in and sanitized.  If they rotated out for any reason they could not come back in until and unless they had seroconverted.  As the young, healthy people in the general population got the virus, shook it off and did seroconvert they could be hired to work safely and not have to stay on-site.  Within a couple months with no attempt to contain spread among the low-risk side of the population there would have been tens of millions of available seroconverted workers and those who found the premise of on-site lodging onerous could have been replaced.  There were no unknowns that could result in ineffectiveness; while we might have had some failures here and there due to human mistake (people are not perfect) beyond that it would have with near-certainty prevented the infection from getting into those facilities and very few high-risk people would have died.  Instead we did the exact opposite in several states and shoved infected people into those buildings, attempting to rely on masks and testing to prevent transmission. The masks and testing regimes repeatedly failed as they were based on statistical reductions which we had every reason to believe was irrelevant (once you cross the threshold of enough virus to become infected how much more gets into you doesn't materially matter with a virus since viruses replicate exponentially) and many died because the fools implemented a scientific method focused on probability and statistical reduction in emitted particles rather than an engineering approach that relied on deterministic process designed to be well beyond reasonable confidence intervals.

Engineering is always deterministic because it has to be as a discipline; if its not people die and the engineers who did not employ deterministic methods are held responsible for the failure.  Scientific methods only are deterministic and thus interchangeable on a functional basis when all the variables are known and correct.  The practitioners of scientific methods are almost-never held responsible when they're wrong; when was the last time a hurricane forecaster was charged with manslaughter when he incorrectly predicted where the storm was going or failed to predict the intensification of the Cat 2 storm to a Cat 3 or 4?  The engineering answer is always superior since it does not rely on that which is not known to be correct -- or even known at all.  If I do not know, for example, what the physical load a bridge pier that is driven to 80' can take without displacement under a specific set of conditions then I have to measure that before I can accept 80' as a suitable depth.

The scientific answer often kills people when all the inputs and variables are either not known or incorrect because it is a guess and guesses are frequently wrong.  The more unknown variables the worse the guess will be.

Facts are absolutes.  Physics is a set of facts.  Chemistry is a subset of physics, when you get down to it; it describes the physical interaction of atoms and molecules, which are comprised of protons, neutrons and electrons (and then subatomic particles beyond that.)

If and when we ever manage to understand biological systems sufficiently we will reach the point of determinism in medicine.  We will not say "you have a chance of beating this condition"; we will know what the outcome will be and whether the condition can be resolved or not -- and if so what you must consume or do to resolve it.

The same is true for "climate"; what is currently proclaimed may be a scientific process but it is not engineering and must never be used to drive policy because we simply do not understand what we're studying well enough to make accurate predictions nor establish causation.  The predictions that have been made have almost-all been proved wrong and as such they don't even qualify as educated guesses.  To make policy decisions on that basis is to make the wrong decision in virtually every instance, that is to screw people in some form or fashion who then have the bad thing happen anyway.

Some day we will reach an engineering level of understanding when it comes to medicine, climate, and many other things -- just as we have with chemistry and, at least at the atomic level, physics.

That day is not today, whether we are talking about climate, weather or all manner of biological things around us - including medicine.

Grrrr....

Hindman:   Americans know they need to plan for their later years and get their affairs in order, especially as retirement approaches. But while people recognize that need, too many aren’t following through and taking action.

When someone passes without a will, it means they have died “intestate” – meaning the intestacy laws of the state where they reside will determine how the property is distributed upon your death. But without clear direction on how you would like critical items like financial assets, property, personal possessions and items of emotional value distributed among loved ones, confusion and disarray are a common end result. Not only does the lack of a will create turmoil and headaches – both financial and emotional – for family members; it heightens the risk that your end-of-life preferences won’t be carried out in accordance with your wishes. On the other hand, a well-prepared legacy can give you the simple and satisfying peace of mind of knowing that you’ve done what you can to organize your life, shape your legacy and leave your family with a roadmap of your preferences. It can be one of the greatest final gifts we leave to those we love.

Yes, you should have your affairs in order.

But I really dislike self-interested jackasses peddling crap -- and this falls into that category.

First, there are plenty of people who need no Will at all.  If you have little or nothing in terms of assets, or intend to die broke and have no minor children then a Will is not only a waste of time it is functionally worthless.  In fact in that situation whoever you name as Executor (Personal Representative in some states) would be five-alarm stupid to accept the job and file the Will with the courts because there's nothing to get but once you file there are both costs and responsibilities.  In other words if you know you will either die broke or in the hole and have no minor children then save the money.

You should still have a durable power of attorney and advance directive; those are to some extent state-specific depending on where you live, in an attempt to have what you want to happen actually happen when it comes to you being flat on your back and unable to make decisions.  Make damn sure said advance directive is on file with all the hospitals and other places you might be taken if you collapse without warning; until said place has it and knows they have it they'll do whatever the hell they want and maybe, but not necessarily, whatever someone who identifies as one of your next-of-kin wants.  If this isn't what you want it's bad news and the cost of that, if any, will wind up billed to your estate which your estate will be obligated to pay.  So if you do only one thing make it that advance directive and put it on file at all the local hospitals.

Warning: Some people will tell you to put someone else on your accounts.  If you are offered this, to be a "second signer" or "co-owner" do not accept unless you are that person's spouse, in which case it is (of course) perfectly ok.  The reason to refuse is that if they do something stupid you are fully responsible legally and financially, and this can ruin you instantly.  Consider someone who has brokerage account and is short at the margin limit of a company that gets taken out and the stock doubles.  They will come after your house!  Don't do it.

A power of attorney gives you the ability to take care of business while the other person is alive without that risk and is the correct instrument; there are several forms of that from very limited ones for a specific asset or account and specific directives all the way to a general durable power of attorney that is extremely broad and essentially gives the person who holds it the same rights as the principal.  Just be aware it turns into a pumpkin instantly upon the principal's death and if you are holding one it is a civil and in some cases criminal offense to self-deal or otherwise screw the principal who gave it to you.

If you have or expect to have assets, or in the instance where you have minor children then a Will is appropriate.  Just understand its limitations and do it the right way to minimize them.

Specifically, get anything worthwhile out of the Will and thus out of probate.  This will make your heirs happier as it's faster, cheaper and has a near-perfect capability to have happen exactly what you wish so long as that's legal.

The first thing to consider is that for anything that doesn't trigger gift tax issues (e.g. things worth under $14,000 in total to a single person, but perhaps of immense sentimental value) give it to the people who you want to have it while you're still alive -- but before you're on your deathbed.  This is very unlikely to be challenged and if it is the person challenging it will be forced to spend money on a legal case with no monetary reward.

When you die with or without a Will but with some assets subject to probate then "someone" has to file with the probate court.  If you do not have a Will then whatever is subject to probate is distributed based on state law; there's a table they go down (e.g. "spouse first, then any direct descendant children, then ..... and on and on until the category fills.)  A Will overrides this to any extent you wish and nominates one or more people (in a chain, if the first refuses or is dead, etc) to be the Personal Representative (or "Executor" in some states; same thing, different names depending on the state.)

However, as soon as that Will is filed with someone named as Personal Representative (assuming the designation of either as valid is not contested, and it can be if someone wants to), or Probate is open "intestate" (with no Will) the fees start.  Filing and publication fees are typically in the many hundred dollar range right up front.  Unless that person both lives locally and can and will keep their act together sufficiently to deal with the court on a routine basis then there will also be legal fees involved.  Most people will either want or need at least legal consultation in doing this job; if you have a law office do it "end to end" for you (which is also an option) the cost is going to double or more.  The cost of this process in dollar terms is almost-always well north of a thousand dollars simply in court fees alone by the time it's all said and done; with lawyers involved it only takes one that's a bit of a snake to run the bill through the roof since all time is billed hourly.  Choose wisely and ask lots of questions!

Further, and much worse in many cases than the money hit is the fact that once Probate is opened there are statutory time windows that amount to a virtual standstill in terms of anything being paid out or distributed and similar.  The reason for this is that all states have a "Bar Date" for claims; 3 or 4 months is common and the clock does not start running until Probate is filed and published.  A company or person with a financial claim on the estate has that long to file their claim; if the Personal Representative pays out anything beyond funeral and ordinary maintenance costs (e.g. utility bills on a house, etc) and there are insufficient funds to cover claims he or she can be held personally responsible for those debts!  Therefore the usual (and good) advice is distribute nothing until the bar date passes so you know exactly how much is left.  If the Personal Representative is comfortable enough with the decedent's debt profile (usually only true if you were running that person's money for a couple of years prior to their death) then some distribution can be made sooner, especially of things that have little financial but lots of sentimental value (various bits and pieces of personal property, etc.)  One thing to be very conscious of is anything on a lease; this most-often comes up with cars but it can be anything (e.g. an apartment!)  Death does not void a lease in nearly all cases and the firm or person the decedent took it from can and usually will try to collect the entire remaining balance of payments.  That can be a literal crap-ton of money and is quite capable of turning a modest estate into a smoking hole with negative value.

Next up is that most states assess an inventory fee on estates -- which amounts to a tax.  That's usually assessed on the net value of assets on the day of death. Some assess straight-up taxes as well.  There is also a potential federal estate tax issue but that doesn't hit most people as the limit is quite high ($11.4 million at present); if you're in that bracket then you're a 5-alarm idiot if you don't already have professional legal advice to deal with it in advance with some sort of bypass trust.  There are ways to defray that tax and in some cases completely avoid it but that has to be done well in advance, so if you're that wealthy head thee to a good estate planning attorney pronto.

Note that if you do not file probate on an estate then there is still a statute of limitations on debts -- typically two years, but in some states it can be materially longer.  In other words if there are debts then it's to advantage to bar any who don't pay attention by filing Probate -- but only if there are assets to pay the debts with and, when that's done, something will be left!  Otherwise the correct action is to walk away and let the creditors pound sand; that you're named in a Will does not mean you're obligated until and unless you accept the appointment.  Figure out if it's worth it (there will be something left, in your best estimation, and whatever you'll receive is enough to be worth your trouble) before you file!

IMHO, assuming no minor children, your goal while alive should be to make it not worth it to Probate the Estate even if there are assets and by doing so deny both the lawyers and the courts their fees.

Many times this can be done.

First, financial accounts of various sorts can for zero cost have what is known as "POD" put on them.  That's payable on death and it's exactly what the name implies.  You designate who gets what percentage and it's a simple form you fill out at the bank or brokerage.  If you die your heirs need only present a death certificate, which they can usually obtain within a week or your passing, and the money is theirs -- period.  A cashier's check is cut and that's the end of it.  Likewise life insurance policies should always name specific beneficiaries and not your Estate.  If you have modest debts -- such as a credit card for ordinary monthly expenses -- and someone you trust to pay it when you die then POD them an account specifically for that purpose with just enough in it for that to happen.  They pay the debts after you pass with that money and that's the end of it.

Second, if you have Real Estate and it's owned and has a positive equity then the superior means of dealing with it is usually a Revocable Living Trust.  It costs money to set one up if you use a lawyer (typically a couple of thousand) and it's state specific as is a Will but only at initiation.  Once established it remains valid even if you move to a new state.  The only thing to be careful of is the potential for state tax considerations in states that have a death or income tax.  If you live in such a state and intend to move to a state where such is not the case move first, then set it up in the new state.  If you already have a trust in a hostile tax environment state then revoke it, transfer the assets out once you move and set up a new trust in the "friendly" state, transferring them into the new one.  A trust, once set up, must be funded by having the assets transferred into it.  In other words for a house you re-title the house into the Trust.  There are people who claim that a trust "hides" ownership -- this is not really true unless you name someone else as Trustee to manage it, which is very dangerous and for most people should be done, because title has to vest in a person; thus it's something like "Karl Denninger as Trustee for blah-blah Trust of date-set-up."  But, since the Trust document itself is private who's named as a beneficiary is not disclosed and the Trust is not filed with a court after you die.  In the trust documents you name a successor trustee who is the person (or chain of persons) who obtains control of the trust after you die.  You can designate pretty much anything that's legal which you want done in a Trust.  Revocable living trusts can be modified at-will including assets being moved into and out of them during your life, you can change beneficiaries, etc.  Note that a revocable living trust does not provide any sort of tax protection since you maintain control over the assets until your death, at which point it becomes irrevocable and cannot be changed.

Trusts can also have financial accounts re-titled into them and that's frequently done if, for example, you have minor children and a fair bit of money -- or adult children you don't want to have get all the cash at once.  Thus the term "Trust Fund Babies"; if there's plenty of money you may be perfectly ok with having a law firm named as the successor trustee to carry it out when you get hit by a bus since you don't care about the fees and costs.  For most people designating the chain of heirs is sufficient, but once you get into high net worth situations you may make a different choice.

Note that in most cases you do not want to title vehicles into a trust; the reason is that in many states it is difficult to obtain insurance on them.  They're one of the few things you should basically never put in a revocable trust, unless it's something like a classic car collection.

Along with the Trust you usually want what is called a "pour over" Will, which simply states that anything not in the trust and otherwise undisposed goes into the Trust on your death.  Note that the Will still has to be probated; if it's a "small estate" this is cheap and fast but the entire point of using the Trust and POD in the first place is to avoid the cost and hassle of formal probate -- if you don't re-title things properly you spent the time and trouble (never mind money if a lawyer was involved) to set the trust up fro nothing since the pour-over Will still have to be probated!

The key difference with a Trust is that just like a POD on a financial account it doesn't go through probate; the court never gets their hands on it and thus there are no delays or fees assessed by same.  This means the heirs get possession and control literally as soon as you die, which makes things a lot simpler.  In addition nobody has access to your list of who gets what other than the trustee; unlike a Will which is filed with the court and becomes public a Trust does not.

Consider that if you have all your assets covered by a Will -- a house, a bank account, maybe a brokerage account -- and you die, until someone files that Will and is named Personal Representative how does the power bill get paid at the house?  Your bank account is locked on the day of your death and a power of attorney to access that account becomes worthless.  Someone is going to have to fork up their money to take care of that until the Will can be put into probate and Estate accounts set up and financial accounts transferred or liquidated, all of which costs time and money.  In addition there's a very clean argument that nobody has the right of possession (e.g. to live there!) in said house at the moment of your death until Probate is established and on the day the Probate Court appoints the Personal Representative that person immediately has a fiduciary duty to preserve the value of same for the benefit of all the heirs.  This can easily conflict with reality; let's say you have someone living in the house who is a partial heir but is a drug user and might trash the place or interfere with the sale required since no heir has the means or desire to buy out the others; the PR can, if the house isn't to pass solely to said person, have a legal duty to forcibly evict them no matter who it is and no matter what else is in the Will as their duty is to protect the Estate assets for the benefit of all the heirs (not just the person living there) and that duty is not to the dead person it's to the court!

If the bank account is POD'd to your heirs in some percentage distribution and the house is in a Trust that specifies that "X" has a right of possession then you immediately (within a couple of days) have the funds to pay the power bill and whoever is so-designated has the rights set forth in the Trust document no matter whether it's to the benefit of the asset -- or the rest of the estate -- or not.  In other words your desires before your death are continued exactly after your death and as long as whatever you put in that document is legal it's enforceable.  Even better is that whatever people have the right to possession of the property need do nothing to enjoy it, and the title remains undisturbed since the Trust still owns it.

Now the successor trustee, once you die in the case of a Revocable Living Trust, still has to dispose of the property as the Trust directs.  But re-titling the house out of the Trust into someone's hands (if it's a 100% gift) or selling it and splitting the proceeds is no different than any other Real Estate transaction, as opposed to filing a Will, having the PR appointed, getting letters of authority and similar, along with all the delays and costs involved.

Finally none of this changes tax and debt obligations; you cannot evade either.  If you try creditors (or the IRS) can (and if its worth it for them will) sue to claw back whatever you try to distribute outside of the process.  If you have $10 large in a bank account and owe $25 large on a credit card, thinking you can POD the bank account to your daughter as a way to screw the credit card company out of the $25,000 that's likely to fail and get her sued a few months after you pass, quite possibly after she's already spent the money!  Don't do that.

Finally there are "small estate" rules for people who die with little in the way of assets but the limits vary from state to state and in some states are laughably low, to the point that someone with nothing more than a modest car exceeds them.

As you can see this can be a lot more complex than it first appears, even if you aren't particularly wealthy.  The only place it doesn't matter at all is if you either are or intend to die broke (or even better, deeply in the hole) -- in that case then fuck 'em and do nothing with regard to finances (e.g. POD, will or trust), on purpose, but make damn sure nobody else has joint responsibility for anything so the people who you owe can't come after someone else when you die.

In short get competent advice -- there are plenty of people out there who are outright snakes and whoever is managing things for you when you pass is going to get to meet a bunch of them.

I just recently wound up my later mother's estate; I'm not a lawyer nor did I set up her affairs originally, but I did hold powers of attorney for both financial matters and health care and was her Personal Representative, and have seen the flat-out ugly bullcrap that everyone in the world tries to pull.  I got dozens of spammy and in some cases scammy letters from various entities and people, along with more than a few phone calls.  It's a five alarm pain in the ass and a good thing that I'm pretty-much a pissed-off alligator when someone steps on my tail and am more than willing to chase-and-bite -- hard.  Most people would have been buttfucked by some of the crap that was pulled -- as it stands everyone who was legitimately owed money (not many) got paid and there was something left, with none of the schemers and scammers getting anything.  That's the way it should be but it was overly complex -- when my time comes it won't be.