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Last modified Oct. 16, 2019 at 10:07 PM EDT.

Here's an interesting article I found recently:

It even mentions sleep disorders, sleep deprivation, and fatigue.

Quotes:

Also, sleep disorders affect over 20% of people, and the resulting sleep deprivation reduces inhibition. These kinds of transient neurodiversity can also interfere with social sensitivity, Theory of Mind, and verbal inhibition, so can reduce the ability to comply with speech codes. Unless universities want to outlaw fatigue, hunger, heartbreak, meds and coffee it's hard to maintain the delusion that everyone's speech will be 100% inoffensive 100% of the time.

[...]

Campus speech codes discriminate against neurominorities. They impose unrealistic demands, fears, and stigma on the large proportion of students, staff, and faculty who have common mental disorders, or extremes on the Big Five personality traits, or transient disinhibition due to sleep deprivation or smart drugs. As a practical matter, it is virtually impossible for someone with Asperger's, bipolar, ADHD, low Agreeableness, low Conscientiousness, extreme fatigue, or Modafinil mania to understand what kinds of speech acts are considered acceptable, and to inhibit the production of such speech 100% of the time, in 100% of educational and social situations.

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American presidential candidate Andrew Yang's giveaway of 10 Freedom Dividends; universal basic income & human-centered capitalism

Monday, September 16th, 2019 09:41:31 GMT

I don't pay as much attention to politics as I maybe should, and it's actually pretty hard for most politicians to even get much of my attention, because I'm somewhat cynical, and also so preoccupied with the usual things I'm preoccupied with - my own projects (mostly programming), reading library ebooks, and trying to maintain my health, and not relapse back into being fatigued, headachy, and poorly nourished.

However, American presidential candidate Andrew Yang has succeeded in getting my attention, because he's actually strongly promoting the ideas of universal basic income and human-centered capitalism!

Andrew Yang is doing a giveaway of ten Freedom Dividends - $1,000 of basic income per month for 12 months, which you can enter to win at:

Quoted from the rules page:

The Promotion begins on September 12, 2019 at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time and ends on September 19, 2019 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time (the "Promotional Period"). All entries must be received within the Promotional Period to be eligible to win the prize. Sponsor reserves the right to reopen submissions at any time and set a new deadline for additional submissions.

I'm actually reluctant to enter, because if I win, I'm not sure I'd really want that much public attention.

I don't think $1,000 per month for 12 months is enough for me to be particularly happy to appear in the media in connection with anything political. Actually, probably no amount of money would make me really happy to do that.

Especially since the media, and many in the media's audience, are sometimes quite unkind to people who have failed to lem.

But, even though I'm reluctant to enter the giveaway, I just thought I'd blog about this, since a Freedom Dividend could be of great financial help to probably many people reading this, and I'm very happy that a plausible presidential candidate is actually promoting the ideas of universal basic income and human-centered capitalism.

I still haven't learned very much about Andrew Yang yet - but, promoting universal basic income and human-centered capitalism seems very wise and prescient, given that a future outcome of increased technological automation will likely be increased unemployment.

I was intrigued to learn that, according to this interview of Andrew Yang by Stephen Colbert after around 2 minutes, 23 seconds - Martin Luther King and Thomas Paine also were in favor of universal basic income.

I think it would be wonderful for everyone to be able to be free of having to pursue money, which would give everyone more time, peace of mind, and opportunity to engage in the pursuit of happiness, and give everyone a break from being pursued (and/or slowly digested) by the life-destroying monster that is poverty.

It would make life so much better for anyone with sleep issues (such as circadian sleep issues, or other sleep issues) who is being literally tortured by work schedules which clash with their body's circadian rhythms.

Anyone trapped in a career they loathe would finally have a much easier time quitting and doing something else instead.

Many homeless people might finally be able to afford their own apartment or other home, at least in parts of the USA where apartments, rental houses, or even mortgages still cost less than $1000 per month.

However, housing and apartments can be so extremely expensive that I think some amount of universal basic income more than $1,000 per month would be a much more comfortable amount. I think my family's mortgage here in northeast Ohio went up from something like $860 to $960 per month in recent years.

But, even with "only" $1,000 of universal basic income per month - no longer having to live in fear that we might not be able to afford to pay our mortgage would be wonderful!

I still adore Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders and @SenSanders on Twitter), even though I don't agree with him on everything (such as taxation, or a jobs guarantee). I think universal basic income would give people a lot more freedom than only a jobs guarantee:

A tweet by Andrew Yang quoted in that article:

Bernie ignores the facts that money in our hands would 1) create hundreds of thousands of local jobs and 2) recognize and reward the nurturing work being done in our homes and communities every day. He also assumes that everyone wants to work for the government which isn't true.

- Andrew Yang (@AndrewYang) 11:30 AM - Aug 27, 2019

I particularly like "2) recognize and reward the nurturing work being done in our homes and communities every day".

I think for people who want to be stay-at-home parents or caregivers, a sufficiently large amount of universal basic income would probably be much more helpful than any very time-consuming guaranteed job outside of their own homes. Or even inside their own homes.

But, I definitely think it would be nice to be able to have both universal basic income, and also the option of getting a guaranteed job.

Especially if that guaranteed job was also guaranteed to be as flexible as I would need, due to my sleep issues (possibly Non-24-hour Sleep-Wake Disorder) often making it torturously difficult for me to deal with any fixed schedule.

I just wish there were a way other than taxation to fund universal basic income. Perhaps there is?

Here's a blog post I wrote which (among other things) explains why I am against all taxation:

In that, I also mentioned some possible alternatives to taxation: lotteries, or crowdfunding via something like Kickstarter.

I think raffles would be another good idea. One of the credit unions (non-profit bank alternatives) I use - DCU (Digital Federal Credit Union) - raises a lot of money every month for the DCU for Kids charity by holding raffles, in which they sell 3,000 raffle tickets for $20 apiece, for a total of $60,000 per raffle!

$20,000 goes to the winner of the raffle, while the rest goes to DCU for Kids.

The tickets often sell out so fast, I've sometimes missed my chance to buy a ticket! But even though I've never won any of those raffles so far, I'm very happy that at least my money is going to some good causes. (And also pleased that a 1 in 3000 chance of winning $20,000 is much better than the odds of winning a huge lottery.)

The DCU for Kids raffle is real-world proof that raffles really can work brilliantly and reliably for raising large amounts of money for good causes.

So, perhaps universal basic income could actually be funded completely voluntarily via similar raffles?

Andrew Yang wrote 2 books! I haven't read them yet, but I definitely want to.

Hopefully, these books will be available on your local library's OverDrive website, which has legally free ebooks you can borrow and read on your computer or phone.

I'm going to read them before I decide whether or not I'm going to vote for Andrew Yang in 2020.

But so far, I'm definitely very impressed with Andrew Yang.

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"Failure to Launch" is actually Failure to Lem

Wednesday, July 4th, 2018 13:52:38 GMT

Many millenials (and others) these days are criticized for not moving out and becoming debt slaves and wage slaves to (barely) support themselves, and are picked on for "failing to launch" and become "independent".

"Independence" is such a frequently misused word nowadays. Similar to how "royalties" are probably usually just pittances - what is commonly called "independence" is usually not even close to real independence.

In my opinion, real independence is being at least a millionaire (or maybe even just a several-hundred-thousandaire) - and/or being able to survive in the wilderness like Survivorman.

Certainly not becoming a debt slave and wage slave, and being desperately dependent on having to make money, because of having too high expenses, too little income, and almost no savings, forcing you to live from paycheck to paycheck, and/or to live on debt if your paychecks are too small or scarce.

I think as a society, we should be far kinder to and more respectful of our young people, and simply give them all the resources they need or want, debt-free, to thrive and to build a better future for everyone.

And the same for our older people!

(But I think this should all be accomplished through voluntary charity and voluntary fundraising - not taxation, nor any other ways of stealing people's money.)

Quite often, picking on someone for "failure to launch" amounts to picking on someone for being too rational to jump off a cliff just to follow a lot of conformist lemmings who succumbed to peer pressure or societal pressure, and were all too willing to take the plunge into probably lifelong debt slavery and wage slavery.

(Or who were forced to be a lemming by their parents and society, which both failed to provide an adequate launchpad.)

So, instead of "failure to launch", I think it's more like, "failure to be a lemming", or "failure to launch yourself off a financial cliff only to fall to your doom".

If your parents (or other relatives or patrons) give you the gift of being able to avoid joining the rat race or lemming race which most people lack the freedom to (comfortably) refuse to participate in - I think probably the most rational course of action is to accept it.

(Unless the "gift" comes with intolerable strings attached - in which case it's more of an attempt at manipulation than a gift.)

Without as many bills to pay as someone "independent" (but actually probably extremely dependent on having income) - you have a chance to build up a large nest egg much sooner than someone who has to spend probably most of their income just to keep a roof over their head, and pay for transportation, food, and other basics.

It's not "failure to launch", it's "failure to lem" - and it's a good thing. :-)

Similarly, I think anyone who has rich parents ought to just guiltlessly accept the many advantages their parents made/make available to them, and not feel bad about themselves when jealous people pick on them for supposedly being "spoiled" or "privileged".

Poverty spoils a lot more children than wealth ever did.

Also, I think "privilege" is quite the wrong word for wealth, because I consider wealth something that everyone is entitled to - a human right.

However, I don't think that right entitles anyone to steal others' property. So, no, I'm not advocating communism or socialism - I'm 100% against all taxation, and I think when people have their property extorted from them by things like taxation, their human rights are being violated.

Here's an excellent essay (or small book) on the evils of income taxation. I don't totally agree with absolutely everything in it, but I think it makes a lot of good points:

I'm sure my family would have had a much easier time surviving and thriving if we had been permitted to keep all our earnings, instead of being deprived of so much of our hard-earned money by taxes and other forms of oppression, such as the evil, corrupt so-called "child support" system.

Which is often more like bureaucrat support, or ex-wife support, rather than child support, and which harms and traumatizes children and their families in numerous ways, which you can read about here:

Rather than coercive communism or socialism - I am in favor of people earning their own money, and also all voluntary charity. I am totally against plundering or extorting anyone's honestly-earned wealth through taxation or any other form of coercion, even if it's done supposedly in the name of helping the poor. Usually, it's really to help bureaucrats rather than the poor.

But even if it's done with the genuine intention of helping the poor, stealing is still wrong.

However, one reason I don't consider the legendary Robin Hood a villain is because he meant well, and possibly none of his "stealing" was truly stealing.

I actually don't know if Robin Hood is said to have refrained from stealing from any innocent rich people who earned their money honestly and legitimately.

But, I think Robin Hood is best known for taking back what had been stolen from the poor by rich criminals. (Not innocent rich people who stole nothing from the poor and did the poor no harm.)

And it doesn't seem accurate to call the recovery of stolen property, and returning it to its rightful owners, "stealing".

Some people seem to think taxes are like Robin Hood because taxes steal from the rich and supposedly give back to and help the poor - but, I definitely don't see taxes that way, because unlike Robin Hood, taxation punishes everyone without distinguishing between the guilty and the innocent.

In fact, taxation mostly punishes people too honest and law-abiding to engage in tax evasion - so taxation actually punishes virtue. (However, having the spine to resist complying with evil laws is also virtuous, so I don't regard tax evaders as automatically bad people.)

And taxation is also harder on the poor than the rich, because being deprived of any amount of money (even the seemingly "small" percentages confiscated by sales taxes) can easily reduce poor people's ability to buy groceries and other basics for themselves, their children, their elderly relatives, their pets, and any of their struggling other relatives or friends.

(Many poor people are very kind and generous, and do a lot to help each other out. And sometimes poor people who almost start to rise out of poverty get dragged back into poverty because of helping the people around them.)

And much of the plunder extracted from so many honest hard-working people of every class (whether rich, poor, or middle class) gets wasted by bureaucrats, often on horrible things such as war.

And the government programs for poor people probably usually fail to enable most of the poor to escape continued poverty and dependence.

And those programs often involve policies that actually harm poor people, such as the horrendous, evil "individual mandate" that was a part of the misnamed "Affordable Care Act", which fined people a massive $695 a year per adult (and $347.50 per child) for the disservice of NOT having any health insurance at all!

And for a few years, I was afraid that if I earned too much money, it might harm my family by possibly getting us kicked off of Medicaid, since I definitely didn't think I was capable of making enough money to pay for insurance for us all, nor the $695 penalty fee per person if we went without insurance.

So, because I thought it might do my family more harm than good if I somehow managed to make too much money for us to stay on Medicaid, but quite possibly not enough money to compensate for the possible loss of Medicaid - I felt like I had little choice but to (again) postpone seriously trying to figure out how to make a living.

It wasn't all bad - at least it was nice finally not having live in fear of not being able to afford to see the doctor or dentist if a health crisis happened.

But what would have been even nicer would have been being able to make a significant effort to earn my own living without having to worry that doing so would seriously harm us all by possibly getting us kicked off of Medicaid and costing us thousands that I couldn't imagine that I (or any of us) would ever be able to afford.

So, I definitely don't believe that taxes play a heroic Robin Hood-like role of recovering the poor's stolen property and giving it back to them.

In my experience, taxes are yet another thing that kick poor people when we're already down. I still remember how robbed and violated I felt when I saw all the deductions from my first paychecks way back in 2002 - particularly because at the time, I DESPERATELY NEEDED EVERY LAST CENT I HAD EARNED.

And every year, my family and I have to waste a lot of time doing our taxes. And since a lot of our income has been from self-employment rather than conventional jobs, and we often have had to live on all our income and couldn't afford to set aside any for taxes, we've often had to worry that in April we might get financially kicked when we're already down (yet again) by suddenly "owing" a lot of money.

Or, if we were lucky enough to get a refund of our own hard-earned money that we never should have been deprived of in the first place - we had to wonder when or if we will ever receive it, and at least once, it got delayed.

So, I think taxes are much more like the Sheriff of Nottingham than like Robin Hood. (And actually, that Wikipedia article says: "He is generally depicted as an unjust tyrant, who mistreats the local people of Nottinghamshire, subjecting them to unaffordable taxes.")

In my opinion, taxation needs to be 100% abolished for all - poor, rich, and middle class alike, because stealing and extortion are wrong no matter how rich the victim is.

Admittedly, taxes do pay not only for many bad things, but also for many good things. (But I wonder if they pay for more bad things than good things?)

But I think more ethical, non-coercive ways to raise funds for the good things could and should be used instead.

Perhaps lotteries? Or even something like Kickstarter?

It's completely heartless to say it's acceptable, or in any way good, for poor people and their children to either suffer and die, or else become wage slaves and debt slaves with hardly any realistic chance of ever escaping poverty no matter how hard they work.

Also, the stereotype that poor people are lazy is usually false. Some people talk like they think laziness is so evil that it ought to be punishable by poverty. But that's a monstrously cruel punishment, since poverty can be torturous and like a death sentence.

(Such as if you get seriously ill in a society where health care costs a huge fortune, and where insurance is still unaffordable despite a misnamed law to supposedly make it affordable.)

Also, what seems to be "laziness" can actually be a medical problem (rather than just a psychological issue or moral failing), resulting from things like sleep issues, such as circadian disorders, or fatigue from something like low iron, which is one of the world's most common nutritional deficiencies - especially amongst the poor.

Or other nutritional deficiencies - which poor people tend to be extra prone to, because many of us (including me and my family at times) can't always comfortably afford enough good, healthy food and vitamins.

However, even if someone's "laziness" is not excused by medical issues, I believe that freedom actually includes the freedom to be lazy, since being coerced to be unlazy - being coerced to work - is the very definition of slavery, and slavery is an opposite of freedom.

So, if you think about it, being against laziness and in favor of people being coerced to work, actually equates to being against freedom, and in favor of slavery!

Certainly, it can be very noble to choose to work rather than do nothing to help others.

But there is nothing at all noble about making people into slaves, such as by coercing "lazy", or even truly lazy, people to work.

And people are not bad, or "lazy", or lazy, or suffering from "drapetomania", just because they aren't eager to be a slave.

Also, not every form of work significantly helps anyone. For example, I don't think teenagers (or anyone else) should be encouraged to waste their time on jobs like flipping burgers at a fast food restaurant instead of studying, and learning more valuable skills.

Living with your parents and learning how to do something difficult but valuable like computer programming is probably a much better option in the long run than "launching" (or being launched/evicted) too early, then ending up endlessly struggling to survive with possibly only a minimum wage job, and having much less time and energy to study anything.

So, if anyone ever picks on you (or someone similar to you) for being an "entitled", "spoiled", "lazy", "irresponsible" millenial (or older or younger person), I hope it won't make you feel bad about yourself.

If the person saying such things is sincere, and not just trolling you to try to deliberately hurt your feelings, then they're probably a lot more enslaved by conformism and internalized oppression than you are - and that at least partly explains why they say such illogical but hurtful things.

You might not have as much outer freedom as many of our critics, many of whom grew up in more financially fortunate eras and don't understand how different things are now. But, you probably have more inner freedom than they do.

And, as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said,

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

I feel more sorry for such people than offended by them. It's truly sad that some people seem to think insisting on freedom and human rights is just being "entitled" and "spoiled" and demanding "privileges".

But freedom and human rights are not mere privileges - they're rights, and everyone truly is entitled to them.

And if we all don't have enough "entitlement" and self-respect to insist on freedom and human rights, we all might eventually end up with our freedom and human rights being trampled upon by tyrants.

Frederick Douglass said:

"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."

So, I think having low tolerance for oppression (including internalized oppression), and feeling strongly entitled to freedom and human rights, is actually a good thing.

And I think we'd all be better off taking the words of great heroes such as Frederick Douglass to heart, rather than the misguided, self-destructive notions of anyone who argues that demanding human rights and freedom is just being "spoiled", "privileged", or "entitled" - as if all feelings of entitlement are illegitimate and bad, and as if freedom and human rights are nothing but revocable privileges.

If any struggling millenials (and older and younger people) who the media and others like to kick when we're already down are reading this, I hope this blog post makes you feel better.

Another comforting thing to read might be the Slightly Aggressive Affirmations blog.

And even I should read more about history and other cultures to broaden my perspective even more, and make it even more comfortingly obvious how narrow-minded, provincial, and ignorant it is to mindlessly believe that current conformist mainstream opinions on how people should live are "normal" and "universal", rather than irrational, twisted and warped in contrast to wiser cultures, both past and present.

Here's a blog post I wrote about 10 years ago:

Another thing that comes to mind is the fable of the tortoise and the hare. The hare who "launched" quickly had a superficially more impressive start, but the slow and steady tortoise won the race in the end.

Being a careful tortoise is a much more mature, responsible approach to life than being a reckless, delusionally optimistic hare, or a willingly-following-the-crowd-over-a-cliff lemming.

I think caution, learning valuable skills, avoiding debt, and building up a nest egg are usually a much wiser, more mature approach to independence than launching yourself (or being forced) into the world poorly prepared and too soon, with debt being the closest thing you have to a safety net.

(However, in some circumstances, leaving as quickly as possible might actually be the more appropriate course of action, such as if you're living with someone who is dangerously abusive.)

People picking on fortunate people such as rich kids, rich people in general, and people whose parents don't kick them out or treat them like slaves, make about as little sense to me as a slave arguing in favor of making non-slaves into slaves, instead of arguing to end slavery for all.

I also think it's wrong to automatically and indiscriminately be against all rich people, since it is quite possible to become wealthy in honest, legitimate, perfectly moral and honorable ways.

And I think the more wealthy and prosperous everyone becomes, the freer we'll all be.

And I hope that well-meaning rich people DON'T feel guilty and DON'T believe that to be good people, they must make themselves poor (and relatively powerless) by giving away most of their wealth.

I think what would be more virtuous than disempowering oneself would be to remain wealthy, and keep generating more and more money (and other valuable resources) to give away to worthy causes and individuals.

So, if any well-meaning rich people who unfairly torment themselves with guilt are reading this, I hope that makes you feel better.

And I welcome donations and microdonations. :-)

Nowadays, women are definitely under some pressure to "launch", but still probably not as much pressure as men.

So, as a woman, I would like to point out that despite all the despicable propaganda there is out there which bashes men who live with their parents - not all women are so conformist, short-sighted, and/or gold-digger-like as to scornfully look down on all men who live with their parents.

I actually consider living with one's parents as probably indicative of a man who is unusually strong, rational, sensible, and wisely resistant to conforming to illogical and harmful societal standards that simply don't make sense, especially in a society as financially oppressed as ours. A man who is not a sheep or a lemming - a man to admire!

A man with the strength and confidence to stand his ground and stay his course, despite the media and the flocks of conformist sheep, lemmings, and trolls who viciously bash men like him.

I feel sorry for the sheep, lemmings, and trolls who attack such men, since those sheep, lemmings, and trolls seem so misguided, so full of internalized oppression, and so unaware that in cultures other than the USA, it's actually considered normal and wise to fail to launch yourself off a financial cliff like a lemming. Some examples:

So, if you have failed to lem, I applaud you. :-)

And if you have already lemmed, I hope that you will be (or already were) lucky enough to sprout wings and learn to fly. :-)

And I hope those who somehow still think being a lemming is a good idea will wake up from their folly in time to make better life decisions, and free themselves from believing that debt slavery, wage slavery, and going along with the crowd all somehow equal independence and freedom.

Also, Happy Independence Day (July 4th) to all!

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Michael Moore's documentary Where to Invade Next

Sunday, December 11th, 2016 07:23:41 GMT

I recently watched Michael Moore's documentary Where to Invade Next, about countries which do various important things much better than the USA has been doing them.

I loved it, and highly recommend it! It's so comforting to know there are so many good people in the world who actually have the power to put such sensible, kind, compassionate policies into practice.

I really hope the USA will import many of those ideas as soon as possible.

Except I hope that could somehow be done without raising taxes. In fact, if it were up to me, I'd like to ban all taxes on everyone, since I consider taxes a form of legalized extortion or robbery.

I haven't re-read Income Tax: The Root of All Evil by Frank Chodorov in a while, but, I remember liking that essay years ago, so, just thought I'd link to that here too.

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