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Monday, March 23, 2009

Reader Mail #89

This post on nostate.com was 100% missing the point. He's asking "How do you approach wealthy donors, asking them to raise money to support anarchism?"

That's exactly the wrong approach.

The correct way answer is "Start an actual agorist business, and reinvest your profits in the counter-economy." If you start an agorist gold/silver/FRN barter network or an agorist gold/silver warehouse receipt banking system, then a wealthy person might be a potential customer.



I decided to make another attempt at promoting my blog on dailypaul.com.

[What I posted on that forum]

Via Google Analytics, I noticed a lot of people citing my blog here recently. It's been directing a lot of traffic.

Here's another article you might be interested in.

The CPI is a biased measure of inflation. The CPI severely understates the true inflation rate.

If you use M2 as your GDP deflator instead of the CPI, then GDP has been shrinking at an average rate of more than 1% per year over the last 10 years. I can't repeat the calculation with M3, because the Federal Reserve no longer publishes M3. If you use gold as your GDP deflator instead of the CPI, then GDP has been shrinking at a rate of more than 8% per year over the last 10 years.

If you believe "Gold is money!", then the FRN-denominated price of gold is a relatively unbiased measure of inflation over a 10+ year period.

(I would include a graph, but this forum doesn't allow you to include images.)

Read the article for full details.

[/What I posted on that forum]

OK, I've concluded that promoting my blog on that forum isn't productive. Ironically, other people promoting my blog on dailypaul.com has been *MUCH* more effective than me promoting it myself.



In this thread on dailypaul.com, someone was asking "What are other nonviolent resistance strategies?" Nobody else mentioned agorism, so I did.

The best strategy I've seen for a nonviolent economic revolt is agorism.

Instead of saying "Let's wait 4 years and hopefully elect Ron Paul (or someone like him)", agorism is a form of direct action.

You should boycott the Federal Reserve, and use gold or silver as money instead. This prevents the bad guys from stealing from you via inflation.

You should boycott the income tax, and work off-the-books. The income tax prevents people from boycotting the Federal Reserve, because the IRS demands people pay income taxes in FRNs, in exchange for permission to work. The income tax means that individuals do not own their own labor. The income tax allows the bad guys to spend trillions of dollars on war and corporate welfare.

You should ignore all the stupid regulations that increase the cost of doing business.

That's why I lost interest in Ron Paul. It's silly to pin your hope on one person. If you want freedom, you have to get it yourself the hard way, rather than hoping to elect a politician with a clue.

The only way that bad laws ever *REALLY* get changed is when there's widespread civil disobedience of those laws.



I asked Google integrate my Analytics and AdSense accounts, so I could get per-page reporting. Now that I'm banned from AdSense, I still have the AdSense statistics on my Google Analytics page.

AdBrite doesn't provide per-page reporting. Based on what I saw with Google Analytics, I'd need 1000x more pageviews before it wasn't dominated by random noise.

AdBrite is non-contextual, so a per-page breakdown would probably be meaningless anyway.



I liked this article on the Matrix.

In other words, a "real matrix" had to be constructed around middle America, quietly, quietly. Or, as the idea was expressed openly at Carnegie Endowment facilities: "We must control education in the United States." Centralization, of course, makes control easier. It is far easier to impose policy or a single line of thought on a centralized, top-down educational system than it is to impose it on hundreds of privately owned, independent schools and autonomous districts. The government school system was perfect for what the super-elite wanted.

With a free market educational system, it's impossible to impose uniform brainwashing standards.

With a State education monopoly, it's very easy to impose uniform brainwashing standards.

There are some private schools, but almost all of them follow the model set by public schools. Most private schools have a State license, which limits their ability to innovate.

So education became socialization, the adjustment of the individual to the group and the adoption of the idea that truth equals consensus—which invariably bows to the authority of the strongest personality in the group (or operating behind the scenes).

This is the Stubborn Clueless Fool Fallacy. Whoever is most stubborn or whoever has the strongest personality, gets to decide what is true.

"The sole work of the group was to destroy our schools! we spent one hour and forty-five minutes discussing the so-called 'Modern Math.' At one point, I objected because there was too much memory work, and math is reasoning; not memory. Dr. Ziegler turned to me and said, 'Nelson, wake up! That is what we want… a math that the pupils cannot apply to life situations when they get out of school!' That math was not introduced until much later, as those present thought it was too radical a change. A milder course by Dr. Brechner was substituted but it was also worthless, as far as understanding math was concerned. The radical change was introduced in 1952. It was the one we are using now. So, if pupils come out of high school now, not knowing any math, don't blame them. The results are supposed to be worthless." (The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, pp. 14-15)
It's interesting to see people say "The purpose of public schools are to prevent learning?"

I went to a Math/Science magnet school. They had to teach us Math honestly, because we were being trained to be the engineers and scientists who actually built things for the parasite class to leech!

Hopefully, I'll have the resources to homeschool, when/if I have children.

In this environment, it indeed became possible for two major presidential candidates—George W. Bush and John Kerry—to be members of the same supersecret organization, Skull & Bones, and it not be news! In the "real matrix," such an election becomes one of the most important in history, because of the vast differences in philosophies between the two. Democratic and Republican "sheeple" were practically at each other's throats prior to Decision 2004. In the real world—the "desert of the real"—Bush's and Kerry's agendas were more alike than they were different. Both were pledged to an internationalist foreign policy and to the UN. Both planned to continue, and even expand, the Iraq War. Both accepted intrusive domestic policies such as the USA Patriot Act. Both would increase federal spending and expand entitlements, in a financial environment guaranteed to continue and even accelerate our nation's growing debt. And none of this was news!
Bush vs. Kerry in 2004 was like running for President against your brother. It's almost too flagrantly corrupt. It's as if the Supreme Leader of Humanity were intentionally saying "HAHAHAHA!!! Can't you pathetic losers see it's one big scam!" The bad guys could have chosen a suitable candidate who wasn't in the same secret society as Bush, but they didn't even bother trying.

Now consider Sustainable Development. Agenda 21, dating from 1991 and mentioned above, is the bible of the Sustainable Development movement. It is an enormous, book-length blueprint for control of the world's resources—land, oceans, rivers, forests, air, oil, minerals, other natural resources, human resources, and so on—at the global level. That's right—according to the worldview of Sustainable Development, human beings are a resource, like any other resource, which is why nearly every large enterprise in the country in the business of employing others has its human resources department, not its personnel department.
I always found the term "human resources" to be demeaning. It's treating employees as the same category as furniture.



I liked this article on MSN. One gold corporation is sponsoring "gold parties", where people can sell their gold jewelry for cash. There are several obvious flaws.

First, it's an on-the-books transaction. This means that taxes are paid on the value of the gold sold.

Second, there are several middlemen involved. The seller is paying a huge transaction fee. You can get a better price taking your gold directly to a professional jeweler.

A gold/silver/FRN bartner network seems like a viable agorist business.



I liked these two comics on Dilbert.com.

In the first, Dilbert accuses his boss of "Failing the Turing test". I feel that way when talking to pro-State trolls. A lot of brainwashed humans do a very convincing impression of non-intelligent life.

In the second, Dilbert isn't getting the results the boss wants, when using risk management software. The PHB orders Dilbert to forge the inputs to get the desired conclusion.



This post on no third solution points out some obvious defects in Communism. In Communism, people are forced to work in the State commune. Do a group of workers have the right to separate from the State commune and form a new commune? Do these workers have the right to buy and sell from workers in the State commune? If you believe "yes", then you now have a market economy and not a Communist economy.

Of all “revolutionary” ideologies, Agorism has the greatest chance of success because its proponents accept piecemeal victories, but primarily because agorists don’t succumb to the same loser-mentality as other econo-political ideologies.
I would benefit from working as an agorist, even if the State doesn't collapse in my lifetime.



I liked this post on xkcd.



I have this recurring dream as well. I keep dreaming that I'm in school and unprepared for an exam, because I haven't been attending class.

This must be an aspect of pro-State brainwashing.

I've been watching the NCAA basketball tournament. Now, I'm having dreams where I play basketball. I haven't had those in awhile. I wonder if the "school nightmare" is reinforced by other aspects of my daily life?

I liked this comic, for the rollover text and not the comic itself.

The moment their arms spun freely in our air, they were doomed -- for Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane.

The alien overseers don't directly intervene on Earth, because that would be a violation of the non-Aggression principle against FSK! (Non-intelligent lifeforms don't count.)

I'd describe myself as "batshit sane" instead of "batshit insane".



I liked this post on Gamustra, via Hacker News. He wrote the AI for a pool program. At expert difficulty, the AI was able to sink a ball on every shot. At easy difficulty, he added random noise to the calculated shot angle and velocity. Users complained that "easy" was too hard. Compared to a human player, the AI left the ball in an unfavorable location disproportionately too often. That was amusing, because the AI wasn't using strategic play at all!



This video, via Hacker News, was amusing. A group of people put lights on sheep and used it to simulate a game of pong and other things. Allegedly, the whole video was an advertisement, but it still was well done.



This article, via Hacker News, was interesting. Someone claims that "Peak Oil" already occurred in 2008.

I don't consider that proof. Oil drilling may have decreased due to the recession/depression, rather than due to other factors. I would wait a few more years before calling the peak in 2008.



This article, via Hacker News, was interesting. A Federal judge ordered someone to give up the encryption key for their laptop.

It's pointless to encrypt your data to guarantee privacy, if the bad guys can use violence to force you to give them the key.



This article, via Hacker News, was interesting. It's illegal to carry mercury on airplanes. Mercury can corrode aluminum very rapidly.



This article by Zed Shaw was missing the point. He got very excited by the idea of the "FreeHacker's Union", and then gave up after a few meetings.

If you want something to be successful, you have to be persistent. If you're serious, it should take a couple of years, rather than building up a success overnight.

The more I read about Zed Shaw, the more I realize "He could have been interesting, but he isn't." I E-Mailed him a link to my blog, and he never responded. He might think that the idea of agorism is cool, but I'd have to see him in person to evaluate him.



This article, via Hacker News, on web user-agent strings was pretty funny. A webbrowser sends an "agent string", identifying what type of browser it is. Some servers give different code, depending on the client.

When Netscape/Mozilla was first developed, its competitor was Mosiac. Netscape could parse frames, but Mosaic could not. Webservers were configured to serve frames only if the client was "Mozilla".

When IE was released, it was a new agent string. Servers didn't recognize it, so it was served minimal html and not full-featured html. The solution was that IE pretended to be Mozilla. (Nothing prevents a web client from lying about what type of browser it is.)

Whenever a new browser is released, it *MUST* pretend to be some existing popular browser. Otherwise, servers won't recognize it! This has led to a mess.



This article, via Hacker News, was interesting. Allegedly, the NSA is having a hard time cracking the Skype network, because it is decentralized and P2P. Allegedly, Skype keeps switching encryption methods when patches are released.

This makes zero sense. Skype is owned by eBay. Can't the NSA just demand eBay switch to an encryption method that has a backdoor.

This sounds like a fnord to me. The NSA might be saying "We're having a hard time cracking Skype!", when they already have a backdoor in the encryption algorithm.

Allegedly, the NSA is 30+ years ahead of everyone else in the area of cryptography. They could easily deploy an encryption algorithm that seems secure, but has a flaw. They could outright demand eBay use that algorithm, or send someone to eBay to work as an employee.

One of my computer science professors in college said "RSA, as usually implemented, has exploitable flaws. If you want RSA to be *REALLY* secure, you have to add an extra trick or two."

I liked this comment.

This can only mean that they have already broken the Skype encryption - and want their opponents to use it.

Skype is owned by eBay. Like all large corporations, eBay is a branch of the State. There is zero chance that eBay isn't using an encryption algorithm that the NSA approved.



I liked this post, via Hacker News.

The scandal of AIG is not the executive bonuses. The scandal is that the banksters who purchased insurance from AIG are getting repaid in full.

When you buy insurance, one of the risks is that the insurer goes bankrupt. By bailing out AIG, the State enforcers say "Bankers, when they buy insurance, have no obligation to investigate the solvency of the insurer. If you're 'too big too fail', then there's no risk ever."

When the economy was going well, AIG's executives pocketed huge salaries and bonuses. They collected premium, but made almost no payouts. During the recession/depression, everybody gets bailed out.

When AIG is bailed out, the banksters who purchased insurance from AIG are also being bailed out. They didn't perform due diligence when investigating AIG's creditworthiness as a counterparty.



This article, via Hacker News, was interesting. "The Wizard of Oz" was written around 1900, as a critique of monetary policy at the time. "The Yellow Brick Road" was supposed to be ridiculing those who insisted on a gold standard (instead of bimetallic). Dorothy's "ruby slippers" were silver in the original; they were changed to ruby for the movie.

The correct answer is "There should be no State regulation of money at all."



I've read this article before on State control of the mainstream media. (I don't recall if I quoted it here before or not.) It has some interesting bits.

Former CIA Director William Colby was more forthcoming when he admitted: “The Central Intelligence Agency owns anyone of any significance in the major media."

Only a handful of spies in the right locations is sufficient to subvert the mainstream media.

Editors are theoretically in charge of the newspaper's content. However, if they publish something "wrong", then they lose their jobs and their careers. This encourages a culture of self-censorship. You don't get picked as an editor unless you have the right sort of pro-State brainwashing, and even then you have to make sure you don't slip up, lest you get fired and lose your career.

For instance, James Curran and Jean Seaton in their authoritative history of the British press conclude that the growth in both advertising and capital costs were critical in eliminating the popular radical press, which had emerged in the first half of the nineteenth century. They observe that “advertisers thus acquired a de facto licensing authority since, without their support, newspapers ceased to be economically viable”

Most mainstream media corporations get most of their income from advertising. The corporations that advertise have a State-licensed monopoly in their market niche. This makes it very hard to be critical of the advertisers.

For example:
  1. Ford, GM, and Chrysler spend massive amounts of money advertising. Therefore, the mainstream media cannot be too critical of the auto industry bailouts.
  2. Pharmaceutical corporations have huge marketing budgets. Therefore, the mainstream media cannot say "The 'chemical imbalance' theory of mental illness is nonsense!"
  3. Financial institutions also spend lots of money marketing. Further, they could trash a corporation's stock price and then arrange for a leveraged buyout for any mainstream media corporation that misbehaves.
One interesting bit about the Internet is that it lowers the barrier to entry for publishing. That tips the scale back in favor of the good guys. A profitable mainstream media outlet needs millions/billions of dollars in advertising money, which can only come from large corporations. As a blogger, I only need 10,000-20,000 regular readers to make a decent living via ads. I don't have to kiss up to the establishment, depending on them for a source of income.



I noticed this YouTube video by AzraelsJudgement, where he was citing my blog. (Via Google Analytics, I noticed that sent about 5 visits to my blog.)

(BTW, he was citing my blog homepage, when he meant to link to my "Real GDP is Decreasing!" article.)

I've been thinking of starting a vlog (which would necessarily involve abandoning my anonymity). I would have much higher production values if I did that.

Right now, I can't vlog, because my parents would say "OMFG!! FSK!! You can't do that!!" I wonder if "Fear of State!" is really "Fear of insane pro-State brainwashed parents!"

If you do make a vlog, make sure you have a good camera and lighting.

What alternatives to YouTube are there? I can't host the video myself, because that would cost too much bandwidth and disk space. I'll look around more in 1-3 years, when I'm ready to start vlogging.



Anarchy in Your Head is a member of "Project Wonderful". According to that page, that blog gets approximately 1k pageviews per day, and the ad sells for approximately $0.10 per day. That's a CPM of $0.10. I'm doing *MUCH* better with AdBrite.

One advantage of AdBrite over "Project Wonderful" is that AdBrite rotates ads. If a reader visits 5 different pages on my blog, then he gets served 5 different AdBrite ads, which increases clickthrough probabilities. "Project Wonderful" is a fixed ad.



There's been a lot of talk about "OMFG! If we publicly release the names of people who recently received bonuses from AIG, then they will receive death threats!"

That is an evil fnord that says "Violence against those executives matters." Even if all those executives go to jail for fraud, then the corrupt system will still continue.

Sometimes, a handful of insiders must be thrown under the bus, to ensure that the scam continues.



Obama made an appearance on "The Tonight Show". That helps give the superficial impression that he's cool while his predecessor was not. The interview was almost definitely scripted in advance.

Obama also made an appearance on the "60 Minutes Comedy Hour" on Sunday.

I read another amusing bit. The "hardest" show for a politician to give an interview is The Daily Show or The Colbert Report.



fritz has left a new comment on your post "Real GDP is Decreasing, 1990-2008":

I think you have a better view of our economic condition than I could ever have. I am wondering if you could make a brief chart predicting the collapse. Almost like they do in Vegas. For instance..

2009 unlikely .5% chance

2010 unlikely 1% chance

2011 maybe 4% chance

2012 likely 29% chance


If you could put your condensed ideas in next weeks reader mail I would be most great full. Also if you want to throw in some handy caps or other ifs and or(s) that could make it fun. Thank you for your time.

Fritz

My estimate is that it will take approximately 20 years for the State to completely collapse. It's going to be a slow decline. It isn't going to be overnight.

It's going to take a couple of years for an agorist economic system to get started, and then 10-15 years of growth. Therefore, it'll take awhile for complete collapse.

In the present, almost all people don't boycott the Federal Reserve. Therefore, the bad guys can merely print new money to bail themselves out, stealing from productive workers in the process.

Over time, the parasite class will get more and more greedy. This increases the benefit earned by working as an agorist.

The government has crossed the "moral event horizon". Reform is no longer possible.

Increasing excesses can only continue for a certain period of time before there's a backlash. Complete collapse is a historic inevitability.

AzraelsJudgement has left a new comment on your post "Real GDP is Decreasing, 1990-2008":

I really hope that is easier then it looks because you just made me feel mathematicly inferior X100 lol.

It was a pretty straightforward calculation. I did the calculation last year, so I just updated the spreadsheet with an extra row. I gave you enough details for you to figure out what I did.

I can give you the Excel spreadsheet if you really want it. (Blogger doesn't let you upload attachments.)

Really though great work. I agree with Fritz what would be your estimations?

I predict that it'll take approximately 20 years for the State to collapse. I figure another 5 years for working agorist trading groups to develop, and then another 10-15 years for them to become big enough to directly compete with the bad guys.

Mike Gogulski has left a new comment on your post "Real GDP is Decreasing, 1990-2008":

Ye gods! That first graph is dramatic.

Still, I'm gonna bitch: You've framed an 18-year period in the post title, but the first graph and several other tables/graphs on reference the past 8 years. Why?

Oh boy! Everybody's a complainer. I go back to 1990 in all my charts except for that one. Read it again.

Here's the chart going back to 1990. (I added it to the original post.)



There still is a decline, but it's less dramatic. Starting from 2000 makes the graph more interesting, but there was an overall decrease from 1990-2008.



Fivemileshigh has left a new comment on your post "I Added Two More AdBrite Widgets":

Hey FSK, if you're looking for an outlet for your programming talent, it seems the folks at ripplepay.com could use a hand: http://ripple.sourceforge.net/concept.html

Keep up the good work!

Someone mentioned ripplepay here before.

I'm not excited by online digital alternate monetary systems anymore. Why not take the obvious solution, and use physical gold and silver? Why make things unnecessarily complicated?

It's be more useful for me to write "AgoristBay", which would be an eBay-like or craigslist-like site suitable for matching counter-economic buyers and sellers. Agorists shouldn't use eBay or craigslist, because State enforcers read the content.

Working on ripplepay would be a "volunteer" job and not a for-pay job. I'm still looking for paid work. Otherwise, my personal priorities are:
  1. RSS Reader
  2. forum engine
  3. experiment with WordPress
  4. get my own domain (I'm probably going to wait for my 2nd AdBrite check to arrive in July. By then, I'll know if AdBrite are defaulting deadbeats like the scum at Google.)
  5. write an AgoristBay engine
  6. write the "F*** Google!" FireFox extension
If I'm working as a volunteer, I'm going to work on my own projects first!

(I'm been lazy about working on my RSS reader. I'm such a bum. I'm spending a lot of time answering reader comments! I keep doing that, because I think it's an important aspect of blogging. I ridicule idiots and pro-State trolls, because I don't like wasting my time.)



I noticed an amusing bit about the NCAA tournament. A #12 seed is much more likely to make the Round of 16 than a #8/#9 seed. The #8/#9 seed has to play the #1 seed in their second game, where they're a huge underdog. The #12 seed only has to beat the #5 seed and then the #4/#13 seed. The "power" difference between the #12 seed and the #4 seed is *MUCH LESS* than the "power" difference between the #8 seed and a #1 seed. A #1 seed probably has one or two players that will be in the NBA next year, but a #4/#5 seed probably doesn't.

There's no easy way to fix the problem. You could re-seed after each round, like the NFL and NHL do. In the NFL and NHL, the top seed plays the lowest surviving seed, rather than having a fixed bracket. That change is logistically impossible, given the nature of the NCAA tournament. Plus, a pre-set bracket is one of the attractions of the NCAA tournament (due to gambling/pools).

If I were a coach, I'd much prefer to be a #12/#13 seed than a #8/#9 seed. Of course, if you're a #12 seed, that also means you were on the bubble for making the tournament as an at-large bid!

I also think they should expand to 68 or 72 or 96 teams. That would give the mid-major conferences more at-large bids. It seems wrong for a team to win its regular-season conference title and lose in the conference tournament, and not get invited to the NCAA tournament. The main reason they haven't expanded the NCAA tournament is that it would detract from the NIT tournament.



Pro has left a new comment on your post "Is Geithner Getting Scapegoated for AIG?":

We didn't hire AIG to watch over our tax money. We hired the government. The government owns AIG to the tune of 80%

I don't think the government is doing a good job. How do I fire them and hire someone else?

The real people we should blame:

http://www.butasforme.com/2009/03/17/obamas-stimulus-bill-explicitly-grants-aig-the-legal-right-to-hand-out-bonuses/

You're missing the point. Geithner appears to be taking the fall, so that Dodd and Obama and others don't get blamed. It is wrong to blame individuals at the expense of the corrupt system.

If you disapprove of the bailout, you should boycott the Federal Reserve and use real money (gold and silver) instead.

fritz has left a new comment on your post "Is Geithner Getting Scapegoated for AIG?":

I like it when you stick your neck out and make a prediction.Lets see what happens, We have seen this kind of thing before. Your hunch is most likely correct!!
It certainly seems like Geithner is getting scapegoated, as a distraction from other issues.

Even if my prediction turns out to be wrong, that does not invalidate the other points I make.



Fivemileshigh has left a new comment on your post "Ron Paul Doublecross Prediction":

The ideas you expressed in "Code Geass" applies equally to SLH and his actions in the Ron Paul campain. For readers that haven't got to that part yet, you stated "The main fnord in "Code Geass" is that even if you had the power to absolutely command anyone to do anything, you could not ultimately use that power for good."
I don't see the link between "Code Geass" and Ron Paul's campaign.

Ron Paul's Presidential campaign did a good job of raising awareness of a corrupt system, even though he did not get elected.

On one hand, Ron Paul is evil, because he says "A corrupt system can be reformed!" and "The US Constitution is a valid contract!" On the other hand, Ron Paul is good, because he has helped raise awareness for the evils of the Federal Reserve, income tax, and big government.

People get distracted thinking "Let's vote for Ron Paul!" instead of more direct actions like agorism.

(BTW, this same principle is also one of the main ideas in the I, Robot/Foundation series by Asimov)

I read the Foundation series, but not "I, Robot." I consider only the first 1.5 books to be the "true" Foundation series, and after that it started getting silly.

I liked Donald Kingsbury's "Psychohistorical Crisis", an unauthorized sequel. It's worth reading.

One flaw of "using Mathematical models for human behavior" is that it doesn't take into account outliers. If there are flaws in the model, then the conclusions are useless.

If this principle is true, it has 3 implications: 1. SLH doesn't exist, or 2. SLH exists and is aware of it and actively chooses not to interfere, which has the same net result as far as we are concerned or, 3. SLH exists, is not aware of the principle but chooses to interfere, in which case he is not exactly intelligent, or worst, SLH exists, is aware of the principle but chooses to ignore it, in which case he is evil.

There is another possibility. The Supreme Leader of Humanity could be an advanced alien. They are restricted by the Prime Directive, like in Star Trek (fnord!).

Regarding conspiracy theories, there's certainly an element of truth to various stories I've read. It's unclear how knowledgeable the people *REALLY* pulling the strings are. Anybody you see mentioned in public is merely a slave puppet. The people really controlling things are smart enough to never be publicly mentioned.

Are there a group of people who think they're humanity's secret rulers, but are crippled by their own incompetence; they believe their own lies and propaganda? Or, are there a group of people actively working towards the establishment of a true free market? "Taxation is theft!" and "Government is terrorism!" are 150+ year old ideas. The difference is that the Internet has broken the mainstream media State information monopoly.

On a different note, excellent blog! I've been reading it for a few days now.

Look at the "Best of FSK" list on the left sidebar, if you want to see my most popular older posts.



Thomas Blair has left a new comment on your post "AIG Bonuses and Bailouts":

This AIG bonus thing is a red herring. What questions aren't being asked because the media are busy sucking each other off with their self-righteous indignation? The sum of money itself is a pittance--a mere 1/12th of 1% of the money given just to AIG alone--compared with how much has been funneled to the financial industry.

What questions aren't being asked?

I have a feeling this national firestorm of anger over these bonuses means that the plan to distract people from what's really happening is working beautifully.

There was an amusing post on xkcd on this subject.

The bonus money is only a tiny fraction of the total amount stolen. Is the furor over bonuses itself an evil fnord? The bonuses are negligible compared to the total size of the theft.

On the other hand, anything that gets people saying "The economic and political system is completely corrupt!" is fine with me.

fritz has left a new comment on your post "AIG Bonuses and Bailouts":

Its smoke and mirrors..A redirection. These f**ks have the public looking at where did a few million in bonuses go. Instead of, why are you printing and spending a couple of trillion?

The future of the federal reserve note is at stake. The future of our economy is at steak. Money is being stolen from all of us with each dollar printed. And most people are running around saying "I cant believe those guys got such big bonuses"

I think its time for me to start my snake oil business , I have been waiting for the right time!!

As a non-insider, running a snake oil business (or even a legitimate business) is a crime.

I don't care if the Federal Reserve Note loses all its remaining value. I hope it takes a few more years, so I can buy some gold and silver first!

It does suck for my parents, who will lose their retirement savings due to hyperinflation.

Hakuna Matata has left a new comment on your post "AIG Bonuses and Bailouts":

On September 15, 2008 in a matter of minutes more than 500 bln USD (in deposits) changed hands, shifted both financial power and political momentum (Obama won, as he was backed by the boys which we don't see behind the Fed walls).

This is a widely cited story. What happened is that, after Lehman's bankruptcy, some money market funds "broke the buck". They had invested in Lehman debt and were unable to maintain a $1/share net asset value. For the first time in a long time, investors in a "safe" money market account lost their principal.

A bunch of people rushed to sell their money market holdings. Allegedly, that was a severe financial crisis.

I don't get it. If necessary, the Federal Reserve could have printed (or created enough electronic credit) to redeem all balances. Unless people start boycotting the dollar and switch to real money (gold or silver), the bad guys can always print new money to bail themselves out.

(Whenever I say "print new money", I include electronic credits also. It's cumbersome for me to say "print new money or electronic credits" every time.)

Skynews and other media suppressed, covered it up and later in September public attention was shifted by deception into "bailout" hype.
The story of AIG floated on the surface.

However, the academic paper from the Bank of International Settlements
http://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt0903g.htm
can give us insight what was really happen and how the the recent biggest public wealth expropriation
have been executed.

I'd never heard of skynews before.

Later.. "Hedge Funds May Get AIG Cash" published by WSJ recently, mention only Deutsche Bank AG.
The real beneficiaries of the AIG bailout are AIG's creditors. There was no public disclosure of who actually received AIG bailout money.

That's one "advantage" of a bailout, instead of a bankruptcy. With a bailout, there's no public accounting. If there was a taxpayer-financed bankruptcy, then the money trail would be public.

AIG received a check. This money was immediately spent on AIG's creditors, whose identities were not publicly disclosed.
Another deception from WSJ to shift attention of of street invetostor from the big boys behind the curtains of the Fed.

Mainstream media coverage is one big evil fnord. The Wall Street Journal is a tabloid in the same sense that "The National Enquirer" is a tabloid. The only difference is the target audience. The Wall Street Journal targets an audience that thinks they're knowledgeable about economics, when they're really pro-State brainwashed idiots.

Propaganda that brainwashes "smart" people has to be much better written than propaganda for the average idiot.

Caribbean and other hedge funds are not fools. They bought bets on falling house markets as they spotted the bubble and perverted fundamentals, and they bought it from Bank of NY Mellon, JP Morgan (and Merry Lynch) and in the same time they bought CDS against them from other sources.
AIG is only a middleman, and hedgers did not expose them with the bugger.

If you're a hedge fund manager buying credit default swap insurance from AIG, as part of your trade you should be calculating the risk of AIG's insolvency. Those speculators deserve to lose, because they didn't properly assess the counterparty risk of AIG's bankruptcy.

Given the bailout of AIG, there's no point buying insurance from a vendor who isn't "too big to fail". There's no market incentive to assess counterparty risk, which is the probability that your insurer will go bankrupt.

In the summmer 2008 the hedger's options exercised (Freddie and Fanny), then most likely the crooks from NY Mellon and JP Morgan defaulted on their obligations, so hedgers start withdrawing bonds and cash from US money market.

The Fed and gov faced a dilemma:
full collapse of the whole system, along with NY Mellon, JP Morgan and BOA, or to sacrifice some goats (Lehman Bros) and pay some money back via AIG.

Given the Compound Interest Paradox and the corrupt nature of the US monetary system, a bailout of the banksters is necessary. Preserving the scam is always the #1 priority for the bad guys! That's exactly what happened in 1933, when President Roosevelt defaulted on the gold-redeemability of the Federal Reserve Note (dollar) and confiscated all the gold. Now, there's confiscation of wealth via inflation.

Before that they trying pressing on Europe to low their banks (Deutsche Bank) and mounting political assault on Swiss, but it did not work as the Fed expected.

Now.. This is all Dr Devil's Fed you might say, it is known for expropriation of our grandpas gold, and secret gold price manipulations and ops from the Fort Knox dungeons. Besides, the Fed was spotted by shredding our hard earned cash at nights!

If I was attempting "promote agorism via standup/sketch comedy", I'd definitely have a "Dr. Evil as Treasury Secretary sketch". Didn't Hank Paulson look like Dr. Evil? I'd find a Mike Meyers impersonator, or hire him directly.

[Start Dr. Evil impersonation.]
We demand one *TRILLION* dollars, or the economy ****ing gets it!
[/Dr. Evil]

(Actually, the total price tag has been at least several trillion dollars. New money printed by the Federal Reserve should be counted, along with the explicit money spent by the Federal government.)

The Fed, ironically named "Reserve", along with FOMC, deliberately misleading name "Open Market" are nothing more than negotiating platform (by arbitraging) between the government and the private money.

The Federal Reserve's operations resemble looting and pillaging, more than arbitrage.

I agree that the Federal Reserve has nothing to do with the Federal government or with a monetary "Reserve". That's beside the point.

Either calls to save the Fed or abolish the Fed is nothing more then deceptive flush from the big boys (private money).
The Fed is also acting as diplomat channel from them to the government, allowing to obscure this channel from the public. Thus, you can't save the Fed, it will be always another Fed as long current socio-economic model exist.
Abolishing or changing of the Fed means open confrontation between the government and private money, it can trigger a social revolution when either party appeal to the public for ultimate judgement.
The Federal Reserve is politically untouchable. Reform is impossible. Too many people benefit from the current corrupt system.

Most Congressmen are pro-State brainwashed idiots. They don't have the intellectual capacity to understand the issues. It'd be hard to solve the problem, even with an honest government. Even if Ron Paul were dictator, could he prevent the collapse?

Complete economic collapse is the only way the situation can be resolved.

No State regulation of money at all is the only non-corrupt monetary system. The bad guys make too great a profit from their control of money. They won't allow reform to occur.



Hakuna Matata has left a new comment on your post "Interesting Quote":

Could you please point out the source? It sounds interesting.

Hakuna Matata has left a new comment on your post "Interesting Quote":

Could you please reveal the source of this quotation?
I have "comment moderation" enabled. There's no need to double-post.

Really, Blogger should give some sort of E-Mail notification that your comment was queued for moderation. I'll check to see if there's a WordPress extension for that (or write my own).

That quote is from JFK's "The President and the Press" speech. The link is on jfklibrary.org, which appears to be an official website.



By E-Mail, someone wrote:

OMFG! Why are people upset about Obama getting $100k in campaign contributions from AIG!

Even more offensive is that Obama is forgiven if he gives back the $100k. I never understood that concept. "Politician receives campaign contributions from a later-discredited source. The politician gives back the money. He is then forgiven."

If you look at campaign contributions, nearly every candidate (except for Ron Paul) received a *TON* of money from the banksters.

(This bit deserves its own separate post.)



Hakuna Matata has left a new comment on your post "Agorist Philosophy Overview":

The new monetary system components are already available:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_monetary_system
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECache
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

For alterate monetary systems, why not just use physical gold and silver? I never understood why "alternate monetary system" purveyors see a need to make things unnecessarily complicated. It's probably a consequence of massive pro-State brainwashing on the subject of money.

I don't see the attraction of Anonymous digital money. If I'm an agorist, I *WANT* to know who my trading partner is. I don't want Anonymous customers for my agorist businesses. They could be undercover cops! If I'm trading physical goods with someone, I should trade physical gold or silver at the same time.

The problem with any electronic gold system is that the gold must be physically stored somewhere. Then, the bad guys can wreck the system by raiding the warehouse.

I trust gold in my possession more than gold in someone else's warehouse (unless it's an agorist gold warehouse receipt bank).
Ron Paul last presidential elections candidate is supposed was supporter.
However, he was ostracized by media.
(I am not Ron Paul supporter, as I am not even from US).

The fact that Ron Paul received negligible mainstream media coverage is evidence of massive corruption.



Fivemileshigh has left a new comment on your post "Gold Skyrockets after Fed Announcement":

Re: Funding for your activities.

If you were to make your entire blog available via an eBook format for offline reading and ask readers for a donation, I bet you would get a positive response. I know I would.

On Blogger, there's no convenient solution.

On WordPress, there's an extension that automatically converts posts to pdfs. I'll see if it also will convert monthly archives (or enhance it myself, since it's open source).

Until then, you can use an RSS reader that stores information on your PC.

Finding a way to keep the taxman out is another problem for which I don't have a solution. Maybe ripplepay.com could help someday.

That's one big flaw in soliciting donations. I'd have to pay taxes on the income, if you donate via check or PayPal.

So far, it appears that I'm making enough from AdBrite to justify purchasing hosting. I don't have a statistically significant sample size. My traffic continues to grow, which is the important thing. 5%-10% monthly growth seems slow, but if I can keep it up for several more years, then blogging would be a viable business. Besides, the wage slave job market is awful right now! (One benefit of being stuck living with my parents is that it solves the "Pay for food and rent!" problem. I'd rather have my freedom.)

One thing I've considered is asking people to physically mail me a 1 ounce silver coin, as a means of donating.

I've been wondering what "perks for donators" I could have, if I went that route. One obvious perk I could give is "disable ads" and "remove your data from my tracking/analytics system". I don't plan to have any content hidden behind a paywall, because that seems pointless.



Hakuna Matata has left a new comment on your post "The Social Credit Monetary System":

Great invention of the bicycle?
There is a bank with international currency for 75 years!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIR_Bank

That system appears to be based on fiat currency, rather than real money (gold or silver).

Such a system is probably illegal in the USA, due to anti-money-laundering regulations.

No, it is not in Nigeria or Bangladesh..

The existence of such financial institution is another reason why Swiss is the only nation that said to Nazis in 1940 to bugger off and they did't dare to challenge.

If you use an alternate monetary system for on-the-books transactions, you still have to pay income taxes in State-issued slave points. Unless you work fully as an agorist, using an alternate monetary system accomplishes nothing.

I thought that the reason Switzerland successfully repels invasions are:
  1. The terrain is unfavorable for invaders.
  2. Everyone is given a gun and training in how to use it.
I suspect #2 is more important than #1.



Hakuna Matata has left a new comment on your post "Who's the Richest Man in the World?":

By maintaining this blog I convey that the time is near when I can reveal my identity and assert my direct control over each of you individually, as I don't need my inner circle anymore.

Dr Evil
Are you suggesting "FSK is the Supreme Leader of Humanity!"? I've been thinking that would be a clever comedy act. I would perform as "The Supreme Leader of Humanity", explaining how the entire world was enslaved and the plans for a New World Order (an agorist revolution).



robert30062 has left a new comment on your post "Gold Skyrockets after Fed Announcement":

You would think that at some point the American people would start asking the question, concerning the endless merry-go-round of scapegoats, "how in the hell do all of these incompetent/corrupt people keep getting into positions of high power in the first place?". I think on those merits alone that people would see that the state is at best useless but it's a moot point because the media will never allow that conversation to take place on its wires. At this point I think the only thing that will wake up the millions of brainwashed consumer cows known as Americans and bring about the elimination of state violence will be for things to get much worse.

You should just focus on starting a small agoirst trading group. That's the best way to get started.

Between that and my concern for survival as a corporate wage slave in the near future or in a collapse/transition, I am in a daily emotional battle. Sometimes I look at people at the mall just spending and blabbing their cares away on nonsense and almost feel jealous, until I realize that I would rather be awake to jump out of the car when the state drives off the cliff.

That's one of the symptoms of a mental illness. It was very traumatic for me to notice, all of a sudden, that all the people around me were brainwashed idiots. Now, it's merely annoying.

I'm probably going to have to take another wage slave job, before working full-time as an agorist is viable, or I get enough income from advertising on my website.

If you really think about it, most mainstream media personalities are wage slaves. They'd be SOL if their corporate employer fired them, and they were unable to find another job.

fritz has left a new comment on your post "Gold Skyrockets after Fed Announcement":

By now I would consider it a fact the price of gold reflects the worth of the federal reserve note. Has anyone ever wondered why in your lifetime no American has ever experienced a period deflation? Hummm, could it be that value is skimed from all dollars in circulation. Through the act of printing federal reserve notes at an ever increasing rate!!!!!!

Yep..!!

The FRN-denominated price of gold is not infinite. Therefore, the price of gold does not yet reflect the true worth of Federal Reserve Points.

Hakuna Matata has left a new comment on your post "Gold Skyrockets after Fed Announcement":

Q: what is stimulus package and boosting stimulus?
A: you figure it yourself, you are a big girl!

Q: what is quantitative easing?
A: it is when I payed you with your money and now is taking your pants off.

Maybe I should make some "Bailout Porn"?

Hakuna Matata has left a new comment on your post "Gold Skyrockets after Fed Announcement":

There are also
http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-source
implementation of electronic cash for P2P and Social Capital monetary systems.
It was just recently released and not (yet) suppressed by Agent Smith.

Actually, the founders of E-Gold went to jail for money laundering.

Any such system that gained widespread use, if not decentralized, would just have its leaders arrested.

If you have a decentralized alternate monetary system, why not just use physical gold and silver?

Not joking here, I did lots of searches recently on the topics:
digital money and using google collected information (google trends) to get signals from the market.
Most sites and links deleted, (some of them availabe from the wayback machine) wikipedia entries massaged, suspicious strawmans in the forums and blogs, diverting the discussion into UFO/Aliens crap.

You're still missing the point.

Explain why these fancy digital monetary systems are superior to actual physical gold and silver. I haven't seen any reason to use an alternate monetary system more complicated than actual physical gold and silver.



Aaron has left a new comment on your post "Reader Mail #88":

To the gentleman that is taking the econ course:

>>The main argument they are pushing is that a free market left 'unregulated' (underselling, flooding the market, etc.), will result in big businesses crushing small businesses resulting in mass monopolies. Thoughts?

As FSK pointed out, that's complete hogwash. In fact, the opposite is true. A free unregulated market will result in exactly zero big businesses, because they are so inefficient compared to small businesses. The only way they can exist is to have the cost of their inefficiencies put onto other people through violence (the state). This is done, as FSK points out, through taxes, regulations, etc.

Pro-State trolls say "Without the State, large corporations would go around abusing people." That's exactly wrong. Large corporations only exist because they receive massive direct and indirect State subsidies.

In a true free market, there's a natural limit to the size of a business. I estimate the limit to be 100-200 people. If a business is bigger than that, then skilled workers would be better off starting competing businesses, than working as an employee. When a business is bigger than 100-200 people, the Principal-Agent problem starts putting a severe cramp on efficiency.

A free market is the best defender of individual choice and freedom. When I go to the DMV, I have to wait and it takes unnecessarily long. When I buy pizza, it only takes 10-15 minutes (the time to cook the pizza). If it took 2 hours to get a pizza, I'd go to another store!
>>Do you recommend any books, sources, or?????

Read Kevin Carson's Organization Theory. A lot of mainstream libertarian thought still think big business is the norm when there is no state. Carson has some very good thoughts on that.

Download it for free from http://www.4shared.com/file/79845141/f2038585/Kevin_Carson_-_Organization_Theory.html

or buy from Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Organization-Theory-Libertarian-Kevin-Carson/dp/1439221995
Kevin Carson has some good ideas, but he's a tough read. I don't bother reading Kevin Carson anymore, because I'm looking for more advanced practical agorism.

I read an interesting quote. "If you have ideas, but have a hard time explaining them, then it doesn't count." Kevin Carson has some good ideas, but he should be a better writer. I try to write in as simple language as possible.

Kevin Carson usually criticizes government regulations. He doesn't criticize a corrupt taxation system and corrupt monetary system as much as I do.

Kevin Carson doesn't usually advocate for agorism as a solution to the evil of the State.



Greg has left a new comment on your post "Reader Mail #88":

MFA sites, I thought they went out of style around 2-3 years ago. Nothing new about that or PPC arbitrage ( for example buying clicks on Yahoo and showing them Google ads).

I assume that "MFA" means "made for AdSense".

Some of the sites are "made for SEO". I see a lot of spam blogs copying and republishing bits of my blog. It appears to be an effort to fool Google and boost their PageRank for certain keywords. Those pages appear to be auto-generated.

Fortunately, Google seems to recognize my blog as the original source for most of my content. I may have a problem initially, when I move to my own domain.

It must be profitable, because I see quite a few spam sites.

Very frequently, some of the top Google search results are spam sites. I can identify a spam site pretty quickly.

As for niche marketing in general and making sites around keywords and domains- that's just good business sense.

I don't get it. Why would you buy a bunch of domains, and make a separate site for each keyword?

You'd be diluting yourself too much.

I'd much rather have one well-written site, than a bunch of crappy ones.

MFA was never my thing. But I do buy domains, create content,and make money. Which takes a lot of work and research skills, at least compared to the average non-thinking person. I usually monetize with affiliates, but Adsense will do in some cases. The only thing I regret is I wish I hard started buying domains a lot sooner as all the really premium generic domains are taken and worth a lot of money. But I can make more cashflow than domain parkers, at least.

I'd have to see a sample of your sites, to see if they were genuine or spammy. I can't imagine seriously maintaining more than a site or two, if you want the quality to be decent.

Some people hire others to write content for them, on their MFA/SEO sites.

I'm going to pick a better domain than "fskrealityguide.com" when I move my site. The problem with "fskrealityguide" is that it's too hard to remember for someone who's never seen my site before. I have a bunch of variants in mind, in case the one I want is taken. I'm leaning towards a .net or .org instead of .com.

Someone's squatting the .com version of my proposed domain, after I did an availability check. I'll take the .net or .org version. As long as I become the #1 SERP in Google for my site name, that's good enough. I checked the top few Google results for my proposed site name, and it's all sites with very low PageRank.



Chrono has left a new comment on your post "Employer as State":

You definitely did the right thing, not taking that job, and formed the right conclusion, that interviewer WAS a jerk.

I'm pretty sure that refusing that job was a good idea.

Yesterday, I turned down an interview for an "equity-only" job. Why would I work for a minority equity stake in someone else's business? Most likely, the business will be a flop. Even if successful, then my idiot cofounders might seek to cheat me. I'd be doing all the real work, but I'd only be getting a minority stake and my shares would be subject to vesting requirements.

Only an idiot would work for a minority equity stake in someone else's business.

My plan for "develop my blog" is probably better than their business plan. (I really should work on my RSS reader!)

If you're starting a software company, and none of the cofounders are qualified software engineers, then your business is worth $0.

You're an idiot to accept a minority stake in someone else's non-public company (in lieu of cash compensation). Suppose the company is successful and now has $300k/year in revenue. What prevents the other cofounders from hiring their parasite brother-in-law for a $200k/year salary?

A serious startup should pay a software engineer a combination of cash and equity, especially for someone with 10 years of experience like me. Working on my own business seems more productive than begging parasites for a job.

As long as blogging is more productive for you, I also agree.

The job market is a total wasteland right now. Looking for a wage slave software engineer job seems like a waste of time.

Even if I continue 5%-10% monthly readership growth, it'll still take me 3+ years before I have enough traffic to justify blogging as a full-time job.

I'm still looking for a wage slave job. It's a very rough market right now. When I was looking in October, I was getting 3-4 interviews per week. Now, I'm getting nothing. Looking at Craigslist, the volume of quality listings has substantially shrunk. Mostly, the same headhunters and same corporations publish the same ads over and over again.

I completely disagree with the comment about 'positive energy' above. This idea of blowing off all the 'negative energy' one receives and starting over with a clean slate reminds me of the 'love your enemies' myth propogated by Christians. It's bullshit to me.
Huh? Are you referring to Robert's comment that said (paraphrasing) "Abuse is inevitable. Accept that it will occur."

Due to the nature of a corrupt economic system, most wage slave employers are members of the parasite class. However, I'm going to keep looking for non-parasite employers. It's hard, but it's worth a look.

I disagree with "Accept that abuse is inevitable. Any employer will likely be an ***hole." I'm more inclined to believe "Life is too short to waste 45+ hours/week working for a jerk."

However, I don't have any viable alternatives to the wage slave job market (yet), so I'm doing the best I can with what's out there.

Your comments on Asperger's syndrome, and high functioning autism, are absolute gold. Specifically where you mention that an Asperger-er notices that people's verbal messages do not match their emotional messages, and chooses to ignore all emotional messages. That is ****ing gold...seriously.

I would love to see more posts from you in this area, as well as what you mentioned on this topic in Reader Mail 87.

I'll put a draft in my queue for that.

I'm starting to re-achieve emotional awareness, after losing it due to the pro-State brainwashed idiots around me.

I'm trying to broadcast honest emotions most of the time, which is a disadvantage because most other people expect you to conceal your emotions. My "normal" behavior is interpreted by others as dysfunctional behavior.

I'm much more interested in finding other people who can potentially be cured of their pro-State brainwashing, than on presenting myself in a way that's attractive to jerks. I've concluded "Jerks won't like me no matter what I do. The more I become in tune with the truth, the more that jerks feel hostile/afraid of me."

I'm not going to let jerks alter my behavior anymore. A jerk says "I don't like it when you do X", but they make up an essentially random reason. Someone with "high-functioning autism" sees that the jerks are usually pulling the strings, and assumes that the jerk's authority is legitimate. This causes the "high-functioning autism" person to be seeking patterns that aren't actually there. The jerk gives a superficial reason for rejecting you, but the actual reason is "The rejecter is a jerk!"

I'm getting better at recognizing "The person who rejected me is a jerk!", although it isn't something I can explain to others. I should do what I think it right, and I shouldn't let others cause me to do bad things.

Firing my therapist was a good idea, for reasons I hadn't considered at the time. I was assuming that my therapist's judgement was better than my own. I see now that she was an idiot and pro-State troll.



My sister visited my parents on Sunday. While entertaining her and my parents, I watched some basketball. Then, I watched the opening of "60 Minutes" and their ****sucking of Obama. My sister changed to VH1 for "Rock of Love". I realized "Rock of Love" is less disgusting than watching "60 Minutes" interview Obama.



Chrono has left a new comment on your post "FSK Asks - .com or .net":

You generally have good taste, in my view. So I'd say you've got a good domain name. In my very subjective preference, .com is the coolest of the domains, I'm sure because .com is the most 'popular' by American internet user standards. If you want to get contrarian, why not register .co.uk? :) I recommend the .com above all. If there is any way you can get the .com without breaking the bank, this is your best option.

Why would I pick ".co.uk" when I live in the USA?

I'm leaning towards .net or .org. Ultimately, the decision is probably irrelevant. My regular readers will find me no matter what domain I choose. It'll probably take me 6-12 months to rebuild my PageRank and Google SERP on my new domain. I want to pick a domain that somebody who's never seen my site before can remember. "Fskrealityguide" is a mouthful for someone who's never seen my blog before. For example, "nostate.com" is a good name, because it's easy to remember. The #1 Google SERP for "no state" is nostate.com. Therefore, it's a good name. (I'm not going to pick nostate.net. I just checked. "Nostate.net" and "nostate.org" are both registered and owned by domain squatters.)

It appears that I'm going to make at least $0.67/day from AdBrite, which is what I need to cover my hosting costs. AdBrite's minimum payout is only $5, so my first check will arrive in June. I haven't been using AdBrite for a full month, and my earnings approximately doubled when I added two more ad units. I'm satisfied with my current ad layout. I'll know my first full-month earnings in April.

AdBrite doesn't give breakdowns for custom time-ranges like AdSense. Via AdSense, I could get a custom report for any date range. AdBrite only gives monthly reports and "last 7 days" reports. Over the last 7 days, my earnings have (barely) exceeded $0.67 per day.

Of course, my blog's readership continues to increase. My advertising revenue should grow over time, at the same rate as my traffic.

I'm going to stick with AdBrite, unless they turn out to be defaulting deadbeats like the scum at Google/AdSense.

I also like AdBrite's CPM ads. They only charge $0.10 per thousand impressions minimum, which is a lower minimum than AdSense. CPM advertisers are paying less per click than CPC advertisers, at least on my blog. CPM advertisers tend to have less-scammy ads. However, if AdBrite only served me CPM ads, my earnings would be a lot less.

AdBrite makes it easy for advertisers to enable/disable ads on a per-blog basis. Anybody who feels that I'm not giving them a good deal can disable their ads. Hopefully, that feature of AdBrite means it won't be necessary for them to ban me.



Chrono has left a new comment on your post "The "F*** Google!" FireFox Extension":

I have comment moderation enabled. There's no need to duplicate post. (I filtered out your duplicate this time.)

This is a defect in Blogger. It should send you an E-Mail notification that your comment was queued for moderation. I'll fix that (or write my own WordPress plugin) when I move to my own domain.

Given what I have read from your blog, I seriously doubt you will ever release this extension. But let's suppose you do...

Google is our best hope for defending net neutrality. I have very little faith in 'the grass roots' and I do not think there are other major firms with a vested interest in maintaining it.

To be fair, I have not given this much thought.

If Google is not necessary for net neutrality...then the sooner it goes down in flames, the better. Google is not really adding much value anymore, IMO.
Writing the "F*** Google" FireFox extension is on my list of projects, but it's lower priority than my other stuff.

I'm earning a decent income from AdBrite, so I'm less angry at Google now. Over time, my anger at Google has decreased. (That's a good lesson. If someone injures you, wait awhile before doing anything about it. If possible, the correct response to an abusive person is to refuse to deal with them.)

If I did implement it, it'd be as a joke more than anything else. It's the sort of thing that might gain traction elsewhere, and be widely cited.

For now, "RSS Reader", "Forum/Wiki/Digg Engine", "AgoristBay", and "Experiment with WordPress" are all higher priority.



Sphairon has left a new comment on your post "Reader Mail #88":

I'll concede to you the point about Myers-Briggs being biased to a certain extent. I hadn't thought of statistical distribution of personality types according to curve grading incentive systems yet, that's quite intriguing. Somebody should conduct a study on how homeschooled/unschooled children fare in this kind of tests. I'm afraid, though, that pro-state parental impressions may simply replace the bad influence of generic state schools here.

It's tough to know "What would be the personality type of children raised by sane parents?" When nearly everyone is hopelessly brainwashed as a pro-State troll, that makes sociology silly. Also, sociology is an area where experimenting is difficult/illegal/immoral (if you aren't a State bureaucrat).

The parent, if not pro-State brainwashed, just uses their common sense when raising children. One interesting thing about cracking my pro-State brainwashing is that I'm less concerned by "OMFG!! I'll be a lousy parent!" or "OMFG!! It's immoral to raise a child in today's corrupt society!"

I claim "FSK no longer fits on the Myers-Briggs scale, because he cracked his pro-State brainwashing." I was "INTJ" when I was tested, but that was before I had my first panic attack.

I can very much relate to your experiences with abusive social behavior. When I was still pro-state trolling, I would simply dismiss any abuses as "the way things work" and try to adapt. Gladly, this process worked out very unsatisfactorily for me or I might have become an abusive parasite as well. Assuming, of course, that I am no abusive parasite already, which is what I hope for.

I had a similar problem. I was thinking "I'm obeying the rules. I'm doing what I'm conditioned to believe is right. Why am I not experiencing the success I deserved?" I figured out the reason. The problem is that the economic system is rigged, and my pro-State brainwashing caused me to follow a defective strategy.

Now, when someone is a jerk, I can more easily dismiss them as an abusive person.

One interesting false pro-State troll belief is "You can't judge a book by its cover." or "You can't judge someone by their appearance." That is *FALSE*. I'm getting very good at identifying "productive worker" or "parasite" based on a brief inspection. It isn't just physical appearance. It's also based on body language.

Another interesting bit is "You can judge someone by their smell." ***holes tend to smell lousy, and productive workers tend to smell nice. Perfume and deodorants don't cover up the stench of evil! I've also noticed that I smell better now that I've cracked my pro-State brainwashing.

Which brings me to your statements about NLP/progressive seduction. I've been reading into this and even applied it in real life in a few situations. It worked surprisingly well, but on the other hand, I didn't really push it too hard. It's just astonishing how easily people get caught in this Stockholm syndrome type of clinging to those with obvious abusive character traits. The sad truth being that sometimes, I can't help doing so either. I've always wondered why this rather awkward way of "approaching" others can be applied to such a great number of targets. Pro-state brainwashing may indeed be an answer.

NLP has some good advice and bad advice.

Good advice is "If someone isn't receptive, move on and find someone else." This can be used abusively or correctly. "This person isn't receptive to being abused. Find another victim." or "This person isn't receptive to meeting someone as super-awesome as FSK. Find someone else."

The tactics of NLP are how a sane person would normally correct an insane person, so they behave normally. An abusive NLP practitioner will use these tactics to enhance an insane person's insanity, by appealing to their insecurity. There are no sane people to use as role models, so the NLP tactics work.

Conversely, suppose someone is acting like a brainwased pro-State troll. I can "do what comes naturally", and I'll be correcting their behavior, especially now that I'm (mostly?) sane. A parasite will get offended. A skilled productive worker will learn and improve.

I'm now targeting women with "high functioning autism" as dating partners, because they'll be more receptive to being treated fairly. It's 1%-0.1% of the population, but if you meet enough people, you'll find candidates. I haven't had success yet, but I'm getting favorable reactions.

Concerning your mating choices, I'd be afraid that an emotionally labile partner tries to superficially imitate you in an attempt to make you happy. So while you are trying to genuinely build them up, they actually just pretend to become less of a pro-state troll to please you. But don't bet on my advice on that one, I have 0 practical experience with the matter.

If you're a pro-State troll parasite, when your partner mirrors your behavior, they'll adopt the "productive worker victim" mindset.

If you behave like a "normal" person (by FSK's standard), when your partner mirrors your behavior, they'll also adopt a sane mindset.

The "abused productive worker" and "parasite" personality type are anti-mirrors. The mirror of a "normal" person is another normal person.

A parasite won't accept a situation where they're treated fairly, because they're used to being in control. Someone with "high functioning autism" will accept a situation where they're treated fairly, and respond favorably.

This is still mostly theoretical for me, because I only figured it out in the past few months. I'm still working on implementing it. It's tough, because I'm concerned that I'm giving potential dating partners a panic attack. A couple of women have recently acted genuinely interested in me, and then disappeared.

Eventually, I'm becoming more in tune with the truth and I'll find a woman who can handle being exposed to the truth.



I suspect that Richard and maemail (below) are members of the "Bernard Madoff victims' E-Mail list" who saw my blog cited there. They were dumb enough to leave pro-State trolling comments. I'm not absolutely sure, but it seems probable.

I can't imagine someone who wasn't ripped off by Bernard Madoff being so indignant about "Madoff's victims are entitled to a State-paid bailout."

Richard has left a new comment on your post "Madoff Victim Bailouts":

Notice that Richard and maemail (below) have never commented on my blog before. I suspect they are actual Bernard Madoff victims who chose to comment on my blog.

Where do I begin to comment on the trashing of Madoff victims?

I bet you liked my post an hour ago.

Should I first point out that contrary to what the author wrote, there was no Congressional change in the law. The only thing that happened was that the IRS published guidelines clarifying the existing law.

As a practical matter, "Congress changed the law" and "The IRS changed the regulations" are logically equivalent. (According to some conspiracy theorists, the IRS is a rogue government agency, and does not actually derive its authority from Congress. I consider that to be a minor quibble, because all aspects of the State are illegitimate.)

I paid tax on dividends I earned from Citigroup and Bank of America stock. Those stocks have declined substantially. Am I entitled to a rebate on the income taxes I paid on those dividends?

Secondly, you imply that the amounts SIPC pays is a bailout. SIPC, similar to the FDIC, was formed to give the American investor confidence in the system that in the event a brokerage house goes out of business that they will be recompensed for a portion of the damages up to $500,000.

FDIC insurance is paid via a tax on bank accounts. Due to FDIC insurance, every deposit account earns slightly lower interest. If I place my deposits at a solvent bank, I pay the tax to support scammers.

Similarly, SIPC insurance is paid via a tax on brokerage accounts. I pay higher commissions and fees on my brokerage account, to pay for the tax. If a Madoff vicitim receives an SIPC payout, I pay higher brokerage fees to compensate.

This is not a bailout in any sense of the word, especially when compared to AIG or any of the banks. I strongly resent your illogical statement that people who invest all their money in a place that turns out to be a "scam" deserve to lose all their money.

How is that illogical? "People who make stupid investment decisions deserve to lose their savings!" (or have returns that underperform true inflation) What system are you proposing as an alternative to "Investors bear the risk of poor investment choices!"? Since when does the Federal government guarantee that everyone's investments have a positive inflation-adjusted return?

Are you saying "A bailout for Madoff's victims is smaller than the AIG bailout. Therefore, it is morally acceptable." Theft is theft, no matter how big or small.

Are you saying that you never heard "Be diversified!" as an investment strategy?

If you invested your life savings with Bernard Madoff, then you're an idiot who deserves to lose all his savings.

I suppose you'd agree that a little old lady who leaves her home everyday and walks across the street at the same place deserves to be mugged.

No. The mugger deserves to be forced to pay compensation to the victim (or the old lady's police agency, in the DRO model, the basis for free market justice).

You're saying "An old lady was mugged while I wasn't around. Therefore, the police are justified stealing from me to pay compensation to the old lady." I respect the old lady's right to purchase police protection. I disagree that she has the right to force me to pay for it.

The investor is not the criminal.

No, but the Madoff investor is the idiot. People who make bad decisions don't have the right to force everyone else to reimburse them for their loss.

There is no justification for what Madoff did. His supposed portfolio of stocks were diversified. Most U.S. investors use only one broker for investing. Madoff returns on investments trailed the market by large percentages for the entire decade of the 1990's.

If you had any clue about investing, you could have done a simple statistical analysis of Madoff's returns. High returns and low volatility is a dead giveaway for potential fraud.

Madoff's investors weren't using him as a broker. They were using him as a high-yielding money market account. (He was legally incorporated as a broker, but his investors treated him as if it were a high-yielding money market account.)

Why don't you express some of your indignation at the SEC, the great watchdog of the American people,formed to detect fraud, that could not find it if presented on a silver platter, and yet time after time proclaimed Madoff clean as a whistle!
I never said "The State's monopoly of police and justice is legitimate."

Any SEC investigator who worked on auditing Madoff is personally liable for the fraud, by my standards of justice. Via sovereign immunity, the SEC enforcers are absolutely immune from personal liability.

I am saying "Madoff's victims do not have the right to steal from me, via the SIPC and Congress." Your dispute with incompetent SEC investigators is a private claim between you and them.

How dare Americans be so stupid as to depend upon this agency whose very mission was to discover fraud, and yet could not find the largest one in the history of the world.

This is an inevitable consequence of giving the State an unaccountable monopoly of police and justice.

Rather than lace into the thousands of people who lost their life savings, their homes, the food on their table, try placing the blame where it should be placed. Let's not forget either about all the brokerage houses that were paying to SIPC a mere $150 per year, knew about the Madoff fraud, but remained silent. Now their premiums have skyrocketed and they have nobody to blame but themselves.

All brokerages have had their SIPC insurance fee/tax raised. They will merely pass the cost on to customers (me) as higher commissions and fees. I can't evade this higher tax by switching brokers, because all brokers are required to pay this tax.

Why should another broker, who are one of Madoff's competitors, care about his crime?

Suppose there were a true free market. If I were running an investment business and knew/suspected that Madoff was running a scam, I would advertise this fact as loudly as I could, to encourage his customers to switch. Libel laws prevent someone from actually doing this.

I'm saying "Madoff's victims don't have the right to force me (via the SIPC/taxes and the State) to reimburse them for their loss." If you suggest otherwise, you're a scumbag/parasite/idiot.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Madoff Victim Bailouts":

Cronyism. The Madoff victims can pull some strings... just like Goldman Sachs.

This time, the Anonymous commenter sees the point, and the people with Blogger IDs are the pro-State trolls.

Anonymous isn't always an idiot!

maemail has left a new comment on your post "Madoff Victim Bailouts":

Richard - thank you for correcting many of the inacurracies in this article.

Richard's comment was pretty obvious pro-State trolling to me. You're entitled to your own idiot perceptions of reality.

Not only did the SEC wantonly ignore the repeated evidence supplied to them of the Madoff crime by Mr. Markopolos beginning in 1999, for nearly a decade, they also lured investors into the fraud with their public imprimatur by allowing the Wall St. Journal articles in December of 1992 to disclose that based on their investigations the Madoff firm was devoid of fraud.

Why didn't Mr. Markopolos publish his conclusions on the Internet, so that all of Madoff's victims could decide for themselves?

If you had any level of financial literacy at all, you would have noticed "High returns, very low volatility" and suspected funny business.

Since when is the Wall Street Journal a trustworthy source on economics? I know better than to trust comedians/Communists for investment advice.

Thus, the SEC funeled hard earned investor money into another branch of government, the IRS, in the form of short term taxes on those 10% returns, reducing them to approximately 6-7% gains. Thus the IRS became the largest beneficiary of the Madoff crime and remains so today.

My attitude is clear. All forms of taxation are theft. I'm not defending the IRS.

I'm pointing out that a special tax loophole was created, specifically for the benefit of Madoff's victims. How is the example of "An idiot invested in Madoff and got robbed." logically different from "FSK invested in Citigroup and Bank of America and got robbed." I'm not buddies with any Congressmen, so I can't lobby for a bailout.

Making the investor the target for our government's massive failures does not address the bigger issues that should be of concern to all Americans - the government has made tens of thousands of people penniless through their irresponsible and negligent actions - policemen, firefighter's, pensioners, people from all walks of life - decent hard working American citizens.

If a pension fund invested all of its assets with Madoff (or a substantial chunk), then that fund and its beneficiaries deserve to go broke. If it were a State pension fund that got robbed, then other people will make up the loss via higher taxes. Many private corporations are defaulting on their pension plans anyway. Via inflation, most pension plans are having their benefit eroded. Most/all pension plans have no inflation adjustment, or a CPI adjustment. (The CPI is less than true inflation.)

If pension fund managers earn a huge management fee in good times, then shouldn't they be personally responsible for losses in bad times. The pension fund manager can say "Madoff was the crook, not me.", and that a legally permissible defense. While the scam was operating, *HUGE* management fees were charged by Madoff and his "feeder funds".

You can't accept huge returns during good times, and have a free put option of a State bailout during bad times.

This author's remedy is to further penalize the investor and give the government a pass.

I say that the government employees who participated in the scam are partially personally liable for the loss. State employees are protected by sovereign immunity. It isn't possible to sue them directly.

"Government" is an abstract fictional entity. If the "government" pays a fine or bailout, then the actual cost is paid by everyone who isn't a recipient of the bailout.

I still operate on the belief that the government is only allowed to collect taxes on earned income - not on money that apparently didn't exist - and is responsible through its agencies to ALL U.S. citizens.

I say that taxation is theft.

When you start having loopholes and bailouts for some people and not others, that completely perverts the economic system.

Insiders always have a free put option to lobby the State for a bailout when things go wrong. As a non-insider, I pay the cost in the form of higher taxes. There's direct income taxes, and the inflation tax. For SIPC insurance, I pay the tax as fees and commissions on my brokerage account.

The inflation tax, combined with a declining stock market, has cost me a substantial percentage of my savings. Do I have the right to lobby the State for a bailout?

I'm going to take the obvious precaution of investing in gold and silver, so scumbags like you won't have easy access to stealing my savings via inflation.

Summarizing:
  1. The State's monopoly of police and justice is immoral.
  2. The State's monopoly of seeking/enforcing investment fraud is immoral.
  3. The State's monopoly of money is immoral. The Federal Reserve credit monopoly is a massive price fixing cartel. Insiders benefit from printing and spending new money, while productive workers pay the cost via inflation.
  4. If you make stupid decisions, you deserve to lose your property.
  5. In a true free market, private police/insurance businesses would do a much better job protecting property than the State, who has an unaccountable monopoly.
  6. The State does not have a positive obligation to protect you or your property, *UNLESS* you're an insider who can lobby for a bailout.
  7. If group X gets a State-paid bailout or subsidy, this is logically equivalent to "Everyone other than X pays higher taxes." The cumulative effect of many groups X lobbying the State for favors is a completely corrupt system.
  8. Madoff's victims are scumbags and idiots. However, I only have a sample size of two, the people who chose to leave a comment on my blog.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

"I've been thinking of starting a vlog (which would necessarily involve abandoning my anonymity)."

Would it? It seems to me you would give up anonymity only to those people who watch the vlog and then run across you by coincidence.

Sufficiently motivated state enforcers can already find you, and clueless employers still wouldn't be able to find you if you had a vlog, assuming you didn't attach your name to it.

Anonymous said...

Dude... nostate.org is owned by Charles Johnson, aka "Rad Geek", the same guy who I both bought the nostate.com domain for for a minimal and entirely reasonable sum, and the same guy who you slandered in a previous entry as a possible "pro-state troll" because he hadn't (yet) added your site to the anarchoblogs.org feed.

Sloppy, to say the least.

And as for your first comment with respect to my post regarding fundraising, listen, there is no "one true path", no matter how desperately you might cling to the idea. In the state, we face a many-headed hydra of an enemy, with roots down to places like religion, family, psychology, sex and even distorted cultural norms regarding love. It should come as no surprise to one who has professed to value reason that a great many of us believe that a diversity of tactics is necessary in proper.

Anonymous said...

FSK, You commented on my comment about domains, SEO,etc

FSK:"
I assume that "MFA" means "made for AdSense".

Some of the sites are "made for SEO". I see a lot of spam blogs copying and republishing bits of my blog. It appears to be an effort to fool Google and boost their PageRank for certain keywords. Those pages appear to be auto-generated.

Fortunately, Google seems to recognize my blog as the original source for most of my content. I may have a problem initially, when I move to my own domain.

It must be profitable, because I see quite a few spam sites.

Very frequently, some of the top Google search results are spam sites. I can identify a spam site pretty quickly."
---
Greg:
Yeah, MFA= Made for Adsense. There are many of these sites and blogs that use original content and don't copy others. I think there is a big difference. It is certainly possible to have quality content for the sole purpose of monetizing with Adsense.

FSK:"I don't get it. Why would you buy a bunch of domains, and make a separate site for each keyword?"
----
Greg: To Make Money? Niche marketing or owning a premium domain. Ask the guy who owned Sex.com and sold it for $12 million why he didn't just start a blog called "John Doe's World" and write about sex. Maybe you want to have one site about Agorism and another site about car audio or ice sculpture. People are interested in different things and obviously make money in different things." Sometimes it's all about money, and it's not always spammy or low quality.

FSK: "You'd be diluting yourself too much.

I'd much rather have one well-written site, than a bunch of crappy ones."

Greg: Maybe but you are assuming I am writing a blog for some social interaction or something. I am mostly talking about making money. You could be diluting yourself by having a General site with no theme and talking about anything and everything, while not being an authority on anything. Of course if you have an authority agorist site and write exclusively about agorism, you won't have that problem.

There are guys that own 100,000+ domains and don't develop them at all and make millions of dollars. lookup Frank Schilling or Rick Schwartz, Yun ye ( OG, retired, I think),etc. They own domains people choose to go to- much like Google- and find information they find useful. How do you get to google.com? Do you find it on a search engine?

While I develop content and get traffic from search engines, Some people completely go around the search engines. They are truly the Masters of Their Own Domains. They don't even care if they are listed in Google because premium domains get traffic regardless. Now personally, I don't own any premium type-in domains, but I own quality 2-3 keyword domains. Verticals have niches and sub-niches,etc.


FSK: "I'd have to see a sample of your sites, to see if they were genuine or spammy. I can't imagine seriously maintaining more than a site or two, if you want the quality to be decent."

I own around 300 domains over around 20 distinct categories. I'm pretty small time. For one thing content does not always need to be updated. Some sites can be 1 page and static and be useful. Blogs aren't the only sites, you know. There are commercial sites that can be run and updated from a feed or plugin, redirects, many different site builders and templates,etc. For example I have a site that I put up in 2004 that sells a product. I need to make a couple tweaks quarterly, if that. I might have a blog for that site as well, maybe some blogs and other sales sites for the 40-50 different niches in that category that all get significant search and cant be dominated by a broader themed site.

to me this is how I can win as a "little guy." I will never dominate ranks for "widgets" but I can dominate "cheap blue widgets, "buy widgets now, "upgrade my widget",etc.

I don't "squat" anything. I don't register Trademarks. I don't fully develop every domain right away, but I plan to. And if someone hasn't bothered to hand register or has previously deleted my domains- that's their loss.

I have a mental illness. I am a libertarian-anarchist/agorist/whatever. I don't have a "slave wage" job. But I'm mostly just "getting by." I'm not one of these guys living in the Cayman Islands, but I wouldn't apologize if I were.

FSK: "Some people hire others to write content for them, on their MFA/SEO sites."

Yeah, I have never done this but I would probably like to. As you've said, it's hard for one person to create a lot of content. This is an agorist/free market. Freelancers on the internet offer content creation and other services. They provide samples and feedback and do a good job to get return business. I doubt most of them are reporting fully to Uncle Sam. Many of them are from other countries. I'm not a protectionist and I don't mind geo-arbitrage or whatever it's called. if I want to pay someone to write an article for me and he agrees to the terms, what's wrong with that? Is there some requirement that I have to create all my own content without any help?



FSK:"I'm going to pick a better domain than "fskrealityguide.com" when I move my site. The problem with "fskrealityguide" is that it's too hard to remember for someone who's never seen my site before. I have a bunch of variants in mind, in case the one I want is taken. I'm leaning towards a .net or .org instead of .com.

Someone's squatting the .com version of my proposed domain, after I did an availability check. I'll take the .net or .org version. As long as I become the #1 SERP in Google for my site name, that's good enough. I checked the top few Google results for my proposed site name, and it's all sites with very low PageRank."

Greg: What is squatting? They registered the domain you wanted. OK. Maybe that's a sign you picked a good domain! If someone else saw the value in it. Maybe you should just buy it. Did you check the history of the domain, does it have age, what is it currently being used for? Does it have any current backlinks? Those are all things that could add value to the domain itself and worth considering. Is it for sale? Do people actually search for your proposed site name? If they don't then how is that going to benefit you? People who are already familiar with the site are going to type the domain in or bookmark it rather than go to a completely different domain ( search engine) first. Your individual posts will rank for their titles and longtails on their own, probably.

Also if you get the .org or .net you might be giving free traffic to the squatter. Because once people become familiar with your site, they might type it in, and will most likely add the .com. I'd at least consider buying the .com or a variant with the .com available.

Sphairon said...

After reading your reply, I thought "Most people must consider FSK paranoid for making a distinction such as 'parasite' and 'productive worker'", but really, you're spot-on. An acquaintance of mine has mastered the abusive/parasitic mindset frighteningly well. Towards others, he tries to be what they would like to see in him - religious, liberal or analytic thinker. But all he's trying to do is pacify them and abuse their carelessness at any given situation. He's confessed all that to me because I'm not a threat to him. He has sufficiently ridiculed me before all relevant individuals while he himself has too much of a good reputation for anyone to believe this. For example, one time in private, he told me how dumb people are to believe in state regulation of the market - that'll only help the big wigs at the expense of small businesses. In a conversation with a third party, he dismissed the idea as completely insane and made me look like an idiot. I believe you had a similar situation with one of your superiors at the Ruby on Rails facility. He could tell people the most bogus lies, but due to his good standing and parasitic authority, they complied and believed him, no matter what he'd said before.

Of course, there are also abusive parasites who are unaware of their status and just do what they are used to. The main "bad girl" role in the movie "Odd Girl Out" represents a very shining example of such behavior. It struck me because it reminded me of my personal situation. Abusive predators seem to develop an ability to seek out incautious victims whose productivity they can then leech off of. Pro-state brainwashed victims will rationalize this behavior and think "That's the way a friendship works. I'll just keep going." This is bound to cause severe psychological and even physiological problems in the long run. I bet a good number of chronically depressed individuals are victims of abusive predators who have lost any incentive to live or work due to bad social experiences. I'm glad I broke enough of my pro-state brainwashing to be aware of predators and abusive parasites now.

As for our debate about children, I've read parts of J.T. Gatto's book on American schooling and one thing that caught my interest was the childhood of American kids from the colonial days until the dawn of modern schooling. It seems that schooling has also influenced parent-child relations at home. Kids in "untamed" times seemed to be fairly devoid of "single pole influencing", in other words, parents were not so keen to instill their particular value system into their offspring. Kids would stray around and absorb manifold ideas and skills. That's why you had universal geniuses such as Ben Franklin. I wonder whether that is still possible today and only blocked by schooling or whether scientific progress has rendered "universal geniuses" obsolete.

How do you spot women with high functioning autism? Is it plain shyness that you're looking for or are there other factors that spur your interest?

Lastly, do you think that a parasite mindset can be cured? Since the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness seems to be rather bogus, what else is it that makes people parasites?

And thanks for your time and ideas, that's one breath of fresh air for me.

Chrono said...

I owe you a thousand comments. Let's get started.

You mentioned, when discussing your domain, that you want something easier to remember. I contend that .coms are far easier to remember than .orgs or .nets. Ultimately you will come to your decision on your own...

AdBrite seems to be going well for you, per your posts from yesterday (3/30). I did not fully understand what google had done until I read those posts (in Reader Mail #91).

I noticed a comment below mine about the MBTI...
I've recently taken a Myers-Briggs, and it was a professional level test with a very good interpretation; in other words, it was not a free MBTI you can get on the internet. The test questions focus on preferences. This signals to me that it is not necessarily drawing conclusions about a person on an inner level, though again, there were several very accurate points, particularly where it addresses conflict resolution, and methods of processing reality. I conclude that the introvert /extrovert main categories are worthless, this is where I found many "which do you prefer" questions, however there is a caveat coming. The caveat is that you can change from introvert to extrovert and back, depending on your confidence and familiarity in the situations the questions address. From that perspective, the test could be very accurate. My initial reaction says it's worthless, but I'm willing to leave things up in the air, for now.

The reason I mention the MBTI is because I believe the more intelligent a person becomes, the more they shift to the most mature type designation which depends on the bias of the test. I suppose, if the test is very good, and has no bias, then it would not be able to give a type...in which case all the scaled scores would be 50/50% E/I,N/S,T/F,J/P...this is where you come in, FSK. I would say that you would continue to test as a type, until you are using your brain 100% ... my theory is that, assuming the groups in the MBTI are valid, a mature person should be 50/50 everything and not fit into a type.

You probably started out introverted, you would naturally become more extroverted, maybe you were an N and you will become more S, a T who will become more F, and a J who will become more P. Anyway... my 2¢

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