Another biblical reference to debt.

In the morning, I was thinking about the currently insane economics of the world, and I thought about a biblical passage:

Jesus told his disciples: “There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. 2 So he called him in and asked him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.’

3 “The manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg— 4 I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.’

5 “So he called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’

6 “‘Nine hundred gallons[a] of olive oil,’ he replied.

“The manager told him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred and fifty.’

7 “Then he asked the second, ‘And how much do you owe?’

“‘A thousand bushels[b] of wheat,’ he replied.

“He told him, ‘Take your bill and make it eight hundred.’

8 “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. 9 I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.

The weird thing is, in our crazy world, this is a few steps away from a business model. Old debt can be repackaged into new debt. And if these sociopathic finance guys could think long term, there is a value to finding and shepherding people with good credit through the minefields. There's a weird sort of pathway that people don't explain, where you get good personal credit, then you start a company and have good company credit- hopefully, at some point you have at least enough revenue to pretend its a legit business. But in ancient, more truly capitalist terms, none of this makes sense, because debt obliterates any price signal.

In what may be serendipity, I found out that Vox addressed some of this:



Apparently, while trying to figure out how debt is distorting the economy and what was historically done with debt to relieve some of those distortions, Vox keeps getting people popping up and saying all debt relief is socialist. Socialism is a relatively new phenomenon and debt has existed for all of known history, so we can be relatively sure these are uniformed comments.

A Wayward Child of God

I've decided to stop paying attention to Bruce Charlton. It's kind of sad because I want content, but increasingly it seems obvious I should be making it instead, given the poor quality of what is out there. Not that it would necessarily be popular...

Anyway, as should be obvious to anyone with a bible, nowhere has Jesus asked you for a personal relationship. There are various formal relationships- and much like one particular formal relationship- marriage- one might assume something 'personal' may grow out of it.

But I gave proofs- mainly that the use of the term 'personal relationship with Jesus' has risen, and at the very same time, the number of people falling away from Christianity has also risen. These are two phenomena I believe are quite connected.

And Charlton could have delineated himself from this evangelistic craze- instead he suggested the evangelicals he met were good people. Well, sure- good people who fail at their stated purpose. Are they good people? Is this not an unbiblical statement as well?

They are certainly not an effective people for failing at their stated goals. Their goal is to evangelize and they have failed.(Christianity is falling to even keep its own children.) We cannot definitively state that they are good people, but we can figure that they made Charlton feel good.

And feels are at the root of this problem, because for every comment, I received these psychological projections- in the first, I am somehow imputing something, and in the last I am not understanding. In both instances the reality is ignored. Again, delineation from this 'personal relationship with Jesus' message should be very easy- even a helpful exercise, yet he did not bother.

This is spoken in nearly all churches- the bureaucrats seem happy with it. Not just those in charge of churches, but governments as well. They prefer your religion to be personal and private, and not something to be brought up at all when they want to force you to do something against your religion.


But Charlton is in love with his own ideas. This is where the emotion comes from. He has made many mistakes, and playing with Christianity like some genius child without an elder to guide him. Responds with emotion because he interprets an attack on an idea as an attack on him.

Import the Third World, Be the Third World

I can't remember where I heard this, but it was a story about rich people India. The type of people who take helicopters to work in order to avoid the horrid streets, where poor people defecate because they don't have much of a choice. They are just that poor.

Similar things are a foot, or underfoot, in San Francisco. They can't keep the streets clean, yet the price of real estate edges ever higher, and the rich companies have various schemes for getting their employees to work safely.

I don't know the state of the streets and sewage in Mexico or much of Latin America, but I know there's a small upper class, and then everybody else. I was getting close to being able to read the language, but I was presented with a problem, not much in the way of great content out there in Spanish. Which suggests most people don't read, and the people rich enough to do either learn English or get translations of popular English stuff.

Anyway, this is either the plan or a very acceptable side effect of the plan.

It seems to me those who cry about inequality protest too much. If you've got some sort of merit, and could rise, if given a real chance to, well screw you. The rich don't want the competition. Seems kind of dumb in this age of genetics, but the elites seem hell bent on producing dull children. And the only way for those children to be in charge is to dumb down everyone else. Maddening.

Concept Gym In Japan

I came across an interesting video a few days ago. I thought I'd post it and put a few thoughts below:


Although I am not very social, I did like the concept- given that like 99% of the world is more driven by socialization than I am and they obviously need some sort of social help to make improvements. Otherwise, everyone I know would be healthier.

The things I'd do differently:

1: a stronger emphasis on muscle. Don't get me wrong, a Japanese person would still look very slim. But at 6'3, I once got down to 164lbs, which felt like quite an accomplishment after having been an obese 285lbs. But I came to realize I needed to be somewhere near 200lbs. Many modern causes of death are preceded by muscle loss. I want enough muscle to increase the chances I'll be around if I have to deal with any of that stuff, but not so much that the mere act of eating enough to maintain that muscle becomes a full time job.

2: I noticed in some of the photos, they were hanging out, having a beer. To me, if people have internalized and understand diet, they'd likely be having dry wine, sake, or liquor. So, I'd want to educate somewhere along this low-carb paleo-ish thing that helped me so well, but what I really want, and would be trying to create, is a situation in which the client understood his or herself well enough to understand what works for them. This is a huge disconnect in modern life.

3: And speaking of modern life- I would emphasize the importance of circadian rhythm. Sunlight in the morning, no blue light at night, getting to bed at a reasonable hour, etc...

4: The fashion part seemed to be something their clients enjoyed, but it also seemed more like them being dressed in costumes by someone else, rather than developing a personal style. This was probably the most complicated part of the concept, and included designers, shopping, and getting that card, which seemed to give you more exclusive access to people you would theoretically need less if you had actually learned anything. Admittedly, the clients seemed to have a desire for social inclusion- which I would not put a very high price on. So, although it is a bit bewildering, this is likely the thing that if I were to change, I'd change last- after watching it for a long time, trying to figure out where the objective measures are.

Godfather Church

There must be a change in the way church is managed, mostly because all denominations everywhere are in various stages of disrepair because bureaucracy has crept in wherever it can. Various evils have crept in along with bureaucracy, but if we fix the one, we can chase out most of them.

Basically, I think a bishop should have a list of last names. He doesn't get to say he's doing a good job unless those names are preserved, and the number of people practicing them increase (or at least stay the same during trying times.

So, in some cases the bishop might have to get up and go elsewhere, if the bulk of his people were migrating for some reason. On the flip side, that means the clergy in a particular area cannot claim to be doing God's work by grabbing whoever happens to be migrating through and pretending they are the flock- no, you lost your flock, you little bastard.

Also, this would put a serious stop to child abuse. First, instead of the gay mafia sitting in the Vatican and pretending there is no tradition of married priests, the bishop would tend to rely on married priests. Secondly child abuse tends to screw up family formation pretty badly. Milo is Milo, and not a father of five, in no small part because of that sort of stuff.

Finally, a bishop under such constraints, would find himself needing to think more about economics. Families need to be able to produce in order to have and care for children. This is where the imagery of the Godfather comes in. In some real sense, it is a family, and it is a family versus the world. We are taught to think otherwise, but we are taught to think otherwise by bureaucrats who ultimately want us to refer to them and/or the system for all our morals.

The system is ultimately evil, in no small part because it asks us to abdicate our responsibilities to it.

Yet, where do your elders think you are going to get a job? They expect you to hook up to the system, and not to rock the boat too much, because they want their pension. If you must destroy the system, please wait until after they are dead, and have extracted as much of the promises as they could.

But none of that works if you are looking at your list of names. Who did you lose? Who got married? Who did you gain? How many generations have crossed your door?

Searching for God in All The Wrong Dimensions

The Return of Alex Jones to the Joe Rogan podcast was great. One of the many wild things that came out of Alex Jones' mouth was something about the twelfth dimension. So I decided to google this dimension stuff. And I can tell people need some help.

If we look at space, we can have some sort of understanding based on the big bang.

If we look at time, well, we can't look at time- we look at movement, which can be pretty regular because planets and clocks are kind of regular. But we do have a bang like moment, perhaps, indeed the only moment- the now. We don't actually live in the now because it takes time for us to sense stuff and respond, so we are always a little bit behind this event we call now. To some very limited extent, the west coast hippies that go on about being present have a tiny bit of a point, but they can go overboard. We do have to think about the future and hope whatever actions we take are the sort we want to come to fruition.

So, my point is, God is now, and it's completely understandable that we miss it because even when we have everything firing perfectly, it still takes time for the electrons to travel to those neurons.

And, this is just the generally agreed upon third dimension. If there's any truth to the rest of the dimensions, it would be similar. There wouldn't be a dimension where God hangs out. There would be something like a big bang or a now.

Frankly, I was a bit disappointed because I was hoping for some kind of cool math stuff.

The Post Office In Light of Freedom of the Press

I used to assume the sort of standard libertarian view of the Post Office, but now I think that view has errors in it.

So, I think both Republicans and Democrats must not like the Post Office very much. The Republicans view it similarly as the libertarians do- it's doing a job private companies should do. And, regardless of whatever the Democrats say they think of it, at least some of them must be against it, for the Post Office is required to fund its retirement system in a way that no other organization is forced to. They are so hamstrung that their finances look silly at a cursory glance, which furthers the impression that a private company could do better.

But maybe, just maybe the Post Office is there for an explicit reason- to get whatever you had to freedom to print to other people.

If we look on-line, where much of the speech that would have been mailed to people now lives, we see companies have proven very susceptible to deplatforming. It is becoming somewhat obvious that companies may actually be a weak point in a distribution system. They at once want to be a platform, yet at the same time are less trustworthy than the United States Post Office, which, to my knowledge, continues to serve Alex Jones, assuming he has anything he needs to mail.

So, I think we probably ought to reconsider the Post Office. Perhaps an expansion, such as what is discussed here, is needed:



Reform is likely needed- but in no small part it is reform of these restrictive rules that they have had to operate under, and look at reducing stamp prices, so that the option remains viable for the people who need it most. The poor and those being shut out other ways of distributing speech must have options.