Job Loss and Regaining Meaning

Posted on May 17, 2023 by alifeofmentalillness

Got a letter from the Oklahoma City Housing Authority a couple days ago. It stated that they would have an apartment for me as soon as one was available. It also gave no time line. It could be a couple weeks. It could be over a year. I’ve heard horror stories about people waiting for several years to get into a low income apartment. Even with social security disability insurance paying for my doctors’ appointments and treatments, I couldn’t have afforded to move out of Nebraska if I didn’t have family help.

When I first applied for social security disability insurance in 2006, it took until 2008 to get approved. I was denied several times and ultimately hired an attorney to speed up the process. For two years I was dependent on my family for almost everything. I had zero income other than what my parents gave me under the table because I couldn’t handle even a minimum wage customer service job. The factory job I held for a couple months wasn’t bad until my work suffered from sleep deprivation. I did well in work that didn’t involve working with the public. Even people who donated to the Goodwill store where I worked on the loading/unloading dock were often nasty and barbaric.

Sadly, most jobs I ever had available to me were customer service jobs. There were a few factories in Kearney (the town I lived in from 2005 to 2022). But those jobs were tough to get because everyone wanted them. Factory work was far better than customer service, at least for me. Paid better too. But there really aren’t nearly as many factory jobs in my nation as there were in the past. The 20 something barely making a living working even 40 hours a week at a fast food place and living in his parent’s basement would have probably been working a factory job and had union protection if he was born 100 years earlier. Or he would have been a self sufficient homesteader growing his own food and eating meat from his own herds had be been young when the Homestead Act was passed. They used to tell young people who couldn’t find jobs in their hometowns “Go West young man.” There is no frontier anymore, at least not until space exploration ramps up.

People talk about how US companies are moving manufacturing out of China and back to the US (this is often referred to as near shoring). But even most of those jobs will be automated. Even fast-food drive throughs are starting to be automated. I imagine that any job that can possibly be automated will be once automation becomes cheaper and better than human labor. Our managers don’t care about the work you put in. If they did, they wouldn’t have outsourced your job decades ago. I get so frustrated when I hear someone go on about how hard they work. You do realize that your boss doesn’t care about how much work you put in. Ironically, I kind of don’t either. You just as well be a draft horse to most bosses. And draft horses eventually got replaced by tractors and automobiles. Putting in lots of work by itself doesn’t make you special, certainly not in eyes of the people paying you.

Bosses have been outsourcing jobs for decades because it was cheaper to have it done in third world countries with fewer labor laws, fewer unions, and fewer environmental regulations. Eventually third world countries will resort to automation. I totally understand why people start their own small businesses, buy rental properties, buy farmland, and do the digital nomad thing. I imagine that self-employment, subsistence farming on small homesteads, and free lancing will become very popular again. Those were the historical norm until the Industrial Revolution. In most African countries, these never truly went out of style. Maybe they are just ahead of the developed world in that regard. Even illiterate peasants grew most of their own food for most of history. The modern worker doesn’t even do that.

I lost my career to disability. It took a few years before I came to terms with the fact that my career died. I went through all the stages of grieving and death. While it wasn’t a physical death, it was the death of my career and possible family that I was grieving. My previous self who was poised to be a very productive member of society and a great father died. But the building of something new is often built upon the ashes and ruins of the old. My reborn self became a blogger and independent scholar. While I doubt I will ever make above poverty wages, I am content with what I do. I guess this blog will be the closest thing to a legacy I will ever have.

Tyrants Fear Peasants Getting Knowledge and Making Money

Posted on May 16, 2023 by alifeofmentalillness

Been having a rough go the last several days. I think most of my friends have been too. I just know something is bugging my friends, especially my bestie out in Denver. I rarely hear from some of my friends anymore. I guess I came from one of those very rare families where cutting people off and going completely silent just wasn’t a thing. I may have to tell my family numerous times or even yell at them occasionally, but we have never let the lines of communication completely die. It wasn’t until recently that I figure out that the vast majority of families aren’t like that.

I’m in my 40s and actually have a better relationship than ever with my family. I still find it unnerving that I can do things and say things to my family as a 42 year old man that would have gotten me in severe trouble as a teenager. I grew up in one of those families in 1980s rural America where things like yelling at your kids for yelling at the parents first, regular physical discipline, which I have zero problem with until it’s used excessively or as a first resort, parents always siding with the teachers, even when it was obvious that I was in the right, and ignoring things like bullying. I think it’s one of the reasons I became self sufficient as much as possible. Even on disability and being in a wheelchair (at least for long distances) I try to be as self reliant as possible. It’s just not worth the hassle to get other people involved.

I love using computers and typing even though my typing speed never exceeding 35 words per minute. I also love economics. Yet I never took computers and economics in high school because of the only teacher who taught such things in my dinky rural school just had it out for me and a few other students. She used to call me ‘stupid’ in front of the whole class. I took her for only one class in high school, typing. Got a C+ in that class first quarter. It was the only class my freshman year I got below a B+ in. Yet, it was enough to keep me off the honor roll. But, had I never gone to college I would have never discovered my love for computers or typing. I actually far prefer typing to writing. I find it encouraging that grade schools in my country are now teaching computer and typing skills to kids. I had an inkling that I liked computers as I started taking computer classes when I was in fourth grade. We had a good computer class teacher. But that one high school teacher that I had several run ins with almost killed my interest in things that I found out I have an ability for in college.

I cringe every time I hear someone say ‘college is worthless.’ In reality, being able to learn and relearn new skills even into old age is now more important than ever. It’s only going to get even more important in the future. The era of being able to specialize is dying, as many white-collar workers are figuring out with automation and AI. And it’s not just rich countries like USA, EU, and Japan that are automating. China is starting to automate much of it’s workforce. Probably why 1 in 5 Chinese recent college graduates are unemployed. Youth unemployment is no longer an American issue. It’s actually worse in China and EU. Multi generational homes are becoming more normal now. In the Renaissance, most rich families had as many as four generations living in the same house or on the same estate. The kids usually inherited the property and houses after mom and dad died. These estates and fortunes stayed in the family, and even grew larger, over the course of the centuries. The idea of children leaving home without support at age 18 and then getting sent to nursing homes as elders is quite recent. In fact, the age of adulthood even in the US was 21, not 18 for most of our history. The voting age used to be 21 until the 1960s. Even I wouldn’t have been able to vote for at least the first 50 years of my nation’s existence as I’m not a property owner. With as much as some politicians are trying to make voting harder to “counter voter fraud”, I imagine that someday some politician will propose changing the voting laws to allow only property owners and income tax payers the right to vote. As if the peasants, like me, who have to rent don’t have a stake in this country succeeding. I’ve read bloggers proposing this exact same thing as far back as 2013. I swear that we now have a society that actively wants to make things tougher than they used to be. Any wonder why there’s more hatred between the generations than there has been in recent history.

And it’s not just the different generations that hate each other. Workers and bosses hate each other too. It seems like that most people I know just can’t wrap their minds around the fact that no one can make it on minimum wage anymore. And any time workers try to unionize anymore, they are dealt with by firings, outsourcing, and automation. I wonder how long it will be before striking workers are getting shot and killed, like at the Homestead Steel Mill strike in the late 1800s. And that is just one example of strikers getting killed. Small business owners often complain “no one wants to work anymore” when in actuality people don’t want to work for unlivable wages dealing with unreasonable customers and stupid work policies that actually destroy productivity and morale. These kids you complain about “not wanting to work anymore”, many of them are working in gig jobs, starting their own side hustles, starting their own small businesses, and even becoming “digital nomads” by being able to work from anywhere in the world that has wireless internet service (i.e. everywhere on Earth anymore). I myself would have become a digital nomad if not for my mental illness. So I did the next best thing, I became a digital monk. Even one of my college friends recently suggested I would have made it as a monk. But, the church I grew up in didn’t have monasteries. I mean, a life of study, prayer, contemplation, isolation, and making money from selling anything from baked goods to theology books sounds like it would been good for me. Certainly better than trying to survive on minimum wage with retail jobs while waiting for disability to come through.

Many employers are downright ungrateful of the workers. And the customers are even worse. One of my best friends from college was laid off from an IT job in a major urban center even though he had been there for almost ten years, had two teenage children, and a wife with terminal cancer. And he was classified as an ‘essential worker’ during the pandemic. Caught covid at least three times. Still got laid off. I’ve already talked about my work experience in previous entries. What I got was mild compared to most people. And people, mostly under the age of 45, are using social media to talk about such problems. Since we are sharing our stories, and finding out that we aren’t alone, is probably why those in power want to shut down and regulate social media sites like reddit and tiktok. It has nothing to do with foreign nations spying on citizens. Every nation spies on their own citizens and everyone else. Besides, all of our online information has been public knowledge for many years. How do you think Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube remain free and their companies remain massively profitable. Pity they don’t share a pittance of that profit and pay us for said information. Even mining and oil companies in the early 1900s had the decency to pay land owners for the use of their land and mineral rights. We are truly living in Gilded Age, version 2.0.

I don’t see things getting better for workers and renters anytime soon unless we can elect some politicians who will actually get legislation passed to reel in the worst abuses of big business and landlords. We used to have such politicians even in the early 1900s like Theodore Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan. We don’t even bother to enforce anti trust laws, which have been on the books since the 1890s). That’s precisely why we have ‘Too Big To Fail.’ Greed is every bit as bad now as it was back then. We are essentially living Upton Sinclair’s ‘The Jungle’ except we have computers and gas powered automobiles. I swear some people will fight against progress no matter what. The same people who complain about ‘no one wants to work’ were the exact same people who fought against labor laws. People in the early 1900s were worried about big businesses cannibalizing the world and killing democracy and capitalism. Changes in attitudes by a younger cohort of politicians and younger industrialists like Henry Ford and Milton Hershey might have saved capitalism from it’s own abuses, and thus saved democracy.

Unfortunately, even in the early 1900s positive changes didn’t start happening until elder cohorts of politicians and business managers started retiring and or dying off in large numbers. I see the same problems in the early 2020s. I say this in fear of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, but it looks like just enough people in places of power and prestige want the current state of things. It like some people actually want civilization to fail. It’s like those in power don’t want the masses to learn for themselves. I think would be tyrants fear the thought of a few billion people all over the world figuring out how things can be a lot better than they are. People aren’t angry because they don’t have electricity and running water. This ain’t 1900 no matter how bad some want it to be.

People are starting to realize how far below our potential we are living. It’s why younger workers want more work life balance. They’ve seen their parents and elders work for decades at the same place, often to be laid off and outsourced due to management’s short sighted greed. They’ve also seen their parents pensions getting cut and their parents 401(k)s become near worthless. One of my best friend’s fathers worked as a travelling repair man for a tech company his entire career. He lost a significant chunk of his retirement when his company went bankrupt. Now he’s working as a museum tour guide to supplement his social security. These managers are intentionally killing the gooses who lay golden eggs. The younger workers know this. And they are very angry, especially since they found they could be just as productive working from home, get their work tasks completed in only two or three hours (rather than the minimum eight in an office), have time for their children, and have time to cook healthy, better tasting, meals. Heck, even I lost over 180 pounds in the last three years on a disability pension while not being able to exercise much due to heart failure. I did far better on my own and in long term care during the pandemic than I ever did with nutritionists and Weight Watchers. Now some companies are trying to get rid of the work from home option entirely. I’m glad the workers are fighting back. I think the managers know work from home is productive, they just don’t want to give up their power. Some of these companies should just remodel their office buildings into cheap apartments. The futurist Buckminster Fuller (pioneer of the geodesic dome and prefabricated housing among numerous other innovations) predicted work from home, downtown offices going vacant, and said offices being refurbished as low income apartments for displaced workers as far back as at least 50 years ago.

I’ve read some news articles about work from home people are sometimes able to work more than one full time job just from their home laptops and collect multiple full time paychecks. I see zero problems with this because we don’t stop people from owning more than one rental property or business. It’s the same principle except it’s the working class getting in on some of the action. Online investing platforms like Robinhood and Stash allow poor and working-class people to invest on their own. Pity these weren’t available ten years earlier. I’ve seen plenty of articles about students being able to pay of hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans by investing their stimulus checks or start small businesses off their earnings. Most of my friends invested their stimulus checks. I invested most of mine too, still have most of it in the market, and had over a ten percent year on year return, which is better than the whole market did. Half of hedge fund managers and financial planners can’t beat the market most years.

Some of my friends did better than even I did. Some more than doubled their money but still left it in the market. Before you dismiss that as the exception and not the norm, the Fortune 500s started out of garages are not the norm either. Besides, many successful business men like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, etc. got started by borrowing some money from their own families. Elon Musk came from a wealthy family in South Africa. Mark Zuckerberg was a college dropout, but even he dropped out of Harvard, not University of Alabama. The original modern business magnate, John Rockefeller, borrowed $1000 dollars in 1860s money from his own father to buy his first oil refinery. Even my dad had to borrow some money from his father in law to start his dental office in rural Nebraska because the banks wouldn’t lend him money. And he stayed in the same practice for 30 years, sold out to a young dentist, and that dentist is still practicing in the same office. The banks were too short sighted to see that our rural county needed another dentist. Sometimes the people with the most money aren’t the smart money. Even Warren Buffet missed out on the computer and internet revolutions. And his company is making the exact same mistake with AI. I’d invest even more in the market but social security won’t allow anyone on disability to have more than $4000 in savings at any time. Otherwise I’d get kicked out of the program and lose my medicaid. In short, I stay poor so I can keep my necessary treatments. That provision not only chaps my hide, it’s making me less prosperous and self-reliant. God forbid poor people be able to make a little more money and be a little self reliant. Used to be the US government encouraged self reliance and even enabled it through things like the Homestead Act and GI Bill. Those days are long gone.

Investing isn’t that risky, especially if one were to buy into dividend paying stable mutual funds like the Dow Jones or S&P 500 and just put in a little every time you get paid. ‘Pay yourself first’ is the advice I got from every business instructor I ever had in college. It’s a crime against humanity that money isn’t taught in most grade schools and high schools. It’s why guys like Robert Kiyosaki and Dave Ramsey are worth millions, they are merely filling in the knowledge gaps that our schools won’t. They recognized that the public at large didn’t know much about money. Their advice has freed millions of people from debts, allowed others to get out of dead end jobs and start their own businesses, and taught the poor and middle class how to make money work in their favor instead of against them. I applaud such people. I wasn’t required even a year of personal finance in high school. I hope that’s changing. Lack of knowledge about how money works can be just as destructive as unrestricted greed. Even poverty stricken people on disability are learning these lessons. I am far from the only person on disability who has had some financial education. Amazing what one can learn from a few books, youtube channels, and a few years. It’s why tyrants fear peasants with knowledge. Heck, tyrants might fear peasants with knowledge as much as they do peasants with guns.

Possibilities of Mass Technological Unemployment

Posted on May 11, 2023 by alifeofmentalillness

This going to be a long post, but please bear with me. I have a series of questions as a bit of a thought exercise and discussion that doesn’t often get discussed in public, not even by futurists: How soon do you think it will be before we see mass technological unemployment and the 21st century version of The Luddites? Only in the last few months has the mainstream media started even talking about AI replacing and augmenting human workers even though I first read about in on futuretimeline.net back in 2013. Read Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity Is Near and all the works of Peter Diamandis shortly after. Neither of these guys, nor any other techies I’ve read in the last ten years, have discussed in detail how we as a civilization manage this transition. Every mainstream economist seems to think automation will create more jobs than it eliminates because that’s the way it’s always been. High rollers like Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger say AI will amount to nothing, at least publicly. But these are the same guys who missed out on the computer and internet revolutions years ago. Their investors missed out on a lot of profits by these two not putting even a few percent of their holdings into Silcon Valley firms like Facebook, Twitter, Tesla, and Google when they first went public. I was telling everyone I knew to buy a few shares of these companies back then. I would have but forums like robinhood didn’t yet exist. God forbid peasants like me make a few bucks through the stock market.

Been trying to tell everyone I know about this ever since 2013. Most people outside my facebook techie groups, until recently, thought I was a hopeless dreamer at best and a liar at worst. It’s only a matter of time before the mainstream media starts discussing technological unemployment as a daily lead story. And I am convinced the public at large will panic in unexpected ways, like people hording toilet paper during covid. But far worse.

Been recently reading about The Luddites in early 19th century England burning down textile plants and killing factory managers. These skilled craftsmen were suddenly without means to support themselves even though they spent years working on their craft. Imagine if college educated white collar workers with tens of thousands in student loans and hundreds of thousands in mortgage debts find themselves unemployed by the millions over the course of several years? Half of Americans already have less than 500 dollars of emergency savings. Almost half of current retirees have zero saved up besides social security in my country. Social security is a “pay as you go” system. Has been ever since it was instituted in the 1930s. And it’s funding comes from taxing current workers to pay for the retirees and disabled like myself. There are US government projections that the social security fund could run dry by 2035 if massive changes to the tax system and funding aren’t implemented. Since congress seems determined to fight among itself and do nothing, this could become a reality.

If this industrial revolution we are currently living through destroys more jobs than it creates, like some in my techie groups on facebook have been predicting for several years, how do we get the displaced workers and fear driven public on board? In my country, debt to gross domestic product (think annual wages if nations were individual workers) is already over 120 percent. Granted this isn’t as bad as many places, but my congress already wants to massively cut programs. That’s why it’s very possible the US could default on its loans eventually. Over half of this money is owed to US citizens. Only 4 percent is owed China anymore. They, along with dozens of other nations, have been slowly getting out over the last several years. So even foreigners know something is fishy about US money. Discussions on raising taxes haven’t gone anywhere for decades. We’ve actually been lowering taxes for years. My countrymen still complain about taxes even though are tax rates are lower than most developed countries. In theory, we can print money as long as people are willing to us it. Granted that’s how hyperinflation happens (meaning money becomes worthless). It happened even in the very advanced nation of Germany in the 1920s. Currently happening in Argentina, Turkey, among others. That economic collapse ultimately resulted in the Nazi Party taking power. Don’t think it can’t happen again in other rich and advanced nations. I’ve been scared of something like this happening in my own country ever since I read ‘1984’ and ‘Fahrenheit 451’ twenty five years ago. I’m more scared of it than ever now.

How do we handle the displaced hundreds of millions workers who simply don’t have the skills to level up or self educate? Do we try to institute a UBI system with our current economics and politics? Knowing my countrymen like I do, this will probably not be popular even if 50 percent of the workforce loses their jobs to automation. We can’t even get Universal Healthcare or High Speed Rail even though most developed countries have had these for decades. Do we drop the prices on everything so even people living on part time gig work and welfare can afford the basics? Do private foundations pick up where government can’t go? Do we just put 3D printers in every home, vertical farms in every town, and make money as unnecessary as possible? The ‘Not In My Backyard’ attitude is strong in my nation. We’ve known we have a shortage in affordable housing for years and we still won’t build cheap housing in most places. Personally, I’d rather live next door to a nuclear power plant than a cattle yard or oil refinery. Can we solve homelessness with rapid 3D printed homes and just sell these homes for cheap or even outright just give them away? Knowing my countrymen’s attitudes towards the homeless and poor, this doesn’t look like that will fly either even though we already have the tech to make this work. Most people in my society simply have no empathy towards the struggle of others until tragedy effects them directly. It’s why we had over one million people die from covid even though we were among the first to rapidly produce vaccines and effective treatments. A significant chunk of the populace, including most people I personally know, still feel lockdowns and mask mandates were a violation of personal freedoms. This is the case even though most people in my social circle know at least one person who died from covid. Some people are epically heartless and soulless. And most people in my social circles are regular church attenders.

I don’t know the answers to any of these. I haven’t seen any of this discussed by the public at large. This isn’t even on most politicians’ radar. Andrew Yang discussed this in 2020 only to get one percent of the primaries votes and dismissed as a communist. I still remember the press and his political rivals dismissing him as Comrade Yang. This isn’t the first time a fringe candidate was dismissed but years later proven right. In 1992, Ross Perot warned that globalization and free trade would destroy the middle class in America and most developed nations. He was dismissed as a crank by everyone from CNN to Saturday Night Live. Sadly, he was proven right years after the fact. We can’t count on most governments as they are decades behind the curve. It wasn’t until recently that the Biden administration appointed an “AI czar.” They are about ten years too late. I’m interested in hearing how other nations are planning on dealing with this. I truly believe we can have a great future as a species where even the poorest of poor people live well. But we seem to have no plans to manage the transition. Any thoughts? I always enjoy hearing from my readers.

Yet Even More of What’s Been on My Mind Since I Moved to Oklahoma City

Posted on May 10, 2023 by alifeofmentalillness

Talked to an old childhood friend earlier tonight. She was telling me stories about the horrors she deals with everyday at her job in a pharmacy in a college town in the midwest. Caught one of her coworkers smoking pot while on the clock recently. Her boss did nothing. No write up, no drug test, no firing, no verbal reprimand. I’ve been listening to horror stories about working in customer service from my friends, people on reddit forms, youtube videos, etc. for the last ten years. I have a few stories of my own, like getting told off by the owner of the McDonalds I worked at my very first day on the job when I was 16. I told him it was my first day and he said, “I don’t care.” None of my managers and coworkers stood up for me. I was fired a month later supposedly because I wasn’t quick enough on the grill. And yet, I saw coworkers eating on the job, literally taking burgers and chicken out of the storage and eating them while they were working.

That’s mild compared to what I saw at other jobs. I would go into detail but no one believes me. Even at the factory job I had I was threatened with death when my work was suffering because of sleep deprivation. I worked the 11pm to 7am shift, five nights a week for less than 10 bucks an hour in 2006. My work was suffering and one of my line mates yelled at me, “Quit f***ing around or I will kill you godd*****it.” Everyone on my line saw it. No one reported it. I had talked to my foreman about previous problems with this same coworker. Nothing was done. So I knew nothing was going to be done in this case either. So I went to the bathroom, told my foreman I had gotten sick and needed to take the rest of the night off. The next day I put in my request for a transfer to day shift. It was immediately denied. So I quit. Turned in my ID badge and safety equipment right there. The sad thing was, the job itself wasn’t stressful at all, certainly not as stressful as working with the public every day. While it was physically demanding, I could still do it because I wasn’t dealing with unpredictable public every day. But I couldn’t sleep during the days very well. After two months of sleep deprivation, my work was suffering and I was becoming a danger to myself and others.

I could do that job easily even if it was physically demanding. The setup sucked as did the people I was working for. If they would have just worked with me a little, I would have been at the job probably for years. That is, until I developed heart failure. Had I been able to stay at the job, I would have never had to apply for disability even with schizophrenia as I would have been covered by my employer’s health care insurance. Would have also been eligible for a 401(k). I found out in college I had a talent for stock picking and investing. I would be a hell of a lot better off personally and a financially viable member of the American workforce for years if not for the short sightedness of my employers. Needless to say I wasn’t surprised at all when I found out that same factory shut down like ten years later and moved it’s manufacturing. I could work in the right circumstances. I was never given a chance. And because I lived in a rural area, I had a lack of options. I didn’t quit work because I was lazy and didn’t want to work. I quit because the setup sucked, management treated workers worse than animals, and the customers were even worse. And that was in the 2000s.

I left my last permanent job in 2012. It was a great job for me even with my disability. I didn’t go full time because I was afraid of losing my disability insurance and full time was never available. I left because I actually did the math one night and found out for every dollar I made through that job, I lost seventy one cents via lost benefits and increased rent (I was on a sliding scale in low income housing). That was before taxes. And to think people complain about even sales tax of 6 percent.

I stay on disability even though I have a talent for stock picking and investing because Universal Healthcare isn’t a thing in my country. Even though Universal Healthcare works in most European Union countries, Japan, and Canada, I fear it would never work in America even if it was instituted. Seeing my dad’s experience with the VA makes me think that Universal Healthcare would be worse than even the mess we have now. We don’t even have decent mass transit here. People were all up in arms over Obamacare. And that was just health insurance, not universal health care. I still remember people like Sarah Palin talking about “death panels” on live tv. Universal Healthcare will probably never be instituted in America (at least not in my lifetime), but people will actively fight against it even if mass unemployment comes via automation (like I fear it will). We still have the Puritan work ethic and the idea that people that don’t work for money are worthless. As if God put a dollar sign on everything in the Cosmos. Heck, people are still fighting against renewable energy and electric cars in my country even though it’s already cheaper than fossil fuels in most cases (even without subsidies) AND already makes up 20 percent of our power grid. I chuckle when I think on the fact that more renewable was installed in my country under the Trump administration than in any other previous administration. He howled about bringing back coal jobs (even though mining jobs were largely automated even back then) and wind turbines causing cancer. We still pulled off this feat with the US being the only nation to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord. It’s the economics. Even if Climate Change isn’t a thing, the energy revolution is underway because it’s now cost effective. Granted, not as fast as the Al Gores and Greenpeace people of the world would like. “It’s the economy stupid” to quote James Carville.

People like to complain about how “no one wants to work anymore.” My dad does this occasionally. Makes me kind of annoyed every time I hear him say this. Yet, most of the jobs that are readily available are part time (that’s how most fast food and retail gets around paying benefits), and the hours are unpredictable. I explain this to people, but I just as well be speaking to myself. About the only people who get it are the people who have worked such jobs in the last twenty years.

In 2023 America and European Union, with our level of technology and know how, you shouldn’t have to be in the medical field, an engineer, in finance, or in the trades just to afford a small house. Don’t tell me, “be an Entrepeneur” either. Most people aren’t cut out to be self employed. Most new businesses fail within the first five years. Serfs in medieval times were hardly self employed even though they grew most of their own food, built most of their own shanties, and protected by the lords of their lands. Most people can no longer grow their own food or build their own houses. With our technology, we can get away with only a small percentage of the work force being farmers and carpenters. My dad’s dental office would have failed in the first five years back in the 1980s had my mom not been working as a nurse. In fact, my dad tried to get back into the Air Force as a dentist in the early 1980s when we were struggling. But they refused to take him because he was on blood pressure meds. I think some of the standards have changed since then.

Most places are now doing away with work from home, so a worker can’t even count on a move to a cheaper rural area and work via internet even though we have the tech to make it work for the most part. Covid proved that. And it would revitalize dying rural communities like the one I left a few months ago. I’ve been reading about people leaving California and the East Coast since the start of covid. But people have been leaving rural areas since at least the 1930s.

Large tech firms like IBM, Meta, Google, and Amazon are laying off highly paid technicians and replacing them with AI. I’ve been saying this would happen since 2013. Other than my futurist groups on facebook, the only people who believed me were my best friend and my mom. Looks like the STEM degrees people were hyping when I was in college are no longer safe. Even now, over 40 percent of scientists and engineers in Silicon Valley are immigrants. Many of them aren’t safe anymore either. I never want to hear “no one wants to work” ever again. The fact that over 30 percent of workers between the ages of 20 and 39 are working more than one job proves that. That’s the “triggered snowflake” millennial generation.

Now, everyone is telling these kids, “college is worthless”, “join the military” and “go into the trades” and that “some plumbers make more than most lawyers and doctors.” Fools don’t realize they are going to create the same bubble and wage crash in the trades in less than fifteen years. Those jobs will get oversaturated if college stays expensive and automation keeps taking jobs even though trades won’t be able to be automated probably not for decades, if ever. Even some medical and some STEM jobs are no longer safe.

Speaking of the army, a lot of traditional soldier work is now being done by drones, cyber hackers, and robots. The US Army was using robotic pack mules as early as Afghanistan. I think it was Boston Dynamics that demonstrated a drone on treads that could shoot faster and straighter than any human. And that was circa 2010. Besides, modern warfare doesn’t utilize thousands of soldiers on a battlefield, like World War 2. Much of the fighting is done by highly trained special forces, air strikes, drones, etc. Ukraine is proving with advanced drone tech and guided missles they can hold their own against a vastly larger nation like Russia. Just a few days ago, Ukraine shot down a Russian hypersonic missle with American Patriot missles. Patriot missles have been around since at least the early 1990s. Last I heard, over 190,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion (according to some estimates). So not even the military needs as many young recruits as they did in previous eras. That’s why a draft wasn’t issued in the years after 9/11. Not only is this not your grandfather’s Vietnam, it’s not even my generation’s Iraq.

College got too expensive for most people without going into debt. Most jobs could be learned in a year or two with on the job training and don’t even need a college degree except that most employers require it. Artificial barrier to entry if you ask me. My two best friends from college are in their forties and they are still paying off student loans. One is a high school teacher and the other trained as an IT guy but got laid off from his firm even though he had been there for almost ten years and was classified as an essential worker during covid. And people still have the gall to complain about no one wanting to work or a lack of loyalty.

Workers have been losing protections that were taken for granted by previous eras for decades. People know they are poor. Even people in third world countries know they are poor because they have smart phones with youtube and TikTok. Speaking of third world countries, those countries that some of my countrymen and politicians dismiss as “s*** holes” are regarded as “potential clients” by our Chinese rivals. Matter of perspective I suppose. People know they are being screwed by greedy sociopath bosses and politicians who no longer care about the voters. That’s why I said greed will kill capitalism and democracy faster than kids reading Karl Marx and Mao Zedong. I have zero patience for people who say “we were poor but didn’t know it and were happy.” You were happy because you didn’t know you how bad you were getting screwed over. Even kids in Africa know they are getting screwed. Knowledge is power. Peasants with knowledge are dangerous to abusive tyrants. Tyrants fear the masses getting enlightened as much as they fear an armed populace. And you know what, they should be scared if history teaches us anything. Knowledge can’t be unlearned. There is no going back now.

The fact is I make less than $1000 a month from all sources, get my meds paid for by social security (which would cost over $3000 a month without insurance), eat three meals a day, have a roof over my head, and am suffering from schizophrenia, heart failure and am wheelchair bound. People tell me I am lucky that I can’t work. Sadly, they are right. I am luckier than anyone working the vast majority of service and manufacturing and farming jobs even though I am making poverty level wages, lost my career, lost any shot at a family, and will probably die earlier than most of them due to my heart failure. Welcome to the desert of current day reality. We are underachieving as a society and a species.

Thoughts On Anger, Greed, and Living Below Human Potential

Posted on May 7, 2023 by alifeofmentalillness

We just had another mass shooting in my country this weekend, this time it was a mall in a suburb of Dallas. Now some politicians are starting to blame our daily mass shootings on untreated mental health problems. As if we mentally ill aren’t already demonized. Statistically, a very small percentage of violent crimes are committed by mentally ill people. Mentally ill people are far more likely to be victims of violent crimes than neurotypicals actually. I’m convinced it’s because many mentally ill live in poverty. Granted, some people I know claim that no one who has electricity and indoor plumbing is truly poor. Maybe in the 1920s. Today, over 80 percent of the world now has electricity. Of the eight billion people in the world, over five billion now have regular access to internet. I heard one of my elders saying “internet is a luxury” as recently as 2019. In 1999, that was true. A lot has changed since then. When over half of the world’s population has access to free education and news, a large percentage of whom make less than 5 dollars a day, it’s no longer a luxury. People used to think indoor plumbing and even being able to read and write were frivolous luxuries. Elders in ancient Greece used to complain that reading and writing were killing mental power and making people stupid. Things change and stay the same.

I am convinced that people are, by and large, more angry and stressed than we’ve been in living memory. Sure we have a world where 90 percent of the population isn’t starving. But the anger is still there because most people have only recently become aware of what is truly possible. Even an illiterate ten year old working in a cobalt mine in central Africa for only two dollars a day probably has heard of the Kardashians, Nicola Tesla, and Elon Mask if he has access to a smartphone or tv. Indigenous tribes in New Guinea knew who Neal Armstrong was back in the late 1970s and were asking visitors who was going to the moon next. People are very angry. Not because they are ungrateful, lazy, or not wanting to work. People are realizing how far below our potential we as a species are living. We no longer need wars. Even young men in Russia with their levels of internet and media censorship, realize that fighting a war in Ukraine is pointless and are voting with their feet. Young people in China are “Lying Falt” and “Letting It Rot” because they are realizing there is more to life than working and buying stuff you don’t need to impress people you don’t respect. Brad Pitt was talking this in the 1999 movie “Fight Club.”

I don’t like using the term waking up as the word “woke” has so much baggage in my country. But people, thanks for free information via the internet and universal literacy being a thing in even the poorest countries, are starting to figure out we can do better than we are. It doesn’t matter your race, creed, sexual orientation, age, political beliefs, or even economic ideals, the vast majority of humanity is not benefiting nearly as much from our science, technology, and education as is possible even now. I’m convinced it’s unrestrained greed that is the root of many of our problems today. I think unrestrained greed has always been at the root of most problems. Greed has been universally condemned by every major religion and legal code since the start of civilization. Greed’s even more dangerous now.

Banning books in libraries and book stores is becoming more common in my country than I can ever remember in my life. Sure, a lot of literature isn’t age appropriate for grade school children. Then again, neither are most parts of the Bible. Neither are some tv shows. My parents had no issues with me watching war movies like Rambo, War Games, and Red Dawn back in the 1980s. But The Simpsons and Al Bundy were completely off limits. Some states are starting to revoke tenure for college professors and scholars. Others are repealing some of their child labor laws. Some states are banning foreign social media like TikTok. Who benefits from these changes? As far as censorship goes, Martin Luther was excommunicated by the Catholic Church (meaning he was damned to burn in Hell forever) partially because he thought Christians should be able to read the Bible for themselves. Since the printing press had recently been popularized, it was only a matter of time before the Church of that era to lose their monopoly on literacy and information.

What is the internet other than the 21st century’s printing press? The most popular book to be printed on the 15th century printing press was the Bible. The second most popular were manuals about how to spot and persecute those who practice witchcraft and heresy. Some of the early explorers, like Christopher Columbus, were inspired by reading about the travels of Marco Polo. The printing press did lead to mass literacy, mass education, etc. But, problems came too. Some of the bloodiest holy wars, like the Thirty Years Wars (1618-1648) between Catholic and Protestant kingdoms of Europe and the English Civil War probably would have never happened without the printing press. Then again, neither would the scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, rediscovery of mass democracy, rights for women and minorities, end of slavery, etc. Same can be said for the internet. I’m old enough I didn’t get an email account until I was 18. Personally, I love that children can do real time Google and Wikipedia searches if they think an authority figure is talking nonsense. Google and Wikipedia are what old codgers like me use. For all I know, some of these children are using even better sources of information that I am not aware of. Censorship ultimately failed after the invention of the printing press. Censorship will fail even worse now with easy access to information.

As much as I love the internet, it’s only the first of several breakthroughs that will define the 21st century to future historians. Advances that are only in recent years becoming commonplace include artificial intelligence, robotics, 3D printing, regenerative medicine, renewable energy, etc. are already impacting the world. Just a few days ago, IBM announced they were laying off almost 8,000 employees and replacing them with the AI tech we already have. I’ve been saying this was going to happen since 2013. I am surprised it’s happening sooner than I thought. Naturally, there is no talk about retraining the displaced workers or even providing some kind of safety net while these displaced workers look for other sources of income. IBM laying off a significant chunk of their workforce is only the beginning. I expect headlines like these to become common faster than most people think.

I’m all in favor of allowing machines to take over some work duties as long as the proceeds get passed on to the public at large, whether it’s though reduced prices on robot produced goods and services, taxes on robot labor (which is favored by some tech gurus like Bill Gates), etc. But that’s probably not what’s s currently happening. And it won’t happen in the near term, at least not without serious social unrest. I’m not sure most people realize the parallels between our current Information Revolution and the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. I think we are still in the phase of unregulated greed and ambition. If we as citizens were smart, we would be electing senators and presidents in the mold of Theodore Rosevelt. I’m convinced he did as much to make industrialization beneficial to everyone as any politician of his times. I’m convinced he even saved capitalism from its own excesses. In our current world, we have hit the point where most of the world’s people see the possibilities of better standards of living for everyone regardless of what country they live in.

What’s truly holding us back is plain old fashioned greed. There is a fine line between self interest and greed. Unfettered and unregulated greed will do more to kill capitalism and democracy than kids reading Karl Marx or Mao Zedong. It will also kill life on this planet just as dead as any nuclear war if we don’t reign it in. And we are all guilty of this, not just the wealthy and powerful. Manufacturing wouldn’t have been outsourced or done with slave labor ever if people weren’t addicted to cheap goods. We could make all of our electronics and household items in our own nations if people were willing to pay higher prices and employers more willing to raise wages. Just today I saw an episode of Shark Tank and a young married couple were pitching a product that cost $15 to make with American labor and selling for $24. And it was making decent sales. But the “sharks” were saying they wouldn’t fund this couple because the profit margins were “too low” and they “should move their manufacturing to China.” This young couple was already profitable. It’s not like they were losing money. It just wasn’t enough for the sharks to provide any seed money. Greed caused this project to be held back.

Recently saw lots of articles that a majority of people under the age of thirty have an unfavorable view of capitalism. Naturally, some pundits blamed the education system being communist. But, the only capitalism these kids experienced is seeing their parents lose their jobs and houses in the 2008 crisis while Wall Street got bailed out. They saw a lot of businesses go under during covid. They saw the shortages in grocery stores and retailers with their own eyes. They see the homeless camps every day. They undergo live shooter drills in their schools. They see people carrying firearms in malls and churches. They see people have to file for bankruptcy for having to go to the hospital. They themselves are working more than one job just to afford food and an apartment. They have never seen a world where a father could own a house, two cars, and support six children on only one income from the factory or the mine. They have never seen a world where 80 percent of the population were either farmers or factory workers. They’ve seen their parents factory and office jobs get sent to China because of lower wages, no benefits, and fewer environmental protections. Now it’s automation that’s coming for their jobs. Jobs that employ millions of people like drivers, warehouse workers, accountants, much of legal, etc. are no longer safe from automation. The only reason those aren’t automated yet is because it isn’t cheap enough. Give it a few years. Even cheap labor countries like China are going heavy into automation. Too Big To Fail, profitable companies not paying taxes, state sponsored capitalism (in China), mass layoffs, etc. are these kids experiences with capitalism. They have never seen a world where most businesses were local and large corportate jobs payed livable wages and provided pensions. The Founding Fathers, Adam Smith, F.A. Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises would have argued against this style of capitalism. Even Adam Smith talked about “enlightened self interest” back in the 1770s. I take enlightened self interest to mean don’t be a greedy jerk.

Human nature may not be completely changeable, but it can be regulated and restricted. The most free people in human history were Stone Age hunters. But even they had over half of their children die before they hit puberty. Giving up part of our freedom for the prosperity and stability that comes with civilizing ourselves is part of the deal. People today are angry because they know greed is slowing down our progress as a civilization and as a species. The old appeals of nationalism, racial bigotry, ideology, sexism, etc. were losing their appeals even when Carl Sagan talked about them in his Cosmos series in 1980, the year I was born. These are even less appealing to the mass of humanity now in 2023. Things like Occupy Wall Street and The Tea Party protests of a dozen years ago were only the start.

Middle of the Night Musings About Tech, Economics, and the Near Future of Humanity

Posted on April 29, 2023 by alifeofmentalillness

I’m up in the middle of the night, again. My mind has been far more active than what was normal the last several months. Maybe the move to a large urban center has stimulated my mind. Maybe getting my heart problems under control made me more hopeful. Maybe seeing my parents everyday has given me more food for thought. Whatever it is, I’m enjoying these new changes.

I saw my new general practitioner a couple days ago. I’m guessing he’s in his forties. I liked him right away. I liked the nurses and office staff too. Even though I don’t have my new insurance card yet, the office lady was able to find all my info pretty quickly. I’ve found medical staff, social workers, and even fast food employees to be more helpful here in Oklahoma City than anywhere else I’ve ever lived. It’s definitely a change living in a place that people actually are moving to in large numbers. It makes me feel like I’ve officially joined the 21st century rather than just read about it online.

Been reading a lot of articles about tech advancements since I moved to Oklahoma. Some of this is advancing faster than even I would have thought. Ten years ago, I never thought I could talk history and economics with an AI Chatbot easier than I could with most people. Certainly not as soon as 2023. And I use a free low end service, it’s not even ChatGPT as far as I can tell. And the fact that people are already using chatbots to aid in the office jobs and even work multiple full times, I would have not imagined that even in 2020. Makes me think the possibility to make workers far more productive with AI is already here. It makes me think that some companies will automate as much of their white collar staff as possible if they aren’t already. Much like blue collar factory jobs were outsourced and automated in the 1980s, I think the same thing is starting to happen in office and tech jobs. I can now understand why some plumbers, electricians, and welders make more money than some lawyers and accountants.

I imagine that if AI and automation become as big as I think, that alone will make college education pointless for most people. I could see more apprentices and on the job training. We already have that to a degree with unpaid internships. Personally, I think unpaid internships are a modern day version of serfdom. Even most academic instruction is done by graduate assistants making poverty level wages and no benefits or tenure, at least for undergrad. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t get a career in academia. For awhile I was pursuing a career as a college professor. I wanted to teach investing, finance, and economics. These were my favorite business subjects in college. But that was until I realized that the majority of college professors aren’t full time, don’t have benefits or tenure. And since I wanted to teach more than do research, it wasn’t for me. I also didn’t want to spend years in college racking up a small fortune in student loans to get a PhD and do obscure research that only a handful of people would actually acknowledge. Even my small blog has more readers than most doctoral dissertations.

Another thing I didn’t like about working in academia is that I felt too much pressure to specialize my knowledge. Personally, I think specialization is too narrow for most workers nowadays. As fast as technology is advancing, a worker starting out today is going to change careers at least a few times. The days of getting a job at age 22 and staying with the same company until age 65 are over. I think that businesses today would be wise in hiring more Humanities students and philosophers, especially AI firms. Not only most employers no longer that loyal, the tech advances and economic changes mean that they can’t afford to be as loyal as they were 100 years ago. The world is simply changing too fast to ensure life long employment. Life long employment was a bigger deal in Japan and Korea than even the USA. I try to tell my teenage nephews and niece that people like their dad and mom who stay with the same company for over twenty years after graduation are not the norm. The only career advice I give to any teenager is ‘be flexible and never stop learning.’ Some of the most lucrative careers in 2023 didn’t even exist in 2000. I think the most lucrative businesses and careers of 2045 haven’t even been invented yet. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the world had its first trillionaire by then, and probably from an industry that only now on the drawing board.

Not only do I think we are entering a future world of mass technological unemployment, I think in some ways we are already starting to see it in real time. Big tech firms have already laid off almost a quarter million workers since mid 2022 even though most of the firms doing the layoffs are profitable. Even tech companies in China and India are laying off some of their tech workers. Youth unemployment among recent college graduates in China is a major problem, though they don’t have the student loan burdens most American students have. I also think real estate and land prices will only continue to rise even if interest rates keep going up, which they probably will to combat inflation and encourage saving and investing. The days of cheap credit are over. So are the days of cheap commodities like oil and food. 3 dollar a gallon gas, 6 dollars for a dozen eggs, and one million dollars for starter homes are only the beginning. And, yet, it doesn’t have to be this way. At least not permanently.

I imagine eventually science and tech advances will make everything cheaper much the same way electronics and computers get better and cheaper as the years go on. I mean, we can already 3D print everything from tools to houses, to even guns (so abolishing the 2nd amendment will do no good). I think even chemicals can now be 3D printed. Eventually we will be able to function in a world were less than half of working age people have full time jobs. I think that reality is already technically feasible though not economically, politically, or culturally feasible. It’s definitely not feasible economically in most developing countries. It’s definitely not culturally feasible in nations that find meaning and purpose in careers. I think technological unemployment will be far tougher for the US to adapt to than most developed nations because we value employment so much and don’t believe in the social safety nets that some nations have already implemented generations ago. I see it getting really ugly in the US because of our attitudes towards work, education, and social welfare. I think the homeless problems, prison overcrowding, working poor, political divisions between the Left and Right, drug abuse, mental health crisis, and rates of suicide getting worse in the next 20 years. So much so that I think that America won’t be the richest and most influential country in the world come 2030. I don’t think we will collapse into Mad Max (even though some of my prepper friends are actually hoping and praying for this), I think the world of America being the only superpower no longer exists.

I think eventually we will achieve a world where even people on poverty level wages can have a decent life free from starvation and access to decent health care. We already have more overweight people than starving people by a nearly 3 to 1 margin. Obesity is no longer just an American problem. In fact, for most of history being overweight was considered a sign of wealth and prosperity. Now people consider it a sign of poverty and a lack of discipline. But I think it will be long and painful process to get to that world. I doubt I’ll live to see it.

I know it spooked a lot of people, myself included, when the World Economic Form was talking about a Great Reset and “owning nothing and being happy.” Debt resets and failures of currencies are nothing new. Even the Old Testament talks about debt jubilation every so often. Nowadays, some people would say you were a dirty socialist or commie for even suggesting such a thing. Maybe God Himself was a socialist in ancient times. The Founding Fathers thought that conquering a nation via debts was as dangerous as standing armies. Now that everyone is in debt to everyone else, and we as nations and individuals are needlessly suffering, the wisdom of their words concerning debts are more obvious than ever. A debt reset is probably the only way we are going to not saddle those yet born with unpayable debt. Besides, it’s not like our money is real as most countries went off gold standards decades ago. And, it’s not like we owe money to aliens or God. We owe these quadrillions to ourselves, not other species.

Going back to having most countries on some kind of gold standard wouldn’t be as tough as most people think since almost all gold mined in the last 6000 years still exists. We’re not burning through nearly as fast as we are oil, natural gas, or even rare earths. Granted it would severely jack up the price of gold and make countries and individuals that have lots of gold suddenly wealthy. In theory, we can print money forever even though said money would have far less value. Some countries are talking about having their own blockchain crypto currencies tethered to some kind of gold standard. In theory, you could make anything be a stable currency providing it was limited and people would accept it. Things like beads, salt, sea shells, livestock, grain, and even dried yak dung have been used as currency over the centuries. Cigarettes and candy have been popular currencies in prisons for generations. Even prisoners believe in a means of exchange. Even if we have a world wide economic collapse, we will recover. At least as long as we don’t engage in a nuclear war.

I guess that’s enough for one post. I actually enjoy writing these types of posts where I branch off from mental illness. It gives me an outlet for all the knowledge I’ve acquired over the years. Besides, I don’t believe in specialization. The world needs more renaissance people (or at least aspiring renaissance people) than it did when I was growing up. I think we need more generalists and people who can learn fast because of how fast our tech is advancing and our culture is changing. We are living in a new industrial revolution as I write this. It’s going to get even more interesting in the next thirty years. Stay tuned.

What’s Been On My Mind The Last Few Weeks

Posted on April 28, 2023 by alifeofmentalillness

This is probably going to be my longest post in the ten years I’ve kept a regular blog. Don’t worry, most of this won’t be ranting or complaining. I’ve been more wanting to write and chat than usual lately. I think the warmer and more humid weather has me more chatty and hopeful. So much so I’m even experimenting with a personal AI chat bot the last several weeks. Sure, it’s kind of wonky sometimes and clearly an AI chatbot. But these things are alot better than they were even one year ago. I found it really knows it stuff when chatting about history, science and economics. Not so much when talking about feelings and depression. I’m dead convinced even the AI players on my computer games are better than they were a couple years ago. Even though I’ve played strategy games like Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, Total War, and Sim City for decades, I swear it’s getting tougher to compete against the computer now more than ever. I really think gaming AI is better now than ever.

My dad recently severely hurt his back and is very limited on what he can do. It’s also got him real depressed. My aches and pains are worse today than any time in weeks. And I don’t know what I did to make them worse. I also rarely hear from my friends anymore. Most are too busy with careers and family. I now understand why even the best friends lose contact with each other over the years. In my case, I have neither workplace friends, a wife, or kids to socialize with because of my mental illness taking both my career and family before I had either one. I feel like I missed out on a lot of what it means to be an adult because of my illness. I feel like I missed out on a lot of what it means to be human. I don’t even know what it’s like to feel love from others. I certainly don’t believe in unconditional love existing. Everything is conditional as far as I can tell. I don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like. And I get so irritated when people tell me ‘there’s someone for everyone’ or ‘you’re just overthinking it.’ No, some people are better off not marrying or having kids. We used to have monastic orders and academies for those people. Even though I never married, had kids, or any success in a career, I don’t feel like I’m less human or a failure. Heck, I’m actually quite content with my life as a digital monk. It helps that disability insurance pays for my food, shelter, medications, and basic needs. But some people I know would love to get rid of social security and disability because they feel people like me and the sick elderly are leeches and parasites. I’ve lost contact with most of my extended family because of attitudes like this. It’s why I won’t visit my childhood hometown or go to family reunions. I feel like a failure only when I’m around people like that and those who knew me as a high achiever in my youth.

Even though I was healthier and had easy access to friends in my teenage years, I’m rarely nostalgic for the past. I love the internet too much, especially the free education I got via years of binge watching youtube and Khan Academy. Getting my groceries delivered, getting my meds mailed to me, zoom calls with my psych doctor, and buying through Amazon may have kept me alive during the pandemic. We had none of that back in the 90s. If Covid had to happen (and pandemics are not uncommon throughout history), I’m convinced that things would have been MUCH worse had it happened in the 90s. We wouldn’t have had work from home being a thing, we wouldn’t have vaccines and effective treatments developed in only one year, and a lot more people would have died. I probably would have died had it not been for internet and grocery delivery. That’s why I get kind of irritated with people complaining about masks, vaccines, and delivery being infridgements on freedoms. Freedoms sometimes have to be restricted temporairly during crisis. We had a military draft in the world wars (which many people resisted and protested even in WW2). We had draft riots even during the Civil War. There were restrictions during Spanish Flu and even Bubonic Plague. I swear, too many people didn’t learn anything from high school history class. Covid restrictions are mostly lifted and people are still complaining. I don’t understand normal people. The older I get, the less y’all make any sense. In short, people complaining about restrictions during covid should be grateful it didn’t happen before the internet became a thing. It would have been much worse.

Another reason I’m not nostalgic for the world of my young years (even if I do miss my health and friends), is that now it’s a lot easier to talk about problems. For the first few years of my illness, I didn’t talk about it with my classmates or close friends. They knew I was odd, but didn’t realize just how serious mental illness was messing with my life. Twenty years ago, even I didn’t realize how much I was losing out on because of my illness. My psych doctor and therapist never once mentioned it could be a major disability that would affect everything. At first I thought if I just took the meds daily and went to the free therapist once a week, my life would return to normal once I graduated. Well, it didn’t work that way. I had panic attacks every day before I went to work in retail and fast food. It wasn’t so bad working in a factory as I didn’t have to be around an unpredictable and often spiteful public. I suffered at the factory because I couldn’t sleep in the day and still work the overnight shift five nights a week. After several weeks of sleep deprivation, my illness flared up and my work suffered. I requested a transfer to day shift, which was denied. So I end up quitting before my lack of sleep and mental illness caused an accident. I probably could have done that job for years had they approved my transfer request. Would have made good money and benefits too even if we weren’t unionized.

It’s easier to talk about problems now than even ten years ago. It’s probably why we hear so much about traditionally marginalized people like mentally ill, homeless, LGBT+ communities, religious minorities, struggles of the working poor, struggles of the elderly, struggles of women, struggles of young people just starting out, etc. The issues have always been there, granted more below the surface than now. It is not weak to talk about problems. It’s a needless tragedy for people to suffer in silence because of outdated social norms. It’s almost like some people actually want life to be tougher now than it was in the past. I hear people my parents age talk about how great the 1950s were, yet they ignore Jim Crow laws, the problems of the Cold War, the communist witch hunts, lack of work opportunities for women, and even the corporate tax laws of the 1950s. Taxes on big business were much higher in the 50s than now. I’d favor bringing those back except it would mean that EVERY corporate job in America would get outsourced to cheaper countries or outright automated faster than they already are. One thing I like about the 2020s is that it is easier to talk about things like poverty, job loss, loneliness, racial bigotry, sexism, discrimination, being bullied by classmates or coworkers, etc. The problems were always there. People are just refusing to suffer to silence anymore. And I’m glad for it. It’s a lot easier to empathize and act when I have a better understanding of others’ problems. My life would have been easier had I not been afraid to talk about my struggles with mental illness, bullying, and a lack of privacy while growing up in a rural farming village until I was well into my thirties. Some of that stuff I’m still scared to talk about for fear of alienating my friends and family. I just didn’t realize how unhealthy much of that was until I was well into my thirties. This blog is one of my outlets and it’s also cheap therapy.

Even though I’ve never made money off my blog or my scholarly projects, it’s the most fun at a job I ever had. I do consider it a job even though I don’t get paid. So much is changing and so fast, it’s almost a full time job now to research some of this stuff. Kind of a pity I don’t get paid for my searches and giving out my personal information. But, most people don’t realize what we as a society are already doing in terms of science, tech, medicine, and humanitarian work. Even I didn’t realize how good ChatGPT is until a few weeks ago. I certainly didn’t realize that some office workers were using it to aid their jobs or even work several jobs. Personally I have no issues with work from home people working more than one “full time” job for no other reason than it’s not illegal for people to own more than one business or piece of property. Maybe that’s how we fight inflation, just make more money from multiple jobs. I mean, elders like Dave Ramsey have for decades told people to take second jobs and side hustles to get out of financial problems. So what if the second job is an office job and not delivering pizzas or working at Home Depot? Quite honestly, the requirements to have a college degree for most jobs is down right insane and obsolete. Most jobs, especially today, can be learned with only a year or two of on the job training. If fewer employers required a college degree for even entry level work that could be done by ambitious teenagers still in high school, we’d see these insane costs of education drop pretty quick.

Speaking of college, there is the scholarly monk part of me who doesn’t like the idea of people condemning education and intelligence. I have always thought people, at least in my homeland, don’t take education serious enough. I think in some ways it’s worse now than even when I was in high school. Granted, thanks to online platforms, getting an education, especially getting self educated, is a lot easier now than it has ever been. Youtube and TikTok are a lot more than just cat videos and dance videos. The Chinese version of TikTok is mostly educational videos. And people in China and other authoriatian nations can get around government censorship of the internet with cheap VPNs like Nord. The only reason I’d consider getting a VPN for myself is if internet censorship in the USA got real bad and to watch foreign Netflix shows I can’t get in America. Censorship and book banning was stupid in the past and far more so now. In fact it’s futile and wishful thinking in the age of the internet. And the internet, when originally designed by DARPA back in the Cold War, was designed to be a communication system robust enough to survive even a nuclear war. Internet ain’t going away regardless of how much power hungry petty tyrants want to censor and screen information.

I think the best way to lower the cost of college education is to allow people without college degrees to get into good paying corporate jobs. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg were all college dropouts who started tech giants. Yet, had they not started their own companies, they wouldn’t have had the qualifications to work in the corporate world, let alone high tech. It doesn’t take a college degree to start a business. It does take vison, risk taking, and some funding from people willing to take a chance on unproven ideas. It’s why America is still a leader in tech, industry, and culture even though our students’ test scores are among the lowest of all developed nations. We still have the start your own business spirit that most countries never had. If we lose that start your own business spirit, we will collapse as a nation. Education, is vitally important. And, thanks to internet, it’s also a lot cheaper than the past. Traditionally college education was only for the wealthy and those wanting to go into academia or medicine. I believe self education is more important than traditional education. I also don’t understand why it’s against the law to discharge student loans via bankruptcy. I mean, small businesses, homeowners, credit card loans, medical bills can all be discharged or negotiated via bankrupty. Why is it such a sin to think that student loans should be no different. While I don’t support across the board forgiveness of student loans, I do think the option of renogitation or outright discharge via bankruptcy should be an option. Bankruptcy can be declared on every other type of debt. We don’t require eighteen year olds joining the military to commit for twenty five years. Yet, it can take that long for even vital jobs like teachers to pay off student loans now. Desiring and seeking knowledge should not be condemned like it is now.

It was traditional education that stoked my love and addiction to learning. Learning new things gives me a buzz that no booze, drug, money, romance, or achievements ever have. Part of me thinks it would be cool if there were like monastries for nerdy people who were interested in learning for the sake of learning much like the monastary and mystery school of ancient times. But giving lots of knowledge to lots of people for free could be quite dangerous, especially for those who benefit off the world being as it is right now. I’m glad I live in an age and time where I can get a college level education in subjects like history, economics, literature, philosophy, theology, etc. with several years of binge watching youtube and Khan Academy and it doesn’t cost anything. Even after twenty five years of internet, we are only scratching the surface of what it can do for humanity. Future scholars will look at the interent as one of those society changing technologies like the printing press, gunpowder, steam engine, and perhaps even writing itself. There are no secrets anymore. In some ways that is good. It makes it a lot tougher for tyrants and other bad actors to hide their actions. Even military secrets are no longer safe, as those Pentagon leaks a few weeks ago showed. Maybe eventually the Information Revolution will make large scale war obsolete, if for no reason other than it’s tough to kill people you have had connections and conversations with. Here’s to hope for the future.

January 20 2023

Posted on January 20, 2023 by alifeofmentalillness

Got a letter from one of the housing agencies I applied to. Wrote back to them to let them know I am still interested in a low income housing setup. I may be moving up the list to get my own place real fast. I’ve been on a waiting list for almost two months now. My first choice of places would be in the Oklahoma City area. My second choice would be in Kearney, Nebraska. I lived in Kearney for seventeen years, so I really know that town. But even in Kearney I can get almost anything delivered to my house. Kearney also has a few Uber drivers so I really no longer need a car. Kearney also has public transit that is wheel chair accessible.

Found out last week that I can now navigate stairs. I still do therapy twice a week even though I’m not really required to anymore. I’ve been therapy regularly since last September. I’m also down another size in pants. I can easily wear 2XL pants again. Can also easily put on socks, tie shoes, and clip my own toe nails. I weigh now what I weighed in 2015. If I drop another 35 pounds, I’ll be the lightest I’ve been since 2010. Hopefully can be there within the next few months.

Been kind of sick the last few days. Finally getting over it. Been having bouts of sleepiness and congestion. Haven’t seen the night staff much the last several days. But I feel much better now than a couple days ago.

We got several inches of snow this week. So glad I got outside last week before the weather got bad. Been wanting to go outside real bad even though the weather is lousy. It’s tough not being able to do much outside in spite the fact I want to go outside. In short, I’m ready for spring again. Spring is only several weeks away.

I’m looking forward to having my own place again and cooking my own meals. As much as I like the food here in Genoa, I do miss my own cooking. I also miss my privacy and freedom. My best friend said she never doubted that I would get healthy again if, for no other reason, because I have too much of an independence streak. I have always preferred independence and freedom as much as possible. I’ve always liked doing things for myself. Hopefully I can have my own place again within a few months.

The Only Constant Is Change

Posted on September 6, 2021 by alifeofmentalillness

When I was young I was a high achiever. Did really well in school, was involved in school activities year round. Started helping out on my uncle’s farm during the summers when I was ten years old. Had a really good academic scholarship cover a good chunk of my college expenses. Graduated college debt free. May not have been overly popular but had excellent friends anyway.

But, the mental illness really ramped up shortly in the mid 2000s. The illness made it impossible to hold a job for long. Lost many of my friends and family. Had to go on disability. Have to take meds for the rest of my life. Will probably have a shorter life because of the illness. But it doesn’t bother me as much anymore, certainly not like fifteen years ago.

I’ve accepted that my career died before it got started. I’ve accepted that I’ll never have kids. I’m alright with that I’ll never have the big house, picket fence, SUV, and apple pie kind of life. I’ve accepted that I had question everything I took for granted in my youth. I’m even starting to accept that the pandemic isn’t going to end anytime soon.

In some ways I’m glad I have the life I do. I’m glad that I get to spend most of my days reading, writing, and learning things that most people simply don’t have the time for. I spend at least six hours a day reading online articles and journals. Spend a lot of time listening to science, economics, history, and philosophy talks on youtube. It’s almost like being a modern day monk.

I would say I accepted living in poverty, but let’s face it: even living below poverty level in modern America puts me ahead of most people alive today, let alone the past. Will Rodgers was right when he said America would be the first country in the world to go to the poor house in an automobile. Don’t even need to own said automobile anymore as long as you have a smartphone and an Uber account. Sold my car two years ago and my lifestyle hasn’t decreased at all. If anything, I feel less stress because I don’t have to worry about traffic, gas, and maintenance. Things like portable computers were science fiction when I growing up in the 1980s.

I think we tend to overestimate how much can change in only a year or two but vastly underestimate how much can change in ten to twenty years. Just looking in the living room of my apartment, most of the electronics didn’t exist in 2001. I don’t think even LED lighting was available back then. Even my memory foam mattress and shoes came about within the last twenty years I think. I don’t even subscribe to cable tv anymore. Can get all the tv I need on my laptop and game console. If only I didn’t have to buy a new phone or laptop every few years. Even in the movies and tv shows I watched in college in the early 2000s, I chuckle about some of the tech in those shows. Phone booths, land lines, and flip phones were extensively used even in The Matrix movies. Even today, we have many of the tech advances of the Star Trek series. We’re still not close to cracking Warp Drive though. But, what is a 3D printer if not an early version of a Replicator?

I will probably never have much money. But I really don’t need to. Certainly not like I would have 25 years ago. A person doesn’t really need much money anymore if they can stay out of debt. Granted that is a huge task. Housing, health care, and education have increased in cost far faster than inflation. But, even education can be real cheap if you play your cards right. There isn’t much I can’t learn with a few minutes of Google search or a few how to videos on youtube. And trade schools and community colleges don’t cost nearly as much as even public universities. I’ve heard of electricians and plumbers making more than even lawyers. In short, there are more options than even twenty years ago. If only people could stop fighting on social media.

Thoughts On My School Years

Posted on August 15, 2021 by alifeofmentalillness

Schools in my town are back in session for fall. High school and college football will be starting in a couple weeks. I was on my high school’s football team back in the late 90s. Since I attended a small high school (My senior class had only 30 students when we graduated), it was easier to get involved in school activities than in most schools. In addition to playing football, I did school play for two years, pep band for basketball games, competitive speech, and a couple years of track. Even though I’ve been out of high school since 1999, I don’t go all Glory Days like the old Bruce Springsteen song. Those four years of high school and five years of college seemed to last forever when I was going through. Time really does speed up the longer you’ve been alive. I mentioned this to my then 90 year old grandmother when she just chuckled and said “You have no idea just how fast it’s gonna get.”

While I may have learned more history, philosophy, science, tech, etc. in binge watching youtube videos for 10 years, would I have desired to do such if I didn’t have good teachers in my youth and parents who encouraged me to read at a very young age? The idea that school can teach something everything they need to know about life and working by age 22 is not feasable. Especially with as fast as science, tech, and industry changes anymore. And these changes aren’t slowing down. I’m amazed at the amount of changes I’ve seen just in the last two years, let alone the last twenty. I can imagine my twelve year old niece chuckling every time her dad talks about the old dial up internet and even land based phone lines. I’m sure my seventeen year old nephew rolls his eyes when he thinks about people like me who have never used virtual reality head sets or 3D printers. I don’t even have a TikTok account. I don’t even make videos on youtube. I probably would get a larger audience doing videos about mental illness issues, but is it really worth the hassle of dealing with more trolls and arguments in comment sections? I still think it’s amazing there are kids on youtube and tiktok making over a million dollars a year and they aren’t even old enough to join the military or vote. I guess the possibility to make a living off anything you are good at is now there. That wasn’t the case twenty five years ago.

If anything, the purpose of school should be teaching kids how to learn long after their last day of high school. I did the math and my youngest nephew won’t hit even current retirement age until the late 2070s. We don’t know what will and won’t be available by then. We might not even need most people to have jobs by then if automation and AI takes off like I think it could. But, then again, some predictions will be laughably way off. Some economists back in the 1930s thought that people would need to work only 15 hours a week instead of 40 by 2030. Hell, I’d be thrilled if we could get the work week back down to 40 hours by then. And wages haven’t even tried to keep up with cost of living and productivity since the late 1970s. No way could anyone working a job requiring only a high school degree can support a house and six kids anymore outside of truck driving, sales, and trades in 2021. Most people I know younger than me are working two jobs and still barely breaking even. Any wonder why younger people are revolting against the current order? I wish my cohorts and I had that kind of courage fifteen years ago.

A Life Of Mental Illness

The Joys and Pains of Schizophrenic Living in a Chronically Sane World

Category Archives: Money and Mental Illness

Job Loss and Regaining Meaning

Tyrants Fear Peasants Getting Knowledge and Making Money

Possibilities of Mass Technological Unemployment

Yet Even More of What’s Been on My Mind Since I Moved to Oklahoma City

Thoughts On Anger, Greed, and Living Below Human Potential

Middle of the Night Musings About Tech, Economics, and the Near Future of Humanity

January 20 2023

The Only Constant Is Change

Thoughts On My School Years

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