“Freedom” is a marketing scam

“Freedom” “Equality” and “Social Justice” are ad copy. It’s marketing speak. It sounds good because each person can interpret it to mean whatever they already wanted. As a matter of objective goals, or concrete possibilities, the ideas are vaporware, incoherent nonsense, and so much wasted breath.

“America is a Free country!” The patriot shouts. Lol, dude. When did it become cool to quote marketing campaigns un-ironically? Are you gonna “just do it?” Gimme a break of that kit kat bar before you do. America’s not “Free” unless “Free” means “contains an uncountable plethora of restrictions, both formal and informal, and also a >30% tax rate.”

“We’re all Equal in America.” Really? That’s great news for my short cousin. Kinda sucks for all those NBA players though. Oh you didn’t mean equal physically, mentally, spiritually, or socially. Not equal in any of those important ways. You just meant… what exactly? We’re all treated equally before the law? Yeah…. No we’re not. Rich people get off. I’m not complaining, I’m rich. I’m just saying.

Don’t even get me started on how retarded “freedom of speech” is.

“Liberty and Justice For All.” Pick one.

“Don’t Tread On Me.” Why not? You’re a rebel. You deserve the boot.

“Freedom Is Not Free.” What? Did anyone think it was? I dont even know what people think they mean when they say this one.

“Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death.” The hangman’s not busy, step on up sir.

“United We Stand.” Except for on every single election day, and also during those years of horrific bloody civil war.

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public school

sending ur kid to publik skool is child abuse

(often literally, in many unfortunate cases.)

specially if the kid is a gurl

basically just aksing to turn ur gurl into a whore

how many non-fat girls graduate public high school with their virginity intact?

and its not liek these teachers know what the hell they are doing. sure there are a few good ones hidden among the rabble.

But. on average, just ask yoursefl, who would be better at teaching your kids?

some 26 year old bimbo fresh outta college?

or

the loving mother of your children, who has known them their whole lives?

mhm. thats what I thot

—

just bc u had good experience is not good data

its anecdotal

gotta run the numberz

what % of non-homeschooled christian kids remain christian as a young adult?
that is the most important Q

and it is not a high number

in my family we WERE homeskulled through 5th grade and still 33% quit christianity

plus I defected to the true church (parents were prot and I became Catholic)

which mom+dad were not happy about

so just imagine what would have happened if we had been brainwashed in publik skool for the whole time.

—

i would consider it acceptable to send ur kid to an all boys/all girls christian private school under certain conditions as a replacement to homeschool, but that aint cheap.

personal finance

I wrote this as an email to my brother but I figured it would fit nicely on here as well.

This is a TL;DR guide to personal finance, for the newly graduated college kid.

The goal of this guide is to give you the freedom to choose what to do with your life.
The freedom to choose where to live, what kind of work you want to do, and even whether to work or not at all. More money, more options. It doesn’t automatically make you happier. It just gives you more choices.
The minimum length of your working career is entirely determined by one variable: your SAVINGS RATE.
SAVINGS RATE = (after tax earnings – spending) / after tax earnings
 
The average American savings rate is 6% which results in a minimum 62 year working career.

My savings rate is 63% which results in a minimum 11.3 year working career

I started working at 22, so I will retire by age 33 or earlier.

If you want to retire early, get your savings rate up.
Savings rate has two components: spending and earnings
SPENDING
 
Don’t spend all your money, duh. Get a little self control. Spending money on dumb stuff like a $5 coffee every day ADDS UP (over 10 years of buying every weekday = $13.2k SPENT. When you include compounding returns @ 5% you could have earned, it costs you $17k). And, more importantly, it doesn’t really have much of an effect on your overall happiness. Real happiness comes from God, family, friends, and physical health, in that order. No wonder Americans aren’t very happy.
List of ways to not waste money, in no particular order:
  • live with roommates. housing is a huge expense
  • drive less. Gas, tires, insurance, repairs, stress, obesity. All these costs rise with every mile you drive. see about living close to work to reduce this
  • cook your own food. eating out is expensive(over time). McDonalds costs 2-4x more than if you just made your own dinner. Get a crock pot. It takes no skill to make delicious meals.
  • Pay off your debt. It takes no skill, and you get a guaranteed return on investment.
  • use a cheap cell phone plan. You probably don’t need unlimited data. I use Republic Wireless http://republicwi.re/2AGQkAS
  • pick a high deductible health plan. It’s cheaper and encourages you to take care of yourself and not visit the doctor.
  • dont get a personal trainer. not worth it. working out is easy to do for free. run, calisthenics, join a rec sports club. or pay a cheap $40/mo for a gym membership.
  • dont buy a new car. good car buying advice
  • dont pay for cable. lol have you heard of the internet? it has everything.
  • cultivate entertainment habits and hobbies that are cheap/free. hiking, sports, brewing your own beer, building things, playing board games, etc.
  • Use a good cashback card. NEVER EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES KEEP A BALANCE ON YOUR CARD. pay it off every month.
  • Use a cheap investment broker
The whole mrmoneymustache.com blog is a good source of information on not wasting money.
EARNING
 
A job is not a good way to earn money, because it takes up a lot of your time, and has fixed/limited upside. We (mostly) all need to do it for a while, but in most cases you’re better off on your own, unless you can really climb that corporate ladder and make real bonus money. Otherwise, be sure to negotiate as much salary as possible. Ask for a raise. It doesn’t hurt to ask. Don’t be a coward about it.
Real earning comes from ownership. Own productive assets that earn you money while you sleep. The absolute easiest way to do this is to buy low cost mutual funds and ETFs like VNQ VYM VIG SPY DIA. Don’t know what an ETF is? Read this, you absolutely DO need to know what this is.
Simplest investing advice possible:
Every month, dump your excess savings into your investment account and buy more shares of your broad market-tracking ETF of choice. It doesn’t super matter which you pick. Never sell. Stock market crashed and you lost 50% of your savings? DO NOT SELL. Either the world is ending or its not. If it is, the money wont help you, so don’t waste your time selling, or the world is not ending, and selling now is a terrible idea, since in a few years they’ll be back above where they were.
The most high power/go-big strategy for earning is to start your own company. If you want to do this, do it. It’s a lot of work though. Most people aren’t cut out for it.
A middle of the road strategy for earning is to do your own investment research and try to beat the market average returns. This is very difficult, but can be done. If you are interested in doing this, prepare to waste a lot of money learning before you actually do figure it out.
CLOSING POINTS
 
Your basic money flow should be this:
Paycheck – basic necessities = savings
savings => ETF investments each month.
you can retire when your investments are worth 25x your annual spending. Or not, whatever floats your boat.

Are men jerks?

If you haven’t read John C Wright’s On the Sexual Nature of Man, then you should. He’s a good writer, and makes many good points. In the essay he’s discussing the Sexual Revolution, which obviously, any idiot can see has been an utter disaster for the ability of normal men and women to form families. However, one point of his essay stuck in my mind. “4.4 MEN ARE JERKS”

…females have been disadvantaged, exploited, and betrayed by the lusts of men since the dawn of time, and men seek to keep women in a position of weakness, to rob them of their natural rights, because both masculine indifference and masculine ego urges them to do so.

He advances the idea that men spawned the Sexual Revolution, because we wanted to get in women’s pants, because we are naturally sexually immoral, because we “are jerks.”

In contrast is the standard manosphere wisdom, endlessly spouted by Rollo, that the Feminine Imperative is the cause; that the Sexual Revolution was women freeing themselves from the restraints on their sexuality so they could pursue alpha bad boys and ride the carousel.

These ideas seem contradictory to me. Which is right?

Obviously, many men are actually jerks, and will take actions that harm women for their own sexual pleasure. Obviously, many women freely choose to ride the carousel and love to pursue alpha bad boys.

It might be typical intellectualizing to say it, but it seems like this is a matter of more complexity than mere “men are jerks” or “women are feral.” I think both are true, and at play in different ways.

Rich and powerful men loved and encouraged the Sexual Revolution, since it gave them free reign, since they were the alphas that the women would flock to. And these men successfully sold the lie to the majority of normal beta dudes that the sexual revolution would be good for them too, since it fans a man’s pride to be told that he’s an alpha. Alphas said to the betas, “You’re an alpha too. You’ll get to have tons of wild sex if we can just throw off this old ball and chain of Matrimony.” And the betas ate that shit up. Turns out though, that all betas can really manage is a series of unstable short-term relationships with alpha widows, followed by a 10 year marriage to a girl who is about to hit the wall, then a soul-crushing divorce, and finally some fentanyl to wash it all down. “Hey, at least you got laid.” says the ever-growing incel population.

So, yes, some men really are jerks. But, no, the Sexual Revolution is not to the advantage of the majority of men.

What about the ladies? Instead of alphas/betas, I divide women into married/unmarried. In the case of the ladies, despite not having personally lived through the sexual revolution, I think it’s pretty clear that the majority of the married women were not participants or proponents of “Free Love.” It’s the young and sexually powerful single ladies who broke the monopoly price of marriage before sex. Why? Were they just horny? Maybe some were. But I bet for a lot of the now-bitter cat ladies who helped to ruin society by destroying our sexual mores the calculus was a lot more rational. At the time of the Sexual Revolution, there were many more women of marrying age than men. Go look it up. This creates a scarcity of attractive men to marry. So how’s your 6.5 hotness normal girl to compete? Settle for a beta? No way! Instead, if she just sluts it up a bit, she can steal the attention of an alpha chad, and then try to insinuate herself in his life until she wears him down and he marries her. Sexual availability is a competition strategy. Of course, it’s not a wise strategy, but it does in fact often succeed in getting a girl the temporary attention of an alpha. The really hot single women, the 9s and 10s, didn’t need to do this. They already had the attention of alphas. They could make em wait. It’s only with the increased competition from their uglier sisters that they too feel the squeeze and decide to start putting out earlier.

So basically, I think it was the bottom cute-but-not-really-hot girls combining forces with the top men to force the rest of society to give up on prudent sexual mores and destroy the fertility and maintainability of Western Civilization. Thanks guys and girls. You both suck.

Translation from IYI speak

Hate on Taleb all you want but “Intellectual-yet-idiot” is a good phrase. I recently read this quotation:

The state becomes overrun by rent-seeking interests and a depoliticized managerial politics, while citizens relapse into a kind of apathetic and hedonistic privacy, dominated by consumerism and a consumerist approach to political life. At a certain point, however, the thinness of the regime’s claim to loyalty, and the accelerating pace and increasing burdens of relentless creative destruction, jointly become intolerable. The sheer plasticity and restless liberationism of the regime exceed the populace’s appetite for freedom, and a kind of rebellion against the principles of the regime itself will occur. The populace craves the return of “strong gods” (in R. R. Reno’s phrase) and summons them. It is not impossible to discern the beginnings of such a process in our own era, as Reno indeed does. The economic-technical state ultimately turns out to be self-undermining, because it rests upon a defective psychology and anthropology.

Which is from Vermeule. This is really insightful, but also written terribly. Uses big words all over the place just to make the author sound smart. Dumb. Talk like a guy, not a mewling IYI. Here is my translation:

The government gets taken over by greedy, lazy people who merely want money for nothing, and a permanent, unelected bureaucracy that is not tied to elections or political parties. At the same time, citizens sink into selfish, uncaring thrill-seeking–smoke weed, fap, and play vidya all day every day–where their primary concerns are with consuming the next hit, the next game, the next film, the next bitch, whatever. As this goes on, the people’s loyalty to the government becomes weaker, since there is no overriding reason or purpose to motivate self-sacrifice or loyalty. Also, the ability of people to sustain themselves in a normal job slowly disappears, as regulation, robots, and illegals increasingly eat up available normal-IQ jobs. eventually normal people get fed up with these two forces (shrinking loyalty and shrinking job/life prospects). America gives us freedom good and hard and suddenly we realize that we have too much of it. 50 million genders, but no wife. We realize that maybe “freedom” isn’t intrinsically good in and of itself. We decide that actually, we do want a leader with a face and a name, instead of a faceless blob of bureaucrats behind closed doors. We decide that we actually do want an underlying purpose to life beyond “as long as it doesn’t affect me, do whatever you want.” If you look around you can see this happening already. The ideas on which America was built turn out to be self-defeating, since they rest on a wrong understanding of how people and societies necessarily work.

Profanity

F-word, N-word, C-word. One of these words is more profane than the rest. But it didn’t used to be. So, which words are profane change over time. In this sense, profanity is relative, is a cultural construction. It’s not an objective evil to make certain noises with your mouth, in and of itself.

But.

As my dad always says, “profanity is pretend violence.” In a social context, it does have moral valence. However, like real violence, not all profanity is bad. Should you go around punching everyone you meet? Obviously no. Should every sentence contain profanity? Obviously no. But, unless you’re a spineless pacifist, sometimes, you need to punch a motherfucker.

DLPH

Delphi Automotive has fallen 75% off its 52 week high! This price drop has had the effect of causing their dividend yield to spike up to 4.75%. Plus, this high yield comes at an incredibly low payout ratio of only ~20% (using estimated forward EPS of $3.39). I have not done a full investigation since I dont have any capital available to deploy right now, but at a glance this stock is priced crazy cheap. Unless there’s some hugely important piece of information about this company that I dont know, like that cars won’t need drive trains in the next 10 years, it seems like a clear bargain.